Why does a country the size of Canada,with it's vast resources not feel threatened in the way that Westminster does? They sent their's back to the US of A decades ago. Of course,they do not have to act as a proxy for Uncle Sam,despite being a neighbouring state (perhaps because of their resources). I suppose,now that London has turned it's back on Europe,it feels that the future lies in much closer ties with the USA,in fact,becoming the 51st state of that particular union would probably suit them fine and who knows may become their only option in future. The split in our islands between USA leaning England and European leaning Scotland has been around for some time but is now about to become overtly clear to everyone and Trident is just one example.
Very true. I expect that Canada, being big and rich, doesn't feel the need to stress its importance in the world by having 0.7 of the nuclear capacity thereby sitting on the Security Council at the top table and getting their photographs taken with Obama.
I don't understand why there are not demonstrations outside the US Embassy in London. Seems to me that would be as effective as anything else. It would certainly get more international publicity.
Nothing at all will persuade these people to give up ther seat at the top table.
I listened this morning to that fool Fallon explaining how dangerous the world was now and how that meant that even more than before he must get to go to Washington .... sorry, I mean that Britain had to show a lead in the world.
I was thinking that the Western country most affected recently by terrorism is France, which has nuclear weapons too. I wonder that in this dangerous world they didn't think to sort out the Nice and Paris issues with a nice big nuclear bomb.
I think the launch codes change all the time. I don't think the Brits have them, Iain.
Even if tessy is looking at them right now, contemplating bombing some poor sods somewhere, can you imagine for a second that she would dare do it without permission from DC?
Not a chance.
France, which has its own launching system, wouldn't dare do it either.
The US of A hold the launch codes, and the UK are prepared to spend 205 Billion pounds on something they have no control over so they can play with the big boys, How sad is that! And...can you believe those codes are passed over on floppy disks, (are you old enough to remember them?) Check out this vid from John Oliver to see what 'safe hands' the big boys are. In the typical John Oliver way, it will have you laughing at scary stuff.
As I blogged a few weeks ago about Trident https://grumpyscottishman.wordpress.com/2016/07/09/trident-is-a-crime/
Trident is a crime against us all, maybe not illegal as far as the law is concerned but I certainly view it as such against me personally. Interesting that only fluffy Mundell will vote to renew, so basically 58 Scottish MPs out of 59 will vote against but we will have these horrid thing in Scotland anyway, better together democracy at it's best.
Labours position on it is such a joke as well and Corbyn, while still leader, should use the whip to force Labour MPs to vote against or lose the whip and therefor become independent MPs. They don't give a crap about him so why he should he give a shit about them when he is against. He won't of course but it would make the vote more interesting.
Either way this waste of money will be renewed, at least half the UK public support it, even though listening to those for it in Scotland this morning on BBC Scotland Propoganda Branch convinces me that most of them have no idea about it at all. I could not believe some of the rubbish being spouted this morning by a lot of the callers, mainly fae Glesgie to be honest. I sometimes think that ignorance is a growth industry in Scotland some days.
Either way it is just wrong for all the reasons that all of us have been banging on about for years.
I know the kind of thing, Bruce. "We need it to keep us safe."
So every night I worry about Dirk, my German mate; David in Switzerland, Claudine in Paris, Mike in Australia, Elizabeth in Uruguay, Johannes in Iceland, Dani in Hungary and Stan in Bulgaria. Without nuclear weapons there is a good chance they will be dead by tomorrow.
How many Scottish fishermen have been dragged to their deaths by these submarines? Their have been a few reported incidents of trawlers being dragged by their nets and sunk, but i wonder what the true figure is?
A bit like the old Western movies where the baddie get arrested by the sheriff and told he will get a fair trial and then he will be hanged. They (Westminster) will have their debate and then vote to renew Trident.
I think most electors have the right to be outraged at their representatives. A party that revels in winning WW2, and has nothing else to offer, renages on it's victory. You win, then you run away. That is the Tories idea of engagement. And that of Nigel Farage. '45, 2016.
Labour, OTOH, become like the post war consensus is a form of leprosy, hanging around their necks like a corpse that they wish to abandon. Something they want to give up, and that they indeed see as holding them back. Back from what I ask? Back then, when we all embraced giving money to cure leprosy, to fix Britain, there was a common cause. Nowadays it is busted like a neutron hitting another neutron at near light speed in the LHC. They have zero vision.
There is a selfishness in almost all unionist politicians. We are supposed to be amused, as though it were a soap opera at the machinations of BoJo and Cruella, even the nick-names are a joke. They normalize psychopaths.
And labour implodes.
Sorry, that was a bit of a rant.
I want out!
I detest politics played on a personality level. It reduces our futures to a soap opera, and that is ridiculous.
We are incredibly badly served at the moment by very second rate politicians at Westminster.
I despair of the Labour Party. The two who are challenging JC are so pathetically inadequate as to be comedy figures.
The Cabinet isn't any better.
Seriously I watched them on tc yesterday thinking to myself NONE of you planned for any of this at all.
The Greening woman was on. Education. The UK receives 16% of all academic funding. Research is hugely important.
Presently American and Chinese universities are brain draining academics because they may have no future here, and all Greening could say was... "well, we will have to look at all the options", while another boffin signs up to a contact at Yale or Princetown.
And dimbo hasn't a clue what they are going to do.
The SNP, and the wider pro-independence movement like to 'stand up for ordinary working Scottish families'. So the hostility to both Trident and being in the UK is baffling.
No Trident means tens of thousands of job losses in Glasgow. No UK means no MOD spending on the Clyde. This together means no shipyards, no workers earning a living directly or indirectly through/with the Clyde shipyards.
The SNP & wider independentist movement cannot claim; with any integrity; to be pro-Glasgow, pro-worker if they oppose both Trident & our membership of the UK.
No Trident means that we are not an immediate target for other countries nuclear weapons. Probably wouldn't save us in an out and out nuclear war, but at least we wouldn't have started it.
In a lesser conflagration we might survive, Doubtful, but possible. That survival would be dependent on us not having stupid bombs right next to our major conurbation.
Having them there makes us the second target in the UK. The first being London. The enemy will probably have enough artillery to demolish both us and them, ICBM interceptors seem to be a future technology, not something we can deploy right now. Jobs will be the least of it. The nuclear winter is determined not just by Westminster MP's but by similar crawl up the ladder arseholes in France, India, Pakistan, China and the USA. Och and Israel.
I'm assuming, Den, that you are taking the piss, or are pissed?
On the subject of jobs in relation to the Trident project I'd quite form Stuart Campbell's article on Wings:
6. Even if we accept the wildest estimates of such MPs regarding the number of jobs reliant on Trident – which range from around 500, according to the MoD, up to absurdly inflated claims of 20,000 – the lifetime cost of the system is expected to be in excess of £200 billion. That’s £10m per job over the 40-year period, or £250,000 per job per year.
The rest of the argument seems to be about how much the MoD will spend in Glasgow on warships and other means of killing people.
An independent Scotland will need boats too. not necessarily boats that can kill folk, but boats nonetheless. Norway doesn't have nuclear weapons but there are many many boatyards in Norway.
Incidentally, where will all this £200 billion go? Mostly abroad to America to keep their people in work.
There's an awful lot of infrastructure here that needs upgrading, that would provide many many jobs for a very long time on that money.
"No Trident means that we are not an immediate target for other countries nuclear weapons. Probably wouldn't save us in an out and out nuclear war, but at least we wouldn't have started it."
?!
UK maintains a 'no first strike policy', so even with them we'd not have 'started it'. Plus, what's your point here? That we might be nuked, but at least we'd die more moral by not having the ability to strike back?
You can't un-invent the technology, and with trident we deter anyone from striking us with a first strike agenda.
Feargal Dalton @PartickFeargal 6h6 hours ago As #Trident veteran, wish MPs would stop using patronising jobs argument. My colleagues & I are highly skilled. Don't need nukes for jobs.
An independent Scotland will need boats too. not necessarily boats that can kill folk, but boats nonetheless. Norway doesn't have nuclear weapons but there are many many boatyards in Norway.
Not with a 2% of GDP NATO spending commitment to keep orders rolling in.
And do you seriously think a separate Scotland would need nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers? A handful of destroyers and frigates aren't enough to keep those yards remaining open. We need the UK 2% GDP MOD Nato spending to keep the orders rolling in at a good pace and volume.
Yes Douglas. I meant that too. We won't need massive warships to show the world that we are still marginally important. But w will need fishery and oil well protection vessels and there will be some sort of small Navy.
Of course we could try building for other countries. UK isn't the only warmonger.
So you say. We would, probably. have to start a Scottish Navy from scratch. Given that we had rejected your debt. And your ridiculous air craft carriers.
Anyway, a handful might end up as commercial contracts or military contracts from around the globe.
He thinks trident must be renewed because nuclear weapons can't be uninvented, some seriously well thought through evaluation of the issue no doubt led him to that conclusion. So yes, that qualifies him as an arse. Wee Ginger Dug talked about him in his latest blog, and as usuall gives you a laugh in the process.
The impression beloved of Westminster politicians that the UK is a world power is as laughable as the idea that Alberto Costa MP is a serious politician. For those who are unaware of the existence of Alberto, I can only say what lucky lucky people you are. He’s the Scottish born Tory MP for South Leicestershire, who has enthusiastically adopted oleaginous toadyism as a career path. Every time the mental scars of Alberto’s last appearance on our telly screens begins to fade, he pops up again with his wee fat face like a bursting plook. His contribution to the Trident debate was to remind opponents of renewal that we must renew Trident because nuclear weapons can’t be uninvented. Next week Alberto will be arguing for the renewal of the UK’s stocks of iron maidens, thumb screws, chemical and biological weapons, and those Klackers which were so effective in breaking the arm bones of 1970s school children.
since we can't afford everything why don't we fully fund social protections and do fund-raising for nuclear weapon instead of the other way round.
ReplyDeleteYes, why not? It could be part of the Big Society...or did that idea die off with the removal of Mr Cameron?
DeleteWhy does a country the size of Canada,with it's vast resources not feel threatened in the way that Westminster does?
ReplyDeleteThey sent their's back to the US of A decades ago.
Of course,they do not have to act as a proxy for Uncle Sam,despite being a neighbouring state (perhaps because of their resources).
I suppose,now that London has turned it's back on Europe,it feels that the future lies in much closer ties with the USA,in fact,becoming the 51st state of that particular union would probably suit them fine and who knows may become their only option in future.
The split in our islands between USA leaning England and European leaning Scotland has been around for some time but is now about to become overtly clear to everyone and Trident is just one example.
Very true. I expect that Canada, being big and rich, doesn't feel the need to stress its importance in the world by having 0.7 of the nuclear capacity thereby sitting on the Security Council at the top table and getting their photographs taken with Obama.
DeleteI don't understand why there are not demonstrations outside the US Embassy in London. Seems to me that would be as effective as anything else. It would certainly get more international publicity.
ReplyDeleteNothing at all will persuade these people to give up ther seat at the top table.
DeleteI listened this morning to that fool Fallon explaining how dangerous the world was now and how that meant that even more than before he must get to go to Washington .... sorry, I mean that Britain had to show a lead in the world.
I was thinking that the Western country most affected recently by terrorism is France, which has nuclear weapons too. I wonder that in this dangerous world they didn't think to sort out the Nice and Paris issues with a nice big nuclear bomb.
The seriously must think we zip up the back.
Do the British get the launch codes or do the Americans keep them? It's a bit like buying a Lamborghini without the key.
ReplyDeleteI think the launch codes change all the time. I don't think the Brits have them, Iain.
DeleteEven if tessy is looking at them right now, contemplating bombing some poor sods somewhere, can you imagine for a second that she would dare do it without permission from DC?
Not a chance.
France, which has its own launching system, wouldn't dare do it either.
The US of A hold the launch codes, and the UK are prepared to spend 205 Billion pounds on something they have no control over so they can play with the big boys, How sad is that! And...can you believe those codes are passed over on floppy disks, (are you old enough to remember them?)
DeleteCheck out this vid from John Oliver to see what 'safe hands' the big boys are. In the typical John Oliver way, it will have you laughing at scary stuff.
https://youtu.be/1Y1ya-yF35g
Brilliant...
DeleteAbsolutely Brilliant!
Tris
ReplyDeleteAs I blogged a few weeks ago about Trident https://grumpyscottishman.wordpress.com/2016/07/09/trident-is-a-crime/
Trident is a crime against us all, maybe not illegal as far as the law is concerned but I certainly view it as such against me personally. Interesting that only fluffy Mundell will vote to renew, so basically 58 Scottish MPs out of 59 will vote against but we will have these horrid thing in Scotland anyway, better together democracy at it's best.
Labours position on it is such a joke as well and Corbyn, while still leader, should use the whip to force Labour MPs to vote against or lose the whip and therefor become independent MPs. They don't give a crap about him so why he should he give a shit about them when he is against. He won't of course but it would make the vote more interesting.
Either way this waste of money will be renewed, at least half the UK public support it, even though listening to those for it in Scotland this morning on BBC Scotland Propoganda Branch convinces me that most of them have no idea about it at all. I could not believe some of the rubbish being spouted this morning by a lot of the callers, mainly fae Glesgie to be honest. I sometimes think that ignorance is a growth industry in Scotland some days.
Either way it is just wrong for all the reasons that all of us have been banging on about for years.
Bruce
I know the kind of thing, Bruce. "We need it to keep us safe."
DeleteSo every night I worry about Dirk, my German mate; David in Switzerland, Claudine in Paris, Mike in Australia, Elizabeth in Uruguay, Johannes in Iceland, Dani in Hungary and Stan in Bulgaria. Without nuclear weapons there is a good chance they will be dead by tomorrow.
As you say, amazing how thick some people are.
How many Scottish fishermen have been dragged to their deaths by these submarines? Their have been a few reported incidents of trawlers being dragged by their nets and sunk, but i wonder what the true figure is?
ReplyDeleteYou can bet we won;t have the real figure. It will be classified for security reasons, because if Vlad found out he'd surely invade the next day.
DeleteI know we were forbidden for drilling for oi out there becasue of thier bloody submarines.
Still, we should always remember that these four subs are VITAL to world peace. Without them there was be terrorists everywhere... oh wait...
Who benefits from Trident?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thecanary.co/2016/07/18/truth-trident-shocking-fact-turn-us-paying-nukes/
Well, who'd have thunk it!?
DeleteFancy them all being up to their dirty oxters in it!
Good article BJS!
A bit like the old Western movies where the baddie get arrested by the sheriff and told he will get a fair trial and then he will be hanged.
ReplyDeleteThey (Westminster) will have their debate and then vote to renew Trident.
Sometimes I wonder why they bother. Might as well just rubber stamp it.
DeleteAccording to the bbc the number of Scottish jobs dependent on Trident is rising by 3000 every hour. Total currently stands at 1,224,000
ReplyDeleteLOL. Good!
DeleteBy the next election we should have a trillion or so jobs.
We'll never be poor again.
Slightly off topic, our rage at Westminster politicians is misdirected anger. How do I know that?
ReplyDeleteBecause they tell me so:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p041vk7c
What utter rubbish.
Hmmmm...
DeleteIf they didn't talk such unutterable rubbish; if they weren't so self serving, then maybe people wouldn't get so damned annoyed at them.
Even old Soames had a row with Boris, and they know each other.
I think most electors have the right to be outraged at their representatives. A party that revels in winning WW2, and has nothing else to offer, renages on it's victory. You win, then you run away. That is the Tories idea of engagement. And that of Nigel Farage. '45, 2016.
DeleteLabour, OTOH, become like the post war consensus is a form of leprosy, hanging around their necks like a corpse that they wish to abandon. Something they want to give up, and that they indeed see as holding them back. Back from what I ask? Back then, when we all embraced giving money to cure leprosy, to fix Britain, there was a common cause. Nowadays it is busted like a neutron hitting another neutron at near light speed in the LHC. They have zero vision.
There is a selfishness in almost all unionist politicians. We are supposed to be amused, as though it were a soap opera at the machinations of BoJo and Cruella, even the nick-names are a joke. They normalize psychopaths.
And labour implodes.
Sorry, that was a bit of a rant.
I want out!
I detest politics played on a personality level. It reduces our futures to a soap opera, and that is ridiculous.
Auch rant away lad.
DeleteWe are incredibly badly served at the moment by very second rate politicians at Westminster.
I despair of the Labour Party. The two who are challenging JC are so pathetically inadequate as to be comedy figures.
The Cabinet isn't any better.
Seriously I watched them on tc yesterday thinking to myself NONE of you planned for any of this at all.
The Greening woman was on. Education. The UK receives 16% of all academic funding. Research is hugely important.
Presently American and Chinese universities are brain draining academics because they may have no future here, and all Greening could say was... "well, we will have to look at all the options", while another boffin signs up to a contact at Yale or Princetown.
And dimbo hasn't a clue what they are going to do.
And our Education Secretary has no say.
The SNP, and the wider pro-independence movement like to 'stand up for ordinary working Scottish families'. So the hostility to both Trident and being in the UK is baffling.
ReplyDeleteNo Trident means tens of thousands of job losses in Glasgow. No UK means no MOD spending on the Clyde. This together means no shipyards, no workers earning a living directly or indirectly through/with the Clyde shipyards.
The SNP & wider independentist movement cannot claim; with any integrity; to be pro-Glasgow, pro-worker if they oppose both Trident & our membership of the UK.
You are taking the piss, aren't you?
DeleteIn case you aren't.
DeleteNo Trident means that we are not an immediate target for other countries nuclear weapons. Probably wouldn't save us in an out and out nuclear war, but at least we wouldn't have started it.
In a lesser conflagration we might survive, Doubtful, but possible. That survival would be dependent on us not having stupid bombs right next to our major conurbation.
Having them there makes us the second target in the UK. The first being London. The enemy will probably have enough artillery to demolish both us and them, ICBM interceptors seem to be a future technology, not something we can deploy right now. Jobs will be the least of it. The nuclear winter is determined not just by Westminster MP's but by similar crawl up the ladder arseholes in France, India, Pakistan, China and the USA. Och and Israel.
We have our own suicidal lunatics.
I'm assuming, Den, that you are taking the piss, or are pissed?
DeleteOn the subject of jobs in relation to the Trident project I'd quite form Stuart Campbell's article on Wings:
6. Even if we accept the wildest estimates of such MPs regarding the number of jobs reliant on Trident – which range from around 500, according to the MoD, up to absurdly inflated claims of 20,000 – the lifetime cost of the system is expected to be in excess of £200 billion. That’s £10m per job over the 40-year period, or £250,000 per job per year.
The rest of the argument seems to be about how much the MoD will spend in Glasgow on warships and other means of killing people.
An independent Scotland will need boats too. not necessarily boats that can kill folk, but boats nonetheless. Norway doesn't have nuclear weapons but there are many many boatyards in Norway.
Incidentally, where will all this £200 billion go? Mostly abroad to America to keep their people in work.
There's an awful lot of infrastructure here that needs upgrading, that would provide many many jobs for a very long time on that money.
Douglas,
Delete"No Trident means that we are not an immediate target for other countries nuclear weapons. Probably wouldn't save us in an out and out nuclear war, but at least we wouldn't have started it."
?!
UK maintains a 'no first strike policy', so even with them we'd not have 'started it'. Plus, what's your point here? That we might be nuked, but at least we'd die more moral by not having the ability to strike back?
You can't un-invent the technology, and with trident we deter anyone from striking us with a first strike agenda.
So are you saying that the other 190+ countries in the world should be VERY VERY afraid because they don't have nukes?
DeleteShould I maybe phone all my European friends to say goodbye?
It's not a question of dying more moral. If they are going to roast us alive why the hell would we give a damn about retaliation?
It's not like we'll be able to watch it and gloat the next day on Youtube.
Feargal Dalton @PartickFeargal 6h6 hours ago
DeleteAs #Trident veteran, wish MPs would stop using patronising jobs argument. My colleagues & I are highly skilled. Don't need nukes for jobs.
"Tens of thousand of job losses."
ReplyDeleteYou are Jackie Baillie, and I claim my £10.
An independent Scotland will need boats too. not necessarily boats that can kill folk, but boats nonetheless. Norway doesn't have nuclear weapons but there are many many boatyards in Norway.
ReplyDeleteWe might need ships to protect ourselves.
Just saying.
Not with a 2% of GDP NATO spending commitment to keep orders rolling in.
DeleteAnd do you seriously think a separate Scotland would need nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers? A handful of destroyers and frigates aren't enough to keep those yards remaining open. We need the UK 2% GDP MOD Nato spending to keep the orders rolling in at a good pace and volume.
No. But Norway keeps its boat and ship builders busy without having to make out that its a serious world power.
DeleteFor heaven's sake, what you seem to be saying is that in order to find work for people we have to be happy to spend billions on killing machines.
Might be the Tory way to keep people off the dole. Ain't mine.
Read Stuart's piece on the economics of it.
.
Yes Douglas. I meant that too. We won't need massive warships to show the world that we are still marginally important. But w will need fishery and oil well protection vessels and there will be some sort of small Navy.
DeleteOf course we could try building for other countries. UK isn't the only warmonger.
Dean, wake up man; there's more jobs in the peace trade, than the death trade.
DeleteExactly, Jim.
DeleteNot sure what it is about Tories and their wars.
Mhairi Black's speech was superb today.
Dean MacKinnon-Thomson
ReplyDeleteSo you say. We would, probably. have to start a Scottish Navy from scratch. Given that we had rejected your debt. And your ridiculous air craft carriers.
Anyway, a handful might end up as commercial contracts or military contracts from around the globe.
I know.
I might not be adding much to the debate here, but I would just like to say that Alberto Costa is an arse.
ReplyDeleteOh do tell. There's nothing much on the Wiki site about him.
Deletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Costa_(British_politician)
He seems a bit of a nonentity. Can I now assume he has done something to warrant your disapproval?
He thinks trident must be renewed because nuclear weapons can't be uninvented, some seriously well thought through evaluation of the issue no doubt led him to that conclusion. So yes, that qualifies him as an arse. Wee Ginger Dug talked about him in his latest blog, and as usuall gives you a laugh in the process.
DeleteWatch him in action on the Scotland bill debate on You Tube. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C8w8aCrFl-E
DeleteI am sure you will be agreeing with me!
Thanks Issy and PS.
DeleteI see he's an SNP BAAAAD sheep, I mean man.
DeleteLove this bit:
DeleteThe impression beloved of Westminster politicians that the UK is a world power is as laughable as the idea that Alberto Costa MP is a serious politician. For those who are unaware of the existence of Alberto, I can only say what lucky lucky people you are. He’s the Scottish born Tory MP for South Leicestershire, who has enthusiastically adopted oleaginous toadyism as a career path. Every time the mental scars of Alberto’s last appearance on our telly screens begins to fade, he pops up again with his wee fat face like a bursting plook. His contribution to the Trident debate was to remind opponents of renewal that we must renew Trident because nuclear weapons can’t be uninvented. Next week Alberto will be arguing for the renewal of the UK’s stocks of iron maidens, thumb screws, chemical and biological weapons, and those Klackers which were so effective in breaking the arm bones of 1970s school children.
WGD sums it up perfectly as ever!
DeleteDean MacKinnon Thomson is odd.
ReplyDeleteA human being that likes being a target for nuclear bombs. How does that work, in your brain?
To each his own Douglas.
DeleteI prefer a cooler way of going, myself.