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And about your point 'the ability of a nation to cope', well, Germany and France both have higher populations and Germany has a higher GDP. So why do they all come here..becuase of the very generous welfare system, perhaps?
As I see it, if they are truly in danger, they would be happy of the safety afforded by processing centres until their situation is verified. Its not PC to say this, but a significant proportion of 'asylum seekers' are economic migrants, not people in fear of their lives. The only exception I can think of is of the Kurds in Turkey, but, then again, if we stopped giving teh Turks money to kill them all we wouldnt need to support them. Thus, a saving on both sides.
As has been well documented Britain currently has the best performing economy of the G7 hence we are a natural choice, it is simple labour market economics.....
I fucking well know, did you actually join in the recent debate on immigrants?
in times like this, we need an armed force. Blair has overstretched ours, expecting it to do more for less money.
Troops are sent to places like Indonesia, for "peacekeeping" duties. Why? Why do we send our soldiers to countries thousands of miles away to fix problems other countries can't fix themselves.
Because it's our moral duty....well if its our moral duty then the army needs more money and more troops.
The idea, yes.
How they're going to go about it? By cutting off ties with other countries, reinstating isolationist policy and promoting militarism. Now tell me Whowhere, does this remind you of anyone in history? Now I know what you're going to say - it's the past, and therefore irrelevant. Wrong. It's the past, and therefore something we should learn from.
Hitler once had the idea of making Germany a great independent country with a large military. He did this by breaking a lot of treaties and generally using subversive diplomacy.
Economically, your country would be fucked. Cut fuel tax, withdraw from a large portion of international trade, withdraw from the EU, lose big business because of it and impose as many protectionist measures as you can, no doubt pulling out of the WTO because of the restraints it would impose.
Hmm. Great country? I don't think so.
Because you were replying to this post, when I replied in the other, I'll explain again.
I do NOT agree with their policies on immigration, and withdrawing from the EU.
What I do want to see is more of our power being returned to us, and I do agree on their defence, NHS, education and crime policies.
Do you realise what a crap state our armed forces are in at the moment? They are undermanned, forced to use second rate equipment (SA80, Tornado...) and quite frankly need some investment to bring them up to a world-class standard.
Just look at some of the spending programs at the minute:
Eurofighter - Over budget and well over schedule. Why? Because of political wrangling. If we had the money to develop our own aircraft without other country's help we would have a finished and in-service aircraft by now.
Future Aicraft Carrier - The current 3 Invincible class ships are to be replaced by only 2 new ships. Do the maths.
A400M - German finance is needed to build this aircraft, but the Germans won't commit to a buying a particular number. The project is delayed.
Type 45 - The new destroyers won't come into ervice for several years, leaving the current Type 42 fleet (with outdated 1970s weapons) to soldier on.
Yes there have been some successes recently. Challenger 2, the Merlin helicopter, the Sandown class minehunters and the AS90 howitzer are all examples of top class equipment posessed by Britain's forces. Only one of these (Merlin) was developed in conjunction with another country.
You still haven't explained why we need to spend all this money on the army, there are no major wars to fight! <IMG SRC="eek.gif" border="0" ALT="icon">
Kermit-We live in an age of globalisation, the increasing opening up of economies, the flow of goods etc.
Immigration is a part of this and there is no ppint trying to stop it, it is just plain stupid to support capitalism but be anti-immigration they are part of the same system.
There are no major wars to fight, thats right. Unfortunately the current climate is one of police actions and peace keeping duties. Our forces are all over the world, in probably over a dozen different countries.
If you want to use British troops to protect every oppressed person on earth then for gods sake give them the equipment to defend themselves.
Its a choice, you either spend more on the military or you give up all the UN peacekeeping missions we take part in.
And who says we aren't coping with our peacekeeping duties? As far as I'm aware we're doing fine.
You're missing the point.
The troops are overstretched. Our army currently stands at approx 103,000 troops. That includes support and logistics personnel. They use weapons that jam every chance they get.
All our aircraft were designed and built in the 70's. Our radios are not secure.
The liberal lefties continually cry out for us to keep the peace around the world. But if the army says it needs more money to do that, then everybody suddenly goes quiet.
you can't have it both ways.
Our defence budget is £45 billion. One of the lowest in the West. And we're expected to maintain operations on a sum as pitiful as that.
I guess it depends on how much you are bothered about the lives of the soldiers really. They are send into these places with substandard equipment and weapons. Its just blind luck that nobody has died as a result of shoddy stuff. That will change in afghanistan.
You will also note that we are going to be required to send thousands more peacekeepers around the world. Afghanistan is gonna require a very large peacekeeping mission, Peacekeepers are being considered for Israel/Palestine. If Bush goes ahead with his invasion of Iraq then there will be thousands needed there.
As Whowhere says, you cant have it both ways. If you want us to keep the peace in volatile regions of the world then youve got to pay for it.
We're not though.
Troops are spending longer than the normal 3 month tour of duty required, in areas like Sierra Leone and Indonesia.
Because of cutbacks the paras had to stay in Sierra Leone for a lot longer then necessary because it was too expensive to send regular infantry men out there.
The politicians are constantly ignoring the chief's of staffs' pleas for more money and equipment. Equipment that is standardised, and reliable.
Our troops are paid pitifully poor sums of money, that works out at the equivalent of about 75pence an hour. If we paid soldiers, in line with other professions they'd each be earning about £250,000 a year, instead of the pitiful £18,000 we give them to risk their lives for us.
Have you ever been to an army barracks? The soldiers live in sub-standard accomodation, Stealgate would turn his nose up at it, it's generally that bad.
The food is awful, the beds consist of a matress and little more. Ad they are housed in dormitories built in the 1940's. And you wonder why they ask for more funding?
Our navy is a joke, our submarines are vastly ill-equiped, our navy doesn't even have the money to launch regular patrols around the coastline to prevent smuggling.
And our airforce consists of a few hundred ageing fighter bombers that are no match for anything that they might have to fight against.
The only good things we have going for us are our tanks, artillery and the standard of training which makes up for some of the problems.
Now tell me the army doesn't need more money.
What I would suggest is that the MOD simply change it's budget about, get rid of some of the useless crap, I mean what use are nuclear subs for peacekeeping missions, and we would help ourselves if we didn't do what Bush said i.e. doing the donkey work in Afghanistan, why don't the fucking Yanks do it themselves!
Also, we would save ourselves a lot of money if WE DON'T INVADE IRAQ LIKE TWATS! <IMG SRC="mad.gif" border="0" ALT="icon">
Oh so you think we shouldn't be powerful? Britain used to have a huge empire, we started the industrial revolution, we created trade routes to the far east, we invented many of the machines that "shrank the world"... And now you think we should just leave that behind us and curl up in the corner while someone has their turn? After all we have done for the world. I don't know how you define "blind nationalism" but I'd say Britain deserves its place on the world stage.
Are you aware of the role of submarines in the MoD's plans? Do you know why we use them?
I'd define blind nationalism as pretty much exactly what you just said. Blind because you haven't actually got any reasons WHY we should be powerful, you just... think we should be because we deserve it because we're bally well british. Perhaps you regret letting those foreign jonnies look after themselves.. can't possibly do as good a job as a good old british governor, what? They just don't know what's good for them. Much better that we TELL them what's good for them.
Jesus Christ. It's as if the past 90 years didn't happen.
Im afraid it was just luck..None of the peacekeepers have had to fight any significant numbers. Just wait and see what happens in Afghanistan.
Why? Respect.
With power, you gain respect. With respect you get the ability to use that power.
All the British citizens that have ever been sntenced to death overseas, and we manage to get them released, without power or respect that wouldn't happen.
We can influence foreign governments, even the USA, because we have respect and power. Our diplomats have almost succeeded in gaining peace in Israel. Because we are powerful.
Pakistan let us use their territory for our invasion of Afghanistan. If they weren't scared of what we could do, do you think they would have let us? They knew that they were either with us, or against us.
However, due to cutbacks, are armed forces is plagued with malfunctions, breakdowns of equipment and communications, shortages in manpower and fully serviced vehicles.
Without a powerful armed force, all the respect we have gained on the world theatre will be gone.
But to elaborate on why I disagree: the kind of power you're talking about isn't military. It's the strong economy whihc allows us to change trade agreements, the alliances with other nations which make it difficult for, for example, Pakistan to refuse us. And I'd call this influence, not power of the military kind which you and Slogger wish to see us regain. DO you seriously think we would have declared war on Pakistan, a nuclear power on the other side of the world? The potential consequences would be catastrophic, no matter how stong our army, and wuold have escalated the situation into a world war. We won that one by diplomacy, a very different kind of power.
Diplomacy that was backed up with the threat of violence. Pakistan may be a nuclear power, but Pakistan doesn't have ICBMS, only missiles that can hit targets inside India.
Yes, economic influence is useful, but it is useless if it isn't backed up with the military to defend that influence.
Let's think hypothetically, take Japan for instance. Very powerful economically, if there is a depression there it will hit the world hard. But, their military is weak in comparison to that of other countries. And Japan doesnt have a nuclear arsenal.
A few hundred miles away, you have China, one of the most powerful countries in the world, but not economically.
It's all well and good Japan having an influential economy, but if China attacked Japan for whatever reason, Japan wouldn't stand a chance.
You can have military power on its own, China shows that. You can't have economic power without the support of an effective armed force.
I really don't think a war with pakistan would ever have been on the cards, no matter what our military capacity. Economic sanctions/ a tendency to side with India in future subcontinental negotiations over Kashmir etc. would be as far as it would go.
[ 06-05-2002: Message edited by: mr turbo head ]
Not really. During the cold war NATO ran many simulations of what would happen in a conventional war against Russia.
As long as NATO's supplies held out, Russia would lose.
The same applies to China, it is a lot larger than us, but doesn't have the ability to wage a high technology war for an extended period of time.
They'd win at first, but once all their modern armour and aircraft have been destroyed, we'd gain the upper hand. So i think it is far to use China as an example <IMG SRC="tongue.gif" border="0" ALT="icon">