One climb down at a time…

Home Secretary Alan Johnson has dropped plans to make ID cards compulsory for pilots and airside workers at Manchester and London City airports.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8127081.stm

now they just need to kick this cr@p into the long grass and we can get some of our freedom from harrassment back!

Travellers could face chaos during this year’s school holidays if airlines are forced to implement new electronic passport checks, MPs have been warned.

Eddie Redfern, of package holiday giant Thomson, said e-borders would cause big delays if they are introduced in the summer season, as ministers want.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8126161.stm

The recession has a silver lining after all…

Trident replacement next, then those daft carriers

Trident replacement next, then those daft carriers

woohoo! £80bn savings! That makes a wiggle voucher look distinctly poor value IMO.

80bn is a drop in the ocean. Literally.

I’m fairly sure it’s significant if you are involved in the construction of the ships, or in supplying the steel that will be used.

Cancelling these orders may save significantly less than 80bn in the long run.

every little helps 😮

BTW I think theres a legend error on that, it should be stated in £bns.

gonefishin – pumping government (our) money round and round does not create a growing economy.

It’s approaching 50% of UK GDP (again. It also did so under the conservative government of the 80s IIRC), and in fact in the North East and Wales will be in excess of 63% GDP by 2010.

Not a good sign.

Oh I’m well aware that simply moving money round the economy won’t necessarily improve th economy, however is it really any different to the shoring up of the banks? Many people on here lament the fact that manufacturing has declined in the UK so why not have the government support what there is? Bit of devils advocate going on there.

Stoner, seen the hissy fit that Balls has had over on the Speccy website? Most amusing.

I need those carriers to be built because I need orders for the factory. If we cancel the carriers can we cancel the goverment/civil service/nhs pension responsibility. Give some tax money in work PLEASE!

CFH – yep. Blinky can be a petulant little turd, cant he.

you in town for a pimms this evening?

Wars are **** expensive, aren’t they…

‘fraid not, Stoner. Still in town tomorrow?

80bn is a drop in the ocean. Literally.

literally? if so, that’s an ocean i want to swim in. 🙂

nice graph uplink, but incorporates what I would call a “specification error”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specification_(regression)

The structural design of the economy has changed dramatically over the last 100 years. Much as you could show similar structural shifts from pre 1900 going back 2000 years.

I would focus only on the post war period since the shocks of war funding have dissipated, say 1970 onwards.

CFH – maybe free at lunchtime? As soon as Im free of my shackles I peg it to paddington and my return to the Shires.

No can do lunch, I’m afraid.

a plus tard.

It makes me laugh because if I don’t I’d cry. Even when the idiots (goverment/councils/mod/nhs etc) do put money up for manufacturing projects in the UK then most of the work goes to others (ok we get to brew the tea and pore the concrete). I could show you (if I was allowed) some stuff you would expect to be uk manufactured and built but no it’s gone to a company bringing it in because it’s suposedly cheaper. What about the tax take for the goverment, I know I’m a bit thick but I thought that if they gave money build stuff then at least they would be happy that a good portion was coming back in tax at all sorts of levels and not going out via the DSS. They are paying for work to go abroad and in some cases via there own subsidy. You should see some of the stuff we have to do to try and sell on French and German projects, what laughs especially when you find out that the site is 30 miles away in the uk but the EU based companies want to use the local(to them) suppliers. RANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNT. Sorry.

Now here’s the thing, they’re going to make ID Cards “voluntary”.

So, they’ll spend £Billions on something that the vast majority of people do not want to “volunteer” to have. Money well spent? I think not.

Depends what sort of penalty clauses the current bunch of idiots agree to with the suppliers (ie whether they have any interest in the good of the country, or just want to shaft the Torys as much as possible). Because one thing’s for sure – you can write the script of the first couple of years in opposition for Labour right now – it will all be complaining about Tory cuts (due to Labour having pissed all the money away).

Dark days ahead…

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e8d6b4c6-659d-11de-8e34-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1

A tax package to raise £70bn ($115bn, €82bn), probably the minimum required to stabilise Britain’s public finances, might put four points on the rate of income tax, take VAT to 20 per cent, freeze personal allowances and tax thresholds, add five points to corporation tax and collect a bit of extra revenue from the usual suspects such as alcohol, petrol and cigarettes.

Trident replacement next, then those daft carriers

Some real strategic thinking going on there… 🙄

Cutting defence purely because it costs too much generally comes back to bite us on the ar*e in more ways than you think.

Trident replacement next, then those daft carriers

Some real strategic thinking going on there…

Spanish armada likely?

Germany poised to invade?

Cutting defence spending is easy.

We have all those nukes. Why don’t we use them to obliterate all the people we don’t like who may be a potential invasion risk for the next 20 years?

That way we get real value for the money already spent on the Nukes, and don’t have to do any more spending on defence for at least 15 years.

Too late to do Poland or Pakistan, they’re already here. Iceland has been rude to us recently, the French are always a bit of an irritant, we should do Italy also purely because their prime minister is monopolising all the hot totty, and then there’s Monaco. If we did that one during the F1 we could get rid of even more irritants.

One own goal on London would be appreciated by the rest of the country.

I was half asleep this morning, but I’m sure I heard George Osbourne say that he was going to cut through regulation to aid the recovery.
Might have dreamt it though, as I did wake up sweating.

the own goal on London thing, only if all MP’s at Dishonestminster and Rudeboy in Strangers gallery.

Just as the nuc threat is getting greater we want throw ours away. Am happy to get ride of the things because the world is a safe place, not because we can’t afford them.

how is the UK having nuclear weapons going to help if North Korea decides to launch an attack on Japan?

If we have soldiers with adequate body army, with decent transports, with ground attack Helicopters, i can see logic in spending money. I can even see a degree of Logic in the aircraft carriers, in that they can provide a base and air support. But submarines that are designed to deliver a weapon that no one would actually use, and if they did would render the planet uninhabitable?

mrmo=Dr Strangelove 🙂

The whole point of the doomsday machine is lost . . . if you keep it a secret! Why didn’t you tell the world, ay?!

Spanish armada likely?

Germany poised to invade?

No but probably loss of seat at the UN security council for a start- you may or may not think that that’s important.

Another day, another climb down

El Bent.

We can’t afford the Armed forces as they are structured now*. Neither can most European countries, the obvious answer is to make NATO a better more streamlined organisation, each country perhaps even suppling a specialty force. This however will never happen as it suits the US (no matter what they say about NATO pulling it’s weight) not to have an equivalently large and useful armed forces that operates out of it’s influence. Our nuclear deterrent is essentially US operated; they repair them, service them, own them, and certainly we’d need US permission (although it’d be called “agreement”) to fire the damned things.

* Take the Navy’s Army, The Marines for instance, it’s crazy that it’s still independent from the Army, and thusly replicates everything they do, only on a teeny tiny scale, costs us a bloody fortune, not to mention it’s ridiculously top heavy, there are something like 20 battalion level officers for the 3-4 battalion size units that make up the Marines….

No but probably loss of seat at the UN security council for a start

Is it worth the price? Given that we ignore it when it suits us (as do most other countries)

Getting totally rid of nuclear detterance should not be an option unless it is part of a world agreement with other countries to do the same. It is worth keeping to;

1) Use as a bargaining chip to help slowly chip away at other counties stockpiles.
And..
2) Be a big stick that other countries know we have. – It’s not usually the big fella’s acting all agresive now is it?

Trident is an independent weapon, it can most definately be used without approval of the Americans. Missile servicing is done by the Americans but the warheads are British. If the time came when the US refused to play we would have to source our own missiles or hand back the nuclear role to the RAF.

Remember the idea behind the bombs is to have them but never use them, personally I think they have paid for themselves several times over. The cold war would most likely have gone hot with out them. Just because today we are not in that situation does not mean that in 10 or 20 years we won’t be. How many people in 1989 thought we would be fighting in the Gulf within 2 years, how many in 2000 though we would be deployed in Afganistan and Iraq at the same time within 5?

It may also be only a matter of time before a country like Iran builds nuclear missiles capable of hitting Europe, if we & the French keep ours other NATO members have no need to build them, thus our having them perversally helps non-prolifieration. If the Iranians did build and test a bomb. We might also find ourselves having to offer an agreement to the Saudi’s and Egyptions to defend them against Iran to prevent them from building their own. Great isn’t it!

So you see our & Frances nuclear weapons don’t just protect us they also help stop proliferation. Still I’m not saying Trident couldn’t be scrapped but realistically at the moment it is the best tool for the job.

I was going to leave you to your naivety, but that’s too easy.

We can’t afford the Armed forces as they are structured now*. Neither can most European countries, the obvious answer is to make NATO a better more streamlined organisation, each country perhaps even suppling a specialty force.

Yes we can afford it. We just choose not to. Once you start relying on others to supply “specialty forces” you run into a problem which can be summed up with the phrase: countries don’t have friends, merely interests. In other words, if we get into a conflict and we are relying on another country to supply something we don’t have, but it doesn’t serve that particular country’s interest…

Our nuclear deterrent is essentially US operated; they repair them, service them, own them, and certainly we’d need US permission (although it’d be called “agreement”) to fire the damned things.

What a load of nonsense. The missiles are indeed American, but the Warheads are ours. As for the agreement, it doesn’t exist, we have full control over whether we choose to fire them or not.

Tell me, do you have insurance? You know that thing you have to guard against the possibility of injury/loss/damage/death? Thats what defence is: the nations insurance policy, so we should start insuring the contents as well as the building

Stop thinking national short term politics and think strategically.

the biggest reason why Iran would pursue a nuclear program is israel!

The biggest threat to Iran is Pakistan, not Israel. I’m a dinner Jacket likes to talk tough about Israel as it makes him look good in front of other Arab leaders, but Israel aren’t going to wade into Iran, for strangely enough the same reasons we won’t fire Nuclear weapons at any one any time soon.

At last! It’s not just me that thinks his name is “I’m a dinner jacket”!

🙂

El bent,

The IPPR recently suggested more or less what I’ve outlined.

It was written by Lord Roberston a former Defence Secretary amongst others, I don’t think he’s naive, do you?

Do you know that the IPPR are very left leaning? What a surprise they would want to cut defence.

Robertson was a decent enough secretary general for Nato, shame he ruined it with this. While I can agree with relying less on the US and acting more with European nations, this should not to be to the detriment of our own independent capability. Friends and interests.

Essentially this bunch of “experts” are committing the classic historical mistake of “preparing for the last war”, even if that one is still on-going, Besides the potential threats don’t go away because a financial crisis happens. Its also never going to be made policy.