UK Amazon Kindle Forum discussion
General Chat - anything Goes
>
The 'Take it Outside' thread This thread will no longer be moderated ***
message 5351:
by
Marc
(new)
Feb 19, 2017 02:16PM
oh my aching sides, as the good ship HMS UK slips slowly beneath the waves
reply
|
flag
Marc wrote: "oh my aching sides, as the good ship HMS UK slips slowly beneath the waves"given we build some of the worlds finest submarines, I don't have a problem with that :-)
Would they be the three Trident subs that are presently unfit for service, according to the news reports?
Will wrote: "Would they be the three Trident subs that are presently unfit for service, according to the news reports?"Depends why they're 'unfit for service.'
There has been some problems with the missiles which are supplied by the Americans, (so we can blame the Obama administration for those)
But because it's been an 'American' issue (they're the ones who manufactured faulty missiles) the UK government has been very coy about releasing details because at the time. One reason was that it was a US presidential year and it could have unleashed an American scandal that would have hit the democrats.
Imagine the headline, "Obama, the man whose missiles don't work" :-)
'It will be years before Trident comes. And when it does it probably won't work.'Approximate memory of a Yes Minister script.
Will wrote: "'It will be years before Trident comes. And when it does it probably won't work.'Approximate memory of a Yes Minister script."
depends what you mean by 'work'
They do the submarine stuff OK, so in that respect they work
We don't know if they'll take out the appropriate number of cities because we've not been allowed to test that
We haven't had to test the nuclear side of it, so you could argue that the deterrent side of it works :-)
It's ironic, the Russians have a carrier that has to travel with it's own tug because it keeps breaking down. The French carrier Charles De Gaulle has had endless problems. Vibration so bad the propellers snapped! https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-6696...
Ours work perfectly, but we're stuck with substandard missiles and our sub doesn't work
Just a quibble. It's rather unfair to blame the Obama administration for a missile that was introduced in 1990. From a USA Today article:"The Trident II D5, built by Lockheed Martin, is the latest generation of submarine-launched nuclear missiles. It is carried aboard U.S. Ohio-class and British Vanguard-class submarines. It has a range of 4,000 nautical miles.
Lockheed Martin says the Trident II D5 has been successfully tested more than 150 times since it was introduced in 1990, a “record unmatched by any other large ballistic missile or space launch vehicle,” according to the company’s website."
For some years before Polaris went live, it was doubtful that UK strategic bombers could get through to Moscow, and before Trident went live we spent billions on the Chevaline programme to retrofit Polaris with dummy MIRV warheads that probably wouldn't have worked at all. From which I deduce that if deterrence works, it doesn't depend strongly on weapons system reliability.
the general opinion is that if their nuclear programme matches their sub programme, the Russian nuclear deterrent isn't properly functional anyway :-)
Jim wrote: "the general opinion is that if their nuclear programme matches their sub programme, the Russian nuclear deterrent isn't properly functional anyway :-)"Let's hope we never find out one way or another!
On another note, I do wonder what will happen to farming in this nation after the final round of EU money dries up...To a layman like myself, it doesn't look like a great future for British farming.
No doubt, some farms will survive, but a lot could go to the wall.
Has anyone been watching the 'Milk Man' programs on BBC, or was it restricted to BBC Wales?Fascinating. Particularly the points made about milk being cheaper to the consumer than water, and the EU Milk quotas resulting in gallons and gallons being poured away to avoid penalty charges for over production - Jim is this still the case?
The conclusion was that the EU was actually irrelevant to farms at best. The major issue was globalisation , so no shock there. The dairy farms that would survive were those who either reached a point where incredibly expensive mechanisation (I know of a dairy farm near me that spent £ 2.5 million on a new milking parlour) helped them compete or those who diversified. The latter example being a farm that borrowed £750K and changed from milk production to cheese. The finance was to replace an entire year's turnover while the cheese matured for sale. Now that is a hell of a risk, isn't it?
Milk quotas were withdrawn on 31 March 2015.after starting to write something I stopped and put it in a blog, seeing as how the explanation was over a thousand words!
https://jandbvwebster.wordpress.com/2...
Thought provoking. And as climate change continues, that will affect production.i was particularly taken with the view that by importing food we are effectively exporting starvation
From the point of climate change it's an interesting one. It all depends on sea level rise etc. If government in this country really believed in climate change then they'd stop ALL investment in London because if climate change is correct, in the lifetime of somebody reading this the tube will flood with salt water.
So my guess is they don't really believe in it enough to do anything.
Assuming modest climate change then we'll probably see agricultural output increase, and there will be a rapid draining of any wetlands because of the threat of malaria
But yes, importing food is effectively exporting starvation, you're buying it out of somebody else's mouth
No idea of this site's veracity nor how accurate this is and I'm too tired to read it this evening. I've bookmarked it to read later. http://www.worldhunger.org/2015-world...
when it talks about poverty being a cause of hunger, this is true but what you have to remember is that a lot of the hungry poor can be subsistence farmers who cannot grow enough to feed the familyThey might do other things as well to try and eke things out
In short, we're doomed! :)As somebody with an allotment, my carrots were devastated last year by carrot fly :(
so the last thing I need is global warming bringing the seven plagues of Egypt.
On the upside, as a country we re growing more wine...
By importing food, we are not exporting starvation, we are helping those elsewhere in the world share our good fortune. The very fact that 'Famine Relief' happens demonstrates that famines are a local phenomenon, and a key pre-requisite for famine is that the locality afflicted is unable to trade its way out of its problems.
David wrote: "By importing food, we are not exporting starvation, we are helping those elsewhere in the world share our good fortune. The very fact that 'Famine Relief' happens demonstrates that famines are a lo..."what you forget is that a lot of regions of the world would be internally self sufficient. If there was a shortage in one area it could be moved easily enough from another. (Even if the areas are technically in different countries)
But if we buy the surplus, then it cannot get shipped to a neighbour
You have to look at the issue commodity by commodity. Some countries, Ghana for example, make a living from exporting chocolate.
However others have switched to growing cash crops, mange tout or flowers for example. We import them and they're damn all use to their neighbours
http://www.rgs.org/NR/rdonlyres/EF825...
Will wrote: "On the upside, as a country we re growing more wine..."No use to me as a potato, carrot, and turnip grower, unless there is a way to make carrot wine? :)
David wrote: "By importing food, we are not exporting starvation, we are helping those elsewhere in the world share our good fortune. The very fact that 'Famine Relief' happens demonstrates that famines are a lo..."Famine is always a man made problem.
R.M.F wrote: "Famine is always a man made problem. ..."That's only true if you assume that a population outgrowing its resources is a man made problem
A lot of modern famines are due to a break down in supply due to war, but we still get famines where production collapses and poverty means that there isn't the money to buy stuff in
Which again is a man made problem, it just means the rich are too worried about other stuff
Only in this world we're still the rich
Jim, I don't know if you heard this in the news, but Andrea Leadsom's meeting with the devolved administrations on post-Brexit farming policy, was an utter shambles. A master class in waffle and deflection. Their should be a picture of Leadsom in the dictionary under the word incompetent.
With food production set to be a critical issue with Brexit and climate change affects, how the hell do people like this get propelled to high office?
You would think that the Tory party, with its tradition of rural support, would know somebody who knew what they were doing and talking about when it came to farming.
With my allotment experience, I'd probably make a better job of it.
To think that Leadsom could have been PM :(
The problem with post-Brexit farming policy is that there isn't even a common pre-brexit farming policy.The Scots (and to a far lesser extent the Welsh) have run separate policies and have a lot of regulations that are very different. Just to give you one example.
In England and Wales, for health and biosecurity reasons, an animal that enters an abattoir must die
In Scotland an animal can enter an abattoir and be pulled out for further fattening or even bred from
Both these stances are apparently justified by quoting the same EU regulations.
Also there's probably a tendency to ignore the SNP on the grounds that they don't appear to understand Scots agriculture either. For example what idiot made Scotland a TB free zone with cattle moving into Scotland needing to be TB tested but camelids (which are far more likely to be infected and infectious) allowed to move without hindrance.
As for the Tory part and rural support, there are probably less Tory MPs with agricultural experience than there are Labour MPs who've worked in heavy industry.
Jim wrote: what you forget is that a lot of regions of the world would be internally self sufficient.I haven't forgotten this. I just don't think of it as a worthy aspiration. Even in South Sudan there are wealthy people whose standard of living is similar to ours. It is possible because they participate in the world economy. They can buy cars, and for that matter arms, that their local economies cannot produce themselves. Selling us flowers and mange-touts provides the wherewithal to lift more people out of poverty. "Protecting" UK agriculture distorts efficient resource allocation and denies opportunities to people round the world who could provide us with the goods more efficiently, to the mutual benefit of the producers and consumers.
Jim wrote: "The problem with post-Brexit farming policy is that there isn't even a common pre-brexit farming policy.The Scots (and to a far lesser extent the Welsh) have run separate policies and have a lot o..."
Not for a minute am I trying to whitewash the SNP's record in government, but I would expect more competency from DEFRA, which after all, dwarves its Scottish counter-part.
As for your last point, at least Labour MPs have the excuse that most of Britain's heavy industry is long gone. Farming remains an important constant.
Selling us flowers and mange-touts provides the wherewithal to lift more people out of poverty.=-=============================
No, it provides you with cheap veg, gives a decent margin to the corporation which probably has farms in the Ukraine, Brazil and in the EU, gives half decent wages to a handful of employees, some of who might even be locals, and the rest can starve
R.M.F wrote: "Not for a minute am I trying to whitewash the SNP's record in government, but I would expect more competency from DEFRA, which after all, dwarves its Scottish counter-part. As for your last point, at least Labour MPs have the excuse that most of Britain's heavy industry is long gone. Farming remains an important constant. ..."
defra has to dwarf its scottish counterpart, it covers one hell of a lot more people and provides and pays for services used by the Scots and Welsh.
As for farming, as I said, it was an article of faith by successive governments that we didn't need farming, we could get it cheaper from abroad
Jim wrote: "No, it provides you with cheap veg, gives a decent margin to the corporation which probably has farms in the Ukraine, Brazil and in the EU, gives half decent wages to a handful of employees, some of who might even be locals, and the rest can starve. "So true, Jim. And they do starve, in droves. As for the single-factor theories of famine I've encountered -- "they're all man-made" being just another variant of "they brought it on themselves" or "buggers are too stupid to solve their own problems" -- they don't tend to be very useful when actually trying to do something to help hundreds of thousands dropping from starvation who are always the poorest and most marginalized. It's been my experience in the Horn of Africa that powerful people--the ones with money and guns and outside connections--don't go hungry. They do often decide who gets help and who doesn't, though.
Like most problems, the farther away you are, the less affected by it, the simpler the resolution would seem.
Here's a couple of links if anyone wants to read more about famine in the Horn of Africa.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famines_in_Ethiopia
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/12/timeline-somalia-1991-2008/307190/
Well, I did the history of British India at university, and every famine that happened during that era was a result of man made actions, often at the behest of the British who were determined to keep the unruly natives in line. The evidence for this is overwhelming. So I stand by my claim that famines are man made.
Jim wrote: .. gives half decent wages to a handful of employees, some of who might even be locals, and the rest can starve.If by 'the rest' you mean the subsistence farmers and their families who are the most numerous victims of famine, then I most certainly don't wish to see them starve, but I don't want to see them persist with subsistence farming, and I note that huge numbers of them don't wish to persist with subsistence farming either. All round the world they flock to the cities, as did most of our ancestors in the UK centuries ago. They find it tough in the cities (as did our ancestors back in the day), but the fact that so many of them have voted with their feet over centuries, and the fact that we, who started this process earlier, are richer, demonstrates that it is the best thing for them to do. Almost as a tautology, efficiency is the best solution to food insecurity.
A politician's view of Scottish farmers was '4-wheel-drive-owning welfare scroungers'; not a lot of useful input from that direction. From what I could see, the bureaucrats did as they pleased, dedicated to their personal interests, measured in terms of influence, employees and budget. Yet they still considered themselves models of efficiency and competence compared with DEFRA.
given that most of the cost base was picked up by defra, it wasn't difficult
David wrote: " then I most certainly don't wish to see them starve, but I don't want to see them persist with subsistence farming, and I note that huge numbers of them don't wish to persist with subsistence farming either. ..."which is true, they move into the cities and become slum dwellers. If we really wanted to help these people then we'd given them political security, the rule of law, and jobs.
After all with a decent education we'd be able to send them all sorts of data processing and data entry work on-line. Then they'd have plenty of money to buy food
Jim wrote: ... we'd given them political security, the rule of law ...It's one of the theses of 'The Mystery of Capital'. Unfortunately they're not in our gift :(.
No, it's not a gift, we've got to work at it
Jim wrote: No, it's not a gift, we've got to work at itDecades on from the retreats from empire, the Rule of Law is conspicuous by its absence over much of the affected parts of the globe, and more recent Western interventions have fared no better. Given our track record, the rest of the world might thank us if we took a break.
Who's talking about interventions, I'm talking about support. We now have three presidents in West Africa who've stood down after losing an election. One entirely without fuss, one with purely nominal pressure and one when is neighbours prepared to march in and arrest him. None of it was our 'intervention' but there's a surprising amount of support
And in the latest U-Turn, Mrs May is going to the country.Thoughts? Is this opportune, or opportunism?
Council elections in two weeks time to get through first.
Jim wrote: "My thoughts?https://jandbvwebster.wordpress.com/2..."
You wrote: "But even more worrying is that each election or referendum since the advent of social media has been more divisive than the last. We’re engaged in a dangerous experiment with our social cohesion. I suspect our problem is we haven’t got enough grown-ups left.
Can June come quickly enough?"
Lloyd George had to escape from an angry mob during one GE by clambering over a wall. Winston Churchill was pelted with bricks in 1945, and of course, the Duke of Wellington sorted out his political differences with pistols at dawn! Obviously, this pre-dates social media, so decisive elections are nothing new in British history.
It's opportunist, but entirely unsurprising. She's taken flak for being unelected, so this is the inevitable outcome.And with bugger all in the way of meaningful opposition, she's likely to win.
Michael Cargill wrote: "It's opportunist, but entirely unsurprising. She's taken flak for being unelected, so this is the inevitable outcome.And with bugger all in the way of meaningful opposition, she's likely to win."
As an SNP voter, we're well placed to hold fast here in Scotland.
But as always when one part of the UK is 85% of the population, a Middle England victory is all that May needs.
One day, I'm going to go in search of this mythical place called Middle England. Where should I start? :)
Swindon, Worcester, Huntingdon, Amber Valley, Peterborough...
We haven't cleared up the election fraud from the last one yet
R.M.F wrote: "Lloyd George had to escape from an angry mob during one GE by clambering over a wall. Winston Churchill was pelted with bricks in 1945, and of course, the Duke of Wellington sorted out his political differences with pistols at dawn! Obviously, this pre-dates social media, so decisive elections are nothing new in British history. ..."but never in my lifetime had people been falling out over the result of a vote a year later and claiming it should be retaken
UK Amazon Kindle Forum
Books mentioned in this topic
The Beiderbecke Affair (other topics)The Grain Market in the Roman Empire: A Social, Political and Economic Study (other topics)
The Peasants Are Revolting (other topics)
How to Lie with Statistics (other topics)
That Old Ace in the Hole (other topics)
More...
