Tory Country

[Anny Road]

Cost of being bullied by Russian, Israel, Pakistan, Iran etc etc because we aint got nukes?

[Skidfingers McGonical]

35% vote yes for AV and it's not enough for a majority. Tories get 35% in the General Election and that's enough or a 5 year mandate.

 

That shit ain't right.

[Albertini]

Thats total cost, it will rise, it includes the air craft carriers and everything but the Tories have signed up to be ripped off by the US and it will be more than that figure.

 

So it's not just the cost of the bombs, right? And it is the replacement cost which the Guardian, quoting Greenpeace, has estimated at £130 billion?

 

It's a valid point Dennis but also consider the cost of the non nuclear second world war for Britain. Estimated to be around £300 billion in 1945, which in today's money is around £3 trillion.

 

There is a valid argument about why our nuclear system appears to be so much more expensive than many others. I have no problem in questioning the cost and value of Trident but equally believe there is a direct correlation in the proliferation of nuclear deterrents and the fact there hasnt been a world war since said nuclear weapons proliferated.

[cochcaer]

35% vote yes for AV and it's not enough for a majority. Tories get 35% in the General Election and that's enough or a 5 year mandate.

 

That shit ain't right.

 

Time to bring back hanging then...

[WaltonRed]

We cant even fire a nuke without the U.S's permission so whats the point?!

[Anny Road]

Power in the world is directly related to how hard you can hit someone. It's that simple. You are by giving up nukes asking the UK to be more like Belgium. That might not be a bad thing but it is not as simple a question as scrapping our deterrent and carrying on as normal.

[WaltonRed]

But we never do fucking hit anyone hard, hence fighting wars for years in an effort to win hearts and minds!

[VladimirIlyich]

Deterrent against who though? Judging by the 7/7 bombings the problems are internal rather than external.

[Anny Road]

You'd soon see if we didn't have them.

[WaltonRed]

Why anny? We'd hardly be invaded.

 

Besides, nuclear war will never happen...

[Section_31]

Economic power is more important than military power. Gather a bunch of business leaders and politicians in a room together and time how long it takes them to drop their pants the minute anyone remotely resembling a chinaman enters the room.

[dennis tooth]

Cost of being bullied by Russian, Israel, Pakistan, Iran etc etc because we aint got nukes?

 

First off Isreal is already bullying us. Russia has no interest in bullying us and certainly is not put off by us but the USA. Pakistan and Iran have no interest in us or whether we have nukes or not. You think they want to come and conquer us for our call centre staff?

[Anny Road]

Exerting our influence around the world would be a lot harder without the knowledge that we have a big stick.

[WaltonRed]

We've long given up any notion of people being scared of us.

 

We are the great pretenders, they all know we're the Yanks lapdogs and thats it.

[Anubis]

Exerting our influence around the world would be a lot harder without the knowledge that we have a big stick.

 

I don't think we're that influential any more. Our influence comes really from our Empire days, where many countries adopted aspects of British culture. I don't think anyone is really worried about us having nukes. Especially ones we can't fire unless the US let us.

[Anny Road]

See how fast the Argies march in once the subs have gone.

[Section_31]

We've long given up any notion of people being scared of us.

 

We are the great pretenders, they all know we're the Yanks lapdogs and thats it.

 

Said it before, Britain lost the Second Worl War - to America. We became a political and social slave nation, you only have to look around to witness the results. Saying that, before that happened we were merely slaves to the existing British establishment. New money, old money, not much of a difference in the grand scheme of things, we just have less battle cruisers and get laughed at more.

[Section_31]

I don't think we're that influential any more. Our influence comes really from our Empire days, where many countries adopted aspects of British culture. I don't think anyone is really worried about us having nukes. Especially ones we can't fire unless the US let us.

 

I think our main source of influence is the fact we're 'allies' with America. People know we're not much of a force anymore militarily. Bear in mind we couldn't control our areas of Afghanistan because we didn't have anough helicopters or troops to move quickly and saturate areas we'd cleared of Taliban, and also, during the Lybia situation, the Tornados involved are due to be scrapped, and the Royal Navy frigate that was on station was on its way back to be scrapped. We now have an aircraft carrier with no jets on,

 

In recent years we've merely been reduced to egging on the yanks from the background, we're an international Paul Bearer to America's undertaker.

[dennis tooth]

So it's not just the cost of the bombs, right? And it is the replacement cost which the Guardian, quoting Greenpeace, has estimated at £130 billion?

 

It's a valid point Dennis but also consider the cost of the non nuclear second world war for Britain. Estimated to be around £300 billion in 1945, which in today's money is around £3 trillion.

 

There is a valid argument about why our nuclear system appears to be so much more expensive than many others. I have no problem in questioning the cost and value of Trident but equally believe there is a direct correlation in the proliferation of nuclear deterrents and the fact there hasnt been a world war since said nuclear weapons proliferated.

 

Not sure what you are trying to say. The stuff about wars is mute, there was the cold war and that very nearly led to a world nuclear war but at the end of the day the USA has enough nukes to destroy the world a good few times over and have some left over to destroy the moon too so I fail to see the correlation on nukes per se, you could point to the USA's stranglehold on the world as a better indicator. Who is going to attack us and why? Hitler was a lunatic who died a few years ago and the nuclear 'deterent' is totally pointless on every level as long as we are in the USA's pocket which any Uk government subscribes to. You don't see Norway needing a nuclear deterent, don't think they've been attacked and there'd be less reason for someone to attacke here, nukes actually only make us more vulnerable.

 

If you'd rather we cut hospitals and shit then that's an idealogical decision.

[Albertini]

First off Isreal is already bullying us. Russia has no interest in bullying us and certainly is not put off by us but the USA. Pakistan and Iran have no interest in us or whether we have nukes or not. You think they want to come and conquer us for our call centre staff?

 

At the moment Russia and Pakistan don't. Certainly Russia did, whose to say that won't change in the future. I disagree about Iran, they regard us as the "little satan". Add to that North Korea.

 

So what would stop say Iran threatening us with their nukes if they wanted us to change our policy in the Middle East for example?

 

It's a bit facetious to say what they want to conquer us for. Clearly it's not about conquering us. It would be simply punishment for things they didn't agree with, say our involvement in Iraq or Afghanistan.

 

That would result in us having to set our defence and foreign policy on the basis of us not upsetting any state (rogue or otherwise) that had nukes irrespective of whether it was in our national interest.

 

The uncertainty of that region at the moment and the potential of more instability with North Korea actually seems to me to make a nuclear deterrent more relevant now than at any other point since the cold war ended.

 

It seems logical to me that you can't get rid of your own nuclear detereent when countries who regard us as their enemies have just got or are working on introducing their own.

 

The argument about the cost of nukes is also offset by the fact that the cost is coming out of the defence budget, not on top of it. So there's no money being saved as such, it's that part of the budget is going on that one specific area within the defence budget. If you remove our nukes we'd need to beef up our armed forces to make up for our lack of a nuclear option.

 

It can be argued that one nuke would "save" us having to have an extra, what, 50,000 or 100,000 soldiers to compensate for a loss of a significant aspect of our defence capabilities. What would that cost?

 

You could also argue that costs associated with carriers would be spent anyway. We'd still need carriers of some description.

 

Also bear in mind the 30 year life span which these costs will be spread over (if your headline figure is indeed correct). That works out just over £8.5 billion per year. Thats 19% of total current defence budget. So to use your figure of £260 billion that is against a backdrop of total defence spending in that same 30 year period of £1380 million. Kind of puts it into perspective.

 

Clearly the system is expensive and there appears to be a lot of speculation about the true cost of it.

 

But to use that one area of cost from one ministerial budget, and to use a figure for a 30 year cycle to counter the national debt of the country which has trebled over the last 7 or so years (and is forecast to increase five fold over a 10-12 year period) is clearly not a valid argument.

 

Here's another one for you:

 

Benefits & Pensions spending (over same 30 year period and at current levels)

 

£6,000 billion

[dennis tooth]

Said it before, Britain lost the Second Worl War - to America. We became a political and social slave nation, you only have to look around to witness the results. Saying that, before that happened we were merely slaves to the existing British establishment. New money, old money, not much of a difference in the grand scheme of things, we just have less battle cruisers and get laughed at more.

 

Exactly, nukes we can't fire without getting US codes to shoot the things, pay untold billions for it all to work and can't afford basic body armour or housing for the armed forces and have to have a charities to pay for rehabilitation services and looking after soldiers etc stuff the army should be paying for and charities ahve to take up the slack, meanwhile we are cutting every other sector, tipping old ladies out of hospital beds or whatever so that we can look really scary with out nukes that we don't really need, we are just a US outpost on the edge of Europe.

When the Cold war was going on the ones who were going to take the Russian nuclear arsenal was us, we kept requesting the US tone things down given the Russians couldn't reach America and we were getting the pummelling if shit went down and the US couldn't give two shiney ones and carried on ramping up the pressure. When we really actually need these codes off the US, they won't give them to us anyway.

[dennis tooth]

Yeah Poland are gonna come in and fix our plumbing if we drop our nuke program.

 

If you don't have nukes you get invaded. The most likely invasion would be from the USA when Sara Palin gets in power and they got the codes.

[dennis tooth]

Iran doesn't have nukes, whre are you getting that off, 2ndly USA would not sit by and allow Iran to start threatening people. North Korea is a tin pot 3rd world nation on the other side of the world that couldn't even win a war with South Korea.

What would anyone want to threaten us with?

[Guest TK-421]

I'd welcome an invasion, probably do a better job than the Coalition innit.

[Albertini]

Not sure what you are trying to say. The stuff about wars is mute, there was the cold war and that very nearly led to a world nuclear war but at the end of the day the USA has enough nukes to destroy the world a good few times over and have some left over to destroy the moon too so I fail to see the correlation on nukes per se, you could point to the USA's stranglehold on the world as a better indicator. Who is going to attack us and why? Hitler was a lunatic who died a few years ago and the nuclear 'deterent' is totally pointless on every level as long as we are in the USA's pocket which any Uk government subscribes to. You don't see Norway needing a nuclear deterent, don't think they've been attacked and there'd be less reason for someone to attacke here, nukes actually only make us more vulnerable.

 

If you'd rather we cut hospitals and shit then that's an idealogical decision.

 

What i'm saying i have answered in my last post. The stuff about wars is not moot in my opinion. The last world war ended on the basis of a nuclear bomb being used.

 

Had those nuclear bombs been available in 1939 would the second world war have started and had it done so and nukes were used in the first weeks would the cost in lives and money been as great as it was without the nukes?

 

The point is that not having nukes doesn't stop wars and indeed the opposite seems more realistic. Since nukes were developed there hasnt been a major world war. Prior to nukes there were two world wars which killed countless milllions and cost this country far more in monetary terms than the cost of having nukes costs now.

 

Norway isn't a reasonable comparison. we are the 4th or 5th richest country in the world, and we are one of the permanent members of the Security Council. Our influence and involvement around the world has been and always will be more significant than Norway's!

 

I do not diagree about the US's influence on our nuclear deterent and that needs addressing.

 

You can't simply trot out the "nukes or hospital" argument becuase it doesnt hold up. There is far more to a country than simply building hospitals. Health is one part but so is defence of the country and its citizens from all threats that are apparent now and will emerge over the next 30 years.

 

We could remove all our armed forces, our welfare state, law and order, transport, education, foreign aid and everything else simply and build more hospitals, but what would be the point if we had no defence, no law and order and no education?

 

What we could do though is cut our debt interest payments which equate for almost 45% of our health spending, then we could build more hospitals. We could have also not bothered with the NHS IT system and saved £10 billion for new hopstials there.

 

It's about balancing all aspects of our national needs and requirments. Defence is one aspect as important as health.