Poll: Poll: UK General Election 2017 - Mk II
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Soldato
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Soldato
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So that's 50% voting for another party then if every other.
Soldato
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They're being bashed because they've cut the services to dangerously low levels. Other parties don't want any more than a reasonable number of police and other services (border/security) to allow for competent safety checks. What you have with the Cons is selling weapons to known terrorist states and then slashing security services at home. In the last month we've seen attacks on NHS and two terrorist attacks that potentially could have been even worse except for where they took place according to a former senior police officer discussing the cuts ( video posted earlier in this thread)
EDIT - I should add that the draconian measures re internet control that will be pushed through should the cons get in will in no way have prevented the attack in Manchester -it's a scapegoat for authoritarian rule and we should all be very concerned about this loss of privacy / freedom.
You can't possibly know that. I'm much more concerned about kids being slaughtered in the street/at concerts than I am about a slight loss of privacy, and nothing that's being proposed impedes my freedom in any way.
Soldato
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this is what I logged in to post
How do you know it will help?
Soldato
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Do we know they have slashed counter terrorism budgets? We know the number of Police Officers has dropped post hoc ergo propter hoc we've cut domestic security too? I honestly don't know the answer I just find it hard to imagine.
In 2015 the government announced that counter-terrorism funding would be increased by 30%.
I'm glad you asked! My point was that these cases didn't support the conclusion being drawn - that it was about protecting people and that no intervention would eventually lead to Iraqi aggression towards the UK / USA. If that's not challenged then I'm happy to answer in the separate context for the sake of argument that you suggest. I'll even entertain the suggestion that our politician's motives are "pure" because just occasionally they are and most people are good at heart. So, caveats aside how do you do something about widespread human rights abuse in a situation like Iraq, Libya or Afghanistan? (The three listed).
Well I actually campaigned on and off for several years to end the sanctions on Iraq. Is that because I'm a Saddam-loving peacenik? No, it was because they caused serious deprivation to the Iraqi people (in particular shortages of medicines) and helped consolidate Saddam's power by both creating an outside enemy and through keeping Iraq in a poor and desperate condition. I'm pretty Right Wing and like the proverbial person with a hammer who sees everything like a nail, I tend to try and solve everything with trade and investment. I'll come back to Iraq in a moment for reasons that will become apparent and skip to Libya and Afghanistan. Change can happen both incrementally through slow improvements and dramatically through forceful action. You'll think I'm about to say the former is always a better alternative to the latter but I'm not - you need both, usually alternating. The difficulty is in recognizing and having the fortitude to use the appropriate one at the time. Gaddafi was "our" enemy from the start because he actually deposed a Western backed king. An actual, medieval-style, my sons will rule the people when I'm gone king. A king that we (Europe) supported. He rightly overthrew him and then became our enemy because of that. He then had the audacity to continue to reject Europe and things got unpleasant for a while but for the last fifteen / twenty years, Gaddafi was reaching out to the West making diplomatic overtures. Hell, the Libyan Investment Fund (representing - and actually really was doing this! - the Libyan people) invested billions with Goldman Sachs (aka the US Govt.
) at least in part as a gesture of political good will. (Goldman Sachs then lost it and got out of repaying it by the convenient overthrow of the Libyan government, but that's another story). Libya has a high record of human rights abuses but way, way less than Iraq. (I should probably clarify I'm a member of Amnesty). For the most part it was a productive, lawful country. Libya is an ideal example of a country that we could have helped improve human rights in through investment, trade and using these things to help pressure for better human rights and democratic reform. Libya actually wasn't a dictatorship. Gaddafi was a permanent head of state but he presided over a council of tribal leaders who represented their tribe. Not as good as formal representative democracy but something that could transition through reform as freer exchange helped Westernise the country. You'll probably see where I'm going with this - I've started with the easiest one. One where almost unquestionably democratic and human rights reform could be encouraged peacefully through incentive. We had quite a few British engineers (including friends of mine) working out in Libya on the giant aquifer project to help bring irrigation to drier parts of Libya amongst other projects. It was a productive relationship. The country was a lot more modern than I think the average UK person pictures and was not a dictatorship - more of a confederacy of tribes. Not ideal, but clearly getting there. Military intervention was absolutely the wrong thing to do even if in the hypothetical premise we're discussing of Western leaders having "pure" altruistic goals. The benghazi rebels would have remained an isolated group of Eastern separatist militants without our backing. Inarguably.Afghanistan is a mess. It's been like punching mud. All the West seems to have accomplished is to rearrange elements that all flow back into the same pool again once the fist pulls back. And the repeat. Afghanistan is actually the one of the three where I do support military intervention. Linking it to Osama bin Laden and 9/11 is disingenuous as Hell. The US military did not attack Afghanistan to protect America. That was the pretext used to sell it to the American public (and then they re-used it for Iraq somehow). But we're setting all that aside. Afghanistan is a strong argument for intervention because human rights there are appalling. Far, far worse than Libya and worse than Iraq. The treatment of women, in particular, is appalling. However, the expectation that the problems there could be solved by military intervention is staggeringly misguided. This is a populace with, for the most part, no modern mind-set. Education is dire, conception of the people as a homogenous group rather than rival small communities and regions lacking, sexual equality down the toilet, rule of law a bad, bad joke. And the West about as remote and real to half of these people as 16th Century China is to us. Changing Afghanistan will take decades. You need two generations to pass for a significant cultural shift. And even then only if there's huge investment. And even then, there's massive culture-shock. Which manifests as unrest. My point is that military intervention cannot achieve this. The only way you achieve this is with investment and trade and loans helping people modernise their way of life. For example, we run a micro-loan program in Chile and other parts of the world where people are loaned the money to start businesses or buy a farm animal. These are regarded as high risk loans by Western standards and also, being very small, aren't worth the time of big business. But most of the time they are a success because these are desperately poor people used to working incredibly hard just to survive. Give them an actual foot on the ladder for the first time in generations and watch them climb! That is true capitalism in action. The role of the military in Afghanistan should be to support generations long investment and increase of trade, the sharing of expertise - in particular Western engineering and farming techniques and equipment. To achieve this, you need military support to help protect against the elements in Afghanistan that would oppose it. And to protect schools. I'm certain that the Western generals in Afghanistan know this. I'm sure the Western civillian administrators on the ground there all know this. I suspect some of the smarter politicians back in Washington have even worked it out. None of this is news. But I'm sure you can see for yourself that the will simply isn't there. You ask how I would change things in Afghanistan by means other than military intervention. My answer is through long years of loans, investment and trade. And if you say that's too slow I will agree. But I will also point out that military intervention wont do it any faster. Go in - topple regional warlords where they interfere until they stop (if they stop). Prevent the overthrow of the elected government (again and again). And wait for the efforts that produce underlying change to work their way through. And that is what we're doing. But the political will for that wasn't there. The chief goals in Afghanistan are regional power base and securing oil pipelines. We can make a real difference in Afghanistan. And brave soldiers risking their lives to enable it has to be part of that. But we're pulling out with the job barely a quarter done.
For simple time constraints, I'm going to have to wrap this up. I started typing this over breakfast and now have work to do. Iraq our military intervention should have been limited to protecting the Kurds and should have taken place much sooner. For the rest, we should have ended sanctions and alleviated the suffering of the Iraqi people thereby and then, I'm afraid, it would have just been a case of waiting it out. Affluent countries displace totalitarian rulers. A large Middle Class is inherently mitigating on totalitarianism. I'd love to go into it more but I don't have time.
But for selfish reasons a non-military approach to both Libya and Iraq was off the table to our politicians. Libya was affluent (one of the few nations not in national debt until we bombed it to Hell) and was going to use its oil and gold reserves to back an African "Euro". It, like Iraq, was going to sell its oil in a currency other than the US dollar. And it had the audacity to try and negotiate with the West as if it were our equal! It had to go! And a democratic Iraq would have a Shia majority which would be inclined to side with Iran making the latter the regionally dominant power. And that cannot stand! The dominant power in the Middle East must be the USA. It can't be a Middle Eastern country. (Well, unless it's Israel.
. So there could be no Western support for a revolution in Iraq because it would undoubtedly be Shia led. Indeed, the USA pulled the plug on helping a native Iraqi revolutionary movement for exactly this reason. You might think some of the Iraqi revolutionaries would have welcomed the US invasion as saviours, but actually the US threw them to the wolves years before after initially supporting them.Right - got to go! Hope that was interesting whether you agree with me or not.
Caporegime
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And only 1% of that total budget goes to 'prevent' - which we can see is a failure by all the terrorists who have been reported and nothing done.
Soldato
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BBC didn't show it..... at least Sky did.
From Carlisle yesterday. I have admittedly become a fan of him this last month but I would like to think even before that I would have found it difficult to argue with it.
Clearly it is though already as you are unable to use google to find your proof that the police are cowards and ran away at the weekend????
Not many of the press are reporting it, the torygraph have dug up an out of context and incorrectly (originally) represented interview regarding shoot to kill instead. I can't imagine why!
You can't argue with what he says. May is trying to portray this 'strong and stable' message whilst being the one who cut police numbers and made us all a lot more vulnerable.
From Carlisle yesterday. I have admittedly become a fan of him this last month but I would like to think even before that I would have found it difficult to argue with it.
Thats fine to increase the spooks looking at them but at the same time reduce the number of armed officers when they are the ones who will have to go and deal with the terrorists seems mad.
Also its seems at least one of the attackers was reported previously to the hotline as well as the Manchester one but the impression from the Govt is that they get 22,000 calls a year and that's a lot to work through.......
Yet May's solution is to monitor everybody when we don't have the resources to monitor/investigate the ones that get reported.
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Can I point out that you've called various members here "Labour shills" - in fact that seems to be your go-to "argument".
If you vote for May now you are directly attacking our internet freedoms. She wants to bring this country down to dystopia levels of censorship. While Corbyn may not be the best ever, surely letting Labour have a handle on things for 5 years and getting rid of May is what is best for this country - there is no changing her mind if she wins.
I cannot comprehend people voting for this woman and her vile social policies.
I cannot comprehend people voting for this woman and her vile social policies.
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