http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/defence/ship-building-to-stop-in-portsmouth-940-jobs-axed-1-5654099 After 800 years of shipbuilding. It's a bit of a disgrace really that the home of the Royal Navy is being so obviously dismantled. It's so clearly a ploy to keep Scotland in the Union by ensuring their jobs are protected but if Scotland wants to be independent, let them, why the **** should other people suffer as a result? Scotland has disproportionately far too much power in the Union. (Although the new Union Flag would look pretty appalling)
You can see why logistically it would make sense to have your two big shipyards close to each other, however, work on the Aircraft Carriers is expected to continue into 2015 and then there will be the Type 26 Frigates to build, work which is expected to last into the 2020's, so it does make me wonder why exactly they had to close a shipyard at all, but, more than that, it seems stupid to close the Portsmouth shipyard before the work on the Carriers is finished because that means having to send up to the Clyde the work that was going to be completed in Portsmouth and making redundent perfectly capable workforce in the city, and this decision being made before the 2014 referendum and coming in the wake of, what has been described as, "political football" in Scotland over the future of the Govan and Scotstuon shipyards, and what effect closing one of them would have on the vote on independence, or whether the UK would remove its contracts from the shipyards if Scotland voted for Indpendence, does give the impression that the Portsmouth shipyard has been sacrificed to strenghten the Better Together campaign.
The Government have "done the dirty" on the Portsmouth Dockyard, just to pander to the Scottish Government.
As my old grand-dad said (RN during WWII and later Marconi in Portsmouth) Rebuild Hadrian's Wall. Make it twice as high, twice as thick and don't put a bloomin' door in it.
That reminds me of a line (I can't remember who from): "What's the point of having a north-south divide if you're not going to police it" Saw this cartoon in the Times. Very sad. Southampton fans, feel free to use this one in the future.
The truth of the matter is that it was inevitable and the right business decision. The last RN ship built in Pompey was HMS Andromeda in 1968 and there have been many other gaps down the centuries. The oft cited 500 years of unbroken shipbuilding here is a myth, it is a navy dockyard not a shipyard. The facilities are limited and there are not the same skill sets here as there are in Glasgow, so they could never have built a Type 45 or Type 26 here. The real crime in Uk shipbuilding was to close down Swan Hunter on the Tyne, which was the most efficient and skilled yard. The only reason BAE Systems had the yard here is they took it over from VT who moved in after they sold prime development land in Woolston. It was a poorly kept secret that VT wanted to get out of shipbuilding - every time they announced a ship order their share price dropped as they could never deliver on time or to budget. The last complete ships built here were the Oman Khareef OPVs and Trinidad & Tobago OPVs (now in Brazil), both of which had all sorts of problems which had to be sorted out by the Glasgow yards. It is tragic for the people who will lose their livelihood but, with the defence cutbacks biting ever deeper, there is no justification for keeping four yards open. Barrow is safe as long as we keep building submarines. I fully expect further consolidation on the Clyde as work on the carriers tail off.
