Disgusting Politics

Dirk Diggler · 5 Oct 2015 at 11:31

Why are people blabbing on about Trident? The thread is about the article posted in the OP.

Burnsy2023 · 5 Oct 2015 at 11:37

Thompson_NCL said:
The £100bn is over the life time of Trident and includes every possible cost associated to it. The actual per annum cost is only £2.9bn, which might sound like a lot still, but it's chump change compared to overall government expenditure. It's only about 2.5% of our total NHS spending for example.

The idea that we should cancel Trident in order to divert the money elsewhere is foolish, because we'd be giving up our national detterent for very little overall gain to the major spending departments. A percent here or there won't make much difference.

And given that the NHS wastes more than £2bn a year on unneccessary or over priced treatments, I'd suggest that a better argument would be that we tackle waste and inefficiency rather than scrapping the cornerstone no only our national defence, but also something which greatly increases our international influence.

£3bn is a reasonable amount of expenditure.

The NHS budget is a behemoth of a budget so it's not surprising you compared it such a large department.

Lets look at some other comparisons.

The total central gov spending on Police is £3.5bn.
It's 7% of the total defence budget.
It's more than we spend on housing or unemployment benefit.

It's not chump change.

CREATIVE!11 · 5 Oct 2015 at 11:39

Nukes are a national deterrent?

This isn't the 50's any more.

Anybody goes to war (Aside in 3rd world countries) the world will plunge into chaos and go up in a mushroom cloud regardless if the UK had nukes or not.

Moley · 5 Oct 2015 at 11:41

estebanrey said:
I've never had my house burgled and I've always owned a cat.

Conclusion: Cats deter burglars

Your logic in a nutshell

Not even close. Cats primary purpose isn't to deter thieves. Nukes primary purposes IS to deter being nuked.

The logical fallacies are strong in this one...

:rolleyes:

EDIT: Now if you'd said dogs, that would have been closer to the mark.

Moley · 5 Oct 2015 at 11:47

lovelyhead said:
No you missed my point completely.

Israel has conventional nukes (probably) that don't require submarines. Nobody has invaded them even though they are surrounded by enemies.

Why do we need to replace submarine based nukes with more submarine based nukes? Why don't we just have conventional land based or air deployed nukes and save billions which could go towards paying off debt, hospitals, education etc.

Israel doesn't need sub based nukes because it's nuclear deterrent is based around the Samson Option - ie: invade Israel and we all go out together in a lovely nuclear glow.

The UKs nuclear deterrent is about retaliation against an enemy first strike. An enemy can know (easily) when you based your ground and aircraft based nuclear weapons and take most of them out in a first strike attack, whereas a couple of hidden/moving subs carrying nukes cannot be taken out in a first strike attack and will always be able to take out an enemys major cities and military targets in retaliation.

It's this entire Mutually Assured Destruction principle that has stopped any international wars escalating to the nuclear option for over 70 years now.

ubersonic · 5 Oct 2015 at 11:54

nitram100 said:
Cut benefits for pensioners but give ourselves a wage increase! Make me **** sick these *****!

Actually they gave themselves a pay cut and a wage freeze. It was the independent parliamentary standards authority and Gordon Browns incompetence that forced through the wage increase.

Don't let the facts ruin a good rant though

Alex_6n2 · 5 Oct 2015 at 11:54

Lefties fail to read article and differentiate between Think Tank suggestions and actual party policies shocker

Any opporutunity to label the Tories as murderers I guess...

[TW]Fox · 5 Oct 2015 at 11:59

lovelyhead said:
You know who to vote for at the next Scottish election then!

The party who has had the power to tax the rich and give to the poor but hasn't bothered to use it?

Tefal · 5 Oct 2015 at 12:02

lovelyhead said:
No you missed my point completely.

Israel has conventional nukes (probably) that don't require submarines. Nobody has invaded them even though they are surrounded by enemies.

Why do we need to replace submarine based nukes with more submarine based nukes? Why don't we just have conventional land based or air deployed nukes and save billions which could go towards paying off debt, hospitals, education etc.

iirc isreals nukes are thought to be on subs but in cruise missiles launched from desil electric subs.

Tefal · 5 Oct 2015 at 12:04

Burnsy2023 said:
£3bn is a reasonable amount of expenditure.

The NHS budget is a behemoth of a budget so it's not surprising you compared it such a large department.

Lets look at some other comparisons.

The total central gov spending on Police is £3.5bn.
It's 7% of the total defence budget.
It's more than we spend on housing or unemployment benefit.

It's not chump change.

we could save a fortune if we could just get diabetics to follow their diet and treatment advice.

most of the 10bn a year we spend on diabetes is treating complications from people not listening to their doctor.

ubersonic · 5 Oct 2015 at 12:06

Tefal said:
iirc isreals nukes are thought to be on subs but in cruise missiles launched from desil electric subs.

I heard isreal has steam powered bombers that drop the desil electric subs that the cruise missile nukes are thought to be on!

Tefal · 5 Oct 2015 at 12:07

ubersonic said:
I heard isreal has steam powered bombers that drop the desil electric subs that the cruise missile nukes are thought to be on!

i think the reason was because Israel bought a bunch of subs a while back

lovelyhead · 5 Oct 2015 at 12:11

[TW]Fox;28644899 said:
The party who has had the power to tax the rich and give to the poor but hasn't bothered to use it?

Last time I checked, rich people pay tax. If you mean the Scottish government should increase tax for rich people, doing that doesn't always result in more revenue.

[TW]Fox · 5 Oct 2015 at 12:13

lovelyhead said:
Last time I checked, rich people pay tax. If you mean the Scottish government should increase tax for rich people, doing that doesn't always result in more revenue.

I completely agree but it's the thing the left always bang on about doing and brand the Torys as evil for not doing.

NirK · 5 Oct 2015 at 12:13

But they still have a £300 a day allowance and millions of pounds food allowance for the house of lords, disgusting.

FoxEye · 5 Oct 2015 at 12:21

Is there a compelling reason why winter fuel allowance and other such benefits should /not/ be means tested?

[TW]Fox · 5 Oct 2015 at 12:24

NirK said:
But they still have a £300 a day allowance and millions of pounds food allowance for the house of lords, disgusting.

Yea, they should do it for free.

Wait, what?

V F · 5 Oct 2015 at 12:24

NirK said:
But they still have a £300 a day allowance and millions of pounds food allowance for the house of lords, disgusting.

At the same time sleeping. How is this any different to benefits? They appear, pick up their £300 until the next day.

FoxEye said:
Is there a compelling reason why winter fuel allowance and other such benefits should /not/ be means tested?

I suppose you've never heard the amount of pensioners that choose whether it is heat a room or eat a meal for the day?

Tunney · 5 Oct 2015 at 12:24

[TW]Fox;28644899 said:
The party who has had the power to tax the rich and give to the poor but hasn't bothered to use it?

Scotland only has the power to raise and lower each income tax band by the same amount. They can't tax the rich more without taxing the poor more too.

Schlong&Stable · 5 Oct 2015 at 12:25

Burnsy2023 said:
£3bn is a reasonable amount of expenditure.

The NHS budget is a behemoth of a budget so it's not surprising you compared it such a large department.

Lets look at some other comparisons.

The total central gov spending on Police is £3.5bn.
It's 7% of the total defence budget.
It's more than we spend on housing or unemployment benefit.

It's not chump change.

I said it was chump change compared to overall government spending, not specific departmental spending. Obviously I know that £3bn is would be a huge sum to some departments. You don't need to be Burnsy2023 to spot the obvious.

And as I said, if people are so concerned about increasing spending in specific departments, we ought first to look at the massive waste and inefficiencies rather than sacrificing our national detterence.

Failing that, I'd sooner scrap foreign aid than Trident.

CREATIVE!11 said:
Nukes are a national deterrent?

This isn't the 50's any more.

Anybody goes to war (Aside in 3rd world countries) the world will plunge into chaos and go up in a mushroom cloud regardless if the UK had nukes or not.

What exactly do you base this theory on? If Russia nuked us, there is no guarantee that the US or France would respond. Absolutely none. Treaties don't mean squat when the wholesale extermination of your nation is on the table.

And although I don't think Russia would consider a war with the UK today, who knows where we'll be in ten years time. The EU and NATO might collapse by 2020. Then we'd be wishing we had our nuclear detterence to keep us safe, but we scrapped it so someone with terminal cancer can live long enough for us all to get cancer from Russian warheads.