The Political Thread

[Richmond Clements]

I'm not an SNP supporter, but you've got to admit that Wee Eck dances rings around every other politician (and political correspondent) in the country.

Indeed! I'm broadly a supporter of the party, but you're right, watching him effortlessly destroy anyone who dares stand in his path is a joy to behold.
I agree with being in NATO, a couple of my local MSPs have just resigned the party in protest over this change of policy. I admire them for doing so, but this is this is one of the reasons I could never join a political party. The need to compromise or dilute ones own political beliefs for the sake of a party is something I could never do.

[Colin MacNeil]

I'm not an SNP supporter, but you've got to admit that Wee Eck dances rings around every other politician (and political correspondent) in the country.

I'm not an SNP supporter either, just an SNP voter. I don't intend to vote for them on independence.

Anyhoo, NATO and the SNP? See link.

http://wingsland.podgamer.com/how-we-learned-to-stop-worrying-but-without-loving-the-bomb/

Re currency and the Bank of England? Don't forget, this is just the starting point for a newly independent Scotland. Once we're independent, I'd like to see our own central bank be set up with our own currency. I'm hoping it'll be the Scot's Merk. 

Here's another article which has some stuff to think about in it regarding Scotland.
http://wingsland.podgamer.com/the-barnett-trap-and-the-expensive-lunch/

[Professor Bear]

And I'm not exaggerating here....I personally know someone who had a forum with some lesbian transvestites after seeing a clip on YouTube from a swingers club.

Do you know anyone who did their best to sound like an arsehole on the internet?  If so, seek them out, they may have some advice you will find useful.

[Frank]

I'm not an SNP supporter, but you've got to admit that Wee Eck dances rings around every other politician (and political correspondent) in the country.

I'm not an SNP supporter either, just an SNP voter. I don't intend to vote for them on independence.

Anyhoo, NATO and the SNP? See link.

http://wingsland.podgamer.com/how-we-learned-to-stop-worrying-but-without-loving-the-bomb/

Re currency and the Bank of England? Don't forget, this is just the starting point for a newly independent Scotland. Once we're independent, I'd like to see our own central bank be set up with our own currency. I'm hoping it'll be the Scot's Merk. 

Here's another article which has some stuff to think about in it regarding Scotland.
http://wingsland.podgamer.com/the-barnett-trap-and-the-expensive-lunch/

That's actual MacNeil, folks. You don't see Henry Flint popping up here to offer his opinion on a third runway at Heathrow. Can't argue with this from the link above:

Nuclear weapons are pointless, expensive and dangerous even when not being fired at anyone. They didn't stop Argentina invading the Falklands or Iraq invading Kuwait, because in both cases the aggressor knew they could never be used. They haven't stopped any of the scores of wars that have beset the world since 1945, nor any terrorist atrocities. They're self-evidently NOT a deterrent, and if they're not a deterrent then they're no good for anything.

[Frank]

I've just been watching You've Been Trumped, the documentary about the man with the world's most improbable comb over's reenactment of the plot of Once Upon a Time in the West on the East coast of Scotland. Here's Scottish cops demonstrating how much hired muscle $1.2 billion buys you (51 min):

LAW 27: BROWN SHOES DON'T MAKE IT

[JOE SOAP]

The long-awaited sequel to Local hero.

[Frank]

The long-awaited sequel to Local Hero.

Aye, they used that film quite cleverly in the documentary to hilight the difference between the romantic fantasy of film and the brutal reality of how those type of scenarios actually play out. The only small consolation is that Trump's now whining that the wind farm his former pals in the Scottish Government are planning to build off the shore of what used to be an unspoiled natural conservation zone will spoil the beauty of the area. Not a big fan of irony, is Mr Trump.

[Robert Frazer]

Nuclear weapons are pointless, expensive and dangerous even when not being fired at anyone. They didn't stop Argentina invading the Falklands or Iraq invading Kuwait, because in both cases the aggressor knew they could never be used. They haven't stopped any of the scores of wars that have beset the world since 1945, nor any terrorist atrocities. They're self-evidently NOT a deterrent, and if they're not a deterrent then they're no good for anything.

Actually, that's not self-evident at all. The whole paragraph is a very superficial approach to nuclear weapons. Nukes may not have prevented the proliferation of small wars, but no-one suggested that they would... not to say that it wouldn't have been immensely satisfying to have ground a H-Bomb right into the nose of Nasser or Galtieri or McGuinness, but it would have been a bit of overkill. What nukes have done, though, is stopped another big war (how quickly people forget that for almost half of the last century Europe was split in two by minefields and razorwire and Workers' Democracy and machine-gun nests!) and contributed to keeping the small wars contained by tying the hands of intervening forces, preventing them from escalating into big ones in the way a small insurgency in a corner of Bosnia ended up with the Somme. Today, nuclear weapons are the price of admission to the high diplomatic table and so tied to maintaining our relative prosperity in more ways than waging war - and if you honestly believe that there'll never be anything like the Cold War or a similar crisis in the future... well, I have a bridge in London that I'm looking to offload if you're interested!

And heck, look at it this way... if we didn't have nukes we would never have had the Apocalypse War, and the Dreddverse would be lesser for it. 

[Frank]

Nukes may not have prevented the proliferation of small wars, but no-one suggested that they would ... What nukes have done, though, is stopped another big war

Following VE day, my Granny prayed there wouldn't be another war every night; proving it wasn't her prayers which made the difference between war and peace in Europe would be difficult. My Granny's prayers and the absolute conviction some have that nuclear weapons averted WWIII are both superstitious beliefs, with no direct causal connection to the observable outcomes for which they are credited.

It could be argued that it was the Treaty of Rome (1957) which prevented war in Western Europe, since nuclear weapons certainly didn't prevent large scale and devastating conflict elsewhere. The people of Vietnam, Afghanistan, Korea, Cuba, Iraq, Iran, Columbia, and Nicaragua will be relieved to know that a proxy war - consisting of a series of military interventions, economic warfare, and gangsterism (on both sides) - lasting half a century and encompassing most of the globe is preferable to civil war within Europe.

It's been argued by folk with a better grasp of history than you and me that the fear of nuclear conflict actually facilitated the CCCP's brutal response to peaceful resistance movements in the Eastern Bloc, such as the Prague Spring. No-one from outside dared to help for fear of escalating the conflict and risking nuclear annihilation. If either Kennedy or Kruschev had been in slightly different moods on one afternoon in 1962, the terms within which these arguments are framed would be very different.

[Professor Bear]

Ronald Reagan only found out that radiation was real when he watched The Day After, a tv movie which starred Steve Guttenberg, so while I'd like to think that the presence of nuclear weapons prevented a shooting war and thus justified their creation, the evidence isn't really there, only specious conjecture based on the fact the human race is still kicking - but considering some of the stories of close calls that have emerged over the decades that's as likely dumb luck as anything else.

[Robert Frazer]

It could be argued that it was the Treaty of Rome (1957) which prevented war in Western Europe

It could, sure, but it wouldn't get very far.

Again, people rapidly forget about the Iron Curtain and the T-72s waiting to roll across Germany and bring the manifold wonders of cheap vodka and Trabants to us savages. I think that had a more clarifying effect on minds in Western Europe than any level of starry-eyed cant about acquis communitaire. There were also only six founding states of the EU... you couldn't really say that it encompassed even all of "Western Europe" until Spain joined in 1986. Peace is easier to maintain when you keep reducing your scale to exclude the potential area of conflict. Maybe I should get a Peace Prize - there hasn't been any war in my street since I moved here.

The EU has done diddly-squat to maintain peace in Western Europe. NATO maintained peace in Western Europe, by which of course we mean that America maintained peace in Western Europe.

Incidentally, discounting UN work, EEC/EC/EU members have taken military action in at least the following countries:

-Afghanistan
-Albania
-Algeria
-Bosnia
-Central African Empire/Republic
-Chad
-Croatia
-Cyprus
-Egypt
-Falklands
-Iraq
-Ivory Coast
-Kuwait
-Kosovo
-Libya
-Oman
-Vietnam
-Zaire/Congo

...what was that about "superstitious beliefs, with no direct causal connection to the observable outcomes for which they are credited"?

[Gonk]

And I'm not exaggerating here....I personally know someone who had a forum with some lesbian transvestites after seeing a clip on YouTube from a swingers club.

Do you know anyone who did their best to sound like an arsehole on the internet?  If so, seek them out, they may have some advice you will find useful.

That's shocking, you used the word arse. You should be penalised... Although you sound like you may have been penalised more than once.

[TordelBack]

The EU has done diddly-squat to maintain peace in Western Europe.

Except by making internal conflict undesirable and unprofitable through a shared economic and political base, and to many of us, simply inconceivable. It also serves to undermine the pernicious chest-beating effects of the nation state by offering a larger more exciting identity as a European, with our local and cultural identities intact but not necessarily tied to ideas of dominance and militarism.  For those of us who embrace the ideas of free trade and free movement, any European war would be a Civil War, and I think everyone agrees that one or two of those each was quite enough.

[Frank]

It could be argued that it was the Treaty of Rome (1957) which prevented war in Western Europe

It could, sure, but it wouldn't get very far. Maybe I should get a Peace Prize - there hasn't been any war in my street since I moved here ...what was that about "superstitious beliefs, with no direct causal connection to the observable outcomes for which they are credited"?

Glad to see you (kind of) understood the point I made. That was an analogy; if I'd wanted to make that argument concerning the EU myself I would have said so in unambiguous terms.

There's no validity to the arguments that either the European Union or nuclear brinksmanship were responsible for maintaining the domestic peace in Western Europe, since we have no idea how things would have turned out otherwise. Both arguments involve taking an observable fact and working backwards to arrive at a conclusion which serves a preconceived ideological position. In epistemological terms, your argument conflates an a posteriori argument with falsely assumed a priori truth.

[JOE SOAP]

Smilies should be banned.