Brexit, for once some facts.
- Thread starter flecc
- Start date
Which means that we have no control whatsoever on EU products coming into the UK. Anyone can duck by using the NI border. The more we wish to diverge from the EU, the more incentive there might be to do that.
The latest on the Beeb is that Raab was wildly optimistic in his saying a deal is possible, nothing has changed and the talks are still deadlocked over the Irish border!
It is beginning to look as it he is as useless as his predecessor!
It is astonishing how confident some people are over decisions which are NOT in their gift to make. I have made the same point multiple times, once the letter on Article 50 was lodged, UK left the driving seat, and now must be reliant on the charity of strangers
I think nuclear arms have proven themselves as a means of defending. There would have been conflict between east & west by now had there not been a nuclear stalemate.
The nuclear attack on Japan saved countless lives, forcing them into surrender and abruptly ending their killing & torture adventures.
Always wondered why the Americans decided to drop the bombs on Japanese cities rather than drop them on the massed Jap army ranks based mainly in the south.
KudosDave
The Brexiteers who shout out on question time ......’we voted leave now get on with it,we are not idiots we did our homework’.....those same people should do their homework and look into what JRM intends for the U.K.,he is a rich guy it is easy to see his end goal.
There is an excellent article about Singapore in the Guardian today.
KudosDave
There is an excellent article about Singapore in the Guardian today.
KudosDave
Probably to vividly demonstrate the destructive power of the weapon. Destroying a city and everyone living in it is very powerful. The nuclear tactic stopped the aggression, gratuitous killing and atrocities carried out by the Japanese almost instantaneously. If the strike had been carried out against a military target, I don’t think it would have been so shocking and would not have paralysed the country in quite the same way. Many lives saved by this act, a war ended and peace restored.
Ah but they were wearing helmets, and as we know from the cycle helmet wearers in here, helmets make one invulnerable.
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No longer relevant though. Times have changed and we think nothing of killing hundreds of thousands since, even millions. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan for example. Mass killing is no longer a deterrent and it's just as easy with conventional means without risking self harm.
For such as Britain nuclear weapons no longer deter in the same way they did immediately after Hiroshoma and Nagasaki, that only works for very large area countries like Russia, the USA, China and India. The large countries like Russia know we wouldn't dare use even one missile against them, knowing that the three or four multi-warhead ones we received in return would instantly end all chance of life in Britain for at least a century. If that happened the one UK nuclear missile submarine out at the time would be a headless chicken, unable to get orders from anywhere.
Ergo, there's no point in us buying them, especially when economically hard pushed.
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The first sentence is supposition since no one have had the slightest inclination to attack us, ignoring of course the attack by Putin in buying the damaging Brexit result!
The last sentence only a partial truth, the bombs will have been a factor, but not the major one.
After defeating the Kwantung Army so devastatingly the Japanese were as it says here More affected by the Soviet entry into the war, by two Atomic attacks which were in fact relative pin pricks comapared to the preceding Fire raids using incendiaries
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2016/08/06/commentary/japan-surrender-world-war-ii/#.W9oF4eKYS00
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In February 1945, the Japanese military conducted a survey that concluded that Japan could not win the war. But they were not squeamish about the suffering of the Japanese public — more than 60 Japanese cities were subjected to extensive firebombing in 1945, displacing, maiming and killing several hundred thousand civilians. Military leaders could not contemplate the ignominy of surrender, so they compelled their nation to continue fighting a war that was already lost, subjecting the Japanese to horrific suffering that they could have ended far sooner.
Historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, in his 2005 book “Racing the Enemy,” provides compelling evidence that the Pacific War ended due to the entry of the Soviets, not the atomic bombings. Having tasted defeat at the hands of the Soviets twice in the late 1930s in Manchurian border clashes, the generals knew that the new front meant further resistance was futile."
And I would add that the Soviets had defeated the Kwantung Army in just one week!
"Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's research has led him to conclude that the atomic bombings were not the principal reason for Japan's capitulation. He argues that Japan's leaders were impacted more by the swift and devastating Soviet victories on the mainland in the week following Joseph Stalin's August 8 declaration of war because the Japanese strategy to protect the home islands was designed to fend off an Allied invasion from the south, and left virtually no spare troops to counter a Soviet threat from the north. Furthermore, the Japanese could no longer hope to achieve a negotiated peace with the Allies by using the Soviet Union as a mediator with the Soviet declaration of war. This, according to Hasegawa, amounted to a "strategic bankruptcy" for the Japanese and forced their message of surrender on August 15, 1945.[36][15] Others with similar views include the Battlefield series documentary,[2][10] among others, though all, including Hasegawa, state that the surrender was not due to any single factor or single event.
But by all means keep believing in the Fiction you are so fond of it's the very stuff and soul of Brexit thinking.
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The Americans had left several cities free of bombing in order to test the effectiveness of the weapons, it's as simple as that.
according to you then, we needn't have bothered with NATO, so why did we?
I’m not so sure about that. I think Britain could deliver a sufficiently devastating strike to deter an attack on the country. I agree, that Russia could inflict more damage on Britain and even wipe us out completely, but what they would get back, even if it didn’t extinguish all life in Russia, would be enough to deter an attack.
That is supported by timings. The Japanese didn't surrender after the Hiroshima bomb on 6th August. The Nagasaki bomb followed on the 9th August, but the surrender wasn't until 15th August.
So the bombs shocking devastation didn't produce any instant action on the Japanese part, it seems it took an accumulation of factors to bring the decision to give in.
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I can't agree with that, we are only able to have one sub of our four maximum on duty at any one time, and circa 16 missiles couldn't cripple Russia. They've always been sensible enough to scatter their capabilities, something that has always worried the USA strategically, and where they are vulnerable due to poor defensive strategy.
Remember that last US test launching of a Trident missile resulted in it turning to attack the USA and having to be destroyed, so who knows how many of the 16 would even get to the target!
We've no need for them and we've already done far too much spending on things that are no defensive use. We don't need any defence against Russia, what do we have that they'd be interested in attacking us for?
Salisbury cathedral?
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Hang on a minute, what you are suggesting is in fact only practical if we strike first, and do you imagine for a second that it we did they wouldn't wipe us out?
That so called logic is simply absurd
Unfortunately, I think that great-grandmother having been Irish doesn't provide this option to me:
Brexit: Irish passport applications from British have surged since EU referendum, figures show
Over 44,900 applications received in first six months of 2018 - compared with 46,000 in whole of 2015
<lots else>
Gareth Thomas, a Labour MP and supporter of the People's Vote campaign for a fresh EU referendum, said the "Brexit-based surge" was "not exactly a ringing endorsement of the ability of the government to get a good deal".
He added: “As the Brexit that was promised looks wildly different to the one that’s being delivered, it’s no surprise more and more people are looking for a way to mitigate the disastrous consequences for themselves and their families.
“With the Brexit negotiations clearly headed for a miserable outcome, momentum is building behind the campaign for a People’s Vote on the final Brexit deal. The people of this country are demanding the right to have the final say on Brexit.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-latest-irish-passport-application-britain-eu-citizenship-referendum-a8609936.html
Brexit: Irish passport applications from British have surged since EU referendum, figures show
Over 44,900 applications received in first six months of 2018 - compared with 46,000 in whole of 2015
<lots else>
Gareth Thomas, a Labour MP and supporter of the People's Vote campaign for a fresh EU referendum, said the "Brexit-based surge" was "not exactly a ringing endorsement of the ability of the government to get a good deal".
He added: “As the Brexit that was promised looks wildly different to the one that’s being delivered, it’s no surprise more and more people are looking for a way to mitigate the disastrous consequences for themselves and their families.
“With the Brexit negotiations clearly headed for a miserable outcome, momentum is building behind the campaign for a People’s Vote on the final Brexit deal. The people of this country are demanding the right to have the final say on Brexit.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-latest-irish-passport-application-britain-eu-citizenship-referendum-a8609936.html
Customs checks will be done on motorways between Belfast and Dublin.
that arrangement will suit TM, the DUP and the ROI as long as the UK stays close to the EU in the foreseeable future.
Apparently, the report on financial service deal suggests that the UK will have to have EU approval whenever it wants to diverge or all deals are off, a bit like Switzerland.