Comments by "Antony Wooster" (@antonywooster6783) on "Street Battles in Bakhmut Russia Siege Tightens, US/UK Claim Russia out of Ammo, Putin Prepares Plan" video.

  1. 42:23 I don't know, of course, how far these Western leaders are fooling themselves, but I have found sometimes that people are quite unwilling to hear that they have got something wrong. It could even be, that their underlings who know the facts, fear for their jobs if they tell them what they know. There is a saying, I forget from whence it comes, that "There's none so blind as those that won't see!" Considering that one does not have to spout much nonsense to lose all credibility, I do wonder at the way people like e.g. Ben Wallace come out with obviously stupid remarks.
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  2. 55:21 Before the 1880s, the UK government used to get into a war and then find it did not have enough e.g. rifles. So, at vast expense to the taxpayer, it would dish out contracts (No doubt to the right people) to manufacture rifles. Then when the war stopped the orders would cease and the companies either went bankrupt or turned to making something else. Sometime in the 1880s Parliament decided to set up a commission to look into ways of improving this situation. One of their particular requirements was that the rifles should have interchangeable parts. I.e. if a two rifles were damaged beyond repair the undamaged parts from both could be cannibalized to make another rifle, This required a degree of precision that British machine tools of that time did not have. Eventually, the commission decided that the idea of sourcing standardized rifles from different private companies was a non-starter and they said that the manufacture of guns should be nationalized and the work be given to The Royal Arsenal. They also found that they could get machine tools capable of the required precision, from the machine tool factories in Massachusetts. These machines were bought and installed in the Royal Arsenal and produced rifles and other guns throughout the WW1 and WW2 and were still in use when I started doing my National service. In the 1980s I worked in the maintenance department of an English factory, employing about 150 people. I was told that the department had no current head, as the young, newly qualified Engineer who had been given the job, had been shown the department's only lathe (made sometime during Victoria's reign) and had asked: "But where is the keyboard?" On being told that that was not the way it was controlled he had resigned.
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