FROM OUR REPORTER ON ROCKALL

FOLLOWING THE RECENT humiliating failure of the Royal Navy’s attempt to test fire a Trident missile from one of its nuclear submarines, attention has been drawn to the parlous state of the once great wave-ruling power, which appears to have fallen on even harder times than Ireland’s national broadcaster, RTE.

The failure to fire, which will have amused Vladimir Putin, is only the latest in a string of difficulties facing the navy of Nelson and Drake. One of its aircraft carriers developed rust on the way to NATO exercises and had to be withdrawn; then its replacement failed to launch. Rumours even have it that one of these ships got stuck in reverse.

“Those who say that Ireland will have to rely on the Royal Navy to protect undersea cables off its coast, had better think again,” according to Defence Expert Rear Admiral Bunty Cunningham Collingwood, now based in west Cork, where he lives with a donkey. “It’s my belief that the RN will be calling on the Irish Naval Service for assistance in the future. To quote Admiral Beatty during the Battle of Jutland, ‘something’s wrong with our bloody ships …’ I blame those wretched politicians in London, the ones who keep sending the British military off to war and then under-fund the same forces. And don’t get me going on woke and diversity. Nelson must be turning in his grave.”