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| RAF Sea Kings: around for a little longer Image Source: RAF Valley website |
This is only to be expected as over the past 20 plus years we have long grown accustomed to the reassuring sight of the iconic yellow Sea Kings flying overhead piloted and manned by brave RAF servicemen and women. We also know that the search and rescue work they perform, on land and sea, is often a matter of life and death -- and therefore it is entirely right than any changes to these arrangements are subject to the very highest levels of scrutiny. For this reason I completely agree with Albert Owen MP when he said yesterday, "lets put safety as the basis, lets put expertise as the basis" for determining any future changes to the service.
However now that the privatisation of the service has been stopped the question remains as to how the current fleet of ageing Sea King choppers -- many of which are approaching the end of their service lives -- will be replaced. The previous Labour government sought to privatise the whole function through a 25 year Private Finance Initiative (PFI) deal in order to avoid the capital expense of having to buy a whole new fleet of Search and Rescue helicopters. Whether this would have been more cost effective or not is open to debate as many Government PFI deals have been so ineptly handled that the they have ended up costing far, far more over the long term. However, whatever your view on PFI deals it would at least have provided for the full replacement of all old Sea Kings with brand new, faster Sikorsky helicopters of a type currently used by the already privatised Coast Guard Search and Rescue service.
I understand that the potential procurement options to meet future SAR requirements are now being considered. My personal hope is that the Government will now find a way, despite the financial pressures, to fund the new helicopters which will become necessary in the long run to preserve the standard of this life saving service. Furthermore I will continue to argue for the preservation and further development of RAF Valley as the key Search and Rescue base in North Wales and beyond.
23 comments:
Alberto has taken the credit for saving the search and rescue flight at RAF Valley, he's outfoxed you Druid.
Great to see the 70+ old granny giving those armed robbers a bashing.
However.
In the event that one of them makes a complaint of assault she WILL be arrested, she WILL be kept in custody for hours, she WILL be fingerprinted and photographed, she WILL have her DNA taken and it WILL remain on file for ever. She WILL spend weeks agonizing over whether she will be charged or not. In the event that she does, she WILL spend months attending countless court appearance until some judge eventually makes the decision that all this is ridiculous.
Such is Labours' legacy as regards law and order.
Such is Labours' legacy as regards law and order.
It's got nothing to do with Labour. The Police are duty bound to investigate alleged crimes against the person and quite rightly so. The decision as to whether to then persue a prosecution rests with the CPS and again quite rightly so. Being arrested prior to questioning also has it's advantages in that the arrested person then has for more and better protected rights than someone the Police just 'invite in' for a chat . As for DNA databases the Tories have promised to scrap these. They can either be trusted to honour this or they can't. You should stop reading the Daily Mail/Express. Worse for your health than smoking.
Now to helicopters. It's a bit rich Albert wading-in being as his lot started this. It's also a bit rich the tories/coalition thinking there's any political capital in it. Plaid might say something. One day. Maybe.
No matter which way it's spun and by whoever this is merely an unforeseen hiccough causing a delay in proceedings. As soon as the Police have finished investigating, unless the mad idea is cancelled, it will continue.
"It's got nothing to do with Labour."
It's got everything to do with Labour. Time was that the Police at a very low level would not countenance such 'complaints' and would just laugh in their faces. Labour created a situation where no one now even at the higher levels, especially at the higher levels, will take such a decision.
"Being arrested prior to questioning also has it's advantages in that the arrested person then has for more and better protected rights than someone the Police just 'invite in' for a chat "
You seem to suggest that 'being invited in for a chat' is an euphemism for having a good thrashing etc. What rot, your 'rights' are just about the same one way or the other.
"As for DNA databases the Tories have promised to scrap these."
So, currently, she would be DNAd and it'll remain on file, yes?
"You should stop reading the Daily Mail/Express. Worse for your health than smoking."
Shame you destroy any credibilty in your defence of the vile Labour policies that have created a inertria in decision making processses in law and order by making unfounded and such supercilious assumptions.
Oh, and re the helicopters. It was King Billy who won it. He saved the day not Albert.
It's got everything to do with Labour. Time was that the Police at a very low level would not countenance such 'complaints' and would just laugh in their faces.
The Police are a public body and everything they do must follow standardised and publicised procedures. This is for our protection as well as theirs. If you are under the impression that that will change then you will be severely disappointed.
You seem to suggest that 'being invited in for a chat' is an euphemism for having a good thrashing etc.
I make no such suggestion at all. The Police will always try to invite you to te station for a chat as opposed to formally arrest you wherever possible. Once you are arrested they have to follow strict laid down procedures and a suspect under arrest has far more rights than someone who is there of their own free will.
So, currently, she would be DNAd and it'll remain on file, yes?
It will remain on file until such time as the Tories honour their pledge to scrap the database for innocent people. So realy it depends how much you trust the Tories.
Oh, and re the helicopters. It was King Billy who won it. He saved the day not Albert.
I never said it was Albert. Quite the opposite. If there's thanks due to anyone for this temporary reprieve it's whoever it was that had the 'commercially sensitive information' at Soteria. I fail to see the significance of King Billy in that respect as they are a US/Canadian/French & RBS consortium.
For someone offended to be labelled a Mail/Express reader you do a more than passable rant like one. I was waiting for you to somehow feed in unmarried teenage mothers and asylum seekers.
I suspect there is a case to argue for the concept of 'societal overheads'. However we solve the current difficulty with SAR services, it is us lot who will pay. My view is that we should do this outside of an overtly private sector mechanism, because it costs us money - a lot of it - to pay their profits and dividends.
In other words, if a private business can make a profit from supplying SAR services, it stands to reason that the public sector, who don't need to make a profit, should, with proper management, be able to do it much cheaper.
Buy what we can afford now, rather than using 'HP' to pay for them tomorrow.
I go with Photons "what we can afford now" line, not least as I expect 'King Billy' will get a safe machine to fly and for now the service will be saved.
Anon 11.53. You are spot on in what you say.
Don't let the Labour apologist wind you up. It's lucky that you haven't been smeared as a racist, homophobe or even a criminal yet because that is what they do.
Even though their ranks are packed with examples of such behaviour.
Glad to see that Albert was nowhere near when an MP was mocked for being disabled. Just because he's a Tory.
Labour Party = Nasty party. Always were, always will be.
Ignore him.
"If you are under the impression that that will change then you will be severely disappointed."
It seems to me I was commenting on how we got to this stage and not any asperations to it changing any time soon.
Anyway, I'll take the advice given to me at 17 25.
Don't let the Labour apologist wind you up.
I've actually been a Tory since 1969 and voted Tory at every available occasion since then. With GE's, Euro's, Council and Assembly that's probably around 100 votes by now I should have thought.
Yourself?
All that voting and still a Labour apologist.
Amazing.
All that voting and still a Labour apologist.
Bar extremly core issues, there is little difference between the Tories and Labour and you would be fooling yourself of you thought otherwise. Brown when he took Office of Chancellor carried on many tory policies. There is very little different Osborne would have done to deal with the crisis than the actions Darling carried out. Many pof Labour's policies will be carried on by Osborne. Come the next change of power Balls will carry on many of Osbornes's policies.
The left wing of the Labour party is just as insane and deluded as the right wing of the Tory party.
"Yourself?"
Hitlers' Nazi Party,National Front, BNP, EDL and a spell with Pinot in Peru no doubt.
After all you have already decided at your initial post he's a Daily Mail reading rabid right winger.
Your style is similar to Red Flags.
The Daily Mail does the Conservative Party no credit at all. The Telegraph is a far more balanced read - or indeed The Indepenedent (even though it's a sort of New Labour style paper).
As for 'Red Flag' I have little knowledge of him/her other than a couple of posts I have read on here. Some times comes across as a rabid far left winger, some times comes across with a slightly right of centre view point. I believe I may be older clocking in at 60 in a couple of months as I am.
Anon @ 18.47
If we hadn't bailed out the banks, but had instead taken control of them one by one as they went bust, and then used taxpayers money to guarantee savings deposits held in the bank, and to pay the bank staff to administer their book of loans and mortgages and to process public pensions and cheque clearing etc. then the taxpayer would not be in hock to the tune of £850billion.
Does anyone know if there were any politicians in the summer of 2007 brave enough to consider that option?
Outsider, I believe we missed the boat slightly with regards to the banks. Forced intervention, split them into purely high street and purely investment, propped upo the high street banks and left the investment banks to fend for themselves. Possibly a toxic bank for residential mortgages (press-ganged Northern Rock maybe?), and again left commercial mortgages to fend for themselves.
But this is in hindsight. As I recall the events developed so rapidly we were hours away from a total banking shutdown.
But vback totopic - Helicopters and SAR. Are we nit in thie position of privatising SAR purely to cut government spending?
Anon @ 20.18
Maybe the top bankers bonus packets could be helicoptered in to SAR. After all BoE helicoptered a few billion pounds into the banks.
I don't agree it all happened too fast I was asking my friends in the know if they thought RBS was going to fail in the late spring of 2007. In fact I even mentioned it to my bank manager! But Gordon Brown failed to get off his big fat a....
Is Lord Oakeshott's departure from the Treasury and Government tonight the first 'really' big crack in the coalition? His interview with the BBC was straightforward, he said - the banks are " too big to control" (I agree), and he wants to stop "the banks ever ruining the country again" (I agree). In fact, listening to what he said I have just joined the I Agree With Oakeshott Party!
Outsider, personally I support splittig the banks down so that none of them are 'to big to fail'. Never must we be in a position where they hold us to ransom ever again. However once broken down into smaller banks and isolated into different 'disciplines' we need to be careful we don;t put to many constraints on the investment banks. They generate a huge amount of tax revenue and like them or loathe them (and personally I'm very angry that there have been no prosecutions), they are unfortunately a necessary evil.
Anon @ 21:17
I'm not anti-investment, just anti-fools; anti-hubris; anti crooks. Despite all the special pleading coming from the big 'bang' banks, the retail and investment banking institutions MUST be separate entities, or else have no support, real or implicit from taxpayers money.
"the retail and investment banking institutions MUST be separate entities, or else have no support, real or implicit from taxpayers money."
Indeed so. They survived that way until Thatcher's "big bang", and the equivalent repeal of Glass/Steagall in the US, allowed the banksters to hold honest working (and retired) people to ransom, while paying themselves outrageous sums of money for what would normally be considered at best business failure and at worst utterly immoral.
PFI (as per the search and rescue scheme and far too many more similar ones) is no less than an accountancy fiddle to get expenditure of the books and to hide the outrageous cost of having the private sector "manage" and deliver what are inherently public sector services.
As soon as this pub closes, the revolution starts.
Ahhhh.Outsider..20.09
Who are the shareholders here ??
Are They Percuniary rather than Parochial...
Do they actually care about you and me (working class I believe ??) Or their own investments ??????
Nos Da
How serious can we take Paul Williams when he calls for massive gov spending on sea kings at the same time as calling for deficit reduction? Iolo gets it right once again.
honory mention to the druid it seems... www.twitter.com/angleseyfood
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