Widger,
Yep, I'm one of those bluff old traditionalists that would like a decision that has significant cost implications to be made on facts and stats, and not on the feelings in someone's waters.
I get your point that JFH didn't do any embarked ops as exciting as Corporate or Bosnia in its latter years. But I reckon JFH was more than up to the job if they had been called upon to do so. Unfortunately there was an inconvenient ongoing commitment to ops in a land-locked country at the time that I think you'd have to be an extraordinary conspiracy theorist to believe was all part of an RAF plot to run down the FAA and the CVS.
You seem to miss or evade my point though. If every other nation (USMC, France, Italy, Spain, Russia, India, Thailand etc) manages to commit naval aviation on varying degrees of a part-time basis, does the UK have to pay to do full-time USN tailhook-style carrier ops? Does the UK really have a burning requirement to conduct sustained ops of 36 aircraft alpha strikes at night in sea state 6? If so, yes I can see the need for a significant amount of training and currency for all involved. But if the UK requirement is actually for days of 6 turn 6 then the deck dance is a whole lot less demanding for everyone concerned and the ship does become just another airfield.
As long as the UK has a tanker force, it can fly out F-35s to the ship with a few hours' notice wherever it is in the world - especially given the trivial training burden of F-35B STOVL ops. The QEC doesn't become useless as a political tool just because the full air wing isn't embarked. I just don't buy into your idea that the F-35s need to be on the deck of the ship at all times so the captain can look out at his flight deck every morning and feel a warm stirring in his loins. After all, the ship is rarely, if ever, the best place to conduct training from in all the roles that the F-35 is capable of performing. Splash bombing the raft (yet again) and BFM are not the reasons you buy the F-35.
Not sure why you're worried who I am or what relevance that has. Rest assured that one of my 'benign' (as you chose to call them) ship deployments saw my ship evading shore-based missile launches and I was cleaning my wings off in badlands twice a day for about 2 months. So I do feel somewhat qualified to comment, even if I don't post very often.