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What is the best flav... you all know what this question is: This poll is closed. |
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| Labour |
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907 | 49.92% |
| Theresa May Team (Conservative) |
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48 | 2.64% |
| Liberal Democrats |
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31 | 1.71% |
| UKIP |
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13 | 0.72% |
| Plaid Cymru |
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25 | 1.38% |
| Green |
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22 | 1.21% |
| Scottish Socialist Party |
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12 | 0.66% |
| Scottish Conservative Party |
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1 | 0.06% |
| Scottish National Party |
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59 | 3.25% |
| Some Kind of Irish Unionist |
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4 | 0.22% |
| Alliance / Irish Nonsectarian |
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3 | 0.17% |
| Some Kind of Irish Nationalist |
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36 | 1.98% |
| Misc. Far Left Trots |
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35 | 1.93% |
| Misc. Far Right Fash |
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8 | 0.44% |
| Monster Raving Loony |
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49 | 2.70% |
| Space Navies Party |
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39 | 2.15% |
| Independent / Single Issue |
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2 | 0.11% |
| Can't Vote |
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188 | 10.35% |
| Won't Vote |
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8 | 0.44% |
| Spoiled Ballot |
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15 | 0.83% |
| Pissflaps |
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312 | 17.17% |
| Total: | 1817 votes | ||
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Braggart posted:Is a hundred people dying in a fire a reason to start another fire in a random towerblock somewhere while a negligent rich person enjoys his party? If Trident really does fly in a random direction, then I am certainly against against firing it before installing some kind of guidance system.
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Jun 27, 2017 13:18
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Cerv posted:it always comes back to that in this thread's circular nuclear arguments. it's immoral for us to have a weapons programme but just great to be protected under someone else's. It is possible for something to be both immoral and useful. Though I would tend to suggest that anybody having a nuclear stockpile represents an intolerable existential threat to humanity and so being under the US nuclear umbrella is also not useful in the long run.
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Jun 27, 2017 13:19
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Nukes are morally disgusting terror weapons and totally pointless for a north European island monarchy but I'd campaign on a platform of keeping them because the country is full of thumbheaded death fetishists.
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Jun 27, 2017 13:19
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forkboy84 posted:On top of that, it's quite likely that either our next Prime Minister or next but one will be someone who has said he will never countenance using nuclear weapons. Therefore, MAD doesn't work & there's no point of having them.
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Jun 27, 2017 13:20
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Cerebral Bore posted:Why not? Every other country under the US nuclear umbrella seems to do fine WRT not being nuked out of the blue, and if the US-UK alliance breaks completely Trident will become useless in short order anyway because the UK doesn't have the capabilities to perform maintenence on it. The main reason we have Trident is because we're America's foothold into Europe, and as such an essential strategic outpost in the event of a major European conflict. We need it because the Yanks need us.
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Jun 27, 2017 13:21
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So, is it going to turn out like, every building in London with cladding has the very slightly cheaper kill everyone in a massive inferno type? The uniformity of it in the testing so far is kind of staggering.
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Jun 27, 2017 13:25
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OwlFancier posted:It is possible for something to be both immoral and useful. how is maintaining our own weapons morally any different than letting the US do it for us?
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Jun 27, 2017 13:25
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spectralent posted:I think Labour are going for £10. Trillybilly Worker's Party (an excellent podcast btw) said that this is the first time in American history that minimum wage cannot allow you to afford a 1 bedroom apartment in any part of the country, and that if wage growth had kept up with inflation for the past ~30 years minimum wage should be around $19/hour, which is more than what even Fight For Fifteen are asking for. Wouldn't be surprised if UK workers were in a similar situation.
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Jun 27, 2017 13:26
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forkboy84 posted:Nuke chat is consistently the worst. The only people insane enough to nuke us would do it whether or not we have the nuclear deterrent. Therefore, why bother when they money can be spent better elsewhere? But again, for any country other than Russia or the USA, it's not really about that is it? Russia would have been insane to nuke Ukraine, or Georgia. America would have been insane to nuke Afghanistan or Iraq. Nuclear weapons wouldn't have stopped them getting nuked, since they were never at risk of that in the first place, but it could have stopped them getting invaded.
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Jun 27, 2017 13:26
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Night10194 posted:So, is it going to turn out like, every building in London with cladding has the very slightly cheaper kill everyone in a massive inferno type? The uniformity of it in the testing so far is kind of staggering. probably not every one. if your testing lab doesn't have infinite capacity you're going to prioritise the samples you already have suspicions about.
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Jun 27, 2017 13:26
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Cerv posted:i'm not talking about whether it's useful. whether it's moral. Well I'd tend to say it isn't but I think perhaps people might be attempting to make a utility argument rather than a moral one because they don't think their opponent will grant the moral one.
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Jun 27, 2017 13:27
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Cerv posted:probably not every one. if your testing lab doesn't have infinite capacity you're going to prioritise the samples you already have suspicions about. The testing lab hasn't got a capacity issue. The issue is that nobody is urgently sending in samples and the councils are having to be pestered to get it done. God knows how they will force none council owned properties to do sampling given how slow they are with these council owned ones.
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Jun 27, 2017 13:33
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The real secret gently caress you's in the english countryside are the plants. Hog weed and giant hogweed burns are tabloid fodder but unlike false widow spiders, legitimate hazards, but many plants seasonally contain saps that on application to UV light turn into skin burning and disfiguring chemical weapons. And that's how I learnt that pretty little purple periwinkles can gently caress you right up. Reveilled posted:It seems strange we're focusing on MAD so heavily when that doesn't seem to actually be the prevailing doctrine which small countries with nuclear arsenals actually adopt. MAD doesn't have to have parity of destruction to have a significant deterrent effect, threatening the effective loss of the most populous half dozen or so cities of your opponent (or targets of strategic value) has a great deal of "don't gently caress with me" value while having the benefits of not maintaining a vast stockpile. Deterrence is about making sure your enemy can't win, and an enemy that destroys you but comes out of the conflict utterly crippled has probably not won. Of course, it's just a matter of time before humans gently caress it up and we open up the canned sunshine again, either by murderous arrogance or, more likely based on history, just make so many fuckups we stumble into oblivion anyway. Plenty of flashpoints and tension ahead during the climate change wars.
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Jun 27, 2017 13:33
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Didn't we ban nuke chat? If not can we ban nuke chat. Jesus it's as bad as the old Corbyn bad poo poo.
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Jun 27, 2017 13:37
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Tesseraction posted:Japan offered conditional surrender - requesting that the Emperor remain in place - in May, months before the bombings. Sources? Everything I have heard is that before the bombing (and Russian invasion of Manchuria) all they would agree was a ceasefire where they kept their territorial gains.
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Jun 27, 2017 13:39
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Night10194 posted:So, is it going to turn out like, every building in London with cladding has the very slightly cheaper kill everyone in a massive inferno type? The uniformity of it in the testing so far is kind of staggering. I mean, what's to stop some nutter with a molotov lighting up one of these buildings? It seems like a huge security nightmare.
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Jun 27, 2017 13:41
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Night10194 posted:So, is it going to turn out like, every building in London with cladding has the very slightly cheaper kill everyone in a massive inferno type? The uniformity of it in the testing so far is kind of staggering. imagine whats going to happen when the nukes fall
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Jun 27, 2017 13:45
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Tesseraction posted:if the condition of their surrender was honoured anyway, why did 300,000 people have to die and many more be injured? US needed to test their weapon on humans and lol if they were going to try it on their own citizens, even those blacks that were so convenient for the later Tuskagee experiments. The fact that they dispatched doctors and researchers within hours of the attack to collect data on the effects on the victims, and refused to share that information with local medical personnel, tells you a lot about their initial intentions.
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Jun 27, 2017 13:48
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DesperateDan posted:MAD doesn't have to have parity of destruction to have a significant deterrent effect, threatening the effective loss of the most populous half dozen or so cities of your opponent (or targets of strategic value) has a great deal of "don't gently caress with me" value while having the benefits of not maintaining a vast stockpile. Deterrence is about making sure your enemy can't win, and an enemy that destroys you but comes out of the conflict utterly crippled has probably not won.
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Jun 27, 2017 13:50
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Cast_No_Shadow posted:Didn't we ban nuke chat? If not can we ban nuke chat. Jesus it's as bad as the old Corbyn bad poo poo. Pissflaps needs some topic to offer well-researched fully-sourced and strongly-argued rigorous debate in good faith about.
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Jun 27, 2017 13:50
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radmonger posted:If Trident really does fly in a random direction, then I am certainly against against firing it before installing some kind of guidance system. Fine, a tower block close to the rich person's house, but not close enough that the fire poses any threat to him or his property. Still full of complete innocents.
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Jun 27, 2017 13:55
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As an Australian it just doesn't seem to make sense for you to bother spending money on Trident. You're an island, a conventional invasion would be loving awful for whoever tried it when you've got the US on your side.
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Jun 27, 2017 13:58
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WhiskeyWhiskers posted:As an Australian it just doesn't seem to make sense for you to bother spending money on Trident. You're an island, a conventional invasion would be loving awful for whoever tried it when you've got the US on your side. We've let our navy rot. We've just launched our first proper carrier since WW 2 but it has no planes. When it does get planes it'll be the worst version of an already bad plane (The F-35B). We had to use the B because the government wouldn't pay for catapults. We're loving trash. There were rumours that the second carrier would be immediately mothballed because the MoD decided it couldn't actually afford them but only decided this after the order. I have no idea what the status of the second carrier is now.
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Jun 27, 2017 14:01
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That's the best part about empire, that poo poo doesn't matter. The deterrent is the US Navy and airforce, not yours. We bought a fuckload of lovely planes that burn the gently caress out of our carrier's runway and can't fly, or reach our closest neighbour if they could. Still won't be invaded.
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Jun 27, 2017 14:06
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Isn't an aircraft carrier just an insanely expensive floating target for drones though? They're useful for projecting power from off the coast down onto the heads of shepherds and wedding goers but I don't think they'd be that useful surely in a conventional war nowadays. They are OP in Hearts of Iron though.
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Jun 27, 2017 14:09
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We're also a resourceless dump in the North Atlantic, why would anyone want to invade us other than to shut our lovely politicians and media up?
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Jun 27, 2017 14:09
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I intentionally know gently caress all about military matters but if WW3 broke out I'd replace the air Force and navy with thousands of hellfire drones and sink everyone's ships and blow up tanks with an Xbox controller from a base in Shropshire.
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Jun 27, 2017 14:12
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WhiskeyWhiskers posted:That's the best part about empire, that poo poo doesn't matter. The deterrent is the US Navy and airforce, not yours. We shouldn't really rely on the US to protect us, though. NATO is fundamentally an alliance which serves to protect capitalism, unless we're all agreed that either capitalism will exist for ever and ever as the hegemonic power on planet earth, or that any opposition to capitalism must come first from the US itself, we need to accept the possibility that at some point in future we and the US might end up at odds with one another. Possibly not in our lifetimes but it's harder to build experience and capability than maintain it.
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Jun 27, 2017 14:16
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Personally I don't think the abolition of capitalism in the UK would actually change the relationship between the UK and the US all that much if the communist government continued to act as their partner on the world stage. They're literally working against the wishes of the second largest NATO military with anarchists and council communists in Syria, ideology isn't the be all and end all of American foreign policy. WhiskeyWhiskers fucked around with this message at 14:23 on Jun 27, 2017 |
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Jun 27, 2017 14:20
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Reveilled posted:But again, for any country other than Russia or the USA, it's not really about that is it? Russia would have been insane to nuke Ukraine, or Georgia. America would have been insane to nuke Afghanistan or Iraq. Nuclear weapons wouldn't have stopped them getting nuked, since they were never at risk of that in the first place, but it could have stopped them getting invaded. OK, who is going to invade Britain? Like, Russia's decrepit navy isn't going to land at Hastings and do a William the Bastard circa 1066. The EU isn't going to invade us. About the only people who could are the Americans and America isn't going to invade us for a whole host of reasons you hardly need to go into. Therefore scrap the loving stupid waste of money boondoggle end of the world weapon, actually invest in the Royal Navy so it's more than an aircraft carrier with no planes and two frigates. More bang for your buck and you have toys that might actually get used. You have to invent some loving fantastical Clancy shite to come up with a justification for us maintaining a nuclear arsenal. It's stupid. Nuke chat remains loving stupid precisely because it is Clancy wankery. Shame there's nothing actually happening in Britain today so we have to fill the time by talking about weapons no sane human would ever use.
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Jun 27, 2017 14:23
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WhiskeyWhiskers posted:Personally I don't think the abolition of capitalism in the UK would actually change the relationship between the UK and the US all that much if the communist government continued to act as their partner on the world stage. I wish I shared that optimism, but I think you'd see a whole bunch of rich emigrees fleeing to the US, French Revolution style and agitating for the US to step in and restore them to their estates.
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Jun 27, 2017 14:24
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On a slightly different topic, my housemate wrote this the other day that I think is worth sharing with you guys. He's from Belgium and moved over here ten years ago when I offered him a home after he was kicked out by his folks. In that time he's worked for Eurostar, been a police officer, a prison officer and now is a tube driver (after a long period of unemployment). I don't think anyone could argue that he's not invested a lot in this country through his labour, and now he's one of so many stuck not knowing what the future will hold.quote:So I've just read the 16 page document outlining the proposal to EU citizens' rights after March 2019.
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Jun 27, 2017 14:25
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CoolCab posted:this would be good analogy if between 50 and 80 million people died from being eaten by tigers in the five years before we got the rock Do you think that war stopped happening after 1945 or what? Cerv posted:it always comes back to that in this thread's circular nuclear arguments. it's immoral for us to have a weapons programme but just great to be protected under someone else's. I don't see any moral problem here. Nukes are bad, and the less of them that there are in the world the better. And since the US isn't going to disarm any time soon then the UK might as well do what good it can in the meantime.
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Jun 27, 2017 14:25
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I think we can all agree that nuclear weapons are bad and the world would be better if nobody had them. The difference is in how we should respond until that is the case.
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Jun 27, 2017 14:30
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forkboy84 posted:OK, who is going to invade Britain? Russia could probably do a lot of damage parking the admiral kuznetsov in the thames and smoking out london city airport.
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Jun 27, 2017 14:31
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Regarde Aduck posted:We've let our navy rot. We've just launched our first proper carrier since WW 2 but it has no planes. When it does get planes it'll be the worst version of an already bad plane (The F-35B). We had to use the B because the government wouldn't pay for catapults. We're loving trash.
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Jun 27, 2017 14:31
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Brendan Rodgers posted:Yeah everyone with a hardon for nukes needs to be forced to watch this BBC test run of their nuclear warning, or at least the last 10 minutes. Lord Buckethead had the right idea. 
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Jun 27, 2017 14:35
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kustomkarkommando posted:SF have notably cooled on calling for Fosters head recently. Were at this now; The transformation plan (assuming TYC isn't binned altogether) isn't about centralisation, it's about reducing the burden on secondary care by moving services into the community and investing more in public health, social care and preventive medicine. Better for the public and cheaper so more can be invested in service improvements. NI really is over-supplied with major hospitals, though, and centralising centres of excellence is good for patients. Complaints people have about the cancer centre being an hour away from their rural home are a bit mad when looked at from outside NI.
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Jun 27, 2017 14:37
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Cerebral Bore posted:I don't see any moral problem here. Nukes are bad, and the less of them that there are in the world the better. And since the US isn't going to disarm any time soon then the UK might as well do what good it can in the meantime. an obvious implication of "we're protected by the Americans anyway" is that if we ever weren't (say Trump abandoned us) then the UK would have to rearm. it completely undercuts any supposed moral high-ground in the anti nuke stance. it's for people who want the supposed benefits of nukes but also to pretend they're not getting the (metaphorical) blood on their hands. I agree though that the UK "might as well do what good it can in the meantime". by participating in multi-lateral arms reduction / disarmament talks. that'd be more fruitful than unilateral disarmament.
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Jun 27, 2017 14:38
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Cerv posted:you really don't see a moral problem? I don't believe you. Being anti-nuke isn't about chasing the Liberal Moral High Ground, it's about trying to minimize the risk of armageddon. You're looking at this from a completely wrong angle, mate. Cerv posted:I agree though that the UK "might as well do what good it can in the meantime". by participating in multi-lateral arms reduction / disarmament talks. that'd be more fruitful than unilateral disarmament. Why not both?
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Jun 27, 2017 14:43
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