Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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Notes -
Probably just being exaggerated. Soldiers (and presumably sailors) love to whinge. It's their greatest pastime. I would guess the Sun has picked up on independent snippets and packaged them together and fed them to an amenable ex-navy source for the 'Horrific' quote. It wouldn't surprise me if all of the events happened on different trips and the 6 month patrol only happened once.
The minor points in the story are practically meaningless as independent issues. The big issue though is indeed having a 6 month patrol. No one signs up for that. It's telling that even this story is worried about food, but not focused on the psychological toll on the crew for being away from home for so long, while living in claustrophobic conditions with censored communications. While the 6 month patrol was likely a one off, the govt should increase funding to get the maintenance situation under control.
The Sun says they're routinely doing 6-month patrols, I haven't verified it though I guess you could check whenever submarines leave port:
It's really an issue with priorities. I get the sense that funds can be quickly found for housing asylum seekers in hotels (or whatever crisis is in the newspapers this week). But Treasury penny-pinching is left to harangue the nuclear forces, precisely because they're more professional and less prone to bitching to the media.
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