No time to lose

Brilliant. Just spent ~£1 billion fighting against the weapons we sold the last bloke!

I would expect British companies to stay home and not try and generate business and protect/create British jobs. After all that is what all other countries will be doing. Libya doesn’t need any outside help right now.

And talking of jobbies – a vanity blog with a photo of the writer at top being all overwhelmed by his own cleverness – priceless.

id expect that too cranberry but its an absolute tragedy that the only things we seem good at selling are things that kill people

couple that to the bribery, corruption and misery that is caused on an unimaginable scale by said weapons and it is our national shame
not to mention that its not just innocent foreign types that happen to get killed, the SAS were on the ground in libya how would you feel about them being killed by weapons sold to them by us

id read this cranberry
BAE was about to sell 50 apcs to gaddaffi as late as jan this year

the SAS were on the ground in libya how would you feel about them being killed by weapons sold to them by us

Rather that than weapons sold to them by, say, the French.

or indeed the russians, italians, germans etc etc etc

id like to see our politicians taking the lead in ending the global weapons trade instead of milking it

cameron was on his merchants of death tour in the middle east when the arab spring kicked of ffs!
however, you may say im a dreamer

We did blow up all the weapons we sold to them. The least we can do is sell them some more. Rude not to.

that the only things we seem good at selling are things that kill people

That is deeply unfair towards the UK and the businesses that exist here.
( I wrote that out of politeness, rather than writing “utter B0llocks”).

The truth is that “British business success that we can celebrate” is about as likely a headline in The Graunidad as “Immigrant saves puppy and cures the cancer caused by falling house prices” is in the Daily Mail.

The arms trade is a British business success?

Utter bollocks.

as we are the worlds 5th biggest arms exporter (according to wikipedia)

i dont think its something to be proud of, do you?

The arms trade is a British business success?

Utter bollocks.
Isn’t it? Several of my friends have made a career of designing weapons systems.

It’s subsidised up the wazoo!

Most of the weapons i have seen used here this year are Soviet systems including Grad, 120 mm mortars, DSHK etc the FNs are not Ex British as we never had the auto versions although there are a few SMGs about, lots of Milan (French) some cluster bombs in mortar form from Spain, old T55 tanks a few T72s, .50 and .30 machine guns from the USA, 23 and 30 MM anti aircraft canons from France. Gadaffis gold colt from the USA and various berreta systems from Italy. Some H and K Systems.

There are lots of ammunition boxes marked up from North Korea and back in Aug we got to see papers showing China was dealing with him up until the 10th Aug at a ministry building we went to.

I think most of what we sold him had not been delivered yet although his technical surviellance systems from General Dynamics were operating but NATO turned them off pretty fast.

France sold him some Royale jets last year but they were not delivered.

Why should we not sell the country new arms and support items, if we dont someone else will and UK PLC needs all the revenue it can bring in as far as i know.

Who are we selling to?
Surely supporting an industry to the tune of £0.5-1 billion/year (exact figures are hard to come by for some reason) is indication that it’s not a good revenue maker?

**** it why not just sell nukes to anyone that wants em too?
after all if we dont do it pakistan etc will anyway

Brilliant. Just spent ~£1 billion fighting against the weapons we sold the last bloke!

You don’t fight weapons, you fight people. Theres a cliche in there somewhere.