A f*cked parrot, eh? We're resorting to animal based insults, are we.
Still, at least I'm a parrot who can spell, and add up.
And yours is not an insightful and intelligent riposte, however much you might like it to be.
Unless you're willing to pay substantially higher taxes, in order to give defence a really major increase in its GDP share, then we simply cannot afford everything. I don't personally oppose increased taxation, as I'm not some selfish, libertarian, demi-Thatcherite nonce, but I do recognise that tax increases are not supported by the majority, and so are unlikely to happen.
The equipment programme needs more money, even without the cost of ongoing ops (which are, if we believe the Government, funded separately anyway). So something has got to give.
We are not the USA. We are not Russia. We are a minor power, in the second rank, and as such, while we need solid expeditionary capabilities, we do have to cut our coats according to our cloth. We need, flexible, versatile, agile and cost effective assets - and carriers are none of those things. We haven't NEEDED a carrier since 1982, and we are unlikely to NEED one again (that's not to say that Carriers aren't useful, and aren't nice to have, if you can afford them, and it's not to say that they haven't proved useful, and wouldn't prove useful again) but there are other more important priorities, for kit that is essential, rather than just nice-to-have.
We need tankers, recce and SEAD every time we go on operations, and with QRA activity getting back to Cold War levels, and with a need to sustain a Falklands fighter commitment, I'd venture to suggest that four AD squadrons is nowhere near enough, while our FJ force has been over-stretched (yes, over-stretched, not stretched) for a decade or more.
By binning the CVF and JSF we could afford virtually everything else that we need, and failing a massive injection of cash, binning both programmes seems to me to be the best option.