Comprehensive review
 

The comprehensive Foreign and Defence review conclusions will be revealed to us all by Boris Johnson on 16 March 2021. So order the Beer, Popcorn and Pizza for then!

Best wishes,

FB

Got a source for that - I’ve heard anything from the 8 March to 19 March!!!

The day after the next Defence Questions. I wonder what the standard answer to those will be....

Coming on the back of the "No Pay Review" for the AF this year I dread to think!

It’ll be a Triple C... Chop Chop and Chop..

It will be interesting to hear how the government have decided (if they have!) how they intend to go on with the F-35? Will they hold out for all 138, cut the total at 70 and will there be a mix of Bs and As?

FB

The Daily Depress is saying that 32 (Royal) Sqn is loosing the jets, the 146 to be gone leaving just the AW-109. Future use will be the A330.



..

Indeed,

I read that Nutloose, all to help "modernise" the armed forces!:ok:

FB

That's how to make the RAF look bigger! Only equip each Squadron with one aircraft and suddenly, wow! Look how many squadrons we have!

Or perhaps we ought to call it the Northolt Station Flight.

Or the Northolt Wing.... it makes it sound bigger ;)

I don't think we'll be buying more than the 48 we've committed to......and certainly not any A's.

The increasing level of noise (finally) coming from USA (and elsewhere) about the costs of the things, I suspect will mean we'll never buy the 138 or the A.

The A model will not be purchased.

Not good for my blood pressure, and probably worse for yours, but when discussing the defence budget in coming days, let us not forget that the Govt has pissed £37bn (& counting) down the drain on Track & Trace. For what tangible benefit one wonders. Scarcely believeable.

That £37,000,000,000 can simply be counted as part of the debt mountain. No realistic benefit came from it and perhaps will be made redundant by the vaccine (fingers crossed). The government have an incredible knack for stepping, deliberately it would seem, on any Banana skins around. The 1% pay rise for the nurses is likely fairly arrived at, I hadn't been mindful of the 12% pay rise they'd had over the preceding three years, nor that the average pay of a nurse is now £34,000. I wouldn't begrudge them a single penny but the 1 % rise is a headline grabber for all the wrong reasons! Someone needs to better advise this government about how they present stuff.:rolleyes:

FB

The benefit of test, trace and isolate is in reduction of case numbers, hospital admissions and deaths, so assessment of it is bound to involve counter-factual study of what might have happened without it. I haven't seen any informed analysis so I'd be interested in your source for the above. Or is it just an assertion on your part?

Meanwhile I have posted something on the Integrated Review (not the Comprehensive Review as this thread mis-names it) on the long-running and equally mis-named "UK SDR 2020" thread.

£37Bn over 2 YEARS is what they have budgeted. Sounds like you have been reading fake news posts from the lefties on Face Ache?

There is £22Bn budgeted for FY20/21 and £15Bn for FY21/22. Sounds a lot, but that is a test and trace system for 68,000,000 people, which equates to £323 each. That is enough for just 3-4 COVID tests per person, so it is hardly the Government “pissing away” money. Don’t forget that out of that came 18,000 contact tracers that must have worked at least 100 days over the past year - at minimum wage of around £9 an hour then for an 8 hour day then each one is costing £72, so over 100 days that is £7,200 each. Multiply by 18,000 and that is roughly £130M alone.

If you think you can do such a Herculean effort any cheaper than £323 per head per year, then crack on! I digress...

LJ, quite. Almost 1 million tests are being performed daily at the moment, with a turn round time of about 12 hours for the 750k of those which require laboratory assessment. It's a staggering capability to have established, and yet is dismissed as being of "no benefit" by fools who don't make the slightest effort to understand what's beneath a headline.

Some idiots really do seem to think that £37bn was poured away on a failed smartphone app and bungs to Dido Harding's mates. I've seen the £37bn described as a 'zombie statistic', one which refuses to die despite being repeatedly explained in simple terms such as those you've set out. The lesson I take from that is that Harding should have followed Kate Bingham's example and spent a large amount on a top-notch PR consultancy at the very beginning. This would have been decried as 'waste' at the time but might have increased the public's understanding, respect for and compliance with the scheme.

That’s OK then,all the cronyism,incompetence and waste,less than 37 billion,no problem,got it!

Better to have than not, and that goes with all the other cock ups on the way in PPE etc, it’s a steep learning curve, but I’d rather the U.K. PLC has wasted some Monies to get us to where we are now, rapidly on our way to getting the population inoculated and leading the world with a few other countries in the coverage rate and quantity.... it’s not as if there was a tried and tested playbook to work from as such. I personally think they have done an excellent job and even those that deride it are actually benefitting from it.

Perhaps I am influenced by the media over the Test, Track and Trace, I get accused sometimes of being too far to the right, but my source is every time a minister appears alongside someone like Andrew Marr on the BBC or Nick Ferrari on LBC and all in between including Piers Morgan on GMB, I haven't heard a robust defence of the testing system yet. But of course, any good to come of it gets a thumbs up from me. Ferrari isn't exactly a left-winger, he put it to Nadine Dorris that the government could find £37 billion for a test, track and trace system which didn't work, his words, but could only give the nurses a 1% rise. I understand the financial artesian well we're down the bottom of, upside down likely as well.

If the truth is that the test, track and trace caper has worked then even better, but its just that its the first I've come across this. All the money spent on the pandemic has changed everything that was being planned, the nurses probably should be grateful with a 1% pay rise but I'd have thought someone among the government's advisers, MPs themselves in fact, must have looked at 1% and thought, that just doesn't sound like a nice surprise for the NHS, not after all the clapping and mawkish goings on etc.

FB

Spot on FB! Did they get 12% over 3 years? Not saying they didn't but not seen that figure myself.

However, just an observation to flesh out your "average pay" stat but, when you have a mo, have a look at Nursing pay scales and Military pay scales (I've used Army). Not saying that Nurses don't do a great job ... but a newly qualified Nurse (Band 5) comes in at mid Lance Cpl (£24k), a more specialised role (Band 6 eg Health Visitor) is Cpl (circa £34k), a nurse assisting in Surgery (Band 7) is now into lower WO2 territory (circa £40k) and a Chief Nurse/Matron (ooo, err Missus) starts in Mid WO2-land (circa £45k) and goes on up to, erm, ...... had to move pay-scales .......... top Lt Col (circa £87k). A Consultant Nurse tops out at £105k - now that's gusting Brigadier-levels. And something between an extra 30% to 60% for weekend/night/Bank Holiday work..... And, I suspect, the chance of being shot at is quite remote.

It's hard to work out what Adquals are rqd for promotion as a Nurse vs in the Mil but it does make for interesting reading. I'll let you all draw your own conclusions.

PS Mrs H 'n' H works in the NHS so this post is being writted in the utmost secrecy here!!!!!! I'm already in the doghouse most of the time but......... I'd be a gonner if she finds this and I'm hardly likely to have a friendly reception either when she dumps my remains in a bin-bag outside A&E!!!!!! :}

12% mentioned here amongst many other figures. As to your own figures, it strikes me that talking about nurses is rather like talking about soldiers, ie of privates and generals all in the same breath. I'd say that any increase in pay in the public sector at the moment, given that many in the private one will move straight from furloughed to unemployed soon enough (if they haven't already!), is a bit of a bonus. Appreciate it if your wife doesn't see this post either, if at all possible :-

Nurse pay up over the past few years but down on 2010 - Full Fact

Many thanks H & H, I now know why we post under pseudonyms.....By the way, I take it Mrs H & H doesn't know your thumb mark on pprune?!?!?!?!?:uhoh:

FB

Agreed! Nursing grading is quite seamless - hence the jump from one Mil Pay Scale to the other. You could run it through from just under 2nd Lt but, in terms of a Nurse on a Ward, I'd see that more in the realms of ORs type work moving into Officer territory later (+ you get better granularity at the lower levels with the OR scale). Just thought it worth seeing what "equivalence" looked like - all be it difficult comparing the 2 - particularly as some of the higher Nursing grades require quite high quals (as in Masters-level Degrees).

That link is interesting re inflation-adjusted values. In the Mil I'm sure we have all seen that at times over the years. Recall one pay rise (early '80's) when I got a nice little rise - but then read the small print re Food and Accom charges also going up. Ahhh, so that's an effective pay cut for H 'n' H then - even before factoring in Inflation! It was only a matter of a few pence but I did feel miffed! Spent quite a lot more than a "few pence" drowning my sorrows in the NAAFI Bar with rest of the the lads that evening!!! Still, with cockroaches living in the Accom Block with us, we felt the rise in Accom charges was wholly justified and should have been far higher!!!

Mrs H 'n' H is, indeed (as am I), glad her job is quite secure in these torrid times. Many local businesses here are wondering what the future holds ..........! And I worry for my eldest who works in Fashion - that's hardly a secure sector in the economy right now.

Me 2! :ok:

Tried to PM you but you have too many. Pseudonym essential in this case to prevent a "lingering and painful" death if caught! She is vaguely aware of "PPRuNe"....... but that's as far as it goes! Prolly best that way!!!! :ok:

Also worth bearing in mind that nursing is now a graduate profession with every newly qualified nurse required to have a degree.

Forgot that! Of course, one could ask "Why a Degree?" for basic Nursing but that is straying back into the whole Apprenticeship vs a Degree debate. As one nephew said recently "I have to go straight on to do a Masters - employers don't bother with first Degrees any more! They assume everyone has one.". Obviously that could have been industry-specific (Industrial Chemistry) ....... or maybe more widespread in terms of the devaluation of first Degrees. Anyway, I've spent enough time commenting on this dangerous topic given my own domestic situation vis-a-vie the NHS!! I better quit before I'm exposed!!!!!!!! Oooo, er!!!! :ok: