The Lukins.. The Water Rats...

Damn near perfect day yesterday, bit of blogging, bit of great computer game, lots of great book (Zero History now near un-putdownable, not had that with a WG since Neuromancer)

Rounded off with a trip up the road to a pub Rich recommends called The Water Rats, which seems to be the Intrepid Fox of the 1950s interior wise. Apparently Teddy Boys used to hide razors in the rim of their hats and do people across the face You can really see that happening in there..

Anyway.. the middle band on was The Lukins, who I'm delighted to find were from Plymouth and I must look out for them (sorry about blurry photo). Generally great poppy metal I thought was more "the new Garbage" than "QOTST molested by Blondie" on their myspace page.. until their last song which opened up like vintage Paranoid era Sabbath. Aside from being generally all round competent and like able they showed off some great songs, the only dud was actually a cover, a metal version of Cliff Richards Wired For Sound which you have to give them at least balls for trying.

They actually played the audience as well, a very underrated skill in band terms.

This was highlighted by the next band, Carlito (from Kingston), who I think in terms of musicianship were way ahead of the Lukins but got into an instant sulk at the small crowd in the Water Rats and hid their mood very badly. Perhaps too much fizzy pop beforehand. Britpop in fred perry shirts turned up to 11 is never going to be my thing but they could have won me over if they'd shown half of the humility of The Lukins. This might be a consequence of playing to audiences in the South West of course..

To follow on my blog from yesterday on the way London is going, I'll refer you to two albums about London both featuring the same songwriter, one written in 1994, one in 2007, with sharply different moods.

For all the mindless excess suggested in Parklife it is a mostly fun experience, suggesting the freedom and opportunity (seemingly) available in London in the mid 90s.

In stark contrast, The Good The Bad and The Queen, released supposedly at the peak of the Naughty Noughties just before the crash, is full of Dickensian squalor and doom. I wonder it it influenced PJ Harvey's Let England Shake, both seem to draw a parallel to the Britain of a century ago.

We should probably all be in Plym with The Lukins....

Pharaohs of London

I listen to music at work and occasionally the two fit perfectly.

Last year I was working the middle of Whitehall for the Department of Energy and a particular album of music fit like a glove and it's only after the next London stint has started and I've stayed here at length that I've come realise why.

I'm not to into Philip Glass, (only really got into him via his versions of Heroes and Low) but  Akhnaten  is awesome. A fantastic operatic soundtrack to ominous reading of the inscriptions around the Pharaoh's tomb, ending with the sad little notice given to tourists, it was very weirdly appropriate listening in the middle of the English white marble Vatican city of civil service bureaucracy. 

Lately I've come to realise that London is in a wider sense starting to resemble ancient Egypt. Not in climate terms obviously. But in social mobility terms.

The non-domicile tax status provided by successive British governments (that we now know have been terrified of the media elite) have made London the preferred haunt of the 1% of the 1%. 

A British Monaco? Sounds good? 

Aside from further completely isolating London from the nation of which it is supposed to be the capital city, and as a Northerner I probably feel that more than most, it also creates a creeping unease with some of the scum you are sharing the pubs and environs with.

This morning over coffee Akhnaton came on as I read this..

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/16/london-grotesque-bashar-boris-ken 

.. which prompted me to blog today

The Altered States of London

Good week so far.. experiencing the mini-Scala revival of Ken Russell Forever at the HQ of the new Scala activities, The Roxy Bar and Screen (beneath The Shard, where the pic was taken). I became a member at the weekend just in time for their double bill of ALTERED STATES and Russells take on BARTOK.

Both excellent.

ALTERED STATES, is I remember, a very strange ken Russell film and I think some of the younger audience were a bit surprised by it. Instead of crazed nuns, OTT sex and art horror the movie plays now more like the cusp between Kubrick and Spielberg. It is incredibly sober and well put together for a KR film with a magnificent oscar nominated soundtrack by classical composer John Corigliano and dialogue written by Paddy (NETWORK) Chayefsky from his book.

KR could be brilliant with his actors and the central romance angle to Altered States is very strong. Seen from then, in the early 80s, dominated as it was by the incredible effects sequences, we compared the movie with Doug Trumble's BRIANSTORM and AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON. Seen from now it is the brilliant characters carved out by William Hurt and Blair Brown (among others), which stand out and make it closer to the human Goldblum/Davis tragedy within THE FLY of later that decade.

On a big screen in HI-DEF ALTERED STATES would be amazing and would stand comparison with 2001. Those who like a bit of humanity and characterisation may even prefer it.

BARTOK was one of Ken Russell's rarely seen BBC Monitor documentaries on the Hungarian composer Bela Bartok. Long classical black and white music videos, this initially looked like hard going but eventually came good (perhaps because I recently visited Budapest and really liked the place). Highlight was KR's video for Bartok's BlueBeard. Bluebeard leads his wife down to see his final terrible secret -- through a stylised 70s building (New Zealand House apparently) to her eventual doom. Looked amazing even in crackly black and white.

After six months of not finished a book I am tearing through William Gibson's Zero History at flank speed. Much easier to read than Spook County (previous one) it is perhaps because London 2012, Hubertus Bigend and Blue Ant suddenly seem a lot more real and believable. Got into a great routine listening to the magnificent LL show every day. I must be in a good mood, I quite like the sound of the new Paul Weller album.

The Guardian has me doing a hi-tech Time Team archaeological dig looking for and collecting old documentation.

From the new flat I'm house-sitting on Grays Inn Road I'm reading. writing, updating my blog playing good computer games and getting out and about - where am I finding the time for all this?
(TV in flat is broken)

Unfinished business

I never did it but always wanted to set off for Glastonbury Festival at the crack of dawn listening to this....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DetiWap-FM



One more reason to go back someday I guess...

http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/chrishodgson/festivals/glastoindex.htm

THE REAL COST OF THE ROYAL NAVY CARRIERS

In case you have missed the latest on the fiasco which is the Royal Navy's new aircraft carriers: the word is that the cost of converting them use to the more effective (hugely delayed) US aircraft will be so much that the Admiralty may reverse its earlier decision and go with the inferior version of the same plane. OR - quelle horreur! - use the French plane which is available now, and that will probably end up operating from them anyway...

It is likely to make for a fascinating Easter budget statement.

If you thought you knew how much the new Royal Navy carriers have cost the UK budget, you are probably wrong. Originally budgeted at £3 billion, now at 7, likely to rise to an eventual 12, the real cost of disastrous budget decisions on this subject going back to the 1960s has been closer to £30 billion, plus the lives of hundreds and British and Argentinian servicemen and a long running international dispute which poisons Britain's relations with the entire of South America.

The first of the Queen Elizabeth Class carriers is due for launch next year without any aircraft. The preceding class of ships, the much smaller but Illustrious class, have just been scrapped early due to budget issues, leaving the Royal navy without any carrier capability for nearly a decade. While this happens the other Royal Navy carrier veteran from the Falklands War, HMS Hermes, will continue to serve, as it has done for decades, as INS Viraat, the flagship of the Indian Navy until 2020.

What happened to the the management and procurement of the Royal Navy's assets to allow billion dollar assets to be sold and scrapped while their even more expensive replacements sit useless for years?

In the 1960s The Royal Navy had six carriers, all laid down just after World War Two, all in various states of refit. The two major assets where the 50,000 ton Audacious class carriers, HMS Ark Royal and HMS Eagle, capable of flying the biggest baddest jets of the era, the supersonic Phantom II. The others, of which HMS Hermes was one, were half the size at 26,000 tons but considered useful as helicopter platforms. The plan was to replace the larger ships with one or two large but easy to use ships, codenamed  CVA-01 , and keep one or two of the smaller ships for the Royal Marines.

Unfortunately the fleet flagship, the Audacious Class Ark Royal, was an infamous lemon, an expensive money pit who spent more time in dockyards being fixed than at sea. Her sister, HMS Eagle, was much easier and cheaper to run but had missed a crucial upgrade to her flight deck in the 1950s (cost cutting already).

When the inevitable decision was taken to scrap both Audacious Class ships, Eagle had just finished a refit, was considered to be in excellent material condition, estimated to be at least ten years live left in her. And, as the subsequent carrier of Hermes has proved, estimates on the life of aircraft carriers have since proved to be hopelessly pessimistic.

Hesitating at the decision to replace the larger carriers with the new CVA-01 design, a decision was taken shortly after to abandon all Royal Navy operations East of Suez and to scrap the entire carrier fleet.

Such was the political stigma of "aircraft carrier" in the UK budget at the time, a form of replacement, the compromised anti-submarine Invincible Class (including a new Ark Royal) was only ordered as "through- deck cruisers". Of the others, HMS Hermes and one sister ship were retained for use by the Royal Marines as helicopter platforms.

With the even further scrapping of RN resources in Thatcher government's defense budget of 1981 the military dictatorship in Argentina decided this was a signal to re-occupy the Falklands. Previous UK governments had directed a nearby RN frigate to sail around the islands in times of tension. In failing to do this the UK government most responsible for the political failure of allowing the conflict to start reaped historic political benefits from the war which followed. The withdrawal East of Suez was forgotten as a whole new requirement South of Suez was discovered.

 Approximately a thousand deaths later, with a new disputed base to be defended 8000 miles away, with HMS Hermes dragged out of retirement and HMS Illustrious dragged out of a sale to Australia, carriers become a fashionable subject again within budgeting terms and new long term planning began on their replacement.

HMS Hermes, thought to be beyond her useful life, was sold to India in 1986 to become INS Virrat.

Illustrious and her two sister ships sailed onto two decades of semi usefullness with their tiny air group (12-18 short range, subsonic, Harriers) attracting criticism for their limited capability, until a straight budget decision in 2010 between them and a 40 year old RAF relic from the 1970s resulted in the entire Harrier force being scrapped to allow the UK to keep the Tornado (a very hard but correct decision as the RAF role in the Libyan uprising proved.)

Figure 2 HMS Illustrious size comparison with US carrier

Meanwhile, as INS Viraat, the old Hermes, a contemporary of the old Eagle and Ark Royal but half the size, sails on as flagship of the Indian Navy. The Indians had bought a Russian carrier, the Admiral Gorshkov,  to replace her but having found problems with the Russian ship (a similar hybrid compromise to the Illustrious class) the Indians chose to keep refitting the old ship and she is now set to continue until 2020, by which time there will be no spares left for her aircraft. Hermes will then have served for 60 years, when her original estimate was 20.

British naval experts, who seemingly prefer shiny new ships with half the capability of the old, would scoff at the Indians for sailing around in ships of that age, but the Indians  are practical enough to realise something that has also occurred to the US Navy. An aircraft carrier does not have to be stealthy, fast, economical, pretty or even rust free. It is a floating air base. All it needs is to be big enough and mobile enough. For this reason apparently ancient designs, even for the limitless resources of the US Navy, work just fine. USS Enterprise is due to be retired in 2013 after 51 years of service. 

Another factor to be included in these early years of the 21st century, when discussing the usefulness of carriers, is what their actual effective use would be. How much real danger are we expecting to put these ships in? In a world of 'power projection' and flag waving are such vessels, of whatever age, really going to be thrown into the sharp end of a modern conflict? Might some future UK government feel constrained to justify the expense of a new carrier by actually using them? The previous RN carriers were protected by 14 frigates and 20+ destroyers. Today we have the bright and shiny Type 45s. But there are only 6 of them (and currently we can only afford to equip them with one type of missile)

The two new carriers, The Queen Elizabeth Class are named Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales. As has been mentioned elsewhere the previous HMS Prince of Wales was a modern capital ship of another era sent into a hostile zone without adequate support to make a strategic political statement. She then faced state of the art weapons and was sunk (along with HMS Repulse) with huge loss of life. It was a loss of naval prestige in the East which the RN never recovered from and which led directly to the original decision to scale back East of Suez.

Of course, to avoid being wholly pessimistic, we could play the historical game another way, and say the previous Queen Elizabeth Class served with huge distinction in both World Wars and were arguably the most cost effective weapons ever ordered by a British government. The decision to order the deployment of Prince of Wales and the decision to order the Queen Elizabeth super dreadnoughts were both taken by the same man, Winston Churchill, underlining the difficulty ordering and deploying weapons from another era.

Nevertheless, to get the cost of the new carriers in perspective let us put it alongside the budget decisions that followed on from the original carrier savings in the 1970s.

Starting with the most heinous losses.

FALKLANDS WAR

£3 Billion +

255 lives (649 Argentinian)

Six ships sunk

plus permanent state of cold war in South Atlantic and ever worsening relations with South America

ILLUSTRIOUS CLASS "aircraft carriers/through deck cruisers"

Three built, entered service by 1981, all scrapped by 2014

£0.8 billion+

QUEEN ELIZABETH CLASS

Two ordered

Original estimate £2 Billion

Likely to be £12 Billion

Cost and type of aircraft currently unknown, ships unusable until 2020

The cost of the much reviled CVA-01, cancelled in the 1970s is estimated at £100 million, a bargain in today's terms but impossible to justify in the climate of the time. (More difficult decisions for politicians: the decision to scrap the carriers in the 70s was taken by the man who later have to beg for help for the financial bailout from the IMF, Dennis Healy.)

Seen with hindsight the real disaster was to scrap the assets available at the time. It was estimated that a fully modern refit of HMS Eagle (twice the size of Hermes) would have cost £5 million. The cost of continually refitting the carrier since, in a method similar to Hermes/Viraat, is unknown but likely to be less than completely re-inventing the industry, expertise required to operate modern fully capable carrier aircraft for the new carriers after an absence of 35 years.

The US Navy is due to help the RN re-acquire these skills and it is from this direction that we have the most compelling argument to go ahead with the carriers, and not necessarily because we actually should use them. Much of the pressure to get the new carriers came from the US tired of footing the bill for European defence and acutely aware it is the only nation currently deploying large carrier task forces. Regardless of the actual usefulness or obsolescence of the new RN carriers this is the best reason for acquiring them.

In a world were anything from satellite weapons, cyber warfare, nano-technology and drones could be decisive in a future conflict, and the UK has little to no capability in any of these areas, the billions spent on the carriers actually is billions spent on keeping the UK, and Europe, some way underneath the US hi-tech defensive umbrella.

And speaking of Europe, it is again here where the carriers make sense in a larger international context. Operating alone as only as part of a massively cut down Royal Navy the new carriers would be an exceptionally juicy target. However, along with the likely French carrier contribution, and protected by the significant and effective naval assets provided by the rest of Europe they will likely be the core of EU naval defence for at least the next 30 years. 

In this context the initially surprising thought of flying French aircraft from the British ships actually makes sense, and it would perhaps balance some of the idiotic lack of common sense that has plagued the issue of Britain's carriers for the last 40 years. The real cost of the new carriers has been in lives and is a result of vacillation and short term thinking. Having made a hard decision to build and pay for the new carriers let us make sure we get the most from them for as long as possible without needlessly expending them - or their crews.

From the budgetary perspective of 2012 ordering the new RN carriers looks insane. From the international political perspective of future generations the investment in securing our allies across the Atlantic and in Europe is priceless. Whether our allies would agree that defending Europe includes the South Atlantic is another matter.

Each of the new Royal Navy 65,000 ton super carriers will sail into action with a crew of 1600. Hopefully the only sacrifice made on this issue is the financial one we have to make now.

BLAST FROM THE PAST : Bikes in 1996

I've been riding on the wilds of Exmoor for a couple of years now and although now  I'm coming to terms with the breathtaking hills, razor sharp bends and slimy roads there is still plenty to worry about. The Readers Ride featured in Aprils BIKE ("Devlish Devon") is referred to in our house as Fireblade Alley and come summer I would seriously suggest leaving the locals well alone ! That I can deal with them at all is because I learn't a few tricks previously on this route…..

The St. Albans – Chilterns TT Safari

The sheer variety of roads on this route, which crosses the borders of three counties, make it the nearest thing to the Isle of Man within half an hour of London. And the TT doesn't doesn't go through a safari park….

Start in St. Albans by the Roman Verulamiam. Do Ben Hur impressions in the millennium old theatre before taking off down the road and taking a left at the roundabout towards Dunstable and Redstone. (A1583)

From here the roads get about as close to Union Mills on the Island as you're likely to get in the South East, spiced with the odd roundabout to keep the road on your toes.  When the road crosses beneath the M1 and becomes the A5 it passes through Markyate (rumoured to be an old hang out for the Knights Templar) before a turning on the left by a pub announces the route to Whipsnade. Wack open the throttle as you reach the hill, it'll be your last chance for a while.

Quiet sweet villages and Hertfordshire countryside herald the approach of Whipsnade safari park, marked by a weedy looking gate across the road that wouldn't bother a Meerkat. Drive past Whipsnade Safari Park – Meerkats make crap pillions. They always lean the wrong way.

You're now descending down from the series of hills that contain Ivinghoe Beacon. As a famous local high spot the Beacon you might think is a great place for a pilgrimage in the middle of the night to sort your life out and watch the sun come up. Speaking for myself the only thing I found when I tried this was a whole new way to lose your helmet – I tripped over a tent in the dark and it rolled down a hill. Took me hours to find.

 Hurtle past the long line of fencing that keeps the penguins from ravishing the countryside in their heat-stroke insanity. The fencing isn't that effective actually – while looking for access to a giant chalk lion cut into one of the nearby hills a friend of mine broke into Whipsnade's wallaby enclosure by mistake.

But I digress.

Easy on the twisty steep hill, plenty of change downs, some real nutters around here. At the bottom fight the impulse to go tearing off into the Bedfordshire Veldt and turn almost back upon yourself, back up, hugging the base of the hills towards Dagnall and Ringshall.  (B4506) This gorgeous country road winds into a National Trust enclave of the Chilterns and there are some interesting surprises hidden away in the woods if your are willing to explore. If you just want to rattle the sound barrier on your Hayabusa you'll find the roads a bit twisty but with the odd hidden straight equipped with a generous sound proofing of lush English forest.

Woh ! Half way along the final straight don't miss the sudden right hander into the deepest bit of forest – towards Aldbury. If the Merc you've just overtaken flashes you mid turn fight the impulse to chase them up the road to Northchurch, which misses the best bits and is rather dull. (Even when you're trying to honourably extract yourself from a staggeringly pointless road rage incident)

Aldbury, a perfect site for lunch, looms out of knowhere. Comforting and vaguely sinister in a way only English villages seem to be, I'm convinced Aldbury is the basis for the Chiltern village in James Herbert's "The Ghosts of Sleath". The too-tranquil pond in that dominates the place is a dead give-away. The monstrous black Speed Quattro I was given to test by an Internet magazine was luckily out of there before it got dark… (During writing this a friend confirmed that Aldbury was often used as a Location for sixties spy drama's such as The Avengers and The Prisoner)

The road keeps twisting through some golden countryside before reaching Tring. An odd place with its own 19thc equivalent of Whipsnade Safari Park in the shape of Tring Zoological Museum. Here the Meerkats and Penguins are rather less animated however, this being one of the best taxidermy collections in the country.  Ahhh Planet of The Apes. Now that was a movie.

Similar freakish monstrosities can be found at the Trings bike dealer but if you get a demo on one of the (new) Laverda's stay off the next set of roads unless a washing machine on spin is your idea of a good time…

………Because the A41 back to Hemel is a relatively new and unused road is so straight it's always what I thought an Autobahn would be like. The previously mentioned Speed Quattro (that's an old Hinckley Triumph Speed Triple but with a 12000 engine, a speedshifter and exhausts from a B52 courtesy of Daytona Motorcycles in Ruislip) ate this road up and you're almost wishing this could go on forever when Hemel appears suddenly .

Hemel is usually pretty congested actually but does feature the famous Magic Roundabout and quite a good Bike Breakers. I say quite good because the staff have this annoying habit of making you stand at the counter and making you explain endlessly until you say the word "thingy" before they offer any assistance.

After the awesome confusion of the Magic Roundabout the sudden turn off to St. Albans on the right takes you from the worst of Hemel and out onto some interesting backroads which lead back conveniently to the Verulamiam.

Sunny Sunday in London

Yesterday, to check out likely route for pub event at end if month I walked from Farringdon to Southwark and back. Still quite rough from Friday night but if you  end up ordering cocktails in a bowling alley (Bloomsbury Lanes) you deserve all you get...

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