Early Risers.

[simontaylor484]

My youngest has lost the back door key the little monkey.

 

He can't remember where he had it last,  it's not the first time this has happened Swmbo hid the spare in a safe place guess what

 

 

That's right she can't remember where that is 

 

Effing marvelous start to the day 

 

Grrrr 

[Barry O]

2 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

Plus they have never been deployed against a well trained professional army who have sufficient Manpads to deal with a helicopter threat.

 

Many years back I was told that it took approximately 9  man hours of maintenance to keep a Lynx (then the Army's sole airborne A/T platform) in the air for one hour.

For every 1 hour in flight an Apache needs 22 hours of maintenance..

[Barry O]

We only have 4 man crewed Main Battle Tanks.. due to the general shortage of manpower in the Army they get by with a lot less people in the Logistics chain than they used to..

 

The obsolescence is age related...and the Army wanted to upgrade both the Warrior (with a Lockheed Martin crap German   based turret, the Challenger 2 was to get a German designed turret upgrade but some one did listen to some of the older heads about Armour and so... no updates means less cost - but they will be replaced by Cyber War spending.. (how do you use that to stop someone 1.5km away pumping a 125mm High Exploisve straight at you??) Cyber wars are more sexy but totally invisible...

 

 

Baz

[Barry O]

I have visited the opticians - it is very, very, very wet.. mega chuckinitdarn in fact.. Ark safely deployed for use soon as garden is 75% covered in water..

 

Optician reckons eyes are fine.. apparently my old consultant works for the nHS and a private consultancy no longer favoured by the local nHS Trust.. so I ma off to see a different one.. Just wish someone could get a grip of the nHS....

@New Haven Neil - the Kremlin now house a little bit of the nHS (Central was restructured as part of the "Improvements" and the building houses the Department of Work and Pensions among other things.. Yes it does have a swimming pool and a gym and some very, very expensive carpets apparently!

 

Baz

[pH]

1 hour ago, iL Dottore said:

 Just back from “The Boy Doctor” (the GP who took over from my friend - my former GP [rtd] - this youthful doctor is young enough to be my son, scary thought. Nice lad though).

My doctor retired about a year ago. He wasn’t being replaced in the practice, and none of the other doctors were taking new patients. He recommended transferring to another practice, where a new young doctor had just joined his older brother, and was accepting patients. My retiring doctor had delivered them both!

[Happy Hippo]

1 hour ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

Very true about 1812 and he was probably not the first. I am not a military historian but I am sure that there were many cases of small forces winning against superior forces by attacking their supply lines.

It is a well known military technique called FOFA (Follow On Force Attack).

 

You concentrate on hitting and disrupting or even destroying the enemies support, denying them their combat supplies.

 

It is effective because the supply chain is spread over a much larger area and logistic units do not have the same weight of defensive firepower available to a fighting arm.

 

When you are driving a truck, you will have your personal weapon and x number of rounds.  you will not have a support weapons platoon to back you up and neither will you be carrying smoke, grenades or any form of anti tank or anti aircraft weaponry.  You probably will not have a personal radio either, so a convoy strung out along a road is easy picking for a small well armed group.

[PhilJ W]

1 hour ago, Barry O said:

For every 1 hour in flight an Apache needs 22 hours of maintenance..

Well it is American.

[PhilJ W]

Got to do a shopping run, out of almost everything and it looks as if the kettle will need replacing. At least its dry out if a bit windy.

[New Haven Neil]

It has been 18 years since I left the NHS (and the UK) Baz, but I recall the carpets!  Swooshy blue jobs IIRC....quite an outcry at the time at the cost.

 

Rain here now reduced to merely pouring, tree down just around the corner has finished someone's Ford Focus' career.  Luckily it was parked with nobody in it.

 

 

[The Stationmaster]

G'day all,

 

Thoughts very much with Tony and Aditi (some of us can readily recall that unfortunate weekend because Tony had been with us on the Saturday).

 

The rain has passed but the wettage of already damp exterior brickwork has not yet been carried out.  As far as logistics and maintenance hours are concerned some interesting asides.  I'm currently reading Max Hastings' book about 1944-45 and it transpires that US Atrmy logistics in Europe were 'managed' by one of the most useless Generals in the US Army with significant impact on the ability of Allied forces to advance, especially the US army with its voracious appetite for just about everything.   And as far as helicopter maintenance is concerned back in the 1990s I interviewed a retiring RN officer for possible employment with us and he had commanded a Sea King flight during the Falklands war.  Apparently the first thing they did (and I believe he was not alone) was throw away the maintenance schedules and concentrate on the basic requirements only in order to keep the flight in the air for more hours than it was spending in the hangar deck.  Whether they paid for it in the longer term I don't know but they had no failures or scrubbed flights due to lack of servicability during the time they were operating down there.

 

As for doing away with armoured vehicles I wonder what is actually meant?  The press seem to think it means everything including the infantry's transport - which strikes me as sufficiently stupid to have been conjured up by an idiot politico - or does it just mean the MBT force?   Sounds like a great idea as long as you tell any potential opposition to do the same as you - which they obviously won't.  One thing moving money to cyber warfare but in the end it is really about boots on the ground and getting or keeping them there.  So more than likely just a Treasury idea to avoid paying for anew/updated MBT?  And surely getting to grips with cyber war really means no more than recruiting various youngsters who are currently carrying it on from their bedrooms so would in any case cost a lot less than even one MBT?

 

No other major plans for today but shortly it will be time for lunch so i have a strong feeling that some tomato sarnies might also be joined by some containing bacon.  enjoy the rest of your day folks and continue to try to stay safe as a barrage of even more confusing statistics tell us that things are getting better, or worse, depending on where you live and the extent to which you understand, or ideally don't understand,  numbers.

[simontaylor484]

Well

 

The errant key has been recovered

Thankfully. it was potentially a very expensive problem

[The Stationmaster]

8 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

Got to do a shopping run, out of almost everything and it looks as if the kettle will need replacing. At least its dry out if a bit windy.

Try Tesco Phil - they do an excellent, fairly inexpensive, kettle although I'm not sure of its name (own brand).

[PhilJ W]

Thats exactly where I'm going. I've got a double points voucher to use as well. 

[simontaylor484]

I only posted a vidyo on the prototypes discussion board yesterday showing tanks and armoured vehicles been loaded for Estonia on rail flats.

    Let us not forget that the longest recorded tank on tank hit was achieved by a Challenger in 1991

[Tony_S]

Our kettle failed on Sunday. Our new one arrived yesterday. It wasn’t from Tesco. For the model we (Aditi actually, as she liked the red one!) chose the element rating is different for different handle and base colours. Some are 2600W, some are 3000W. 
Tony

 

[TheQ]

Afternoon awl, the rain here ceased some time, the local paper reports 2 trees down on parked cars in Norwich .

 

We all have been a gift by the company, black cloth face masks emblazoned with the company logo, which can hold an pm2.5 filter inside.. (included), and a plastic hook on a key ring for opening doors without touching them..

 

 The filters last a week at the longest.. 100 from amazon is £6:55, I might actually get some as a less uncomfortable mask to wear than N95 for working on on less hazardous stuff on the boat.

 

Also a new contract .. basically exactly the same one but with references to American anti slavery law!!

Edited August 25, 2020 by TheQ

[grandadbob]

Roofer John turned up this morning as promised and sorted out the problem PDQ and at a  very reasonable price so Bobby is a happy bunny.....or as near happy as it is possible for a miserable old git like me to be.  As The Back is improving hour on hour I ventured up the loft ladder and stuck my head through the hatch and there is no daylight to be seen and the damp patch has already nearly dried out. 

I'm typing this from my new "office" and am actually quite pleased with it as I am now on a different floor to The Boss and that means she can't continually interrupt me!  

[The Lurker]

Greetings all from Sidcup where the wind is blowing hard but the clouds have partly fled the scene. Thoughts are with Tony and Aditi.

 

I am also glad to see GDB's back is recovering and his roof appears to have fully recovered. Now just for the waller, eh?

 

It rained heavily earlier but I was able to get out for my walk and avoid it all around lunchtime, better than Mrs Lurker who ventured out earlier and was rained on.

 

We appear to be making progress of sorts with one of our Tanzania cases - a call this afternoon indicates we may be able to reach an acceptable position but it is very much no counting of chickens just yet.

 

In a last run up to the end of the school hols, we are looking at going to Brands Hatch on Sunday with Younger Lurker. It will be quite easy to maintain social distancing there as even when it is busy it does not get too crowded. We will need to buy tickets in advance so i will be keeping an eye on the weather forecasts; i am not going if it is going to be wet as there is no shelter there.

 

have a good day all

[Gwiwer]

6 hours ago, Coombe Barton said:

Just been onto the Wicks and B&Q websites. They’re all out of gopher wood.

As spake of by the late Keith Waterhouse http://omf.blogspot.com/2007/05/how-long-o-lord.html

 

It has been very wet Upon the Hill of Strawberries.  

 

Owing to the strength and persistence of the wind I can now be found somewhere over there ~~~~~~~~~~>>>>>  In the general direction of Q-land   

 

 

[iL Dottore]

Some very interesting posts today. I am particularly intrigued by the insider knowledge of military strategy and tactics exhibited by some of our favourite posters. Having read today’s newspapers, at least on line, I did see the various headlines about Britain “getting rid of it’s armoured vehicles”. Now it occurs to me that many journalists today, no matter from what newspaper, cannot accurately report the news, but tend to either misrepresent, distort or indulge in hyperbole. The Ministry of Defence may be considering re-evaluating the role of the MBT in the British Army, but they are hardly likely to throw the baby (APCs etc) out with the bathwater (the MBT). Even Whitehall is unlikely to be that dim (although I suppose a few seconds after this is written, a few erudite ER colleagues will post - in great detail - why Whitehall is that dim..).

I wonder if this may be an attempt to address the old maxim “the military is always preparing to fight the last war”?

Returning to the matter of questionable journalism, I think that it would be fun to refer to some of the earlier posts on ER in the form of these sensationalist headlines we see in the press. Can you guess which posts I am referring to?
> The NHS made me radioactive

> Illegal, unskilled, gardeners blight Britain! Shock expose!

> Bathmat Crippled Pensioner seeks solace in drugs and alcohol  

> Junior looses housekeys, parents trapped.

> Man caught in storm gets wet!

and so on.

 

Well, that’s about it for me. Time to drink a well earned, albeit small, beer and relax before getting an early night in. Work is ramping up, now that I’ve taken over the medical lead, and I need to be bright eyed and bushy tailed tomorrow morning. I will also need to get my organisational thinking straightened out as I have to plan the next two weeks to spread out the workload.

 

iD

[PhilJ W]

Afternoon all from Estuary-Land. Apparently there was a local power cut this afternoon but as I was eyelid inspecting at the time I missed it. Only evidence of it was the need to reset a digital clock and re-tune a radio. Its still a bit windy out, it finally got the green bin, it was on its side this morning but placing it close to the house seems to have stopped it from blowing over. Purchased a new kettle, yet to try it out, still used the old one to make a pot of tea which is about to be drunk. 

[Coombe Barton]

2 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

As spake of by the late Keith Waterhous

That was written in 2007. I remember cracking the joke when I drove back from Reading and encountered floods 'twixt there and Oxford (long before the M40) in 1979 or prior, as I left that company that had a Reading Branch in 1979.

[Coombe Barton]

25 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

Now it occurs to me that many journalists today, no matter from what newspaper, cannot accurately report the news, but tend to either misrepresent, distort or indulge in hyperbole

This is not a political post. Boris Johnson and Michael Gove were journalists.

[simontaylor484]

It's the same on the Tv news these days I've got so depressed with it i have stopped watching it .

 

  It's much better on here people's every day life,friendly support, good humoured grumbling. 

 

[tigerburnie]

G'night all