As the former flagship of Britain's greatest naval hero, she is an iconic vessel.
It was aboard her that Lord Nelson died after his most famous seafaring success, the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.
HMS Victory embodies the pride, history and traditions of the Royal Navy. But now she faces another skirmish.
The Government says she may be given to a private owner as a cost-cutting measure after fears among defence chiefs that she is becoming too expensive to maintain.
The Ministry of Defence argues that increasing budgetary pressures mean it must review Victory's future like any other ship.
But the idea that the world's oldest commissioned warship could fall into private hands or go to a charity has been criticised by naval experts, who say it would be a tragedy.
Victory has pride of place at Portsmouth dockyard, where she is visited by some 400,000 tourists annually.
She costs a minimum of £1.5million to maintain and run each year, but that figure can go up when major work is needed.
The MoD is considering whether to hand Victory to a private company, to a charitable trust similar to the one that looks after the Mary Rose, to another government department, or keep the status quo.
So says the Daily Mail(link above) now lets look at what the local MP has to say, after all the MP is sure to be outraged, asking questions in Parliment and doing their best to save a part of our history? Right, well no.
Labour Portsmouth North MP, Sarah McCarthy-Fry said this:
‘In today's climate when our troops are on prolonged operations I think it is right to question whether we should be using funding on what is essentially heritage.
Still she did vote for ID cards, which will cost billions yet sees nothing wrong with flogging off Victory for the sake of a million quid or so, maybe she could have it float around the UK paid for by sleazy Labour donors with "Vote Labour" written on the side.
Altyhough I did notice that she made £139,158 for the year 2006/07 so if this champagne socialist donated her expenses for just one fucking year that is a fair way towards covering the expenses of maintaining HMS Victory.
Although here is a better idea, why do not the voters in her area pelt the dire woman with rotten fruit, eggs and rubbish like they did to traitors and cowards in olden days. Oh and let her know that she will be losing their vote come next election.
Much like what happened to one Ruth Kelly - thanks to Reverse for reminding me of this one.
Still our Sarah McCarthy(ite)-Fry is more than happy to waste time and our money voting for 42 days to detain dusky Arab types yet sees nothing wrong with flogging off our heritage to the highest bidder.
I also noticed that she voted to keep the second home allowance for MP's some 24K a year, a nice sum that could help save the Victory yet is used to keep this dire woman in comfort. Just think the removal of the 2nd home allowance for all 600+ MP's could pay for HMS Victory to be looked after and still have money to spare.
Maybe I am looking at this the wrong way, after all saving a ship that helped beat the French is rather non PC and it does sybolise our military history and instill some pride in our history. Far better that our history be erased and replaced with islamic history or any non-white history come to that.
When as every good champagne socialist knows that the British Empire was all about enslaving darkies and stealing their lands. Far better to pretend Victory was not there and build an asylum centre for Afghani plane hijackers.
Just when you think Labour have sunk to the lowest, they dive even deeper into the cess pit.
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2 people have spoken:
How to pelt a New Labour Socialist with eggs....
Lesson One: Ruth Kelly
"She costs a minimum of £1.5million..."
And how much has new labour cost Britain, how many billions, or is it trillions how. A more cost effective idea would be to put the lot of them on some old ship send it out to see and scuttle the thing, and then watch the savings just keep rising.
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