That's what the armed forces are for, the skirmishes. You keep or lose the contents, or the whole car in the skirmishes. For car and skirmishes read Iraq, the Middle East, Sierra Leone, the Falklands, Kenya, in the 50's, Belize, or wherever. But the buck stops inside our borders. Our lifestyles, our choices, our freedom to say who governs us, who dictates our trade agreements, our foreign relations..... That's what the bomb is for. To tell the whole world that no one tells us who to be, how to think, how to be. We shouldn't be embarrassed to be a liberal democracy. We should be proud of it and fight to remain that way. So keep that bomb!
Nah. Still with Corbyn with regard to that one. £30bn to spend on other kit and we'd have the best equipped force for its size on the planet.
Corbyn is an idealist pacifist and would have an army giving out goody bags rather than carrying weapons if he had his way..
Yep, the best equipped force for its size on the planet. Awesome. Impressive. Outstanding. Until just a couple of medium sized nukes takes most of them out. Haway Sid. At least explain your position and explain how you get around the dominance of nukes over conventional forces in a crisis.
National security is the number 1 priority. I just don't believe Trident is necessarily the number 1 priority. Far more important areas we can spend money on to ensure national security (inlcuding our armed forces, equipment, arms, and good old fashioned intelligence) AND then still have enough change left over for schools, hospitals and other important public services. IF we believe we have a right to a nuclear deterrent, and we argue against unilateral disarmament, then we really can't hold the moral high ground against others having it either. If North Korea aren't attacking us because of our nukes, maybe they're looking across at what's happened in Iraq and feeling quite safe having a nuke also. In that sense, univeral deterrence seems to work.
Ha'way yerself, Blunham. How many wars have there been since 1945? And how many have been nuclear? You're talking about the end of days scenario when we all go up in smoke. I'm talking about a life goes on scenario. Tell me what would have happened in 1982 if all we had was nukes. How would we have got the Falklands back? Nuke Buenos Aires?? A strong conventional force has to come first because by the time we're pressing the button we're all finding out if there is a God the hard way...
Our nukes are the deterrents. If we lose our nukes, another country just has to point there's at us and they know we'll surrender. It will be that easy. No point being the biggest, fittest and toughest MMA fighter in the world, if your opponent is allowed to carry a gun into the cage.
We need a balance though Sid...Nuclear weapons are the ultimate deterrent if we ourselves are under threat of oblivion. However, we also need a capable conventional force. At the moment we are as weak as we have ever been, and need to invest heavily in defence in this dangerous world we live in..
1982. We had nukes then. But the conventinal forces have gor weaker. Dont kid yourself this has owt to do with nukes.
Yes Sid, I was talking about an end of days, not a life goes on scenario. That was my point about skirmishes. But Sid, the Argies didn't have the bomb. Do you think we'd have sailed an armada down there if they had? We were never going to use nukes against a country we thought we could defeat with conventional weapons. And the Argies weren't at our doorstep. You missed my original point about what our bomb is for. The Argies weren't going to change or threaten our lifestyle. Maybe a change of government, but nothing more. Like I said earlier, conventional weapons are all well and good for skirmishes, like the Falklands. That's not what the bomb is for.
The Argies didn't have the bomb; we did; they still attacked us. They knew we wouldn't use it in those circumstances, because the only circumstances in which we would use it are so extreme. That's my point. The threats we face are 99% Argie level and 1% end-of-the-world. I'm just saying put our money on the 99% and not the Dr Strangelove version.
The vote in favour was never in doubt, they have already spent £2 billion in preparation for this at Aldermaston and Burghfield. Does the £31 billion include the decommissioning costs for Trident? If it's anything like the nuclear power industry these costs will escalate - They still haven't got a clue what it's going to cost to clean up Sellafield. Based on the best data now available, different assumptions could produce figures somewhere between £95 billion and £219 billion.
