I know this is an old(ish) story but is £16million for HMS Victory a good use of defence funds?
Admiral Lord Nelson’s flagship HMS Victory is to benefit from a comprehensive restoration process which will see the ship returned to its best condition in over 200 years, it has been announced. BAE Systems Surface Ships have been awarded the £16m contract for the first five years of a ten-year programme to restore HMS Victory. The Ministry of Defence said the plans would form the most extensive restoration since the ship returned from the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805
Of course this opens up the can of worms that is full of things like the Red Arrows and Kings Troop RA to name but two.
I know all the arguments about prestige, heritage, tourism, industry etc etc and they are all valid but I do question why the MoD cannot afford actual real capabilities that contribute directly to the defence mission but can afford to give BAe money for this.
It might sound churlish and small minded to question the sanity of spending on ‘heritage’ but when the hear and now is being cut, effectively to pay for it, I think it is worth raising as an issue.
Cut after cut after cut has been inflicted on the MoD’s budget but suggest cutting the Red Arrows, Kings Troop or HMS Victory and the knee jerk reaction tends to be ‘burn the witch’ but this is Think Defence, with the emphasis on Think.
Can anyone put forward a case for cutting real capabilities but spending on heritage?
i don’t think it need be either or. There are plenty of areas that should be trimmed first both either capabilities or the historic were cut.
For that money it had better float…
“Can anyone put forward a case for cutting real capabilities but spending on heritage?”
Nope
Damn no edit!
One wonders what Men like Nelson and Wellington would have thought of men going without adequate equipment, because the funds had been spent to support restore the Golden Hind?
Well no, one doesnt, because Nelsons career was blighted with political sabotage because he wouldnt stop complaining about the conditions his men faced, and Wellingtons career only avoided the same because he was the only capable general England had and his constant string of victories made him dangerous to challenge.
wow.
this type of talk just makes me sad. the idea that heritage would even be under consideration for cuts just boils my blood.
we’ve had hollow forces in the US but the idea of cutting touchstones to our past never came under consideration.
capability is important but so is heritage. you might as well burn books, tear down historic buildings…erase your history before 1900 if you go down this path.
another wing of fighters, another battalion of troops or another warship is not worth the price.
I don’t think anyone’s suggesting cutting Victory up for firewood. But do we really need to spend millions bringing her up to top shape? Could they not just leave her as she is? Or do whatever minimal work is needed to keep her healthy?
Firstly – it is blindingly obvious that the restoration of HMS Victory should NOT be taken from the Defence budget.
Secondly – is Victory “worthy” of restoration? Of course – she is a part of British heritage. There are many historically important places/buildings/items maintained at public expense (The White Tower, Cutty Sark etc), both by the tax payers as a whole and by public donation. Let this be so for the Victory.
I think you answered your own question TD. There’s a wealth of reasons to spend on her.
Not the very least that we live in a civilised, compassionate country that, at its most fundamental, is built on a base of knowledge, learning, interest, curiosity and wonder. Enormous numbers of people flock to her and the Historic Dockyard and learn so much and genuinely enjoy it. People who wouldn’t touch a book with a barge pole on the subject come away knowing about the past, which only broadens their horizons.
There’s that, and the fact that there is so much national identity, so much prestige and so much history in that ship – she’s not just some random sloop – she’s the bloody Victory.
I would rather see National Lottery money funding it but I’m not sure of the accounting process seeing as she is a commissioned vessel. Also, where does the money go for admission since it is very expensive (god bless my Army ID!).
She should be preserved. And well. We are a first world bloody country, some things are about more than money and let’s face it, it is a trifling sum. Government spends more on pictures to hang on their walls.
“One wonders what Men like Nelson and Wellington would have thought of men going without adequate equipment, because the funds had been spent to support restore the Golden Hind?”
You know as well as I bloody do that that is NOT how budgets work Dom. There’s damn good reasons to look after her. Not everything is about some ruthless efficiency drive. What a sterile, mean, miserable little world that would be.
Smell the roses Dom.
“Firstly – it is blindingly obvious that the restoration of HMS Victory should NOT be taken from the Defence budget.”
Devils advocate – she’s a commissioned vessel. An MoD asset. I don’t think there’s anywhere else the Government can get the money from BUT the defence budget. I don’t think that National Lottery money can be spent on government assets. I don’t know but that’s my gut feeling.
£16 million is sod all for what you get for it.
“HMS Victory – A Good Use of Defence Funds”
No, but it would be a very good use of heritage funding.
I’d like to think you could even make a good case for it being met by the foriegn aid budget!
Welcome to TD Campbell
To be clear, I am not proposing we turn her into matchsticks but £16m is not a trifling sum, even over ten years.
There are stark choices here, £1.6m buys a decent spares package for a small system, maybe a an extra bit of training or a new set of tools for example. It might not buy us a new destroyer or tank but it does buy something of value. Scale this up to all the MoD funded museums, Red Arrows, Kings Trrop RHA, horses etc and pretty soon you are looking at a decent amount of cash that could be used TODAY.
I know its not a good example, but how much body armour would £16m buy
I do sometimes wonder in this country if we are becoming a nation of ‘worryers about the past’ obsessed with symbols of the past, sentimental to the point of insanity and taking our eye off the present and future.
As others have said, she is worthy of restoration so let the Department of Culture, Media and Sport take it on but I cannot see why we should delete capabilities, run down training and make a million paper cuts to real capabilities whilst spending money on this and the others.
Maybe I am too idealistic but the future should come before preserving the past.
ps
Just to be clear, the same goes for all services
“I do sometimes wonder in this country if we are becoming a nation of ‘worryers about the past’ obsessed with symbols of the past, sentimental to the point of insanity and taking our eye off the present and future.”
Humans have always been obsessed with the past and terrified of the future. There is far more myth and many more stories about the ancient past than there are tales of what is to be.
But anyway.
The Navy has decided to spend its money in this fashion. It is a worthy cause if you ask me. I have no doubt they could have lobbied for funds from somewhere else, but they either didn’t, or couldn’t. Reading back over the news it seems it was a case of somebody having to pay and so the RN has paid to upkeep her commissioned vessel herself. Seeing as Victory is everything the Navy stands for, and she brings in 500,000 tourists a year who pay a good whack of money to get in, then I really don’t see it as a bad investment.
There’s plenty more places in the MoD that can be penny pinched rather than running down the very definition of an historical national icon that people flock to to see and learn.
“Enormous numbers of people flock to her and the Historic Dockyard and learn so much and genuinely enjoy it.”
So divide £16mn by enourmous and charge an entrance fee.
“Not everything is about some ruthless efficiency drive. What a sterile, mean, miserable little world that would be. Smell the roses Dom.”
Oh that would be so funny if you knew where I worked…..
“So divide £16mn by enourmous and charge an entrance fee.”
You’ve never been clearly.
“Oh that would be so funny if you knew where I worked…..”
I have already worked out you come from a culture obsessed with cost. Insolvency practitioners or something like that I imagine.
The world is more than money. Victory is more than money. Victory represents what makes this country what it is, curiosity, a sense of history and learning.
This is one of those posts that make me ask TD,
What exactly do you think the UK armed services are defending?
For the £16 million sum BAE have agreed to bring Victory to full Type 23 standard and will be fitting Harpoon launchers and a 4.5″ main weapon shortly. Anti submarine capability and a landing pad will be added within 3 years. First expected deployment will be Atlantic Patrol (South) in 2015.
….Sorry just thought i’d lighten the mood a little.
It’s a shame Victory has to be funded from the MOD budget (there are better places for the funding to come from and better uses for MOD funds) but if it has to be that way then so be it.
She is one of our proudest monuments to the amazing things our nation used to achieve and visits to her and other ships and exhibits like her as a child always instilled a sense of national pride, that eventually convinced me that serving this country might not be a bad idea.
I know many in the maritime heritage world have problems with Cutty Sark. A ship which attracts vast amounts of funding yet historically isn’t that important. Its restoration costs have topped £25million and are climbing. It has had over £10million from the Lottery. Yet seagoing vessels that reflect British engineering heritage like the Shieldhall struggle to attract funds.
Having once gone out with a girl who was in the Heritage “business” it doesn’t surprise me that Cutty Sark upsets some people in maritime heritage.
Heritage folk are more cut throat and stubborn and contrary and opinionated than anyone on here by far.
I remember we had a MASSIVE row because there was a museum that would not give a dying Gurkha back his VC that had been donated to a museum.
And I mean a stonking row over it.
If Victory wasn’t there, where would people go to do the “I nearly fell over it myself” gag?
I have a piece of Victory in a plastic case from a visit in 1976. Do you think they’ll need it?
The average age of the component parts must be about fifty years old.
“I remember we had a MASSIVE row because there was a museum that would not give a dying Gurkha back his VC that had been donated to a museum.”
It happens quite a lot, people generaly dont realise that the museum legaly cant give stuff away.
Dont get me started on grannies who leave their house to charity, as long as their children / cat / neighbour / friend is allowed to rent it…
Cutty Shark is a ship? i thought it was only some average whiskey;))
According to the MoD website, Victory gets 400,000 visitors annually. Prices are…
Adults: £21.50
Child: £15.80
Senior: £18.35
Family: £62.15
Student: £18.35
If all those visitors were children (lowest cost ticket), that works out at just £6.3 million per year.
Still no edit?
EDIT: meant just over 6.3 million
Admission prices are to the Historical Dockyards. Not just to Victory. The money is split.
To address TD’s point about the amount – 16m is tiny drop in the ocean to HMG’s overall budgets and the bank balance of the nation.
Should it be in the RN budget because it is HMS Victory ? That is a different question.
Overall how bad would it be for both home and international consumption if HMG said” “fund it from donations, were not giving you a penny” while fighting to make an incrase in international aid a law ?
Two ways to look at it:
1. National prestige, national morale, etc Victory comes first
2. Feeding starving kids in comes before saving Nelson’s flag ship
Personal perspectives, politics and moral view points will colour your answer.
By the way, I have no problem at all with:
1. The Virgin Airways / RedBull Red Arrows
2. The Rolls Royce Aero Engines Kings Troop
3. The Happag-Lloyd / Maersk HMS Victory
“Should it be in the RN budget because it is HMS Victory ? That is a different question.”
Not to a lot of bean counters it won’t be. HMS Victory is a commissioned vessel in the Naval Service – and as 2 follows 1, so the Naval Service pays for its own ship. But Victory brings other benefits to the nation as a whole (tourism, money, prestige, history), but alas, so do all its other vessels.
It’s quite logical that the RN pays the £16 million. The question is did they look for other lines of funding outside its own budget or was it allowed to?
Jed
If it was up to me we’d have the Tesco class aircraft carrier
It’s survived Spanish, French and nazi attack; would be an awful shame if Victory was finally sunk by an accountant.
Would it be better if HMS Victory were decommisioned and ownership transferred to the National Museum of the Royal Navy? Would that allow for more charitable funding, or would the loss of prestige -for being the oldest commissioned warship- make it not worthwhile?
The NMRN recieves an annual grant from the RN, but also has income from the lottery’s heritage fund, donations, visitors, private event hire, licensing, film and tv etc.
“Not everything is about some ruthless efficiency drive. What a sterile, mean, miserable little world that would be. Smell the roses Dom.”
Oh that would be so funny if you knew where I worked
do you work in a sweet factory?
anyhoo,it’s a strange time did anyone see in the papers, they’re selling (or trying to) admiralty arch, frontrunners with a cheque for £75million are people who want to turn it into a hotel. That’ll be fun for the diamond jubille next year;
“and the queen leaves buckingham palace in the royal carriage and passes through the holiday inn arch!!!!!”
when i say arch obviously i mean the whole building!!!!
There are a few well located London parks we could sell for housing or car parking. That should pay for a fair few new bombs.
When you visit Victory you can see where Jed carved his initials on his first draft fresh out of the box from Rayleigh.
As for Tesco Class carriers well it has been in the news this very that HMRC seems unable to get the full shilling out of the big corporations. How many billions has Tesco made this year alone?
Further the last lot to run HMG let in 2.5 to 4.5 million immigrants for a parcel of reasons one of them supposedly being multiculturalism is good for us. Something I liberally interpret as those who rules aren’t particular in our own culture.
Doesn’t a Hawk cost £16m or thereabouts?
To answer your underlying question
they cost about £5m per year.
I want a shiny black one with a DAB radio and fuzzy dice.
With respect to those Red Arrow pilots I don’ suppose anybody has baulked at replacing those 2 cabs.
The second one wouldn’t need replacing. The first one be replaced from the fleet. Another one wouldn’t be purchased. Hopefully they didn’t no.
I know one didn’t have to be purchased just transferred from somewhere else. It is still an amount of MoD capital being tired up for some reason other than front line work.
(I don’t mind the Red Arrows. Just trying to put £16m into perspective.)
None of the hawks are on the frontline, but I guess so from an accounting angle.
Yes I got that your first post
When I say front line I mean not sitting in attrition stocks, Empire Test Pilots’ School, sitting outside a gate of one of the innumerable RAF stations……
And I know you got my point earlier on but it has been so long since I have done some RAF bashing. And it is Christmas. And it is Wednesday.
I would say the warship would be considered part of UK history and the money shouldn’t come from defense. The other things though are there to show the military to the country. I think like the US most people have very little interactions with the military. The question is the cost worth the return.
@x well as it is christmas, could i rip off one of your earlier posts. Maybe you could tell us why the raf man in the careers office turned you down ?
I’m all for keeping Victory, but could they not just fund it on the sly from some other department? Or use lottery money etc? Why does the MoD have to pay for something it doesn’t use?
And do we know what the £16 million is for? Just regular maintenance or some kind of bells and whistles upgrade?
@ Topman re RAF recruitment
I have a x and a y chromosome and don’t look good in hotpants.
i heard the navy aren’t so keen on taking women. Lots of long trips away, say no more …
The money should come from different funds, including a tourism-related budget.
The worst thing about this order is in my opinion that BAe got it. That’s nonsense.
A team of art restauration and woodworking expert companies should have got the job, not a giga corporation that hasn’t built or rebuilt anything including wood for decades.
It all comes from the same pot I don’t see why there is a problem.
You never know BAe might actually be good at woodwork. The company appears to be run by woodentops………..
As well as, not instead of.
@X: 22/12/11
I don’t know why you think that, they couldn’t glue 2 unequal wings on MR4A, so why would they be any good with matchsticks? 8-> I bet they take her apart, attempt to triple the fee (citing the unique difficulty of getting the old beams to mate back together), and then the next incoming (labour) government cancell the project and scrap her! :-0