In a growing sign of Britain's descent into irrelevance, I noted a small item buried on the inside pages of The Telegraph yesterday (which you can read for free by the way via PressReader using your local library card) about our GPS Satellite system. Cast your mind back a couple of years when we learned that third countries would not be able to participate in the EU's Galileo system, into which we had already pumped £1.2 billion. Theresa May then announced we would build our own. Well it seems that is going to be scrapped.
A £92 million feasibility study was launched in 2018, proving either just how expensive paper is these days or how cheap EU membership is.
The Telegraph are now reporting plans for Britain's own satellite navigation system face being scrapped after officials concluded the ambitious post-brexit project would be a "waste of taxpayer funds."
"Sir Mark Sedwill, the Cabinet Secretary, has urged ministers at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to decide on the project’s future as the Prime Minister focuses on the national response to the coronavirus pandemic.
"Scrapping the project would be a major blow to Britain’s space industry, which has been seen as a national priority and which was due to play a key role in Galileo. In 2018, Theresa May handed the UK Space Agency £92 million to assess the feasibility of a UK satellite system. The money is believed to have largely been spent, and officials are now weighing up the cost of scrapping the programme or keeping their options open."
We are beginning to look like an aristocrat who has fallen on hard times, trying to keep up appearances and pretend we are still the superpower we were in the 19th century, wearing shiny, threadbare trousers and shoes with paper-thin soles. Everybody can see we aren't the force that we once were but we can't let it all go. We don't have pockets to match our ambition anymore.
Andrew Bridgen was outraged by it in 2018 - but then he is in a permanent state of outrage isn't he? Dudgeon is always high in the Bridgen household anyway, but one fears that however many lessons we get, men like Bridgen will never see the truth.
We will still be able to access Galileo as will plenty of other third countries but we not be part of any future development or ongoing maintenance work, Most importantly, we will not be allowed access to the highly secure military-grade signal Public Regulated Service (PRS), a huge blow that will put the UK, and its military, far behind other Western nations when it comes to using the latest global technologies.
I am sorry to say that as a result of Brexit we are slowly dropping down the rankings and being relegated to the second division of nations. We have become fundamentally unserious about our future role in the world except to provide other nations with a constant source of gossip and laughter.
Perhaps the only bright spot, if that's what it is, is that the US is even worse.
For sheer jaw-dropping stuff this article in The Atlantic magazine about the American economy and labour market takes some beating:
"The unemployment rate rose to 14.7 percent, the highest rate in the history of the statistic, going back to 1948. Unemployment reached a record high for almost every measured demographic—men, women, teenagers, whites, Asians, Hispanics.
"The worst unemployment crisis since the Great Depression is also the most sudden in history. Before this morning, the BLS had never recorded a monthly decline in employment larger than the 1.9 million jobs lost in the spring of 1945. But between March and April 2020, the number of people with jobs collapsed by 20.5 million. The retail sector alone exceeded the 1945 record by shedding more than 2 million jobs."
And this is simply off-the-wall stunning:
"Another measure of the labor market preferred by some economists is the employment-population ratio, which divides the number of Americans by the number of employed people. There, the U.S. also suffered its largest monthly decline on record, falling to 51.3 percent, the lowest number in the history of the statistic. It’s conceivable that next month’s report will, for the first time in history, show that the majority of Americans are not officially employed."
Anybody who thinks we are going to bounce back quickly from the Covid-19 crisis is surely delusional.
Perhaps the only bright spot, if that's what it is, is that the US is even worse.
For sheer jaw-dropping stuff this article in The Atlantic magazine about the American economy and labour market takes some beating:
"The unemployment rate rose to 14.7 percent, the highest rate in the history of the statistic, going back to 1948. Unemployment reached a record high for almost every measured demographic—men, women, teenagers, whites, Asians, Hispanics.
"The worst unemployment crisis since the Great Depression is also the most sudden in history. Before this morning, the BLS had never recorded a monthly decline in employment larger than the 1.9 million jobs lost in the spring of 1945. But between March and April 2020, the number of people with jobs collapsed by 20.5 million. The retail sector alone exceeded the 1945 record by shedding more than 2 million jobs."
And this is simply off-the-wall stunning:
"Another measure of the labor market preferred by some economists is the employment-population ratio, which divides the number of Americans by the number of employed people. There, the U.S. also suffered its largest monthly decline on record, falling to 51.3 percent, the lowest number in the history of the statistic. It’s conceivable that next month’s report will, for the first time in history, show that the majority of Americans are not officially employed."
Anybody who thinks we are going to bounce back quickly from the Covid-19 crisis is surely delusional.
