That's a shame mate, I'd have had both of them The grandkids are here in August and that's the perfect excuse for Mrs Smug. The coastline here is lovely but we havent had a boat since we left France ... ... I still have an RYA licence so I'll have a look at hiring one.
Good news for our companies involved or associated with Airbus, but the Indians and Chinese seem to be rapidly increasing theirb fleets. 'Indian carrier IndiGo has made a record order for 500 Airbus A320 aircraft - the largest single purchase agreement by any airline in commercial aviation history. The deal, announced on the first day of the Paris Airshow, is worth roughly $55bn (£43bn) before any bulk-order discounts. IndiGo now has an order book of 1,330 aircraft with Airbus. It is expected to mean a stream of deliveries between 2030 and 2035. India is a burgeoning aviation market, with some analysts saying it is on track to replace China as the aerospace industry's next growth frontier.' https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-65952879.amp
Thats if production takes place. It's a lot of aircraft and I'm sure our eco warriors are already en route to glue themselves to the roads of Delhi
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...mily-eavis-jeremy-corbyn-labour-b2360557.html The usual 'working class heroes' involved.
I haven't seen the film but I've read about the conspiracy theories. Things like this, and the stuff about Chemtrails, and the other things mentioned in the article are a real danger to society. As soon as people started chanting his name at Glasto in 2017, I felt that there was something untoward about the support around him.
Oliver Letwin's testimony to the COVID inquiry is interesting. A man without anything to protect saying stuff just arrived on his desk for 'blessing' having been told it was all fine.
Everyone from Boris Johnson to his seven loyal goons keeps saying what a massive success we made of our Covid situation, 'world class this and that' ... ... but the stats put us below Spain, Italy, Portugal, etc. The only defence is that 'everyone else is doctoring the figures' whereas if a man with Covid knocks someone over and kills them we add that to our Covid figures.
It is going to be 2026 before we see the outcome of this inquiry by all accounts. Yesterday and today have been incredibly interesting though, with Cameron and Osborne up. I think it is inevitable austerity will have had an impact, not least on medial and social care capacity. Unless I am mistaken though the inquiry is going only that far back in terms of understanding, not to the level of investment or funding mechanisms earlier. I suppose that is reasonable but I might feel a bit defensive if I were Osborne I suppose, picking up an economy in trouble as he did. Clearly something was needed to reign in debt, whether it was austerity or something else. What I find interesting is his stance overall. That by reigning in debt they had fiscal headroom to react during covid. I imagine there is some truth in that. Furlough and lockdowns cost a huge sum. Of course non of that means he should be thanked for his efforts. I am also interested to hear that he doesnt believe no other country had ever prepared for a pandemic which required long lockdowns. Be keen to know if that is the case. I certainly at the outset never imagined we would have such lengthy restrictions. So far everyone has said we were only planning for a flu based pandemic. It does seem that on that basis we were not prepared for the type we saw. I hope this inquiry actually finds some useful lessons for current and future governments to implement.
IIRC, sometime during the last 10 years, the NHS did a big study on dealing with a pandemic, it was published in medical journals. Germany amongst others took notice of it. One the recommendations was to stockpile PPE. Hunt went against this and ran down the stocks to save money.
