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Westminster Politics

McGrathsipan

Dawn’s less famous husband
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ClaytonBlackmoorLeftPeg said:
you don’t think that Covid is THE biggest reason for the contraction in the economy?

it’s not just convenience, as as close as a fact as you can get.

edit. I’m. Not ignoring Brexit or the impact, but clearly Covid has had an unthinkable impact on the economy.
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Covid is a massive reason but the economy would still be taking a massive Brexit hit with this No Deal stuff.
 

ClaytonBlackmoorLeftPeg

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McGrathsipan said:
Covid is a massive reason but the economy would still be taking a massive Brexit hit with this No Deal stuff.
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I don’t doubt that, but Covid, as least in the short term will have 10x the effect of Brexit.

*Clearly not actually figures, but the effect of Covid this year and next year will dwarf any effect of Brexit.
 

Mr Pigeon

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11101 said:
It's always popular on here to blame the Tories but that was a decision taken by the previous Labour government.
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The last Labour government was ten years ago. What happened to existing funding for these projects? Did it just not exist?

Genuine question because I know cack all about defence funding.
 

Solius

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Ah another day and more proof of cronyism. Carry on as normal everyone.
 

Berbasbullet

Too Boring For A Funny Tagline
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11101 said:
Because it's desperately needed. For example, we are replacing 13 Type 23 frigates with 8 Type 26s, and we replaced 12 Type 42 destroyers with 6 Type 45s. It's always popular on here to blame the Tories but that was a decision taken by the previous Labour government. The ships are headline projects but it goes all the way down to soldiers on the ground operating with substandard kit, it's past the point of being dangerous by now.

We may not be facing an imminent war but with the Middle Eastern threat past its peak we need to be prepared for what's next. Plus, the ~20b it's costing to build those ships is a shot in the arm for the economy.
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I see, thanks for the detailed info, I still think it’s an inappropriate time to be focusing on military right now but appreciate hearing the justification behind it.
 

11101

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Mr Pigeon said:
The last Labour government was ten years ago. What happened to existing funding for these projects? Did it just not exist?

Genuine question because I know cack all about defence funding.
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Budgets gets moved around over time, sometimes due to wider government plans, sometimes due to changing threats as these are multi year projects. The Eurofighter Typhoon program for example started in 1983, first flew 11 years later, and we got our final delivery a year ago. With no more Cold War we didn't need as many fighters as we first thought, so we ended up with 90 less than originally planned for.

The Type 45s specifically were all completed by 2010, so that was almost entirely done under Labour. It was just an example that military budgets have been reducing for a long time. The Falklands War was the last time we had any noticeable increase in defence spending.
 

Mr Pigeon

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11101 said:
Budgets gets moved around over time, sometimes due to wider government plans, sometimes due to changing threats as these are multi year projects. The Eurofighter Typhoon program for example started in 1983, first flew 11 years later, and we got our final delivery a year ago. With no more Cold War we didn't need as many fighters as we first thought, so we ended up with 90 less than originally planned for.

The Type 45s specifically were all completed by 2010, so that was almost entirely done under Labour. It was just an example that military budgets have been reducing for a long time. The Falklands War was the last time we had any noticeable increase in defence spending.
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Thanks for the info, much appreciated. I forget that designing and building these things takes a little longer than me making a cheese sandwich sometimes.
 

FootballHQ

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Rams said:
Similar sized countries.. which one; France or Germany?

Honesty, some people are soooo ignorant...
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France population is 66m so pretty much exact with UK. Surprised me they give 0.4% given their historical links to huge parts of Africa.
 

Fluctuation0161

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africanspur said:
Is this an actual festival of brexit or just a 'UK festival'?

If its the former, I'm going to actually vomit. I think I'd take unpaid leave from work and just go somewhere with my family where I'm not exposed to this nonsense.
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I believe it is quite literally a festival of Brexit. Its fecking obscene!
 

Rams

aspiring to be like Ryan Giggs
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FootballHQ said:
France population is 66m so pretty much exact with UK. Surprised me they give 0.4% given their historical links to huge parts of Africa.
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Why are you comparing countries based on the size of the population when analyzing spending based on GNI?
 

Rams

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711 said:
I've no idea what the argument is about but France and the UK are as close a match as you can get for both aren't they? According to wiki for GNI they're 22nd and 23rd out of 194.
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Which would be about right as both countries have similar wealth and size economies. The sizes of their population is irrelevant.
 

UnrelatedPsuedo

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11101 said:
Because it's desperately needed. For example, we are replacing 13 Type 23 frigates with 8 Type 26s, and we replaced 12 Type 42 destroyers with 6 Type 45s. It's always popular on here to blame the Tories but that was a decision taken by the previous Labour government. The ships are headline projects but it goes all the way down to soldiers on the ground operating with substandard kit, it's past the point of being dangerous by now.

We may not be facing an imminent war but with the Middle Eastern threat past its peak we need to be prepared for what's next. Plus, the ~20b it's costing to build those ships is a shot in the arm for the economy.
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Are we not way past the wars of ships already? All ships carry more weapons than ever before. We don’t need as many.
 

11101

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UnrelatedPsuedo said:
Are we not way past the wars of ships already? All ships carry more weapons than ever before. We don’t need as many.
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Tell that to the Chinese, who plan to build nearly 200 new ships and submarines over the next 10 years. The entire Royal Navy has 70.
 

Fluctuation0161

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11101 said:
Tell that to the Chinese, who plan to build nearly 200 new ships and submarines over the next 10 years. The entire Royal Navy has 70.
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The reality is that Britain don't have the economic capacity to compete with the likes of China.

The British empire and all its associated spoils are nearly all gone. Many people are disappointed when because they think we should still have this colonial power.
 

11101

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Fluctuation0161 said:
The reality is that Britain don't have the economic capacity to compete with the likes of China.

The British empire and all its associated spoils are nearly all gone. Many people are disappointed when because they think we should still have this colonial power.
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We dont but we still need to have that deterrent and we can defend ourselves against almost anybody, including the Chinese. The US is still, by far, the only Navy that can take a fight to anywhere in the world.

For all the doom and gloom, the Royal Navy is still arguably the second or third most capable on the planet.
 

sun_tzu

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Fluctuation0161 said:
The reality is that Britain don't have the economic capacity to compete with the likes of China.

The British empire and all its associated spoils are nearly all gone. Many people are disappointed when because they think we should still have this colonial power.
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I thought Brexit was about going back to the glory days of sending gunboats to china to kill civilians till they agreed to sell our opium for us in india as our slaves were not picking tea fast enough whilst high... looks like we are going to have to implement plan B and re-start selling slaves to America... and if that does not work I guess its time to ebay the elgin marbles

On a serious note I think the spending on cyber defences (and probably offences) is logical as is reassessing and reinvesting in equipment given the changing nature of potential deployments and the next generation of drones / planes, battle tanks (which need new support vehicles) etc but I think cutting the aid budget by a relativley small amount is absolutly the wrong signal and they should be increasing soft power options at least as much as hard power options because if UK are not part of the EU I believe UK probably loose some influence or at a minimum are perceived to and increasing aid / soft power would be a way to somewhat offset that rather than cutting which only seems to highlight the issue
 

UnrelatedPsuedo

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11101 said:
Tell that to the Chinese, who plan to build nearly 200 new ships and submarines over the next 10 years. The entire Royal Navy has 70.
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We’re a tiny little island of no real consequence. We don’t need an obscene naval fleet. It’s 2020.
 

Smores

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11101 said:
We dont but we still need to have that deterrent and we can defend ourselves against almost anybody, including the Chinese. The US is still, by far, the only Navy that can take a fight to anywhere in the world.

For all the doom and gloom, the Royal Navy is still arguably the second or third most capable on the planet.
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Well that's the issue isn't it? We don't need the second most capable navy fleet on the planet. It's absurd.

I can however understand the cyber investment because it's a much needed national defence even in peacetime and increasingly crucial to many industries.
 

11101

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UnrelatedPsuedo said:
We’re a tiny little island of no real consequence. We don’t need an obscene naval fleet. It’s 2020.
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Sorry, but that's just nonsense. We're the 5th largest economy in the world, and the second biggest contributor to the largest military alliance. Downsizing the military would be a surefire way to ensure we really do become a tiny little island of no real consequence.

What do we do when Russian bombers fly into our airspace to test our defences (as they regularly do), if we don't have enough planes? What about Chinese submarines in the Atlantic, if we don't have ships capable of detecting them? You and @Smores may think we don't need it all, which is understandable as we don't face a Soviet or Nazi threat right now, but the military's 2021 budget is not for what's out there in 6 months time, or even 10 years time. The ships and aircraft we build now are being designed to face threats 30 or 40 years into the future.
 

UnrelatedPsuedo

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11101 said:
Sorry, but that's just nonsense. We're the 5th largest economy in the world, and the second biggest contributor to the largest military alliance. Downsizing the military would be a surefire way to ensure we really do become a tiny little island of no real consequence.

What do we do when Russian bombers fly into our airspace to test our defences (as they regularly do), if we don't have enough planes? What about Chinese submarines in the Atlantic, if we don't have ships capable of detecting them? You and @Smores may think we don't need it all, which is understandable as we don't face a Soviet or Nazi threat right now, but the military's 2021 budget is not for what's out there in 6 months time, or even 10 years time. The ships and aircraft we build now are being designed to face threats 30 or 40 years into the future.
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I assume you think we’ll send up a flying boat?
 

Mr Pigeon

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Adisa said:
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I suppose Boris has a really difficult choice on his hand. Keep the current researcher in post so that Carrie's crimes don't risk seeing the light of day, or replacing them with his tennis partner that probably has some dirt on him.
 

sebsheep

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Mr Pigeon said:
I suppose Boris has a really difficult choice on his hand. Keep the current researcher in post so that Carrie's crimes don't risk seeing the light of day, or replacing them with his tennis partner that probably has some dirt on him.
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Probably just calculating how many days it will be until something else will come along to distract everyone so that it can be swept under the carpet until a few years down the line when someone somewhere will ask "Hey remember when we found out Carrier Symonds abused he expenses? What ever came of that?".
 

FireballXL5

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Regulus Arcturus Black

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FootballHQ said:
Think it's gone down from 0.7% to 0.5%. In these times I actually back that, still give money for disasters that hit worldwide but let's not give quite as much freebies to China and other economically developed countries.

Pretty sure U.K invests more foreign aid than many other similar sized euro countries but could be wrong.
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Seems everyone has lapped up this ”what about France” Tory whataboutism. Your post is pretty much exactly what my Mum wrote to me in whatsapp the other day to defend Britain reducing it’s budget and changing the law.
Covid is going to be the perfect argument for the the Tories with Brexit, plays right into their hands.

0.7% is crap as it is, our ”Western” countries enslaved, conquered and stole resources from so much of the World to enrich ourselves.
We shouldn’t be using France as an argument to pay less, we should be shaming them for it.

Meanwhile Scandinavia is shaming the rest of the World again, with around 1% in Norway & Sweden.
 

Sweet Square

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esmufc07 said:
Just came to post this. Those headlines are shocking and it’s amazing it was only 20 years ago.
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Yeah it seems like something from the 1950's(I think a lot people myself included forget just how right wing and reactionary the 2000's were).

Crazy how much has changed in such a sort amount of time. Also it shows how the transphobia stuff in the media is updated homophobia from the late 90's.
 
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