Tory dirty tricks & smears . . .

They should just ban the media from reporting on politics entirely except where facts and policies are concerned, elections should be all about the policies not this mud slinging circus we have become accustomized to.

The trouble with focusing on policies is that everyone will realise all the main parties are practically the same as much as they try to pretend to be polar opposites, the only parties offering real change are those which get constantly belittled in the media.
 
PMKeates said:
Did you know that the Lib Dems are offering that they will hold a "full defence review" including Trident, but have already committed to not replacing it fully?Additionally, their offer of fitting nuclear warheads to cruise missiles on board Astute submarines is rubbish. The Astute's cruise missile, the Tomahawk, has a range of 1,500 miles and maximum speed of around 550 mph. It would take over 2.5 hours to travel from the Mediterranean to Iran, which is about as far as it can go. You could overtake it with Thomas Cook holiday plane and shoot it down with a spud gun.

The existing Trident II missile has a range of 7,000 miles and a maximum speed of over 13,000 mph. It can travel from the South Atlantic to North Korea in 18 minutes and deliver several nuclear warheads at once.

The two systems are a million miles apart.
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Why spend billions of pounds we don't have on a nuke we have no use for. The cold war is over. France even has a better nuclear setup than we do, it's pointless.

Labour is spending on pointless rubbish, cut spending = no tax rises.
 
I get around said:
Why spend billions of pounds we don't have on a nuke we have no use for. The cold war is over. France even has a better nuclear setup than we do, it's pointless.
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In what way to do France have a better nuclear setup than we do? We have the ability to deploy dozens of nuclear warheads to anywhere in the world independently, from a group of submarines that are practically undetectable. There is not much to be gained.

I am all for disarmament but it should be a collective disarmament, not us disarming alone.
 
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scorza said:
I think Nick Clegg has strongly hinted that Gordon Brown's resignation as leader of the Labour party (and therefore as PM) would be one of their conditions for a Labour/LibDem alliance.
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monirity parties dictating governement policy, oh the joys of an hung parliament

( yes I know Labour would be in a minority too to a much lesser extent )
 
krooton said:
"krooton likes this"

So it's only really the nuclear power thing that I'm not a fan of from the Lib-Dems, provided the immigration and trident stuff in the above article ring true.
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Let me give you a comparison. If an Astute submarine equipped with nuclear tipped cruise missiles is in the South Atlantic and we need to destroy a military installation in North Korea that our intelligence says is going to mount a nuclear attack in an hour, it will take 4 days to deliver the warhead.

The Trident system could deliver it in 15-20 minutes.

The Astute proposal would render us a nuclear non-entity.
 
Rotty said:
giving an amnesty to illegal immigrants ? :eek:
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I don't particularly like that, however if there are that many illegal immigrants here in the first place then the current system isn't working and something else should be tried, better they become legal migrants paying tax than illegal ones. Obviously one of the biggest concerns is that it will provoke a surge in illegal immigration in the hope of another amnesty, however it should be possible for an effective government to manage this.
 
Rotty said:
giving an amnesty to illegal immigrants ? :eek:
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It is a bit more complicated than that. I see his point in that we don't actually know who and where all the almost 1 million of them are. The amnesty is a one-off to basically get them out of hiding so they can be accounted for. It won't be applied to any new immigrants moving forward, and isn't applicable if the person committed a crime.

Seems as balanced as any other party's proposal, if just taking a very different angle.

PS. I'm a legal immigrant.

PPS. I wish that EU member didn't get free reign to move here, as I know many non-EU immigrants who moved here, worked, paid taxes, didn't mooch off the system, yet still got sent back after their 2 years.
 
PMKeates said:
Let me give you a comparison. If an Astute submarine equipped with nuclear tipped cruise missiles is in the South Atlantic and we need to destroy a military installation in North Korea that our intelligence says is going to mount a nuclear attack in an hour, it will take 4 days to deliver the warhead.

The Trident system could deliver it in 15-20 minutes.

The Astute proposal would render us a nuclear non-entity.
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Booo! Is there nothing else comparable at a smaller cost?

It's an annoying aspect of the policies. It doesn't affect me on a daily basis (well, you know what I mean), but on the off chance it is required, it makes a huge difference.

What are the global/legal implications of a pre-emptive nuclear strike though? I doubt the world would look to favourably on it, regardless of how good our intel and disliked the enemy is.
 
stockhausen thanks for the libdem rss feed, you've cleared it all up for me now. I'll certainly change my vote, phew, to think I nearly voted for those nasty tories.
 
PMKeates said:
Let me give you a comparison. If an Astute submarine equipped with nuclear tipped cruise missiles is in the South Atlantic and we need to destroy a military installation in North Korea that our intelligence says is going to mount a nuclear attack in an hour, it will take 4 days to deliver the warhead.

The Trident system could deliver it in 15-20 minutes.

The Astute proposal would render us a nuclear non-entity.
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Exactly. It just seems crazy to abandon it.
 
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