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Sage advice....
... which is why Gordon sold off quite a lot of our reserves at a low price a few years ago, despite advice that this was a bad idea. Prudence? I think not... |
I think you have a point MrBernoulli- AR may well be in it's twilight as far as UK taxpayers are concerned. However there may be an alternative plan; namely The MOD's plan B ,- Tristars! they are still available at low cost, spares issues could be negated by sacrificing a number of Airframes, plus there is tried and tested corporate knowledge. It also avoids PFIs funded with sub prime loans peddled by sub prime financers who as sure as eggs will tie the ,MOD in irreversible knots. And the best bit of all? There will be a future for a three person flight deck!:D.
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I was with a wg cdr many years ago who was all cock-a-hoop as he had just bought all the East African VC10 for £100k (all or each I am not sure). Of course they didn't come into service at £100k each.
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No, but did they cost EIGHT HUNDRED MILLION POUNDS each either?
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I shall enter my tuppence-worth here and use the quote from Gremlins 2.
" we're advising all our clients to put their money in canned food and shotguns" not bad idea IMHO. lets face it, fiscally this government is screwed. we are taxed left and right, its all spent on crap and quangoes and shiny chairs for main building. Labour have run this nation up its own arse and will now sit back and watch, safe in their protected salaried and guarded mansions....... F%&K it I say we have a revolution........... all in favour |
the "Golden Rule" (authors: G Brown and E Balls), which says that over the economic cycle UK will only borrow to invest (ie, no debt for provision of services in any one year) |
"F%&K it I say we have a revolution..........."
We do have all the guns!!!! oh oh, big black car outside. |
what was that quote about PFIs transferring the risk to the private sector? Never mind, there's no money left in the kitty to buy any tankers, or carriers, anyway...
£2bn of public money goes down the Tube Taxpayers will have to pay £2 billion to rescue the failed privatisation of London Underground, the Government admitted yesterday. Ruth Kelly, the Transport Secretary, had to raid the Government’s contingencies fund to settle the debts of Metronet, which ran nine of the twelve underground lines but went bust in July. The scale of the public liability for Metronet’s failure will be a severe embarrassment to Gordon Brown, who forced through the controversial Public Private Partnership of the Tube when he was Chancellor. The payment also exposed the fallacy of the Government’s claim that it was transferring risk to the private sector. The five companies that owned Metronet – Balfour Beatty, Thames Water, EDF Energy, Bombardier and Atkins – had to pay only £70 million each towards the debt because they had won guarantees from the Government that limited their liability........ |
ORAC You beat me to it. Just finished reading a couple of articles on Metronet on the tube this morning.
So let's get this straight, New Liarbour can find £35 - 55 Billion to bale out Northern Rock and another £2 Billion to bale out Metronet. Those 2 combined would more than solve the EP (or should that be PR) "bow wave"!! I think the government have their priorities a little screwed up. And buyt a few more machine guns for the guys on the front line (yesterday's Current Bun) And today's Telegraph |
a few more machine guns for the guys on the front line How about the £12billion being wasted so foreigners can come to London and show us how good they are at running, jumping, throwing sticks etc? |
"show us how good they are at running, jumping, throwing sticks etc?"
All usual cliches about coffee and keyboards apply. (In truth, I did laugh so hard that I scared next door's cat). |
:) I fagu.
Talking of cliches, if MoD cut back on this seemingly bottomless pit of black Omegas... |
well if there is a recession then air travel will fall and airlines will be only to willing to sell on some of their redundant airframes which will look in the press like a good buy until the costs of refurbishment and conversion are taken into account.
BTW I wonder if Tony's Mortgage for his London home is with Northern Rock? |
Some interesting comments regarding FSTA here:
Coming back to haunt him: the billions in debt that Brown thought he'd buried. The Independant 24 Feb 08 The Government's reputation for prudence has been battered and pummelled by economic blow after economic blow ever since Gordon Brown left No 11. But it is a fiddle from his past as Chancellor that might yet deliver the knockout punch. Next month the Treasury will be forced to overturn the great accounting scam that Mr Brown himself championed. The Prime Minister's fiercest critics argue that he has hidden more than £30bn of debt, which future generations will then be burdened with paying off. The big attraction of the PFI has been to get spending off the Government's balance sheet. The capital value of the 621 contracts signed under the initiative is £56.9bn, yet only 42.4 per cent of this debt has made it on to the Government's books. The £32.5bn that has not been accounted for represents a staggering 541 projects. In itself, all this is not proof of a scam. Some projects have such significant risk and control transferred to the private sector that those companies, rather than the Government, should indeed account for the project. However, the Government has often gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure that it has transferred the risk. For example, AirTanker, the consortium set up to run the Government's £13bn mid-air refuelling programme, has been given ownership of the 14 aircraft in the scheme. This means that its shareholders, which include EADS and Rolls-Royce, will keep assets paid for by taxation when the 27-year contract ends. During that contract, AirTanker will also be free to hire out those assets for commercial gain. Yet insiders say the consortium itself never deman-ded sweeteners. In the next few weeks the Treasury, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and Frab will agree to a new PFI accounting guideline, making it more difficult for departments to use the PFI simply as a driver to get those hospitals and schools off their books. Most pundits have assumed that this will automatically mean that most or even all of the £56.9bn will be treated as on-balance sheet. But many projects would undoubtedly remain on the private sector's books as it bears the brunt of the risk – a Ministry of Defence source confirms that AirTanker would never end up on its budget – and there is no guarantee that the Government will reassess the schemes that are already built and operational. |
DefenseNews: Executives: U.K. Refueler Deal Near Completion
LONDON - It's taken more than four years of talks, but senior executives from two of the companies in the consortium negotiating to provide Britain's Royal Air Force with a fleet of Airbus flight refueling tankers say they expect to seal the deal by the end of the month. Thales U.K. Chief Executive Alex Dorrian told reporters here during a company briefing that he could see nothing to stop the deal from going ahead in the first quarter of the year, "unless the world comes to an end in the next fortnight." Dorrian's view was echoed by Hans Peter Ring, EADS' chief financial officer. Speaking at the company's annual results presentation in Paris earlier March 11, he said the closing of the contract was due in the "next days or weeks." EADS, Airbus' parent company, is the leading shareholder in the AirTanker consortium poised to complete a Private Finance Initiative (PFI) deal to supply 14 Airbus A330 air refueling aircraft to the Royal Air Force. They will replace Britain's aging fleet of VC-10s and Tristars. Other AirTanker shareholders are Thales, Cobham, Rolls-Royce and the VT Group. The consortium was nominated in January 2004 to provide the fleet of A330s to the RAF for tanking and transport duties. The negotiations have been dogged by a series of delays, in part caused by the complexity of what is the world's largest defense PFI deal. At one stage, the MoD threatened to pull out of the negotiations after it tangled with AirTanker over the terms of the deal. Even at the last minute, AirTanker hit a hitch when efforts to finance the deal became a victim of the credit crunch. Moves to raise the 2.5 billion pound ($5 billion) cost of building the aircraft on the credit markets had to be abandoned. The money will be loaned from the banks instead. A spokesman for AirTanker said the consortium members were "really confident now, we are very well placed to meet the March 31 date." An MoD spokesman confirmed the two sides were undertaking final steps to complete the negotiations. Industry executives here reckon the MoD could even announce completion of the deal before Parliament breaks for its Easter recess later this month.......... |
So by this point will it be Mr Northrop and Mr Grumman supplying Sir's tankers?
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:sad: I read somewhere that the discussions on the scheme had cost £47m so far....... Just an ordinary bloke me, a taxpayer and all that. It does seem a lot of money to me, for talking....
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G-A - yes indeed. How much are the tankers themselves?
Also heard that the KC-45 competition was "completely irrelevant" to the UK, and that we'd be stuck with our plainest of plain vanilla A330 tankers. After waiting so long for the damn things in the first place, it really takes the biscuit that we're not "reaping the synergies" of the US buy. Out of interest has anyone (BEagle, Jacko, Pr00ne?) managed to disentangle the figures to work out the unit purchase cost of the FSTA and the comparable figure for the KC-45A, and then the differential life-cycle costs? It would be very interesting to see how much we're saving by giving up the higher-spec tanker. S41 |
S41,
I found post #63 by FJ2ME in the "Northrop Grumman/EADS win USAF tanker bid" thread quite interesting. :ugh: Cheers, Transall. |
"Also heard that the KC-45 competition was "completely irrelevant" to the UK, and that we'd be stuck with our plainest of plain vanilla A330 tankers."
your almost certainly right, though i would have thought that the ability to carry cargo on the main deck might be attractive to the bidding consortium, even if the boom wasn't wishfull thinking on my part i know the other advantage to that being buy a couple of paletized Exec suites and you can utilise any of the fleet in the "Blair force one" role |
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