It is quite a lot of words to say, essentially, that a bunch of political types said some words and then the thing that was going to happen, happened anyways. Truly this update is a monument to...something, no doubt. Ironically, not to aircraft engine cooling, which in any other AAR would be what we expect but we here in Butterfly have learned to expect the otherwise unexpected. I must once more express my dismay at the lack of fisticuffs despite the excessive political arguing..
Not all of us can write 18 part naval conferences where no actual decisions are made and everything is punted into the future. But I do my best.
What is most surprising here is that the leaker was in fact found in good time, a rare display of government efficiency.
Leakers are generally always found, or at least heavily suspected. What they are rarely done is publicly identified, as was the case here.
Here I must disparage the opposition parties, they should not need any excuse to mount such accusations, the simple existence of the government ought to be enough.
Well indeed. But this was a chance to do so when people might be listening to them. Well some people. Perhaps.
The downside that all planes would be designed and built by the same company, thus having the same critical design vulnerabilities and aerodynamic flaws, to say nothing of insufficient cooling systems, was roundly ignored by these proponents.
I see you are unfamiliar with the Labour way of nationalisation. Nationalised industries were never unified, all the bitter rivalries of the constituent parts were loving preserved and lots of duplication (or more) of effort was the order of the day. The design offices would carry on doing their own thing, just for the benefit of "the people" and not shareholders.
The Central Path. The Median Road. The Balanced Boulevard. The Compromi--okay, this may be too on the nose.
I'm sure I don't need to say that "The Middle Way" was an OTL book Macmillan wrote and published in 1938. Whatever else one may say for wet centrists they can nail down bland buzzwords like few other groups.
"No, this failure of nationalisation is not reflective of the inherent flaws of nationalisation, this one is!"
It is important to be accurate in one's accusation of inherent flaws.
It turns out that all the parties believe in competition on a free market, they simply disagree on how to define "free". And, in the case of Labour, "market".
And if we are honest there was a lot of discussion about "competition" as well.
Translation: "I have gotten myself in too deep, let me wave my hands around and pretend that nothing has happened while whistling innocently."
Should have just announced it was all decided over light refreshments.
I do hope at least one of these projects is in some fashion related to engine cooling, else we may have to open a serious investigation into our authAAR regarding allegations of title abuse.
Engine cooling was discussed in Part 1
and Part 2 so taken as a whole I feel the subject was adequately ventilated.
Thus far no boos have been met, and in the interests of the party, I shall therefore ceremoniously boo myself.
"Boo!"
I second this. Booo!
Of course. Pre-ww2 Labour Policy was that there should be a single state monopoly. One of those things I would not dare to make up.
At least Butterfly has a functioning british economy and political institution. A rare thing in the current HOI AARs.
This is sadly true. But then many would argue this is less interesting than a dysfunctional disaster, so perhaps I am the one doing it wrong?
I meant to, but the forum software screwed up my multiquote. I blame Paradox for your lack of lessons learned.
I also blame Paradox then, for not been given the lesson in the first place.
It is tremendously fitting that this should happen though, I suppose.
We can all find common ground in blaming Paradox.
I am too rather shocked at a leaker actually being discovererd, I wasn't aware that was possible.
Normally the leaker is too senior to name. As Sir Humphrey Appleby would say "The Ship of State is the only ship that leaks from the top."
And of course in this case the rest of the country, indeed most of the house of commons, don't know the leaker has been identified.
Oh, a forced take-over that looks like a merger? Such a creative solution. So instead of simply switching out Napier for Alvis or, some other manufacturer, Napier gets to save face, Alvis gets into the ring through it's de facto takeover of Napier and the politicians get to proclaim that they saved the jobs of all those napier-related employees. On the face of it, it looks like a win all-round. That is, until Alvis-Napier starts rationalising it's operations, making some of those workers redundant in the name of efficiency. I guess they're going to need plenty of government contracts in order to not let some of those less necessary workers go... Looks like the venom will be in the tail.
To be properly political about this the re-armament boom has a few years yet to run and there are some other opportunities for the combined firm, plus it will take Alivs a few years to learn how to design aero-engines and suck all the knowledge out of Napier (and un-learn the bad ideas they got from their French engine licences). All of which safely pushes the problem past the next election and thus into the unknowable future that is probably someone elses's problem.
I'm actually quite shocked that you posted this chapter not at the top of the page. That does seem strangely impulsive by your standards...
It seemed harsh to punish everyone for TBC's many, many crimes.
Also, it has always been possible to figure out who leaked. The catch is doing anything about it. Civil servants can't be punished, and politicians can't be punished safely. You have to either add it to the list of things they've done to hold over them, or try to get them out through other means (because just saying they leaked and taking action will lead to the target leaking everything they know to the press).
Yes Minister, Series 3, Episode 5 -The Bed of Nails.
Just wanted to let you know
@El Pip , I have been reading and enjoying this gargantuan project! I have learned far more about British industrial policy than I ever thought I wanted or needed, but I enjoy the amount of effort you put into these updates!
I am delighted that you have taken the leap, it is quite the committent and I think more than a few have been put off by it's vast size. I am doubly delighted you are enjoying it.
That does seem like a bit of a problem, but it seems like something the government would do! It is good to see that Britain makes mistakes like anyone else, and it really makes all the successful aircraft much more impressive!
I do try to make sure the British still make mistakes, they have avoided some of the worst howlers of OTL but they have also made brand new different cockups.
Like the rest of us, you have now surely found that you in fact not only want but need to know far more about British industrial policy than has yet been provided, thus another addict has been born. Curse the name of El Pip, blessed be his name!
It is an endlessly fascinating subject. Or at least we are 15 years and several hundred thousand words in and the fascination levels seems constant.
The best bit is you never do get the huge tech or industrial policy dump. It's shown, we get interested...hey look at that, Spain!
This is a skill
@RustyHunter must learn. Get given 10,000 words on aero-engine/industrial policy, complain it is not enough,
then complain about lack of plot advancement. Though best to take it slowly as the sudden changes in demand can given the inexperienced commenter whiplash.
I never knew this part of me existed, but now it does!
He is a cruel master, and we are all but servants of his whims
Good, you are one of us now.
How else would we still be in 1937?
By being thorough. Thorough and detailed.
Unforeseen consequence of Pip's sub-glacial updating speed is that it beats the knowledge into you, willingly or unwillingly.
To understand what's happening in part 3 I had to reread parts 1 and 2.
To understand part 2 when it came out I had to reread part 1.
This is the kind of devoted readership I dream of and am delighted to have found.
If there are any more parts I'll be the world leading expert on the Ring and Air Ministry politics.
We are taking a break to look at other things, though a degree of Air Ministry politics might sneak in as it does also involve aircraft. And maybe some aero-engines, but only incidentally.
Beside that, I wanted to comment on recent HoI 4 purchase. I also saw the bundle, but decided not to buy the game yet.
Reasons: few flaws I've noticed online and on forums make me curse the wretched Paradox for ruining the game with really amazing industrial/unit building section:
- Paradox (lead by Podcat) refuses to implement optional messages in HoI2 style (when unit arrives somewhere, when it's attacked, etc.), so that's you actually know what's happening. It seems like you more or less need to relegate war to AI, or otherwise observe and command every single damn unit and province in the world. It seems this moronic design decision comes from pigheaded belief that design's team internal multiplayer works best without such messages. So they decided to remove this completely OPTIONAL part of the game so you're not playing the game but rather watching the AI play it.
Curse on Paradox.
- when Man the Guns, naval focused DLC came out, it came with a bug that makes AI stop building any naval unit besides convoys. It remains unfixed today, two years after that naval DLC came out (it seems they fixed it in internal patch that will come out with next DLC).
- they added spying but decided to make it into an arduous/laborious mini game that is at the same time very limited (you can only have a few spies) and very micromanagement heavy (you have to constantly shuffle your few spies to do anything). What's wrong with an intelligence budget that you set and divide among countries, so you don't have to meddle with it constantly? And that lets you do stuff in more than one or two countries?
Curse on Paradox.
(of course, game seem to have many many many amazing features, which make me even madder when they ruin it by such moronic and stubborn design choices).
They do seem to be quite terrible flaws, if I do ever start the game I will find out how bad they are. I hope all readers are suitably pleased that I have prioritised writing over actually playing, or indeed installing, HOI4.
I for one am always grateful for up-to-date information on why my decision to pretend HoI4 never existed is justified. HoI3 is bad enough but it is at least a proper wargame.
That's why I can't find the options! That is incredibly frustrating, and it really makes no sense.
I only got the game to try out the mods, and the Fallout one is quite good. For some reason, HOI3 got skipped by a lot of mods, but they all love HOI4. I'll never understand why, but that's the only reason I can find to play HOI4.
HOI3 has a lot of flaws, but I think it's quite good considering it has such lofty ambitions and somewhat delivers on all of them. As far as I can tell, HOI4 basically decided wargames are hard and delegated all the fun bits to the AI.
The main motivation I had for getting HOI4 was it was cheap (indeed I paid Paradox £0 for it, giving all the money to Humble and Charity, which did give me a small moment of joy) and the mod scene. I have plans for a future 'fun' AAR once I finish my CK2 TapestAARy and HOI4 does at least have a very wide range of mods that will make those plans much easier.
That said I do worry somewhat that because the base game is so ridiculous and full of stupid jokes (like the puppet names, etc) it forces a comedy to go even stupider to stand out. Which neatly brings us onto;
I'm not sure if this is universally true. The British AI in my game is, if anything, too invested in the naval war effort.
But then again, the US (having sold their fleet to the UK) haven't built much since so far as I know...this might be the reason?
I believe this is because the US AI decided it liked "Destroyers for Bases" so much it wanted to do "Carriers for Colonies" and "Battleships for worthless scraps of land". And HOI4 lets you do that, because of course it does.
Ok if you think that is strange, you are probably not ready for Imperial Cheese.
Or indeed any HOI4 AAR that does not work very hard to hide the actual game mechanics.
