General Election June 8th

[Chippy_boy]

Of course not.
Cunts are going to SELL it.

Course they are. Richard Branson is champing at the bit.

Or not.

Actually with his teeth, he might well be. And at 50p it does seem a bargain. I'd give 60p myself. Maybe I should buy it.

You silly sod.

 

[Chippy_boy]

And pass the baton to Diane Abbot. ;-)

I'd say she'd drop it, but actually she'd probably lose it.

 

[Len Rum]

Corbyn has done a very good job campaigning to labours core vote so if he loses which seems likely it shouldn't be the disaster that was previously predicted. What labour decide to do after the election if the result is similar to Millibands efforts will be quite interesting. Personally I think the country needs a new voting system at the very least.

For once I find myself agreeing with you mate on the voting system.
As for Labour I would like to see a 'man of the people' leading the party after the election like Dan Jarvis or Clive Lewis ( both ex military).
A leader like that who could tap in to the patriotic nationalist sentiments of the votes Labour have lost to UKIP/Tories allied to a center left manifesto ( as per the current Labour manifesto) would represent a formidable opposition to the Tories.

 

[Chippy_boy]

The nuclear isssue is also being managed, Trident will be renewed

Absolutely. So we're all sorted then.

 

[Chippy_boy]

For once I find myself agreeing with you mate on the voting system.
As for Labour I would like to see a 'man of the people' leading the party after the election like Dan Jarvis or Clive Lewis ( both ex military).
A leader like that who could tap in to the patriotic nationalist sentiments of the votes Labour have lost to UKIP/Tories allied to a center left manifesto ( as per the current Labour manifesto) would represent a formidable opposition to the Tories.

We want Jezzer. We want Jezzer. We want Jezzer.

 

[Chippy_boy]

Well that's probably why Theresa voted Remain. Which way did you vote?

 

[vonkeynotvenky]

For once I find myself agreeing with you mate on the voting system.
As for Labour I would like to see a 'man of the people' leading the party after the election like Dan Jarvis or Clive Lewis ( both ex military).
A leader like that who could tap in to the patriotic nationalist sentiments of the votes Labour have lost to UKIP/Tories allied to a center left manifesto ( as per the current Labour manifesto) would represent a formidable opposition to the Tories.

Dan Jarvis ticks all the boxes for me it's only his stance on Brexit that would prevent me from voting for him. Post Brexit is another matter and I would happily give him the tick if he could get rid of the radical element in the party.

 

[Vic]

While we're on the subject of crap policies. means testing the winter fuel allowance will probably cost nearly as much as it saves. The aim of not giving money to those who don't need it can simply be met by changing it from an allowance to a payment and making it taxable income.

They still haven't said at what level of means you'd lose the allowance. And I don't think they're promising to retain free eye tests or the bus pass for pensioners. Let the pensioner buyer beware.

More importantly, what messages is he sending out to Putin, Kim Jong-Um or even to ISIS*. If they think he wouldn't press a reliation button, that's all is required to render our entire nuclear deterrent impotent and worthless.

Whether a leader is *actually* prepared to do it or not, is not really the point. It's the message they send out that's important, and in that regard, he fails completely.

* Is it beyond the realms of possibility that ISIS would try to kill millions of Britains by putting Polonium in the Thames water supply, or some other such catastrophe? I am not sure it isn't.

Field Marshall Carver asked at the height of the Cold War what the bloody hell Trident was for. It's certainly no bloody use for deterring ISIS. Spend some of the Trident money on more surveillance of potential terror plots and that would make us safer.

Another slogan from those days. Why don't we fund schools and hospitals properly out of tax and hold jumble sales to buy nuclear weapons?

And whoever posted that the Cuban missile crisis demonstrated that deterrence worked - that was all about the Americans trying to get round MAD by installing tactical weapons in Turkey that (in their truly mad world) would allow nukes to be used without triggering Armageddon. "Victory" would mean as few as 20 million dead Americans.

Frankly with the threats we now face, it's just bizarre to be rehearsing these Cold War arguments as if they were still at all relevant. But even on those bygone terms Corbyn's stance is just a modern take on the problem then - Russia could still invade western Europe with conventional weapons (why would they?) and no-one would push the button "because of the self-deterrence inherent in such a strategic context". Any leader can say they'd annihilate the planet but in reality they wouldn't.

The up to date question to put to May would be "if Russia invades EstonIa would you authorise a first strike against Moscow?" Or even "if North Korea invades S Korea would you defend Seoul by nuking Pyongyang and hope for Seoul's sake that the wind is not blowing north-south?"

It is just sheer madness to talk about using nuclear weapons as if there were any circumstance in which it would make sense. Hence the "self-deterrence".

 

[Len Rum]

We want Jezzer. We want Jezzer. We want Jezzer.

Mate you're becoming the mcfc1632 ( aka the bore) of this thread.
Take a day off, relax, give yourself some 'relief' and come back refreshed and maybe a better person and poster.

 

[Gelsons Dad]

It is every bit like handling a household budget just with a lot more complexity. The principles are exactly the same, money coming in, options to borrow to spend or invest and money going out.

Spend more than you have coming in, over stretch and can't pay your debts you go bust. In country terms that means borrowing becomes prohibitively expensive and rampant on inflation ensues destroying the value of people's savings or a ratcheting up of interest rates causing people to default on loans which become unaffordable.

There is nothing good to come from spending more than you can afford over a considerable period of time (how much time depends on how much you overspend) whether as an individual or a country.

See Greece for a perfect example. But Dammo will not see it as he's smarter than us.

 

[HelloCity]

Well that's probably why Theresa voted Remain. Which way did you vote?

Remain.

Why?

 

[Len Rum]

After Fallon's foxes paw on income tax today ( no rise in next parliament) it looks as though increases in NICS for the self employed will be back on the agenda.
Wonder if white van man knows?

 

[NorthamptonBlue]

I have bitten the bullet and voted Labour (by post). Voted Tory last time but didn't think much of the manifesto which seemed to be "I am May, give me a blank cheque and trust me". I don't.

 

[vonkeynotvenky]

Can Paul Mason be muzzled?

 

[City Raider]

Another 9 seat shift to Labour in latest YouGov poll. Keep going (or disappearing) Theresa, you're having a blinder.

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

All this means is that we can use it independently but the USA may refuse to allow us to use their missile delivery system subsequently. You're an intelligent man Colin what don't you get about Deterrents having worked for 65 years and the alternatives being very risky and unproven? Russia and China know that if they use Nukes they will be hit in kind.

In my younger days I was wholly in favour of a nuclear deterrent because the geo-political situation was very different back then. The USA and the Soviet Union were sworn enemies and China was a completely unknown quantity. France & the UK wanted a seat at the top table and that's the only reason they developed nuclear weapons. However our efforts to develop an effective delivery capability were predictably dire so Macmillan had to go cap in hand to Kennedy to beg for Polaris after the USA cancelled Skybolt. In those dangerous Cold War days, the superpowers couldn't engage each other directly but they fought proxy wars in Africa, the Middle East and South East Asia.

The world today however is a very different place and the threat has changed. There is no Iron Curtain and China plays a full part in the global political economy. As we've seen only too recently, the threat to global security arises from religious ideologies not millions of pounds worth of hardware. Cyber warfare can cause as much infrastructure damage as a nuclear weapon without a single unit of radiation being generated. Also, there is now a danger that nuclear weapons could even fall into the hands of organisation like ISIS or Al Qaeda, who are non-state actors. What use would our warheads have been if Salman Abedi had detonated a tactical nuclear device a week last Monday? The answer is none.

And looking back at past conflicts, would Ukraine have used nuclear weapons to respond to the Russian annexation of Crimea and the disguised encroachment into parts of Eastern Ukraine? No it wouldn't. Did the USA use nuclear weapons on Iraq when it invaded Kuwait? No it didn't. The one conflict I can think of since the Cuban missile crisis that could easily have led to the use of nuclear weapons was the Arab-Israeli war of 1973. There was a genuine existential threat to Israel in the early part of that conflict, particularly on the Northern front when an overwhelmingly numerically superior Syrian force broke through the forward Israeli line on the Golan Heights. Israel had nuclear weapons and the capability to deliver them but it didn't use them. Had their hastily improvised second line of defence not held back the Syrians then it's possible they might have used them but would the Russians have responded in kind? I highly doubt it.

So there is, in my opinion anyway, no reason for us to have nuclear weapons and the fewer there are in the world, the better and safer it will be.

 

[Chippy_boy]

Mate you're becoming the mcfc1632 ( aka the bore) of this thread.
Take a day off, relax, give yourself some 'relief' and come back refreshed and maybe a better person and poster.

Oh the irony. No thanks Len.

 

[Chippy_boy]

After Fallon's foxes paw on income tax today ( no rise in next parliament) it looks as though increases in NICS for the self employed will be back on the agenda.
Wonder if white van man knows?

Are you seriously trying to have a go at Tories about possible tax increases. Seriously, is that what you want to try and do? Seriously??? I mean wow, just wow.

Have you stopped to think for one nano second just how ridiculous that is? Attempting to criticise the Tories for an unannounced, not even talked about small NIC rise, when Jezzer is planning on stealing £500bn off us over the next 5 years. Unbelievable Jeff.

 

[SWP's back]

I have bitten the bullet and voted Labour (by post). Voted Tory last time but didn't think much of the manifesto which seemed to be "I am May, give me a blank cheque and trust me". I don't.

Is it still against the law to inform people how you have voted before the result is announced?

 

[SWP's back]

Are you seriously trying to have a go at Tories about possible tax increases. Seriously, is that what you want to try and do? Seriously??? I mean wow, just wow.

Have you stopped to think for one nano second just how ridiculous that is? Attempting to criticise the Tories for an unannounced, not even talked about small NIC rise, when Jezzer is planning on stealing £500bn off us over the next 5 years. Unbelievable Jeff.

Len is great at tax hypocrisy.