As my (presumably) politically-obsessed readers will have noticed, nominations for the General Election closed last week, so now we know who is standing in each seat. To each of us, therefore, falls the task of deciding who, if anyone, to honour with a vote.
The way you are supposed to do this is to read the manifestos of each of the parties and candidates standing, and pick the ones which will be best for the country. This is a long and tedious process, best avoided, but as I pointed out at the time of the last European Elections, our politics has now become so devalued by idiocy of one sort or another that a simple optimisation is possible. For each candidate, read the associated manifesto until you discover something spectacularly offensive or stupid, then stop. If you find a manifesto bereft of any idiocy or offense, then vote for that candidate. In the event that you find more than one such manifesto, this procedure won't help you, of course, but this is unlikely to arise in practice. If no manifesto lacks for idiocy and offense, then you -- and we -- are in trouble. More on this later.
(For the purposes of this exercise I am considering the candidates as representatives of their parties.)
Here is the line-up in Cambridge, in face-saving alphabetical order: (several of the candidates have web logs, or, at least, some sort of regularly-updated web site; I have linked to these)
| Candidate | Party |
|---|---|
| Anne Campbell | Labour |
| Helene Davies | UKIP |
| Suzon Forscey-Moore, Independent | Independent |
| David Howarth | Liberal Democrats |
| Martin Lucas-Smith | Green |
| Ian Lyon | Conservative |
| Graham Wilkinson | Independent |
| Tom Woodcock | Respect |
So, to each candidate's policies in turn:
-
Anne Campbell, Labour
Anne and the Labour Party will no doubt be familiar to my readers. The party's manifesto weighs in at 112 pages, though if you go to the party's web site they will offer you a personalised version of the document, presumably with lies tailored to your particular prejudices, though tellingly that page did not work at all when I tried it.
The Labour party have designed this document to come out rather well in my analysis, since it starts off with a fluffy and basically content-free preface by Our Leader, and then a recap of Labour's term in office so far. While this stuff is misleading, it's not actually offensive by political standards, and it's only after 14 pages that we get to their actual policies.
I came close to stopping on page 48, where Labour trumpet one of their `achievements' in office (legislation to allow the seizure of assets from `alleged criminals' whom the Police have been unable to convict -- i.e., innocent people) and threaten to,
develop new proposals to ensure that criminals are not able to profit from publishing books about their crimes.
-- a silly and pointless attack on free speech. But it would be a mistake to duck out too early, since a mere four pages later we encounter a `points system' for immigration (i.e. 1970s industrial policy masquerading as 1970s racism, effectively), the introduction of some sort of gastarbeiter nonsense:
We will ensure that only skilled workers are allowed to settle long-term in the UK, with English language tests for everyone who wants to stay permanently and an end to chain migration.
-- i.e., `you can come here but your family can't, and you can only stay if we think you're good enough, however hard you work' -- and, to top it all off, bloody ID cards.
-
Helene Davies, UKIP
UKIP's manifesto is, if nothing else, short. Specifically, it is short: 16 pages. The first offensive policy is on page 2 (page 1 is the cover): as you may have spotted, UKIP propose to leave the EU. Bzzzt!
-
Suzon Forscey-Moore, Independent
Suzon is the organiser of The Campaign for a Fair Hearing and an advisor to Action 4 Justice. I can't find a manifesto or an election address for her campaign in Cambridge, but the two organisations named on that page campaign respectively for,
the abolition of the office of Lord Chancellor and the establishment of elected constitutional and constituency courts of review;
that ex-ministers should be held surchargeable by a public grand jury on the same grounds that already applied to people in local government.
On the assumption that she's campaigning here on the same issues, I can't support her. Elected judges are a very bad idea. But perhaps my assumption is wrong.
-
David Howarth, Liberal Democrats
The Liberal Democrat manifesto is, pleasingly, only 20 pages long. A hint of something offensive comes in on page 11, where we learn that,
[Liberal Democrats] will consult with business and public services to agree numbers of work permits for economic migration to make sure that Britain continues to prosper.
-- yes, it's immigration quotas. As with Labour's ``points'' scheme, it's always possible that the quota might be set so as not to limit immigration in practice, but this is still wrong in principle and an unwelcome intervention by the state in the economy. (Even the CBI -- usually quick to reject free trade -- has spotted that immigration quotas are a bad idea.)
-
Martin Lucas-Smith, Green
The Green manifesto is 32 pages long (but that's OK -- I didn't print it out). There's a lot in here that's pretty silly, and the promise on page 15 to waste NHS money on,
alternative and holistic health treatments
-- code, I think, for `treatments that don't work' -- comes pretty close to being offensive. But it would be unfair to make no mention of their defence policy (unilateral nuclear disarmament) and their Iraq policy,
[to] seek the withdrawal of UK troops, who should be replaced by UN peacekeepers.
is in my view immoral. Unless told to leave by the Iraqis our troops should stay until we and the US have cleared up the mess that we have made.
-
Ian Lyon, Conservative
One admirable feature of the Conservative manifesto (32 pages) is that it is somewhat upfront. ``Controlled immigration'' is promised on the very first page, but it is only on page 19 that we discover (a) another bloody points-based system for economic migration; and (b),
Our objective is a system where we take [as asylum-seekers] a fixed number of refugees from the UNHCR rather than simply accepting those who are smuggled to our shores.
-
Graham Wilkinson, Independent
Graham has a website setting out his positions rather than a manifesto document as such; there's also this cam.misc thread in which he announces his candidature. Leaving aside the question of how wise it is to stand as a little-known independent in a Parliamentary election, Graham's valuable quick comparison chart reveals him to be another supporter of immediate withdrawal of British troops from Iraq.
-
Tom Woodcock, Respect
Respect's manifesto (link hidden in a news item on their website) weighs in at 20 pages. One page three (page one is the cover and two the contents) we learn that they are -- of course -- another troops-out-now mob. I couldn't be bothered to read on to discover how they present their leader's enthusiasm for the murderous rule of Saddam Hussein.
Of course, in a first-past-the-post election, one has to consider (a) whether there is any chance of an individual candidate winning, since otherwise one's vote is wasted; and (b) the qualities of the individual candidates. Here I am handicapped by only having met three of the candidates, but by a happy chance it turns out that those are the three who stand the most chance of winning:
- Anne Campbell has, whenever I have met her, seemed personable and engaged. However, she doesn't answer questions, refused to come to January's NO2ID public meeting on ID cards despite being an enthusiastic supporter of the Labour Party's dangerous scheme and, as I have previously reported, objectively supports the use of torture in the `war on terror'.
- David Howarth did come to our meeting in January and spoke eloquently on the demise of Britain's last ID cards system in 1951 and the arguments against the new proposal.
-
I met Ian Lyon yesterday when he was out canvassing in Market Square, and had a most surreal conversation with him: (paraphrased from memory)
(Note that the Labour manifesto describes the proposed identity cards as `rolling out initially on a voluntary basis'.)
Me: What about voluntary cards with a biometric identity register?
IL: Don't you think that the Liberal Democrats' local income tax is a more serious threat to privacy?
Me: [slightly surprised by this change of tack] Err, yes, but what about the National Identity Register?
I assume what's going on here is that he believes that, because I am opposed to ID cards and the National Identity Register, I must be a Liberal Democrat. I am not. No fuses obviously blew when I failed to defend the local income tax (a policy on which I in fact have no strong opinion) but in any case he declined to continue the conversation any further.
Another question of interest is how the election is likely to turn out -- and, of course, nobody wants to back a loser. Here are some possible outcomes:
(The 2004 local election result is rescaled to bring the support for `other' candidates down to its normal level of ~8% in a general election. The Daniel Davies prediction is from his Adjusted Regional Swing Estimate model as given here; it's based on data from 10th April, but the polls haven't moved much since then. The other predicted results are from here and here. Backing Blair has Cambridge down as a safe Labour seat, so I assume that they are using a UNS-type model like Martin Baxter's site.)
Update: I unaccountably left Martin Lucas-Smith out of the list of candidates I've met. Ho-hum. Nice bloke but he's not going to win. I went on Sunday to an event described as a hustings at which all of the above candidates were present, which gave an opportunity to discover Suzon Forscey-Moore's manifesto -- vague, but not unlike what I have presented above -- and hear from the others. Unfortunately, the audience at this event -- run by the Cambridge churches -- were prohibited from asking questions of the candidates (a fact which, it is rumoured, is not unconnected with Anne Campbell's decision to appear at it alone among such events); instead, the candidates were asked to respond to a set of five questions which were circulated in advance. And in another tragic reverse for British democracy, the candidates representing political parties -- except for the bloke from Respect -- were permitted fifteen minutes of speaking time each, compared to five minutes for the others. This was, to put it bluntly, completely fucking hopeless.
Comments
Posted by Nick Vale, Sunday, 24 April 2005 09:27 (link):
"Of course, in a first-past-the-post election, one has to consider (a) whether there is any chance of an individual candidate winning, since otherwise one's vote is wasted..."
Not sure it's entirely wasted. I like to see my otherwise forlorn support for the local Green candidates as a strategic vote, in that it helps encourage them to try again next time.
Posted by Francis Irving, Sunday, 24 April 2005 10:43 (link):
And another option would be to strategically vote for the party most likely to win who supports introducing STV, (or even better PFPTP)
Posted by Helen Wright, Monday, 25 April 2005 02:33 (link):
Any acronym that long should definitely be a hyperlink...
Posted by Chris Lightfoot, Monday, 25 April 2005 11:12 (link):
PFPTP.
Posted by Alistair Turnbull, Tuesday, 26 April 2005 19:04 (link):
We could call it the raspberry system. :-PFPTP!
Posted by Roy Badami, Sunday, 24 April 2005 11:47 (link):
Hmm, how does local income tax threaten privacy, I wonder...?
Ok, the Inland Revenue will need to know where you live (rather than just have a contact address) but I don't immediately see how this is worse than the current system of having to give this information to the council for administration of council tax...
As for replacing British troops with UN troops, why is this a bad thing, as long as Britain makes a suitable contribution to the UN force (ie the same number of troops we currently have in Iraq)? The issue is not whose troops they are, but under whose command they are. I suspect that having the troops under UN command would be beneficial to relations with the Iraqis...
Posted by Chris Lightfoot, Sunday, 24 April 2005 15:23 (link):
I'm not sure. As you say, the Inland Revenue will have to know where you live -- to within one local authority, at least -- and whenever you move, if you are a taxpayer. And as you say those things are already true of Council Tax, though the information is not centralised. I don't know how the Lib Dems propose to implement their scheme, but I'd assume it's just a case of having the Revenue look up the appropriate marginal rate for each local authority and adding this to your bill at the appropriate moment, then disbursing the spoils to the individual councils. So, it is intrusive, but not very.
(I didn't want to argue this out with Lyon because, as I say, I don't know or care very much about this particular policy and I actually wanted him to tell me his opinion of the NIR or any other hypothetical similar database. And I also wanted to make clear to him that my opposition to ID cards is not party-political.)
My reading of the manifesto was that it was as if there were some magical pool of `UN peacekeepers' on whom could be drawn to deploy a force replacing British troops. Otherwise I don't understand the use of the term `withdrawal'. It's also fair to say that the record of UN command of peacekeeping forces has been somewhat patchy, but that's a separate issue; I wouldn't object in principle to putting British troops in Iraq under UN command.
Posted by Roy Badami, Sunday, 24 April 2005 19:05 (link):
don't know how the Lib Dems propose to implement their scheme, but I'd assume it's just a case of having the Revenue look up the appropriate marginal rate for each local authority and adding this to your bill at the appropriate moment, then disbursing the spoils to the individual councils.
AIUI, that's pretty much exactly it. The local authorities don't even get to find out anyone's income or individual local tax bills; they just get given agregate information about the local tax base to allow them to set a marginal rate, and then receive a lump of money from central government.
Posted by Roy Badami, Sunday, 24 April 2005 13:23 (link):
On the LibDem immigration policy, which is the issue that interests me most in your discussion, since I currently intend to vote LibDem:
I've been trying to find some more detailed information on the LibDem's immigration reform proposals, but so far I've failed.
But I think your comment As with Labour's ``points'' scheme, it's always possible that the quota might be set so as not to limit immigration in practice is somewhat disingenious, because it implies that there are no current limits on immigration, which is blatently untrue.
There are significant hurdles to getting a work permit, and generally someone coming to the UK to work needs to be sponsored by their prospective employer, who must demonstrate difficulty in filling the position and apply for the work permit on their behalf. Alternatively, if the person seeking to work in the UK qualifies on points in the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme, they can apply for a work permit themselves. This kind of permit doesn't involve a prospective employer, and they can enter the UK to seek employment. There are also a whole host of programmes which apply to specific industry sectors where there are skills shortages: the Skills Shortage List, the Sector Based Scheme, specific schemes for doctors, nurses, and vets, and no doubt many others...
So the status quo is that we place restrictions on people coming to work in the UK which inevitably serves to restrict their numbers, and probably has very similar effects to industry sector quotas. I'm not immediately enamoured with the idea of quotas, but it's hardly clear whether it will be better or worse than the current system. As you say, it all depends on how you set the quotas. And since the LibDems seem to be broadly in favour of immigration, it seems to me to be grossly unfair to criticise them solely because they might set the quotas lower than current effective levels...
If what you're saying is that you'd like to see a complete abolishion of the system of visas and work permits, with anyone being free to live and work in the UK, that's a different issue. But I don't see any party proposing this...
Posted by Roy Badami, Sunday, 24 April 2005 13:43 (link):
Ah, I did find this which suggests that the quotas will be set quarterly, with an annual independent review (with input from the CBI).
So I suspect this is rather different to the kind of quota system that the Tories are in favour of and that the CBI are against...
Posted by Chris Lightfoot, Sunday, 24 April 2005 15:03 (link):
Well, the Conservatives' quota is for asylum applications and is incredibly offensive; for economic migrants I think they're proposing a points system, which is just bloody stupid. That said, Digby Jones seems to have interpreted the points-based system as being a quota in effect; I haven't been following the various pronouncements of these wankers in detail so I don't know if they have outside their manifesto given the impression that they actually want to implement a quota, but it's certainly not what their manifesto seemed to be suggesting. In any case there's no way whatever I could ever vote for any party which advocated a quota on asylum applicants so the point is rather moot.
Posted by Roy Badami, Sunday, 24 April 2005 19:09 (link):
Indeed.
But what about the LibDems...? Why do you find their quota on work permits more objectionable than the current system?
-roy
Posted by Chris "to the left of 91% of the population" Lightfoot, Monday, 25 April 2005 14:50 (link):
The current system (quotas by types of worker, e.g. highly skilled workers, people prepared to work in Scotland, or seasonal agricultural workers) is also offensive and stupid. (There's more information on this stuff -- or should be -- on http://www.workingintheuk.gov.uk/ but, true to form, that site isn't working right now. This Google-cached page lists some of the schemes.) This policy looks like it has fewer adjustable parameters than one like the Lib Dems' with quotas for each section of industry, which may improve the chances of a successful choice; that said, the difference isn't that great.
But it would be nice, just once, to vote for a party which actually has a positive programme of trying to improve these things rather than just not fucking them up much more than they are already. It's completely pathetic that we have a category of `illegal' migrants who are officially vilified and yet relied upon to keep the economy going. And don't get me started on the wankers who complain about `sponging' asylum seekers while merrily denying them the right to work.
This election is plainly going to be a fucking disaster.
Posted by Roy Badami, Tuesday, 26 April 2005 19:12 (link):
I agree with what you say, but the Lib Dems are of course playing a balancing act in the campaign of trying to appeal to both disaffected Labour voters as well as disaffected Tories.
Given that the LibDems seem to regard immigration as a positive thing, I'm certainly prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt here.
Their stated policy on immigration may be dissappointing, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it offensive.
-roy
Posted by Sam Evans, Thursday, 28 April 2005 15:48 (link):
It's completely pathetic that we have a category of `illegal' migrants who are officially vilified and yet relied upon to keep the economy going.
Right. A sensible immigration policy would have something like the following features:
1. People with jobs to go to should be able to come and do them 2. People wanting to come and do the "nasty but necessary" jobs that seem to be beneath the dignity of indolent welfare parasites should be able to come and do them 3. Once you've paid a decent amount of tax for, say, 4 years, you get to stay permanently, and so become entitled to state benefits. 4. Asylum is completely different from economic migration. Stop confusing the two.
It may be of interest to allow, say, anyone without a serious criminal record who doesn't pose a public health hazard to immigrate on payment of a bond sufficient to purchase a return plane ticket to their country of origin. You don't get state benefits till you've paid my 4 years tax, but you can take any jobs you can get. If you return home, your bond is refunded. If you become a permanent resident, it is refunded. If you are convicted of a serious criminal offence, or lose all your money and income and can't support yourself, your bond will pay for your repatriation to your home country.
That seems fairly simple, removes most of the bureaucratic quota nonsense, but should be sufficient to deter the "benefits tourists" that everyone is so scared of.
Posted by Roy Badami, Monday, 2 May 2005 03:02 (link):
That seems fairly simple, removes most of the bureaucratic quota nonsense, but should be sufficient to deter the "benefits tourists" that everyone is so scared of.
I presume the other concern is that if the influx of economic migrants is too great, and in particular if the rate has a sudden increase, then it could significantly increase unemployment. You could have a sudden increase in the population seeking work, but the resulting increase in consumer spending that should create the corresponding jobs may lag significantly.
Posted by Simstim, Sunday, 24 April 2005 19:08 (link):
I find that it's rare to find a candidate/party who agrees on all of the major issues with you. For example, I'm pretty solidly Green except I'm more ambivalent towards the EU than they are (although they're anti for the right reasons in my view). Apart from standing as a candidate yourself, I can't see there being any way around this problem. A form of PR that caused the parties to splinter might help though.
Posted by Edmund von der Burg, Monday, 25 April 2005 12:25 (link):
...But it would be unfair to make no mention of their defence policy (unilateral nuclear disarmament) and their Iraq policy...
What are your concerns regarding unilateral nuclear disarmament? I have only recently started thinking about this and am finding that it seems a good idea.
Posted by Eben Upton, Monday, 25 April 2005 14:22 (link):
For me, unilateral nuclear disarmament without pacifism seems a little like non-vegan moral vegitarianism (or worse yet, moral-vegitarian-except-for-fishism). Little point in having a nice big conventional army if every time you start to win (or every time you put two tanks next to one another) some bugger drops a nuke on you.
So, pacifism good (if you get away with it), MAD good (likewise), CND-style useful-idiot disarmament bad.
Posted by Liz Upton, Monday, 25 April 2005 23:49 (link):
Dear God. I appear to have married a man who can't spell vegetable.
Posted by Eben Upton, Tuesday, 26 April 2005 00:04 (link):
Well, I can still spell pnats to you woman. Oh, nuts :)
Posted by dsquared, Tuesday, 26 April 2005 07:13 (link):
Or "Ewen", apparently
Posted by Eben Upton, Tuesday, 26 April 2005 22:00 (link):
Or "Ewen", apparently
No, that was my parents. Clearly bad spelling is hereditary.
Posted by Roy Badami, Tuesday, 26 April 2005 19:15 (link):
Hey, I'm a non-vegan moral vegetarian... :-)
-roy
Posted by Chris Lightfoot, Tuesday, 26 April 2005 20:39 (link):
Ah, but are you a unilateralist?
Posted by Roy Badami, Wednesday, 27 April 2005 03:41 (link):
Good question... Back in the days when Old Labour were in favour of unilateral disarmament, I was. I'm not really sure, these days... I haven't thought about it in depth recently, since none of the major parties are advocating it...
I generally describe myself as a pacifist (and donate to Conscience, despite the fact that I regard there goals as somewhat naive)...
I think I probably still am in favour of unilateral nuclear disarmament, though not strongly. As far as I can see your argument against it is predicated on the idea that a nuclear power would rationally launch a counter-strike against what would inevitably be an irrational first strike.
The problem with the nuclear deterrent is that nuclear retaliation is not a rational act, so it's only a deterrent if your oponent believes you might behave irrationally...
If I believe I'm inevitably going to die, I'd rather not risk taking the rest of the human race with me... If the price of my safety is electing someone who would rather cause the extinction of the human race than lose a war, then it's not a price I'm prepared to pay...
I realise that things aren't quite as simple if you're thinking in terms of a terrorist nuclear strike rather than old cold war terms, but I think that ultimately the above still holds... Nuclear retaliation is still stands a very high risk of resulting in a (nuclear) WWIII and MAD...
As for the vegetarianism issue, I trust that Eben is a vegan himself, because I have a problem with meat eaters criticising me for not being vegetarian enough...
-roy
Posted by Eben Upton, Wednesday, 27 April 2005 10:58 (link):
because I have a problem with meat eaters criticising me for not being vegetarian enough...
I'm not criticising anyone. I'm just slightly peeved when people take a position (unilateralism, vegetarianism) which is only viable because there's someone else out there picking up the slack (Uncle Sam and his Minutemen, me and my steak), and describe their choice as a moral one (with the attendant implication that Uncle Sam and I are somehow im- (or a-) moral).
Objection withdrawn if you're really careful about where all your cheese comes from.
Posted by Chris Lightfoot, Wednesday, 27 April 2005 11:20 (link):
Um, sort of, but I think you've got it backwards.
Deterrence only works if you can guarantee that you will automatically and irrationally respond with nuclear weapons to the use of nuclear weapons against you.
As you say, retaliation clearly isn't rational (sunk costs fallacy: once the country is wiped out its interests are not served by killing more people) and so the only way a threat of retaliation can deter an aggressor is by ensuring that retaliation will inevitably follow any attack, regardless of whether any surviving leaders think it will serve their present interests or any other special circumstances.
The way that we try to achieve this is by putting the missiles in submarines to which it is difficult to transmit orders, and giving their commanders instructions to fire the missiles if they establish that Britain has been attacked. Then we advertise the fact that these people are sufficiently indoctrinated to actually execute this plan in those circumstances; as the potential attacker, you must gamble that Highly Trained Submarine Man will have an attack of conscience at the last moment and decide not to incinerate your country. So far this seems to have worked.
This is why hiding behind Uncle Sam's skirts is a poor strategy: for the United States to retaliate against a country which attacked the UK would not necessarily be rational. Indeed, it's quite unlikely to be, especially if it might provoke escalation against another US ally -- reinforcing the message that `supporting the USA == national incineration' -- or against the US itself -- reinforcing the message that `you shouldn't get involved in foreign policy if you can help it'.
Posted by Roy Badami, Wednesday, 27 April 2005 13:04 (link):
This is why hiding behind Uncle Sam's skirts is a poor strategy
I wasn't trying to suggest otherwise.
My point is that I find the necessary strategy of irrational retaliation offensive, to the extent that I have great difficulty supporting it, even though it may have pragmatic benefits. In the context of being unwilling to sanction a policy of retaliation, surely unilateralism makes sense?
Of course, if we took that route, we'd probably have to be rather more careful with our foreign policy to keep the risks to an acceptable level.
-roy
Posted by Colin Teubner, Wednesday, 27 April 2005 15:03 (link):
I'm not convinced retaliation is necessarily irrational. Your premise (the country considering retaliation being completely wiped out and thus having nothing to protect) is as if Russia had decided to wipe out every major city in the UK, but today a more likely scenario would be North Korea using one or two nukes on (say) Los Angeles. I'm fairly certain the US has the capability to scorch literally every square inch of North Korea, which it could justify because doing so would almost certainly obliterate whatever nuclear capability that country has, thus preventing any further attacks. Not a great scenario for our friends in South Korea, but not exactly irrational either.
Posted by Chris Lightfoot, Wednesday, 27 April 2005 21:07 (link):
Yeah -- I was considering the scenario where the whole country is basically destroyed. The UK is a pretty small country, and -- as they used to say of West Germany -- ``the towns are only ten kilotons apart''. It wouldn't take many bombs to wreck the place more-or-less completely.
None of this stuff seems like an immediate worry right now, but back in 1960s when British deterrence policy was invented, it looked pretty terrifying: (emphasis mine)
Posted by Chris Lightfoot, Monday, 25 April 2005 14:32 (link):
What Eben said, basically. If you have the bomb then other people (at least, other people who are at least somewhat rational) can't credibly threaten you with a nuclear attack; if you don't, they can. Of course, once every country has gone through that reasoning, they'll all want the bomb (Oh look! Turns out lots of them do!). But I'm only considering what our policy should be, and a change from the status quo seems likely to decrease our security, not increase it.
Posted by dsquared, Monday, 25 April 2005 17:16 (link):
Presumably a policy of "unilateral nuclear disarmament" for the UK is de facto a policy of "hiding behind the skirts of Uncle Sam"[1]; the idea being that we could actually get rid of our little comedy nuclear deterrent (and probably even get rid of the nuke-support surveillance systems at Fylingdales[?sp]) and the USA would still probably do something about it if we got nuked. Hence, we retain all the advantages of deterrence plus a small cash saving. I am not sure that this actually what the Greens want, but nor am I sure that it isn't what I'd like to see. The general concept of "running up someone else's tab" is core to my political philosophy.
[1]This metaphor will be seen soon in a Thomas Friedman column.
Posted by Chris Lightfoot, Monday, 25 April 2005 18:16 (link):
I'd be surprised if the Americans would be at all happy about dismantling Fylingdales. I think they need it to see missiles that are heading their way. (The claim is that it has a tracking range of about 3,000 miles with 360° coverage; if taken literally, that looks like this, so that it ought to be able to detect missiles launched from such WMD-infested locations as: anywhere in Europe, much of the Arctic, north Africa, parts of the Arabian peninsula, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, etc.)
I am fully in favour of your `running up someone else's tab' philosophy but it would rather leave us in the shit if the Americans ever decided that they didn't fancy starting a nuclear war over somebody else blowing up (say) London. (Or, indeed, decided that they fancied blowing up London themselves. That said, I don't know if the software in the Trident missiles lets us point them at the Americans.)
Posted by Michael Stillwell, Monday, 25 April 2005 23:00 (link):
The thing I don't get about Fylingdales is that you can easily get to within a mile or so of main boxy bit in a car. So, whilst taking it out is probably going to be out of the question for Joe Terrorist and his shoulder-mounted rocket launcher, I don't see how it could reasonably be defended against some group that actually had the capacity to launch the sort of weapons that Fylingdales is apparently looking for. (I mean, if you're able to launch multiple ICBMs or whatever then I don't see that disabling Fylingdales would be much of a problem for you.) Now I'm sure they've thought of this but I don't know what I'm missing...
Posted by Daniel Davies, Monday, 25 April 2005 23:45 (link):
Magic LASER satellites in the sky, innit?
Posted by Chris Lightfoot, Tuesday, 26 April 2005 00:47 (link):
Apparently the designers of the thing noticed that people might want to shoot RPGs at it from boats, and so moved it away from the coast:
but the possibility that THE TERRORISTS might arrive by road was discounted during these plans.
Equally reassuringly,
Slightly less reassuringly, it appears that would mean losing all warning of missiles launched from Europe, the Middle East, north Africa, and parts of the Ukraine and European Russia.
Posted by Colin Teubner, Tuesday, 26 April 2005 18:53 (link):
We would never blow up London. Where would we go, then, to take pictures of each other in quaint red telephone booths, and overpay for literally everything? Incidentally, since most Americans see the UK as either 'feisty little brother' or 'demented great-grandfather', I think an attack of any sort upon it would invoke plenty of American wrath. (I, for the record, see the UK as an Important And Relevant Sovereign Nation, but what do I know.)
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