The Labour Party. All discussion here please

[alchresearch]

or ukraine. deterents are very handy when you need to deter someone.

 

Then it very much depends on who your neighbours are.

 

Out of all the countries Vague Boy posted:

 

Spain. Or Germany. Or Sweden. Or Ireland. Or Italy. Or Norway. Or Australia. Or Canada.

 

How many are threatened by their bigger neighbour?

[L00b]

Then it very much depends on who your neighbours are.

 

Out of all the countries Vague Boy posted:

 

Spain. Or Germany. Or Sweden. Or Ireland. Or Italy. Or Norway. Or Australia. Or Canada.

 

How many are threatened by their bigger neighbour?

How many are NATO members under the umbrella of the US, British and French nuclear arsenals?

 

And do you think the US, British and French let them forget the fact, at useful times?

[unbeliever]

Depleted uranium shells are not 'nuclear'.

 

They have a small element of radioactivity, but that's part and parcel of getting the job done faster, better and safer for our troops (whose AH-64 attack choppers also use these).

 

You aren't ever going to stop the technological escalation of warfare (depleted uranium shells were created to defeat improved armour: if the enemy has better armoured tanks, and APCs and whatnot, you need something still better to knock them out). Thousands of years of warfare proves so.

 

We could do without those munitions I suppose, but then everybody must agree not to whinge if, as and when more British troops should get killed doing the same job of fighting better armoured foes in the course of performing their duties. If you won't agree to it, perhaps you'd prefer the older Russian option of strapping landmines to dogs and training them to go fetch their food under enemy tanks?

 

War. Ugly business, whichever way you look at it. But sometimes unavoidable. Like 70 years ago, and many more before and since I'm sure. And still as inherently human a 'problem solver' as thousands of years ago.

 

There is a valid point about organising their clean-up after a conflict ends, just like landmines (which, though not nuclear or even radioactive, have long been -and remain- far more of a post-war problem).

 

You also make a valid comment about Bush and Rumsfeld, but how are they relevant to Trident? Most of the budget would get spent in the UK, allocating work to UK firms providing UK jobs.

 

Quite so.

Depleted uranium is so called because it has had the fissionable material removed. It's what you have left over when you create enriched uranium usually for nuclear reactors.

It's used because it's very dense: 19g/cc (c.f. lead: 11.3g/cc), and therefore the same size shell does more damage on impact.

The half life of depleted uranium is 4.5 billion years which makes it only very mildly radioactive (c.f. enriched uranium: 700 million years and plutonium: 24 thousand years).

Anybody sick from being exposed to a depleted uranium shell either has chemical heavy metal poisoning from uranium dust, or trauma from shrapnel.

 

The LD50 for depleted uranium is about 100 ppm, and for lead is about 500 ppm.

You'd have a job to catch even mild radiation poisoning before you died of heavy metal poisoning.

[Alan Ladd]

You are entitled to your opinion, but please don't state it as of it's a fact.

 

And for your information I have never voted Labour.

 

I am indeed, please don't lecture me on the content of my submissions to this forum. Your interpretation of what I and others state is confrontational naive and in some cases insulting.

[Eric Arthur]

Then we'd be like, well, Spain. Or Germany. Or Sweden. Or Ireland. Or Italy. Or Norway. Or Australia. Or Canada.

 

Getting rid is not the same as never had, because

How many are NATO members under the umbrella of the US, British and French nuclear arsenals?

Which the UK sits at the head of, punching well above its weight, as it does in the UK.

Edited October 1, 2015 by Eric Arthur

[flamingjimmy]

You have completely missed the point.

 

Imagine the UK without nuclear weapons. Imagine Iran with them.

Imagine the UK without a UN Security Council veto. Imagine North Korea with one.

 

Nobody with any sense likes nuclear weapons but we hold our nose and put our principles aside to take the least worst option, mutual deterrent, something that Corbyn cant imagine himself doing, demonstrating his inability to be the leader of a nation.

 

This is how it is in the real world, principles work when everyone agrees. Unilateral principalism is just a pathetic ignorance of responsibility.

 

'this is how it is in the real world' oh really, North Korea getting a seat on the UN security council? Are you joking or just stupid?

[Eric Arthur]

'this is how it is in the real world' oh really, North Korea getting a seat on the UN security council? Are you joking or just stupid?

 

The phrase was "Imagine the UK without a UN Security Council veto. Imagine North Korea with one." There's a point being made which isn't very well hidden if you take the trouble to avoid being stupid.

[drummonds]

it seems mao tse corbyn has upset lord sugar now.

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/jeremy-corbyn-labour-party-lord-sugar-prime-minister-china-a6675276.html

 

If Jeremy Corbyn is elected Prime Minister in 2020 “we should all move to China,” Lord Sugar has said in a scathing attack on the new Labour leader.

 

The businessman and star of TV show The Apprentice, who quit the Labour party in the summer, suggested Britain should be left to “rot” if Mr Corbyn enters Downing Street and claimed that his approach to the housing crisis would “shut down” London’s booming property market.

 

He also hit out at Sadiq Khan, Labour’s candidate for London Mayor, describing him and Mr Corbyn as “Batman and Robin”.

 

 

it doesn't take folk long to cotton on to the fact that labour have appointed an utter oaf as leader.

Edited October 1, 2015 by drummonds

[Alan Ladd]

We will never get rid of nuclear weapons.

 

The Labour party will get rid of Corbyn. (By Easter)

[Obelix]

hey. if you think corbyn has blown it on trident, just wait until he gets round to making pulling out of nato a labour party policy.

 

He's already wanting to sign away the rights of a large number of people who desperatly want to remain British and not Argentinian.... I can easily see him removing us from NATO.

 

He's a dangerous idealistic fool who has no idea of the real world.

 

---------- Post added 01-10-2015 at 17:12 ----------

 

Quite so.

Depleted uranium is so called because it has had the fissionable material removed. .

 

I think you mean fissile, not fissionable. U238 can undergo fission from fast neutrons, but it cannot support a chain reaction.

 

It's biggest risk however is it's chemical toxicity, and it's pyrophoric nature. Most people dont realise how widespread it is - your average jumbo jet has hundreds of kilos of it on board to act as counterbalance weights for the control surfaces...