The Theresa May General Election thread (edited)

Fretwired

ICBM said:

Fretwired said:

He can take us out of military intervention in the Middle East and Afghanistan but that won't stop the attacks

No, it won't - but it will cause less harm to the world overall anyway, so is a good first step.

And what about the innocent people who will lose their lives and those that will live under oppression? Do we turn our backs on them?  Should we have negotiated with the Nazi's to stop bombs falling on British cities?

It's time for the UN to get the rest of the world's major powers together and send in a big army and kick their arses. NATO, France, Russia, China, Japan, eastern Europe, India, Oz and anyone else who is up for it. When faced with an decent armed force they cave in.

And just on the news IS has invaded the Philippines and has taken a city . This evil is spreading.

ICBM

Fretwired said:

And what about the innocent people who will lose their lives and those that will live under oppression? Do we turn our backs on them?

In general less people have died and from what I've seen most of the survivors when asked say they would have preferred to live under those - undoubtedly brutal - dictators than in the chaos we've unleashed.

We don't have to turn our backs on them, but military interference rarely works as has been proven time and time again. It's time to think of better approaches.

Fretwired said:

Should we have negotiated with the Nazi's to stop bombs falling on British cities?

Watch out for Godwin's Law…

(And no, because they had already invaded several European countries by that point.)

Fretwired said:

It's time for the UN to get the rest of the world's major powers together and send in a big army and kick their arses. NATO, France, Russia, China, Japan, eastern Europe, India, Oz and anyone else who is up for it. When faced with an decent armed force they cave in.

Perhaps. If it can be done at all it needs to be through the UN. I also think we can do more to encourage the regional powers to take action - even though we don't necessarily agree with all of them on all things. They're usually quite content to stand back and allow us to make ourselves a target by doing it.

Fretwired said:

And just on the news IS has invaded the Philippines and has taken a city . This evil is spreading.

Daesh would never have got a foothold in the first place without the Iraq war and the attempt to topple Assad.

Chalky

Corbyn's speech can be shortened to "When I'm in power, I'll tell everyone to be nice to everyone, no more nasty arguing or fighting, and there will be cake for us all!"

Budgie

Chalky said:

Corbyn's speech can be shortened to "When I'm in power, I'll tell everyone to be nice to everyone, no more nasty arguing or fighting, and there will be cake for us all!"

The Tories will be the opposite and there will be no cake either. This election could be won or lost on cake.

Jalapeno

Sweden & Germany aren't gung-ho with overseas military engagements  - yet they're still targetted by IS terrorists too - Sweden last month, Germany last Christmas. How does El Corbynista explain that away ?

EDIT: Silence is deafening .....

ThePrettyDamned

Drew_TNBD said:

ICBM said:

Drew_TNBD said:

See not even I would go that far! lol. I think non-British people should learn English fluently, but I don't want to stop them using their mother tongue. British people should learn other languages too, because it makes you smarter.

No, I'm not saying they shouldn't use their mother tongue! Just that we should not allow them to refuse to integrate by sending official communications to them in non-English languages. I'm quite happy for them to use their own languages as well for any other aspects of their lives if they want to - allowing them to not learn English *at all* is the problem.

The British have a very poor record for languages, yes - I count myself guilty, I can barely speak a bit of French but not enough to hold a serious conversation.

Right I think I get you, you're talking about having governmental organisations and banks and things sending out comms in a variety of languages??

Although it opens up a lot of avenues for problems (having a family member acting as translator and deliberately misinforming others, for example) it's surprising how much it costs, for example, the NHS to have a key surgical document translated to Polish (random example). 

Every time any small update is made to that document, that fee is paid again, or it may not be translated at all - meaning a bespoke service is used if the document is required in another language, which is incredibly expensive. Worse still is the cost of hiring an in-person or on-the-phone translator - if a patient has already undergone surgery and is attending a follow up, the NHS is obliged to ensure a translator is booked if the patient requires. This, apparently, costs rather a lot. The following appears to be the total cost of all translation services in the NHS. 

http://www.2020health.org/2020health/Publications/publications-2012/Translation-Services.html ;

Although a drop in the ocean to the NHS budget, it's still significant enough (seems to be around £20-£23 million per year) - especially when so many people miss clinic appointments. My girlfriend would often have to rebook translators as so many skip clinic appointments (and, again, rather than trusting people to look after themselves, it's the responsibility of the NHS). The translator still gets paid, even if the appointment is missed - that's their time and they could have had another client. 

A quote from the above page: "Zia Haider Rahman, a Bangladeshi human rights lawyer in Tower Hamlets, says the provision of translation and interpretation is actually damaging to his community. “They are doing harm because they are reinforcing the language barrier which separates this community from the rest of Britain. They are de-incentivising Bangladeshis from learning English.”"

I'd be interested to also know the total cost of care caused by immigrants being unable to speak English and thus worsening the effects of confusion caused by brain injury, dementia, post traumatic amnesia, infections, anaesthetic etc. It certainly contributes - these things are bad enough if you *do* know the language, but being confused and being cared for by people who primarily speak English must just add to it, thus increasing the risk to the patient through aggressive behaviour or refusal to cooperate. That'd be a bloody hard thing to work out, though. 

I'm sure it's not black and white, but more needs to be done to help people from other backgrounds, cultures and communities to integrate with the British public, and language is a big part of that. Ultimately, it comes down to years of not controlling our borders well enough. 

Fretwired

:-) :-)

ThePrettyDamned

Chalky said:

Corbyn's speech can be shortened to "When I'm in power, I'll tell everyone to be nice to everyone, no more nasty arguing or fighting, and there will be cake for us all!"

If there's cake, I'm out. I'm trying to lose weight to minimise the risk of being a financial burden on the state. 

FX_Munkee

ThePrettyDamned said:

Chalky said:

Corbyn's speech can be shortened to "When I'm in power, I'll tell everyone to be nice to everyone, no more nasty arguing or fighting, and there will be cake for us all!"

If there's cake, I'm out. I'm trying to lose weight to minimise the risk of being a financial burden on the state. 

I'll have yours.

ThePrettyDamned

FX_Munkee said:

ThePrettyDamned said:

Chalky said:

Corbyn's speech can be shortened to "When I'm in power, I'll tell everyone to be nice to everyone, no more nasty arguing or fighting, and there will be cake for us all!"

If there's cake, I'm out. I'm trying to lose weight to minimise the risk of being a financial burden on the state. 

I'll have yours.

Aaaand we're back on track

ICBM

Jalapeno said:

Sweden & Germany aren't gung-ho with overseas military engagements  - yet they're still targetted by IS terrorists too - Sweden last month, Germany last Christmas. How does El Corbynista explain that away ?

EDIT: Silence is deafening .....

I assume because as he's already stated, it's not the only cause.

It's absolutely true that radical Islamists simply hate everything the West stands for. It's also true that military interference in 'their' region gives them more of an excuse. Neither is the only cause, but both of them are causes.

Whether they even know whether Sweden and Germany have forces in the Middle East is possibly questionable. They're NATO members so it could be assumed that they do, or at least support US and UK policy.

Jalapeno

Not saying he's wholly wrong, just only partially right.  The line of argument suits his pacifist, and highly selective appeaser agenda, the one he's stuck to for >30yrs (and fair play for that, but he's just wrong).

Heard him reported on R4 this evening, that he accepts the overwhelming Commons majority vote on Trident renewal, and his party's democratically selected policy - but just he's going to review nuclear weapons in a defence review if elected - ok, so he doesn't accept a Commons vote and his party's policy at all then ... but wants to impose his view when in power.

ICBM

Jalapeno said:

Not saying he's wholly wrong, just only partially right.  The line of argument suits his pacifist, and highly selective appeaser agenda, the one he's stuck to for >30yrs (and fair play for that, but he's just wrong).

I would agree he's only partially right, but that it's a big factor rather than a small one.

If you think stopping interfering in the Middle East won't stop terrorism - which I agree it won't - can you provide any evidence that continuing to do so will?

Can you name one Western military intervention in the region in the last hundred years which has both been successful in its original aim, and has not either made an existing problem worse or created a new one?

Jalapeno said:

Heard him reported on R4 this evening, that he accepts the overwhelming Commons majority vote on Trident renewal, and his party's democratically selected policy - but just he's going to review nuclear weapons in a defence review if elected - ok, so he doesn't accept a Commons vote and his party's policy at all then ... but wants to impose his view when in power.

You could argue that if he wins the election he will have a new mandate to conduct a review. It's also not certain he'd get his way even then - although I personally would like him to.

I would also like to ask how Trident deters Daesh or home-grown terrorists...

The same blinkered thinking on defence - and aggression - will simply produce the same results we've already seen. It's not as if the evidence is lacking.

Myranda

ICBM said:

Jalapeno said:

Not saying he's wholly wrong, just only partially right.  The line of argument suits his pacifist, and highly selective appeaser agenda, the one he's stuck to for >30yrs (and fair play for that, but he's just wrong).

I would agree he's only partially right, but that it's a big factor rather than a small one.

If you think stopping interfering in the Middle East won't stop terrorism - which I agree it won't - can you provide any evidence that continuing to do so will?

Can you name one Western military intervention in the region in the last hundred years which has both been successful in its original aim, and has not either made an existing problem worse or created a new one?

Jalapeno said:

Heard him reported on R4 this evening, that he accepts the overwhelming Commons majority vote on Trident renewal, and his party's democratically selected policy - but just he's going to review nuclear weapons in a defence review if elected - ok, so he doesn't accept a Commons vote and his party's policy at all then ... but wants to impose his view when in power.

You could argue that if he wins the election he will have a new mandate to conduct a review. It's also not certain he'd get his way even then - although I personally would like him to.

I would also like to ask how Trident deters Daesh or home-grown terrorists...

The same blinkered thinking on defence - and aggression - will simply produce the same results we've already seen. It's not as if the evidence is lacking.

It's not meant to. 

It's a nuclear deterrent - ie to deter others from nuking us... Conventional wars (even an asymmetrical war with a group like Daesh) are not something that should factor into the thinking of the use of nuclear weapons... 

Even the threat of immediate invasion by a superior hostile force is not a reason to use nuclear weapons... It's simply and only for the implication that should you launch a nuclear weapon at us we will retaliate and annihilate your way of life and country. 

Use of nuclear weapons outside of that scenario begins to weaken the reasons for others not to use the. 

This is why Corbyn should never have said he'd refuse to press the button (because it means anyone crazy enough to launch a nuclear strike against us would be safe from retaliation - we'd all be dead so no conventional counter attacks would be coming). Even if he never would press the button he should have just kept it to himself. 

If a Prime Minister of this country publicly suggested us firing first in a nuclear war I would happily march on London and enact a bloody coup... But it's nice to know that with the deterrent no one at least partially sane can nuke us without the absolute knowledge that doing so also kills them... Hence stopping them. 

If Daesh ever get nukes and a launch vehicle then everyone is in trouble as they're clearly mad... But they'd be expecting the mother of all carpet bombings before then. 

ICBM

Myranda said:

If a Prime Minister of this country publicly suggested us firing first in a nuclear war I would happily march on London and enact a bloody coup...

May has done... or at least Fallon says so and she hasn't disagreed.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-nuclear-weapons-first-strike-michael-fallon-general-election-jeremy-corbyn-trident-a7698621.html

(Google it if you don't think the Indy is trustworthy.)

ToneControl

Drew_TNBD said:

ICBM said:

And as usual, Corbyn is 100% correct if you actually listen to what he has to say…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2017-40053427

No he's not. He's like, 33.3% correct. He's picked out one factor and ran with that, completely ignoring all the other factors.

The foreign policy argument doesn't just end with "we are bad people and we've done something in the past to deserve this" - that is just dumb.

It goes further. It goes to "why does a kid born in the UK feel any sort of connection to people being bombed in country X when he's never been there, has no family there, and didn't give a shit about the place until he was exposed to propoganda?"

And that is where the religious element comes in. No other religion reinforces the idea of a global community and global family more than Islam does. It's a real big problem.

it's the gorilla in the corner, no one wants to admit it, possibly for fear of appearing to be racist

I like loads of Muslim guys, but that doesn't stop me realising that this is a major problem. Not a new one, Christianity did crappy stuff at various points, but we're living now, and this is the problem people need to understand now. Religion causes hatred of "the others", and at the minute this religion is doing that the most

Myranda

ICBM said:

Myranda said:

If a Prime Minister of this country publicly suggested us firing first in a nuclear war I would happily march on London and enact a bloody coup...

May has done... or at least Fallon says so and she hasn't disagreed.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-nuclear-weapons-first-strike-michael-fallon-general-election-jeremy-corbyn-trident-a7698621.html

(Google it if you don't think the Indy is trustworthy.)

Well currently I think Fallon isn't trustworthy but it's close to coup-bait that's for sure (though it's a hypothetical rather than a current situation)...

But it's certainly not what trident is for.

ICBM

I was hoping you'd be outside No. 10 with a pitchfork and a flaming torch .

Seriously, does it make you question whether you should be voting for lunatics (or at best liars) like that, or for the dull beardy chap who actually seems to have thought about what it would really result in?

ICBM

Just watched the Andrew Neil interview with Corbyn.

He was unnecessarily evasive in a few places where he could quite easily have been more honest with no loss of credibility, but overall I thought he came across well - much more thoughtful and less formulaic than May with more detailed answers. The most searching questions concerned his support for the IRA - and which he failed to convincingly refute - whether that matters much to voters now is the issue.

Confirmation bias? Probably. But I still think he's a better choice than May.

cj73

^ I've generally voted Tory, Greens or SNP ( not exactly the norm, I know ) but if I voted in two weeks purely on leaders I'd vote labour.