Jackonicko
Everyone knows your pro RAF and anti RN stance, as well as your lack of Armed forces service, so I think your totally one sided opinions get taken with a pinch of salt.
Frontseater made a good post (#32) on page 2... which seemed to be taking a fairly neutral stance to look at the issue.
There are good points coming from all sides in this, but Jackonicko, your first few lines said
1) The UK can now longer afford to carry out the full spectrum of military roles and operations, and has to concentrate on those core 'defence of the UK' capabilities that cannot be left to allies,
So just what, in your opinion does the 'core defence of the UK' entail if issues similar to the Falklands will not happen again?
If you want to be totally blinkered and not take lessons from the past, you would have to say terrorism was the biggest threat.
In which case, by your set of arguing principles, not only should we bin the carriers, we could also reduce the surface fleet further and cut huge swathes of personnel from the RAF and close most of the UK bases.
We could then spend some of the money saved on bolstering the numbers in the army, both with more foot soldiers and more army aircrew.
The rest of the money could be spent on increasing the number of security personnel in the UK security services.
Job done. (from a blinkered perspective)