WE CANNOT AFFORD NOT TO HAVE A NUKULAR DETERRENT
Unfortunately, we cannot afford to have one either.
We're boned either way. Might as well have a big party, and spunk the last value out of Sterling. Fire up the Quattro!
Tomorrow is election day, and on most issues the politicians aren't offering you any clear choices. Nobody's being open regarding what they'll do about the public finances, for instance: more than one politician has revealed total ignorance combined with terrifying eagerness to make policy. But on one issue there is a clear …
For once I completely agree with Lewis. Once you add in their dangerous policies on PR and taxation the Lib Dems are definitely the most dangerous party to vote for. Despite the fact that I believe the current Labour Party to be the worst thing for the UK since the late 70s and IMF bailouts and a winter of discontent, I would actually vote Labour ahead of the Lib Dems.
PR sounds nice on the surface, but perpetual hung parliaments would be a disaster. Every hung parliament in the UK has been a disaster, and every country in the world which has hung parliaments has nightmares getting anything done. The Belgian government has collapsed, Israel is run by extremists, etc. All thanks to hung parliaments.
The entrepreneur tax (more than doubling capital gains tax) that the Lib Dems want to bring in might bring in more income for a year or two, but the mass exodus of entrepreneurs would cost the country very dearly in the medium term. Increasing the tax allowance to £10k is a voter bribe, nothing more nothing less. The country can't afford it at a time when we are about to get a credit downgrade and have a mountain of debt to issue next year, without the support of Quantitative Easing.
I'm happy to say that I'm an ex-pat. So vote Lib Dem if you want, I'll sit in another country and laugh as Britain destroys itself.
So, every country in the world which has hung parliaments has nightmares getting things done, and it would be a disaster?
Remind me - it's obviously Greece, with it's record of strong majority government, that is currently bailing out the Federal Republic of Germany, which has enjoyed a mere two years of non-coalition government in its history. Or did I get that wrong?
Oh, and it's a crap piece too. The question, Lewis, is whether you want a Trident replacement to deter the Soviet Union, or a carrier that might actually be useful in the modern world. We aren't going to afford both, thanks to a financial disaster produced by organisation that boast both NuLab and the Tories as their cheerleaders.
The UK's nuclear deterrent (SLBM based) is based on the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) principle. Nobody can nuke us out of existence without us being able to nuke them out of existence too.
This is fine against superpowers, but is of no use at all against the likes of Al Qaeda, Taliban, etc. If one of Mr Bin-Laden's followers sneaks a WMD into the UK and sets it off, what good would SLBMs do us? Who, what and where would we nuke in retaliation?
When it comes to countries that may be a nuclear threat to the UK in the future (Iran, for example), SLBMs are, pretty much, overkill. What do you gain by nuking a stone-age country back to the Precambrian? Nuclear SLCMs / ALCMs are just as capable of doing that, and cost a fraction of the cost of replacing Trident like-for-like.
I suppose the only country the old MAD doctrine still applies to is North Korea as they have sufficient air defences to combat a cruise missile attack. The question is, is it worth spending all of those £billions on a submarine / missile system to protect us against one 3rd world country that has enough trouble of its own (and with its southern neighbour) without picking fights with an insignificant country in northern Europe.
Simple (and doesn't need ICBMs): submarine sitting permanently in the med armed with nuclear cruise missiles aimed at Mecca. Make it known that any Islamic NBC attack on the UK will result in Mecca being wiped off the face of the earth within, say, 6 hours (to allow civilians to leave the area).
Unless Allah actually does exist, of course, in which case we're well and truly FUBARed anyway.
Now, what do you think the reaction would be if you gave the Islamic world 6 hours to get clear before you nuke Mecca? How many people do you imagine would be still around at T-Zero?
Answer: At least twice as many as when you issued the warning. Men, women, children, babies, 99.999%+ of whom are innocent, but devout, Muslims.
That's got to be the strangest outburst from Lewis ever.
I'm still voting for the Lib Dems tomorrow because a) I live in one the places where it's a fight between them and the Tories, and b) whoever gets in will have a good chance of needing their help...
Lewis speaks as if there's going to be a Lib Dem landslide tomorrow all over the country. Well, if that happens we'll march up to the House of Commons, kick in the doors, and say "Look, we'll pay for the damage..."
Lewis - I agree with you most of the time, but I think you're wrong here...
The main problem with scrapping Trident is it makes it harder to argue we should put Nuclear into the Carriers. As far as deterrence goes Trident is pure vanity.
The only nations with nukes & delivery systems that Trident could deter are US/France/Russia and China. We can hope that 2 of those are on our side (ha!) and the other 2 both have enough warheads they can blow us up, take a full-scale Trident strike and then blow us up again.
We should cancel Trident and Eurofighter T3. Put some of the money into Nuclear carriers (we still have nuclear attack subs, so we'll keep the infrastructure) with catapults. Scrap the F35-B and get -Cs for the Navy. The Riff-Raff can get F35-As with the money we'll save from T3 and we'll still come out ahead.
Taking the defence argument further, the Trident savings will have enough left over to build some more helicopter/marine carriers to help with peace-keeping/anti-piracy jobs.
We can reduce the threat from dirty/terrorist nukes by growing testicles and adopting a non-US-centric foreign policy (the Lib Dems would help here I think).
On nuclear power; you're right, we can't do without it, but we *do* need to work out what to do with spent fuel for the next 50K years - I'm not sure that ponds at Sellafield are a good long-term solution - so the quicker we get Fusion going and move away from Fission the better.
In truth, this argument is largely redundant as even the most woolly liberal knows they won't be in power by themselves on Friday. I do hope that they can get Trident brought into the defence review (and so save the Carriers, which look likely to get the chop otherwise), but no-one really thinks anyone (even a Liberal PM) would actually bin civilian nuclear and that certainly won't happen in coalition.
... is by voting against the Lib Dems.
Since I can only vote FOR a party - not against ones I don't want.
I wonder what the elections would be like if we were able to pick the parties that we didn't want - it would at least make the 'X' useful, since we could also select a tick mark for parties we do want.
ttfn
your reporting on IT is good, and amusing - keep off the politics - your arguments are badly made and are verging on persuading me to vote Lib Dem, not your intention i'm sure.
You unfortunately sound like a tentacle of the Murdoch press (it's not like we need another one really now is it?)... stick to what your good at.
Hint: it ain't political commentary.
having discovered my local lib dem candidate is on a team at the weekly pub quiz, he seems like a genuine down to earth chap with sound sociopolitical ideas and ideologies.
But now I know about the Lib dems evil plans, i'm much more inclined to vote for the current conservative arse who tells me 'we share simmilar concerns' (over the Mandy Bill) and then doesn't even bother to go and vote... or the other destroyer of liberty, whoever the hell that is.
Seriously, who out of all the 'super powers' in this day and age is going to drop a nuke?
I actually wrote to the Liberal Democrats as I believed their stance on nuclear power to be not grounded in science. Heck, even Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, supports nuclear power!
I explained to them about Thorium reactors and hybrid fusion/fission set-ups, both of which largely solve nuclear waste problems (the latter is capable of using 99% of nuclear fuel, in comparison to today's fission reactors which only use 20%) and solve proliferation problems. On top of that, the latest generation of nuclear reactors can produce hydrogen, which could be used for fuel cell vehicles or hydrogen ICE vehicles.
I also mentioned the inability of renewables (with the exception of biomass) to provide the base load power requirements of our nation, due to the variability of environmental conditions. The problem with biomass, however, is one of energy density - you'd need an awful lot of biomass plants to generate the same power as a single nuclear power plant.
The only response I received 'we will pass this onto our policy unit for consideration', rather than a response qualifying their position. I really do like the vast majority of Lib Dems policies, but their anti-nuclear policy is simply idiotic.
Terminator, 'cause Skynet is fond of nukes too.
"I explained to them about Thorium reactors and hybrid fusion/fission set-ups, both of which largely solve nuclear waste problems"
Thorium? Sounds great, but it's just another breeder technology. Hybrid fusion/fission? What a joke! If you've mastered fusion, why would you mess around with thorium, uranium, plutonium? Such hybrid plants are promoted to help clean up the mess from existing fission plants, although they're not exactly the only way with a decent source of energy at hand. More likely, they're just another way for the vested interests to insist on the continued relevance of their pet fission-dependent technologies despite that relevance evaporating rapidly if you can deploy one of the fusion-based technologies.
Fusion is fine. Fusion/fission is fail!
I don't care about Trident for all the aforementioned reasons, but the Lib Dems anti-nuclear power stance is one of the main reasons I would not vote for them. It's clear that they oppose it for ideological reasons rather than actual facts about supplying a country with power - I don't know if its the best choice but I sure as hell don't want some politician to rule it out in their manifesto before they even commission a review of power generation schemes.
Dear Mr. Page,
with all due respect this article is pants. Scaremongering pants of the worst kind. If someone, and it's a bit of a puzzle as to who that might be, does drop an ICBM on the UK I don't think anyone will really care whether "we" can retaliate or not. And if being in NATO actually means that no one will honour their commitments then why bother sticking around? We can't afford much of an army anyway. Not that you can see Norway loading up with Trident and they've got resources worth fighting for.
As for your other hobby horse nuclear power. Well, this is going to be an ongoing debate but the fact is that even if new power stations were commissioned tomorrow they won't be ready in time for the projected shortfalls from 2015. Energy efficiency on the other hand can have an immediate and significant impact.
Space race - really more money for Prof. Pillinger? Manned spaceflight is still prohibitively expensive and of little real value. Don't mind upping our contributions to ESA, though.
Is nothing happening at CERN this week?
What a load of bollox, why is the Reg editor even letting this crap being posted. The author clearly drives a Chelsea tractor, never turns off unused electrical goods, wouldn't dream of walking to the local shop and sleeps with a gun under his pillow due to an extreme condition of paranoia and a massive case of being a dumb ignorant f$ck. Jesus
We should be looking to reduce our Nuclear "Arsenal" rather than extending it into the future. What good are the Six party talks if the countries lobbying for non proliferation are gearing up to renew extremely expensive and relatively ineffective nuclear weapons.
I agree with Nick.
I was looking at what the Lib Dems said about Trident. I am all for MAD keeping the peace.
I found that:
The fleet consists of 4 boats only. That's about half of what is needed. Crews need to rest, boats need to be repaired and serviced.
The nukes themselves are supplied by the yanks. Britain (unlike France) has no independent nuclear strike capability. Odds are the missiles will also need US controlled GPS guidance to work. It is unlikley that Britain would be able to launch a strike independently. The estimate is 18 months use if the yanks withdraw support.
Renewing the current system is a waste. The system needs to be redone completely. That needs a proper review.
What the LibDems say is:
The current system is bad.
More information is needed before a replacment is planned and (more importantly) budgeted and paid for.
So Lewis, the wartech firms paying you to get my tax money thrown at them for free then?
FFS you could have searched the LibDem site and got proper information. It took me all of about 1 minute to find and about 8 minutes to skim through.
Four boats is sufficient for the "always one at sea" criterion and the evidence of history is that the punch packed by a single boat is a sufficient deterrent.
As noted in a reply to an earlier tin-foil hat, it is vanishingly unlikely that the US could stop us lobbing an entire boat's worth at the US because we've had physical custody of the hardware for several decades.
It is unlikely that the missile's *depend* on GPS, since Polaris was a perfectly workable system in its day and that day was before GPS. Therefore, whilst someone *might* have put a GPS receiver in each Trident missile for "fine tuning", they would have no trouble in arranging for a purely ballistic fallback system.
However, whilst submarine-launched ICBMs probably were the optimal solution in 1960, quite a lot has changed since then and so the Lib Dems have suggested that perhaps we ought to review this policy once every few decades or so.
I don't think disarming nuclear force Britain will result in a nuke strike right out. Most of what large or at least established powers are facing comes in rubber boats or manages to board aeroplanes without a passport. It's massive knee-jerking with the associated massive cost that's doing the most damage to our civilisation, and for that the best knee to jerk is the USoA still. Assuming a rational suicide bomber, you could very well strip nukes from all continents except the North American one and they'd still be prime knee-jerk-triggering fodder. All Britain has to do is stop gazing over the pond and wonder if yonder apes don't have a point jumping around, but instead go back to its former stiff-upper-lip stoic self. The latter would be a good idea even without assuming a rational suicide bomber.
The argument that nuclear weapons are pretty safe because the two piddly tiny little ones that were actually and quite needlessly dropped on actual people did little damage in the greater scheme of things is, well, a bit specious. We simply don't know what the tsar bomba would do, but looking at the Chernobyl deadlands, I honestly don't want to find out. That, and that alone, is what makes nuclear weapons so effective.
Further, the key to spacefaring isn't going to be nuclear either. Most power we can access is ultimately from the sun. The stuff that isn't is late big bang leftovers, or maybe just planet formation leftovers, and then from the sun after all. So to get us suitable amounts of power for spacefaring and growing so decadent that heyday USoA looks primitive and backward by comparison is going to need basically a big fat power connection right from there. All the rest, basically anything we can do on earth, is playpen fooling around. And so is sending nuclear powered science robots around the solar system. We need to get up there and secure a beachhead with power socket. And then we get to worry about not cooking the planet to a nice crisp with all that extra energy.
My prime beef with nuclear is the same with all the others: The cost and risk including cleanup. Sticking the next fifty generations with glowing waste isn't my idea of leaving a lasting legacy while we hand over the planet to our children. Neither is turning the planet by way of runaway climate into venus or mars, take your pick.
I have a real quibble with your overall argument, mind. But even if you can easily deflate clueless politicians' plans (that still seem to attract a following!), you're not nearly thinking big or long term enough either.