INDEX	August 7, 2023
Had breakfast this morning in what we round here call the Dead Letter Box, otherwise known as the Wetherspoons in Barrow. On April 29 the BBC reported that Royal Navy investigates after official documents 'found in Wetherspoons', the pub in question being the one I was eating in. In this report the files were described as "generic training documents" with no classified information though strangely a navy spokesman said: "we take all security matters extremely seriously and will investigate the circumstances of their discovery." How the discovery of routine training documents could be a security matter, the navy did not explain. British Aerospace (Bae Systems) seems to have benefitted lately from a spending spree by the Ministry of Defence. In January the local press was reporting that BAE Systems was buying the former Debenhams, WH Smith and Body Shop in Barrow. The context for this was that long term decline at the submarine manufacturer, the town's dominant industry, had come to an end. As a result there was a need to revitalise the town. In February the local press reported that more than 600 apprentices were to be recruited by Bae. It is quite difficult to explain the need for new submarines in the context of the Ukraine/ Russia war. Given the lengthy timetable required to build new subs, the Ministry of Defence probably has its eye on a more long term conflict perhaps with a key martime element. Meanwhile the so called intelligence services continue their harassment campaign against me. One of the latest things they are doing is blocking the loading of seemingly random browser and email pages. You would have thought they had better things to do.
INDEX Jonathan Brind		August 7, 2023