On the aid front, perhaps we should get our own house in order first. Anyone who reads Private Eye will be familiar with the Commonwealth Development Corporation (CDC).

That said, I wouldn't take anything the Torygraph prints as fact, esp. with regard to their pet subjects.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... erity.html

I bet you won't see the EU cutting jobs instead.

When you consider how much the coalition have already wasted in terms of scrapping Nimrod, this is small potatoes.

Let's face it - most of our air force is out of date.

The Nimrod has been plagued with technical problems

- perpetual fuel leaks
- in 2002 new wings were made too weak and the wrong size because none of the planes are identical
- the AEW3 upgrade was a disaster, costing £1 billion
- instead of looking at a new airframe, they decided to continue trying to upgrade a 40-year old airframe

It should never have got to this point - it should have been killed off years ago and the money spent on either AWACS or something based on a newer airframe.

On top of this, we still use VC-10s which are nearly 50 years old. We're no longer a global player, only a support role for the Americans and NATO.

I agree, though when Nimrod was close to completion it does seem wasteful. We will probably have to buy P3 Orions to fill the gap that Nimrod filled. As for tankers there is a Airbus program IIRC.

We've just received the first of our A330 tankers. They're replacing our VC-10's.
clicky

yup lets keep on throwing more and more money at a project regardless. At some point you have to go enough is enough.

I am not suggesting that continuing was the only option. If I were to spend another £200 million I would want guarantees that they would be enough to complete the project. The basic premise was wrong from the start. The original Nimrods were hand made so every one was different. I would have thought a new airframe was a better option. Though knowing how ministries constantly add extra roles which doubles the costs I thibnk there is blame all around really.

They're at it again:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... guide.html

The cost is actually very low when you consider our share is £9 billion. Which is a fraction of our overall budget.