British Politics Thread.

[Mr Mystery]

There's a difference between Private and Public school - but I'm not sure what it is.

Then there's State School, which Those Who Decide like to give the bare minimum funds to, ensuring few reach the heady heights their contemporaries in private/public schools can attain.

[CoffeeGrunt]

[URL="https://www.nhaschools.com/en/About-Us/Pages/Difference-between-Private-and-Public-Schools.aspx"]The NHA says [/URL]that private schools charge tuition while public schools get it from the government...so?

[Psychosplodge]

[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_school_(United_Kingdom)[/url]

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[URL="https://www.nhaschools.com/en/About-Us/Pages/Difference-between-Private-and-Public-Schools.aspx"]The NHA says [/URL]that private schools charge tuition while public schools get it from the government...so?

That's the US.

[CoffeeGrunt]

Ah, my mistake.

[URL="https://www.gov.uk/types-of-school/private-schools"]The UK Gov website then.[/URL]

Private schools (also known as ‘independent schools’) charge fees to attend instead of being funded by the government. Pupils don’t have to follow the national curriculum.

[Denzark]

I went to a public school due to the joys of not having money, so I don't understand your point unless you're setting it up for a classist, "well of course you went to public school, tch!" History at GCSE level doesn't teach much of WWII, by the way, as it's forced to cover a lot of, well...history. Additionally, it's only taught at GCSE level at all if you choose the subject.

CG for want of pedantry, public school is usually UK vernacular for one which attracts fee paying - ie private school. I take it you meant state school - no classism intended - I went to a state school as well (although boarding).

Perhaps you should focus less on insulting people's intelligence to make yourself feel good, and more on educating them?

There was no intention of that, and for which I apologise if you took it like that. Actually I thought you were possibly trolling saying that the Americans did the bulk of the fighting and relegated the efforts to of non-Americans to 'Intelligence gathering'. I agree with what you say about Russians- the second front they opened was a key factor in Germany's failure.

Plus [URL="http://www.ddaymuseum.co.uk/d-day/d-day-and-the-battle-of-normandy-your-questions-answered"]according to D-day museum figures[/URL], 10,000 more Americans than British fought at D-Day, though I admit I thought the disparity was higher. The US death toll was far higher than ours', though.

Some of my offence taken to what you wrote above was because the Americans fought from Dec 41 to Aug 45. Us and our Commonwealth/Empire allies, were fighting all the way through from 1939. If the Americans 'did the bulk of the fighting' for that to be true at D-Day the numbers at D-Day of non-Americans would have to be less than the American numbers, no? The US had some of the nastier landing sites for sure, weather didn't help. My last job was based at Southwick Park, which contains the stately home where D-Day was planned. The Map Room is still in as close to original state as possible and we all got taken through the whole thing in some depth. The room in the top right corner of the house picture at link was mine: [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwick_House"]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwick_House[/URL]

But to take it back OT, the contribution of the UK to NATO is second only to the US. Obviously the days of us operating unilaterally are probably in the past. That said, remember when Miliband managed to get a vote for us not to go into Syria? That is the point at which the US didn't, iirc. Our joining in in such events is seen as vital and as I stated, Corbyn refusing to say he definitely will is seen as ruling it totally out in many areas, and as such is bad.

[Psychosplodge]

Yes but public schools are still part of the private system.

State schools are the ones we all went to.

[CoffeeGrunt]

It's fine. I just personally feel that A, were Corbyn to say he would engage in war he'd be held up as abandoning his morals and be dragged through the mud for that instead. There's little the guy can do that won't result in it.

Ignoring Mr Corbyn and addressing the wider point, Britain's involvement does matter, but I dislike the fact that we lost many soldiers if Afghanistan and Iraq with more now needed as the region has already become destabilised. IMO we should have a hands-off approach to the Middle East once ISIS are weakened to the point where the FSA and Assad's forces can remove them. Is it morally right to leave Assad in power? No, it's utterly abhorrent, but what can we realistically do?

As far as Russia, Putin seems to be playing a game of careful brinksmanship. I don't know where his next move would be, nor how it'll be done, but it'll be done under the auspices of deniability and obfuscation. My question is, if Putin rolls in en masse, we'd need a significant force to stop him. It's not the war he'd prosecute, but if it were, then it would be a pretty bloody one. It's always been proxy wars up until now, and I don't think either side really knows what a real confrontation would look like.

It probably wouldn't go nuclear, but say Putin takes a swathe of Poland, battle is joined, then surrenders on grounds of keeping that bit of Poland that his soldiers incidentally captured on their day off because they're so patriotic, what do we do? Obviously we can't let him have it, but then escalating the situation could be pretty bad.

I'm personally hoping that it won't come to that, and I'll be honest, it's a moot point re Jeremy Corbyn as I can't see the guy getting into power any time soon, as much as I like aspects of his morals.

[Denzark]

I admire Corbyn for sticking to his principles. But Putin-esque aggression is only contained when he thinks he won't get away with it. Corbyn has just told him a Corbyn Britain would let him. So what if that failure to deter actually therefore encourages the agression? Is his principles worth him not saying 'I'd back our treaty obligations'? He could always lie up front and then look for a politically weaselly way out.

Imagine if Chamberlain had fronted up to Adolf, how many lives would have been saved?

[CoffeeGrunt]

Probably not a lot. When Hitler put boots on the Rhineland his main concern was the French, who did nothing. Apparently they even had orders to pull out immediately if any aggression from the French was met. There was none.

Britain did warn Hitler during the next engagements in Czechoslovakia IIRC, and Hitler ignored them. Then they threatened full war, he invaded Poland, we declared war, and nothing happened other than poor Poland getting bombed to dust. So we committed 200,000 men to France because we thought it was going to be WWI MkII, got blitzkrieged and fled at Dunkirk while abandoning all our vehicles.

I mean, we could have attacked immediately after Poland, but without the wartime economy or advances in place, it would very well have been a disaster, most likely. The French worshipped at the altar of static warfare by that point, and German capabilities were beyond our expectation. The BEF anticipated that Hitler would invade through Belgium and were drawn into battle there, but were encircled after the Germans moved through the Ardenne and thus had to struggle to breakout in order to avoid being captured.

I mean, we could have thrown everything into France, but then the inevitable failure would have been far worse, as it was a miracle that the defenders at Dunkirk held out long enough to evacuate 200,000, never mind more. Not to mention that it wasn't an issue of power, but tactical outmaneuvering that lost us France.

We made attempts in Norway, and there was the North Africa campaign, but really, us jumping into the fight in the early war wouldn't have necessarily ended it there. Especially in a theater that rendered our Navy essentially-irrelevant.

[Denzark]

The only good part of Chamberlain's appeasement was to give us time to re-arm from cuts of the 30s. That said, in the 30s you couldn't air transport entire brigades of troops quickly - large forces and their kit went by sea.

Its an interesting debate but well OT.

It still doesn't change the fact that Corbyn has minimised his options and not even pretneding to be robust can only disadvantage us. Being principled is not enough.