This is an exhibit from La Coupole, which is a fascinating and humbling place to visit. It is very interesting from a historical point of view and at the same time quite shocking that such a place existed. The time when I visited there was a temporary exhibition entitled “Deportation and genocide, a European tragedy”. [...]
Archive for the tag 'Defence Matters'
Filed under Crookham 2011, Heritage, Holidays
Flodden – Revisited
The Flodden battle site is very close to where I stay when I visit Northumberland. My previous visits have always been in September and I was curious to see how the land looked in a different season.
I have a series of posts about the battle which can be found here along with some of [...]
12 Comments CherryPie on Jul 26th 2011
Filed under This & That
Farewell to the Metrix Consortium
The latest issue of Private Eye bids a fond farewell to the Metrix consortium:
So. Farewell then to the Metrix consortium and the crazily expensive plan to privatise defence training at a new academy in South Wales under a PFI contract which rose from £11bn to £14bn and was plagued by delays.
Defence secretary [...]
6 Comments CherryPie on Oct 27th 2010
Filed under This & That
Civil Servants and the Spending Review
Although I blogged about the good news of the cancellation of the DTR procurement and Metrix’s appointment as Preferred Bidder I couldn’t quite face posting the rest of the dire news that was announced in the spending review. The news has an immediate and far reaching effect on all public sector workers, the people they [...]
6 Comments CherryPie on Oct 25th 2010
Filed under This & That
Defence Training Review Collapses
Yesterday my colleagues at Cosford learned that they had a won a long campaign to stop the privatisation of Defence Training.
In a ministerial announcement it was revealed that it had become necessary to terminate the DTR procurement and Metrix’s appointment as Preferred Bidder because an affordable solution was not forthcoming within the time frame required:
DTR [...]
6 Comments CherryPie on Oct 20th 2010
Filed under This & That
Military Academy on Shaky Ground
The Guardian newspaper also report that they have learned that the PFI project that was proposed to finance a military training academy in Wales is likely to be scrapped:
The Guardian has also learned that a £14bn PFI project – one of the largest ever – to finance a military training academy in Wales is likely [...]
6 Comments CherryPie on Oct 6th 2010
Filed under This & That
Costly PFI Project Might Now be Axed
Today’s edition of the Shropshire Star reports that plans to move defence training to South Wales could now be axed. Union officials have welcomed the news that these costly, controversial plans may not go ahead and the new hope this gives to RAF Cosford’s chances of survival as a military base:
A Government source has [...]
9 Comments CherryPie on Sep 29th 2010
