I'd cut stuff like Aircraft carriers, Nuclear missiles etc. To my mind that's just willy waving. Not like we're ever really going to need them. And if we do, we'll be steamrollered all the same.
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I'd cut stuff like Aircraft carriers, Nuclear missiles etc. To my mind that's just willy waving. Not like we're ever really going to need them. And if we do, we'll be steamrollered all the same.
I'm not sure about removing foreign aid. Reviewing it? Absolutely, and certainly India can bog off. But never lose sight that we got rich at the expense of others.
And what detterence? If we're gonna get nuked, we're gonna get nuked. And those likely to ever actually do it are clearly already insane, hence not at all worried about the possibility of being nuked back.
NATO and MAD kept us from WW3 for half a century. It seems to work.
Days of super powers are more or less over. We're all invested too much - bit of a triumph of capitalism really.
But, going back to more tangible things.
Scottish Independence Referendum certainly seems to have highlighted a desire, if not necessarily a need, for different areas to have more of a say of how things work for them. And I for one hope we don't see this desire fade.
But how best to manage this? Suggestions?
I don't really see the point, beyond the needed Westlothian question reform. All devolved regions will benefit is Manchester/Leeds everyone else will be even worse off.
There is an issue of size and resolve.
Scotland has the issue that if it does become completely de-evolved then while it might maintain a reasonable head per capita investment, the issue comes down to population density. Because it is very sparsly populated it makes providing services very hard and very expensive to do
So for instance, west midlands has the same population as scotland but requires less hospitals, less police stations, less firestation etc, all because it is so close together so that it can then start to specialise and invest heavily in specialism owing to the small geographic confines. Whereas say, Pembrokeshire only has 1 hostpital for the whole county and in some cases clients are flown to ireland.
London has brilliant services because of this.
[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-29310512]Milliband - Give me 10 years to fix UK[/url]
Mr Mystery - How about 5 and we'll see how it goes?
How about No? Look what your lot did last time...
Seconded.
On the international aid thing, getting rid of it in favour of 'our own tribe first' is rather short sighted. Whilst we obviously shouldn't be funding a country with a space programme (and I believe no longer are), most international aid is worth while.
Some of it is emergency disaster relief, which I challenge any decent human being to claim is unnecessary. Plus if a big rock from space smashed into our country and buggered us, we'd expect the rest of the world to chip in and save us.
The other type of international spending is international development which is focused on attempting to help stop crappy countries being so crap so that the people there can develop into productive trade partners and members of the global community, rather than Ebola ridden death zones that we then Have to chuck cash at to save or terrorist breeding grounds that we have to blow up, costing us far more in the military budget.
How exactly money is spent abroad needs looking very carefully at, but simply withdrawing it full stop is a false economy as it benefits us in the long term.