Like Ruth Davidson herself, I have nothing worthwhile to say. I just wanted to make a comment. I suppose I'm behaving like the average Unionist MP or MSP in that respect.
Ruth, Scotland would have to stump up £16.5 billion, for weapons it neither needs, nor wants. I suspect this money could be used more effectively for job creation and diversification.
To want to have, and to promise to use, these weapons, you have to be a monster.
Set killing millions of people, including children, and millions of animals and laying waste to massive swathes of the world, not to mention maiming millions more and precipitating horrific illnesses, against 600 jobs.
Of course 600 jobs are not to be belittled, but for £167 billion, I'm betting I could get all of the redundant men and women back to work within days!
I wonder if Ruth would like to get in a state about the jobs that may be lost in the tax office in Dundee? The ones that the Tory government are bringing about.
Munguin forgives your language, and I imagine Tris's mum, who informed me the other day that she not only knows all these words but also how to spell them properly (don't ask me why!!! I mean, how often does she have to write them down, unless she's leaving a note for the postman!) will be forgiving becasue of the Xs!
PS. scotgoespop deserves a wee donation if you can spare a couple of quid. Sites like Munguin's Republic and scotgoespop, etc are our best weapons against slimy unionist newspapers.
I agree about James. I don't know what we would do without his clear and informative analysis of statistics which would otherwise go flying over my head.
I even added to the confusion by talking about 600 jobs. Well if Jackie and Ruth can do it, why not me?
Logically, the MoD should know how many people they employ, but, we need to remember that the MoD was the organisation that was buying light bulbs at £22. a shout, when they were available at a corner shop for 65p, so knowing its a*se from its armpit is probably not its most compelling attribute.
I wouldn't trust the MoD figures either to be honest. Tris gives a perfect example with the light bulbs. But they're probably quoting uniformed personnel - or perhaps admirals, since there are still more of them than bloody ships.
But as usual, everyone is trying to score political points, rather than sitting down and discussing things, and perhaps coming to an agreed compromise. Politicians never seem to look beyond the next election,
If you are going to scrap Trident, then at least give those who are going to be affected a clear plan on how they will be supported afterwards.
The MoD is incredibly inefficient, so the figure may or may not be wrong. There's always a chance that they plucked the correct figure out of the air.
Some of the staff are Lockheed Martin I believe and may not be included. Most of then live on a base Monday to Thursday and go back to wherever they come from for the weekend. They don't have much effect on the local economy, but their jobs are jobs no matter where they come from. Ms Baillie and Ruth are right to be concerned about job losses. We remember all the solidarity with British working classes that they showed during the referendum campaign.
I suspect that like most situations you cannot give guarantees about people's jobs in the future, but I find it weird that Ruth is worrying about 500 or 3,000, or 11,000 or 13,000 jobs in this case, when she has stood back and watched the military (and other government jobs) be decimated by the UK government without saying a word.
Tory cuts so far, 20,000 Army, 5,000 Navy, 5,000 RAF, 60,000 NHS, 36,000 Police, 730,000 Public Sector, 7,000 Firemen ...
Comments from Ruth? None.
Somewhere between 500 and 13,000 redundancies to do with a nuclear weapon that allows the numbnuts to pretend that they still lead a glorious empire and suddenly our Ruth is in a twist about the rights of the workers.Tell it to the marines, Ruth.
As for these dangerous times...I fail to see even a fool like Cameron using a nuclear bomb on ISIS, the Argentinians, or the Russians in Ukraine.
What Scotland would do of course is to stop poking our nose into things we can't begin to understand. The UK will NEVER do that, but it might serve these dangerous times better if they built up the conventional forces that might be able to address the situation in the Middle East.
Perhaps adopting a position of non-beligerance, y'know, not threatening anyone that isn't English with a good doing, for, say the next three hundred years or so, might, just might make that evil war mongering appendage to Bella Caledonia fit to sit somewhere in the cheap seats at the UN.
I shall be accused of being anti-English, and that is not, exactly, true. Roughly speaking 35% of them voted for the Imperial Party and I do have a huge issue with every man jack of them.
They seem to see the modern world as equivalent of thrilling tales of derring do on the high seas. The next Traflagar will be dropped from an enormous height on London, West Central Scotland and other major population centres. The lucky ones will die instantly. Meanwhile our three, at sea Tridents will be sought out. Assumming they are not caught or sunk, they will take out downtown Moscow and any other major bases.
This is predicated on a 'second strike' scenario, responding to a nuclear attack.
It is not beyond credibility that the West might be pre-emptive, losing a battle or two in Vietnam, with the dreaded domino option that the whole of South East Asia would, heaven forfend (!) go communist. Better to nuke them. It was, for people outwith the Strangelove story, but well entrenched in the US military, something that was advocated. Answer insurgency with nukes, what could possibly go wrong?
Because that causes an escalation whether directly or indirectly. The people who were nuked, and dead, have nothing to say. They are dead. For a moment or two, the winner stands aloft waving his Trident. And that is, leaving the nukes aside for a moment and just describing them as 'firepower', is how the world ended up where it is right now. People do not get positive vibes from drones, especially the armed type. The sort that kill wedding parties indiscriminately, the sort that claim a target when none was there to be seen.
Could you imagine us in a similar situation? We are all humans and they are martians? They try, oh yes they do, about who are the good humans and who are the bad humans, but, you know, at the end of the day, they really don't know and they kill indiscriminately, but pretend it is surgical.
It is not. It is Strangelove murder. A murder because they are numbers not relatives, statistics - we would have lost more US soldiers if we had had to invade Japan, so, it's justified. Handy arguement for team Death.
But what, you might say, of the other side? What of 9/11 and 7/7?
The problem is not the assymetry of warfare these days it is the firepower that a few men have. They can, and they know it, cause complete disruption in the willpower of the West.
The issue here is that the West has willpower too, but no strategy. We 'won' Afghanistan and sent out politicians who said how wonderful it would be.
They lied.
They had absolutely, beyond camera facing jerks, the faintest intention of doing what was needed. They knew the spotlight would move on they could hide their murderous coat under a bushell, as they watched Afghanistan burn.
Why?
Because they had moved on.
Bush elder had only had a partial win in Iraq. This became the dream of his son, To correct a horrendous family wrong. Iraq with WMD's, 15 minutes to London. What's not to like?
Well, we were failing to stablise Afghanistan and now the troops were under pressure to do round two with the hero of the middle east/ the devil incarnate, your dates are the CIA's dates and whatever they say is true...
Thus Afghanistan is abandoned.
Bloody hell tris, now you know more about me than I meant, and so does GCHQ.
I am so annoyed that we can't be sitting outside Cameron's sphere of influence.
I absolutely want my country to be non aggressive. I have no real knowledge of the folk that live in downtown Moscow, but I do not wish them ill. I doubt the average Muscovite even knows of our existence. I would quite like them to retain their ignorance of our existence.
But there are two problems with this.
Firstly, we are tied to a nuclear state that hasn't the first clue what happens when MAD breaks down. To be clear, we give the world over to whatever lifeform survives
It will not be Tory scum.
There are people on this planet able to solve this existential threat, they are thee and me and soft skinned folk everywhere. It is frankly an evil that our lack of heavy armour, such as deep bunkers and Strangelove technology allows them, and that is a conprehensive 'them' who threaten our mere existence.
Frankly, anyone that has the job title 'post holocaust denier' is liar.
There was a lunatic that argued pro Nagasaki and Hioshima, on the basis that less lives were lost. Less lives were lost on one side, not the other. I had very ,very bad thought's about that nut-job.. It is af if 'winning', after you have lost morals,is good enough,
Like Ruth Davidson herself, I have nothing worthwhile to say. I just wanted to make a comment. I suppose I'm behaving like the average Unionist MP or MSP in that respect.
ReplyDeleteLOL Very good....!
DeleteRuth, Scotland would have to stump up £16.5 billion, for weapons it neither needs, nor wants. I suspect this money could be used more effectively for job creation and diversification.
ReplyDelete@Loretta, good one.
Aye seriously, who would use them?
Delete"We stand in solidarity with Scotland's workers" No, you feckin don't and even if you did, for many it is too feckin late!
ReplyDeletesorry, Tris's Mum and Munguin! XXX
If it wasn't so pathetic it would be funny.
DeleteTo want to have, and to promise to use, these weapons, you have to be a monster.
Set killing millions of people, including children, and millions of animals and laying waste to massive swathes of the world, not to mention maiming millions more and precipitating horrific illnesses, against 600 jobs.
Of course 600 jobs are not to be belittled, but for £167 billion, I'm betting I could get all of the redundant men and women back to work within days!
I wonder if Ruth would like to get in a state about the jobs that may be lost in the tax office in Dundee? The ones that the Tory government are bringing about.
Munguin forgives your language, and I imagine Tris's mum, who informed me the other day that she not only knows all these words but also how to spell them properly (don't ask me why!!! I mean, how often does she have to write them down, unless she's leaving a note for the postman!) will be forgiving becasue of the Xs!
Ruthie baby must have got a dunt on the heid when she was playing rugby with all those wee schoolboys.
ReplyDeletePS. scotgoespop deserves a wee donation if you can spare a couple of quid. Sites like Munguin's Republic and scotgoespop, etc are our best weapons against slimy unionist newspapers.
DeleteYes Dan... either that or she's a Tory...
DeleteI agree about James. I don't know what we would do without his clear and informative analysis of statistics which would otherwise go flying over my head.
I'm off there to donate. We can't lose him.
{Aye Munguin. My wee problem with the pic is the famous last paragraph, as usual}
ReplyDelete"This is a decision opposed by many decent labour-affiliated tradeunionists and by thousands of loyal labour supporters"
{There may be a kernel of truth in that}
It's the word decent that angered me, Vince.
DeleteIf you support abolition you would appear to be 'in' or 'un' decent....
Tris
ReplyDeleteRuth is a plank.
bruce
LOL... :)
DeleteOh bloody hell!
ReplyDeleteANOTHER figure to jostle with regarding Trident and S******d!
First we had the font of all knowledge, a.k.a. Jabba the Hutt, with her 11,000 jobs affected by cutting Trident.
Then we had the M.O.D. with 520 jobs, no you read that right 520 jobs directly affected by Trident in S******d.
THEN we had Jabba the Hutt with her 13,000 jobs directly affected by Trident in S******d.
NOW we have wee Ruthie and her 6,700 jobs directly affected by Trident in S******d.
Will someone ... ANYONE ... please, please, PLEASE get ONE figure that is actually ACCURATE!!!
To be honest Tris I actually think the M.O.D. figure is the accurate one after all it is the M.O.D. who operate the bloody W.M.D. equipped submarines!
It is confusing Arbroath.
DeleteI even added to the confusion by talking about 600 jobs. Well if Jackie and Ruth can do it, why not me?
Logically, the MoD should know how many people they employ, but, we need to remember that the MoD was the organisation that was buying light bulbs at £22. a shout, when they were available at a corner shop for 65p, so knowing its a*se from its armpit is probably not its most compelling attribute.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1362825/MOD-paid-22-65p-lightbulbs-Liam-Fox-says-inexcusable.html
I wouldn't trust the MoD figures either to be honest. Tris gives a perfect example with the light bulbs. But they're probably quoting uniformed personnel - or perhaps admirals, since there are still more of them than bloody ships.
DeleteBut as usual, everyone is trying to score political points, rather than sitting down and discussing things, and perhaps coming to an agreed compromise. Politicians never seem to look beyond the next election,
If you are going to scrap Trident, then at least give those who are going to be affected a clear plan on how they will be supported afterwards.
zog
The MoD is incredibly inefficient, so the figure may or may not be wrong. There's always a chance that they plucked the correct figure out of the air.
DeleteSome of the staff are Lockheed Martin I believe and may not be included. Most of then live on a base Monday to Thursday and go back to wherever they come from for the weekend. They don't have much effect on the local economy, but their jobs are jobs no matter where they come from. Ms Baillie and Ruth are right to be concerned about job losses. We remember all the solidarity with British working classes that they showed during the referendum campaign.
I suspect that like most situations you cannot give guarantees about people's jobs in the future, but I find it weird that Ruth is worrying about 500 or 3,000, or 11,000 or 13,000 jobs in this case, when she has stood back and watched the military (and other government jobs) be decimated by the UK government without saying a word.
Tory cuts so far, 20,000 Army, 5,000 Navy, 5,000 RAF, 60,000 NHS, 36,000 Police, 730,000 Public Sector, 7,000 Firemen ...
Comments from Ruth? None.
Somewhere between 500 and 13,000 redundancies to do with a nuclear weapon that allows the numbnuts to pretend that they still lead a glorious empire and suddenly our Ruth is in a twist about the rights of the workers.Tell it to the marines, Ruth.
As for these dangerous times...I fail to see even a fool like Cameron using a nuclear bomb on ISIS, the Argentinians, or the Russians in Ukraine.
What Scotland would do of course is to stop poking our nose into things we can't begin to understand. The UK will NEVER do that, but it might serve these dangerous times better if they built up the conventional forces that might be able to address the situation in the Middle East.
Not that long ago, the referendum to be exact, they were telling us we could not afford fund our Scotland's defence force.
ReplyDelete16.5 billion would have built at least 16 brand new type 26 frigates, built in Scotland.
Instead we will pay our allocated share of a weapons system that is built elsewhere and will provide no protection on land or sea to this country.
Nope, doesn't make sense to me either.
I wonder how many jobs that would have created Golfnut.
DeleteThe nasty joke is... how many military jobs has the current Tory, and previous Tory/LiberalDem coalition got rid of?
Thousands.
It's cheap and nasty Ruth!
Tory cuts so far, 20,000 Army, 5,000 Navy, 5,000 RAF, 60,000 NHS, 36,000 Police, 730,000 Public Sector, 7,000 Firemen ...
ReplyDeleteCan't actually remember you kicking up hell about any of that.
And, as it goes in these dangerous times, how is it that the British armed forces are so devastated that they couldn't fight a war if they had to?
DeleteSeems Cameron is begging for an invasion.
http://new.spectator.co.uk/2015/11/britains-armed-forces-no-longer-have-the-resources-for-a-major-war/
Perhaps adopting a position of non-beligerance, y'know, not threatening anyone that isn't English with a good doing, for, say the next three hundred years or so, might, just might make that evil war mongering appendage to Bella Caledonia fit to sit somewhere in the cheap seats at the UN.
DeleteI shall be accused of being anti-English, and that is not, exactly, true. Roughly speaking 35% of them voted for the Imperial Party and I do have a huge issue with every man jack of them.
They seem to see the modern world as equivalent of thrilling tales of derring do on the high seas. The next Traflagar will be dropped from an enormous height on London, West Central Scotland and other major population centres. The lucky ones will die instantly. Meanwhile our three, at sea Tridents will be sought out. Assumming they are not caught or sunk, they will take out downtown Moscow and any other major bases.
This is predicated on a 'second strike' scenario, responding to a nuclear attack.
It is not beyond credibility that the West might be pre-emptive, losing a battle or two in Vietnam, with the dreaded domino option that the whole of South East Asia would, heaven forfend (!) go communist. Better to nuke them. It was, for people outwith the Strangelove story, but well entrenched in the US military, something that was advocated. Answer insurgency with nukes, what could possibly go wrong?
Because that causes an escalation whether directly or indirectly. The people who were nuked, and dead, have nothing to say. They are dead. For a moment or two, the winner stands aloft waving his Trident. And that is, leaving the nukes aside for a moment and just describing them as 'firepower', is how the world ended up where it is right now. People do not get positive vibes from drones, especially the armed type. The sort that kill wedding parties indiscriminately, the sort that claim a target when none was there to be seen.
Could you imagine us in a similar situation? We are all humans and they are martians? They try, oh yes they do, about who are the good humans and who are the bad humans, but, you know, at the end of the day, they really don't know and they kill indiscriminately, but pretend it is surgical.
It is not. It is Strangelove murder. A murder because they are numbers not relatives, statistics - we would have lost more US soldiers if we had had to invade Japan, so, it's justified. Handy arguement for team Death.
But what, you might say, of the other side? What of 9/11 and 7/7?
The problem is not the assymetry of warfare these days it is the firepower that a few men have. They can, and they know it, cause complete disruption in the willpower of the West.
The issue here is that the West has willpower too, but no strategy. We 'won' Afghanistan and sent out politicians who said how wonderful it would be.
They lied.
They had absolutely, beyond camera facing jerks, the faintest intention of doing what was needed. They knew the spotlight would move on they could hide their murderous coat under a bushell, as they watched Afghanistan burn.
Why?
Because they had moved on.
Bush elder had only had a partial win in Iraq. This became the dream of his son, To correct a horrendous family wrong. Iraq with WMD's, 15 minutes to London. What's not to like?
Well, we were failing to stablise Afghanistan and now the troops were under pressure to do round two with the hero of the middle east/ the devil incarnate, your dates are the CIA's dates and whatever they say is true...
Thus Afghanistan is abandoned.
Bloody hell tris, now you know more about me than I meant, and so does GCHQ.
I am so annoyed that we can't be sitting outside Cameron's sphere of influence.
That's pretty comprehensive.
DeleteScotland could be a peaceful non aggressive country. Like Iceland, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Greenland...
I'm not sure that is what all Scots would want, but I'd guess the majority feel that way.
All the nose poking, wherever the Brits have done it, has resulted in recruiting more people to the cause.
In their wake they have left utter chaos.
And as you say, they have lied and lied and lied. They have always lied and lied and lied, and only now are we starting to know just how much.
Yes, GCHQ going to be busy with all their new found powers. Tessy must be salivating.
I absolutely want my country to be non aggressive. I have no real knowledge of the folk that live in downtown Moscow, but I do not wish them ill. I doubt the average Muscovite even knows of our existence. I would quite like them to retain their ignorance of our existence.
DeleteBut there are two problems with this.
Firstly, we are tied to a nuclear state that hasn't the first clue what happens when MAD breaks down. To be clear, we give the world over to whatever lifeform survives
It will not be Tory scum.
There are people on this planet able to solve this existential threat, they are thee and me and soft skinned folk everywhere. It is frankly an evil that our lack of heavy armour, such as deep bunkers and Strangelove technology allows them, and that is a conprehensive 'them' who threaten our mere existence.
Frankly, anyone that has the job title 'post holocaust denier' is liar.
There was a lunatic that argued pro Nagasaki and Hioshima, on the basis that less lives were lost. Less lives were lost on one side, not the other. I had very ,very bad thought's about that nut-job.. It is af if 'winning', after you have lost morals,is good enough,
That man has my disgust.
We indeed live in Orwellian times, Davidson's words are strong reminders of Doublethink and Newspeak.
ReplyDeleteBig Brother Theresa May... Jeeeeeez.
DeleteWhat an horrific thought.
I bet her office is room 101!
Theresa May, yes...Thoughtcrime is next, it would appear.
ReplyDeleteProbably I'm in for life then!
DeleteMe too, obviously.
DeleteSee ya there!
Delete