BBC Question Time tomorrow night

[Pielander]

As luck would have it, my housemate is on it tomorrow night. (3rd Feb). He's asked me for some ideas for questions to ask.

Does anybody have any (serious) topical questions?

RSVP ASAP.

[Training Risky]

To the Tory guy: When is your party going to acquire the nous to become media-savvy and become electable again, like the massive con trick that Nu Labour pulled on the nation in 1997.

To the Nu Labour stooge: When is anyone in your party going to realise that foxhunting is a slightly less pressing issue than Defence or European acquiescence?

To the Lib Dem putz: When are we going to tell your candidates/policies apart from Nu Labour's?

To Germaine Greer: When are you going to steal an apple and s*d off back to the Queensland Bondu?

To Jo Brand: Have you heard of salad?

There may be more!:E

[airborne_artist]

Try this for size:

"How can the Government reconcile significant cuts in defence spending and manpower when the last 15 years have seen the armed services increasingly over-stretched as the UK government attempts continually to punch well above its weight?"

[Lafyar Cokov]

If its Hoon - I think there's a whole thread on that!!!

[Archimedes]

How about:

"In the light of journalists [from name of paper(s) if known] knocking on the front doors of the widows of those killed in the RAF Hercules crash and attempting to photograph the greiving families less than 24 hours after the death of their loved ones, is it not time for such shameless behaviour to be ended by replacing the spineless PCC with a regulatory body that will prevent these tabloid parasites from preying on other people's grief?"

According to the BBC website, the panel will be:

Margaret Beckett
Andrew Lansley
David Laws
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (God help us)
Lord Stevens (didn't realise he'd been made up to a Lord so soon after retiring as Met Commissioner)

[opso]

How about:

The Prime Minister's comment about the recent tragic loss of an RAF C130 in Iraq showing the 'real face of the army' reinforces the view of many that politicians have little awareness of the military that they are so keen to commit to conflicts of choice. Do you believe that this lack of understanding is behind the latest round of defence manpower reductions that fly in the face of the recent report showing that the Armed Forces are already 90% overstretched?

I know that it's a 'creative' use of the statistics and headlines, but, hey, it's the sort of tomfollery that politicians should be used to.

[JessTheDog]

How about...

"Does the panel think that the restructuring of the Armed Forces is still feasible, given the existing overstretch, the lack of an Iraq exit strategy and a renewed threat from the Provisional IRA?"

[adr]

I like opso's question, and would suggest an edit with a second bite at the cherry. It may or may not be better than the original!

After the recent tragic loss of nine RAF personnel and one soldier in Iraq, many in the forces were dismayed to hear the Prime Minister say the loss shows the 'real face of the army.' Was this carelessness, revealing a lack of understanding that might explain the decision to reduce defence manpower even further at a time when 90% of forces personnel recognise that the forces are already overstretched? Or was it a Freudian slip, revealing a plan to disband the RAF and absorb its tasks into the Army?

adr

[heights good]

Why do the government continually make procurements on a political basis rather than on a military decision? An example is the Merlin and Lynx, both made by Wastelands both notoriously unreliabe. If Wastelands make a helicopter that is top of its class and within your budget then common sense tell you procure it, however, they make second class aircraft. Why do we not purchase something that does fulfill the requirements and the company doesnt have us over a barrell with the spares package?

[Razor61]

It's all okay saying those questions but do you think 'that' particular panel of 5 will have any decent answers to those decent questions mentioned on this thread?

Oh, hang on... re-phrase...
"Do you think that particular panel will actually take notice of what is asked and come up with a proper answer without going over the b@ll@cks we already know and disagree with?

Did that make sense?

:rolleyes: :\

[crossbow]

An example is the Merlin and Lynx, both made by Wastelands both notoriously unreliabe. If Wastelands make a helicopter that is top of its class and within your budget then common sense tell you procure it, however, they make second class aircraft.

Clearly you are not an aviator. The Lynx second class ??? Show me a light, fast agile helicopter which is better than the Lynx. Unreliable??? are you mad?

Merlin = Best ASW helicopter in the world...bar none. In fact the second best ASW helicopter in the world is MILES behind it...

Nope, I can categoriaclly state that we got 2 world class helicopters from WHL. with those 2

[heights good]

Iam an aviator and i can assure the RAF merlin is pants (thats if the tail rotors stay on them) how much is it costing from the JHC budget to fix this problem? This is on top of a price tag of £40m and £30m for the navy and RAF versions. The army lynx has a terrible servicability rate out in NI its just lucky there are pumas around to save the day.

[hyd3failure]

Why does the Army Lynx have such a poor servicability rate and yet the RN version has an outstanding servicability rate?

I completed a 7 month det recently and the aircraft servicability rate was 98.5%. In fact out of 197 sorties planned the aircraft achieved 196. So what do the RN do that the Army don't ?

[oldbeefer]

So you like your Pumas. Who built them? Westlands!

[littleme]

If you're mate's going to take any questions from that then I'd like to see him ask one's suggested by adr/opso and airborne_artist. Boy would I love to know the real answers to them though. As Razor61 rightly suggests, even if he did ask them, I doubt we'd never get a proper answer. Politicians are ****, they NEVER answer the question asked! :mad:

....and we all know it's because they don't have a clue, or the answers for that matter!

[skua]

Lower your sights a little. Phrase a question that any politico should (!) be able to answer:

Does this (or your putative) government have the b***s to fund its armed forces to the proper degree - i.e. one that allows them to fulfill the tasks given to them by that government, without putting members of the military into undue danger?

Alternatively, when will the government rein in its international ambition to fit in with the curtailed size and capability of its armed forces?

Good luck

Skua

[Pielander]

Thanks for the suggestions.

He didn't get the chance to speak in the end, but in any case, I don't suppose Margaret Beckett would have had much to say on defence funding.

Never mind. Hopefully the S of S will be on QT in the not-too-distant future (and hopefully it won't be the incumbant).

Cheers

Pie

[heights good]

If im correct the Puma was a licence built version from the french (hence not a Wastelands design) and as to why the army get problems i have no idea but i can assure you they do struggle with servicability.
If im also correct im sure i heard on the grapevine that the US101 is going to have a totally redesigned tail rotor because of the problems its had of late. Strangely enough not built by Wastelands.

[ORAC]

I'd start using a different grapevine. From the press conference announcing the contract award:

"Q: Thanks. One of the things that came up during the lead-up period was that some versions of the 101 in Canada and the U.K. were grounded at various times because of problems with a tail rotor piece that kept cracking. The Merlin in the U.K. crashed and was grounded for four months in Canada. They're still on some type of flight restriction while they try and figure out what's causing this. How did that factor into your decision?

MR. LAUX: We are very aware of the technical issues that are being worked. We have in our plan a very focused activity to further understand and to participate in understanding the redesign activities that are going on. And it is our expectation that we're likely to carry that redesign even further as we continue to mitigate the risk areas in the aircraft.

Q: So you're going to redesign this part from scratch, then, so that you don't have to worry about this concern? Is this one of the parts that's going to be replaced?

MR. LAUX: It's not going to be redesigned from scratch. There's a healthy amount of design work and testing and qualification and understanding that has gone into the current configuration. We're looking for more robustness than the current design has, and we're going to work towards that end."

[crossbow]

Was the Merlin Tail Rotor designed and built by Westlands or Agusta? Does anyone know?

[heights good]

I stand corrected however the fact remains the design was flawed and the tail rotor is being redesigned and not by Wastelands.