RAF's largest plane ever lands in UK

Voyager of discovery

The Royal Air Force is going for biggest is best now. They've taken charge of a new tanker and transport plane, named the Voyager, which is almost 60m (197ft) long and has a 60m wingspan.
It is twice the size of a Lancaster bomber and will replace the VC-10 and Tristar aircraft. The RAF has bought 14 Voyagers and the first is expected to be in service by the end of the year.

These planes are not quite as big as jumbo jets, but you'd be hard pressed to notice the difference on a runway at a distance. The Voyager is a converted Airbus A330-200 airliner and can carry 291 troops for more than 6,000 miles (9,656km). So this is not for sorties out of the UK. It's to fit in with providing troop movement and refuelling well away from Britain. "I'm leaving on a Voyager and may be away some time", could well be a refrain.

The RAF is departing from its Word War II role of "defending these isles" to being able to get into action a bit more quickly than was seen in the response to the Libyan rebels. "Don't worry, rebel commander. We've got a Voyager with us". "A Voyager! Well, that's great news. You'll be here this afternoon, then?".

I'd say this was a good investment. No good having old planes on a runway somewhere in England, waiting for the call. The RAF need to be where the action is. Unless there is an uprising in Britain, which is highly unlikely (due to apathy rather than energy, I'd guess), the emphasis must be on the theatre of operations. Which will be well away from British shores, as the Belgians, Dutch, Germans, etc are very disinclined to invade unless its Canary Wharf, and that's not in the purlieu of the RAF.

Peter Luff, Minister for Defence Equipment, Support and Technology, has got it right. He said, "The arrival of the first Voyager aircraft in the UK marks an important milestone in the process that will see the Royal Air Force equipped with the best available air-to-air refuelling capability, with the first due in service by the end of the year.

"Recent events in Libya and ongoing requirement for air-to-air refuelling over Afghanistan clearly demonstrate the essential role that air-to-air refuelling plays in getting our aircraft to where they are needed."

Clearly. Well done.

Passports pass the pricey point!

Today David Cameron announced the spending reveiw of defence. It was all about keeping us safe for the best price. How best to defeat the enemy and all that. Sounded OK as far as it went. But I get a sneaking feeling that in this modern age of terrorist warfare, where the odd bearded wonder is the actual problem, not a whole army of well disciplined foes, that it is the "man on the Clapham omnibus" that gets to pay for it all. And in more ways than one.

Only yesterday I was thinking again of renewing my passport. Can't go anywhere foreign without one, not these days. So much for the single market of the great European experiment. I would like to pop over to France but have to fork out £77.50 for the privilege. Now, OK, that boils down to £7.75 each year for a ten-year passport, but it's the reasons behind why the Passport Office is in charge of such inflation-busting price rises that gets me.

I saw this on Wikipedia and immediately thought that both the terrorists and the mandarins have a hand in weedling cash out of the citizen. If there were no terrorists it is perfectly plausible to think that the cost of renewing a passport would be no more that £25. But there is a whacking great premium because of Osama and his gang, fraudsters and official inefficiency. My last passport was issued in the USA by the Washington Embassy. I now see that in similar circumstances today I would be stiffed for £124!

From Wikipedia -

The cost of obtaining a standard passport over the years has increased greatly. While consumer prices in the UK have increased by 24% from early 1998 to 2009, the price of a passport renewal increased by 269%.
£77.50 - 3 September 2009 - an increase which the Government said was necessary due to a falling number of passport applicants, and also to pay for enhanced passport security measures. The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats said that people were paying for the price of introducing ID cards.
£72 - 4 October 2007 - due to an increase in the consular premium added by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office.
£66 - 5 October 2006 - for the introduction of the latest generation passport, anti-fraud measures and interviews for first-time applicants.
£51 - 1 December 2005 - to reflect the cost of implementing key anti-fraud measures.
£42 - 2 October 2003 - to pay for new anti-fraud measures.
£33 – 21 November 2002.
£30 – 14 January 2002.
£28 – 16 December 1999 - to fund a major overhaul of the Passport Agency following the summer crisis.
£21 – 26 March 1998.
£18 - November 1992.
The above fees apply for passports issued in the United Kingdom by the Identity and Passport Service. Passports issued outside the UK by the Passport Section of a British Consulate, Embassy, or High Commission currently cost £124.

If the spending on defence could get rid of Bin Laden and the spending on security could get rid of fraudsters, we might get our money's worth on passport production. Otherwise we will not get the value for money that David Cameron talks about. Just more shelling out for a poor return.

Royal Air Force to be scrapped?

Not content with deceiving the nation about the helicopter issue, Gordon Brown is still rambling on as if the tooth fairy was in charge of the exchequer. Appearing before a committee of MPs on Thursday, Gordon Brown dismissed as 'ridiculous' claims that Whitehall mandarins are preparing 'doomsday' cuts to the public spending budget of up to 20 per cent. That's what he told MPs.

Over the past few weeks, teams of Treasury officials have, indeed, been planning for huge spending cuts across government departments. As an example of the scale of this exercise, the Ministry of Defence team is looking at the radical step of closing down the Royal Air Force and incorporating our airpower inside the Army and the Navy.

So Gordon Brown doesn't know about these ideas and these plans? The very fact that civil servants should be contemplating putting the bulk of the RAF into some museum and merging the remainder is testament to where we actually are as a nation.

This piece of news was hidden away in Peter Oborne's column in the Daily Mail. I trust those MPs asking the questions on thursday are away of the real subterfuge going on. Getting Brown to chat about things will be the least positive way to uncover the truth. We need to know what is intended. The Royal Air force no more? I doubt if the country would accept that. Gordon Brown needs to come clean and stop this continued habit of telling porkies.