Forget Faslane 185


With this country’s massive needs in housing and renewable energy, it is typical that the only public spending announcement the Tories wish to make is on more potential for death and destruction at Faslane. The politics of the ludicrous claims on employment creation are risibly transparent. Don’t vote SNP! Don’t Vote Corbyn! This is not an industrial or a services economy, its the WMD economy.

I was frustrated during the referendum campaign by the mealy-mouthed response to the unionists constant carping on about job losses at Faslane. Chucking out Trident will cause job losses. Good. Doing evil should not be sustained as a job creation scheme.

It is like arguing to keep the Spanish Inquisition going because of the workers it employs. Woodcutters gather the material for the burning alive of heretics. Skilled workers lay the faggots and construct the bonfires. Blacksmiths forge fetters and implements of torture. Then the torturers themselves have good steady jobs, and what of the clerks who write down the confessions? Ending the Spanish Inquisition would cause economic disruption.

I think that pushes the parallel far enough, but it is a sad comment on our moral relativism that anyone is allowed to talk of employment at Faslane as a bonus without being roundly ridiculed and socially shamed. As usual Osborne’s numbers are a trick of mostly totaling existing plans over a lengthy period. But even if this was genuine investment, he should be told where to stuff it. Scotland must not be a WMD based economy.


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185 thoughts on “Forget Faslane

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  • John Spencer-Davis

    Winkletoe
    31/08/2015 3:40pm

    Nonsense. Of course I understood his point. The way he put it was callous, and I still say so.

    John

  • John Spencer-Davis

    Republicofscotland
    31/08/2015 3:22pm

    Very sorry to read about this, but it doesn’t surprise me. You know how enamoured I am of Iain Duncan Smith and his merry throng.

    I have completed scores of Attendance Allowance forms for people, and I believe they are deliberately designed to make people throw them aside in disgust. Two questions very early on are about toilet functions, and they always upset people, always. They could at least situate them so that the form is well completed before the most intrusive and embarrassing questions.

    Kind regards,

    John

  • Pan

    John Spencer-Davis
    31 Aug, 2015 – 3:44 pm

    “[sic]

    Bad manners.”

    Yes, on reflection, I agree. That was thoughtless of me.

    “Make sure everything you write from now on is letter-perfect, won’t you.”

    I do my best.

  • John Spencer-Davis

    Pan
    31/08/2015 3:56pm

    Lol we do seem to rub each other up the wrong way, don’t we? A shame, because I don’t think we are that far apart in our positions.

    John

  • fedup

    Trouble with thinking locally is; the bigger picture gets fuzzy and makes no sense.

    As the Saudi buy seventy two Typhoon fighters
    , and even little Oman buying 12 of the same, what the hell are these countries going to do with these expensive assets? They cannot even wield it and hit the potential enemy on the head with it, as these are way too heavy.

    But the path of Peking order in the imperial world is; for the less powerful to help subsidies the cost of development (hence keep the companies and their shareholders in the gravy) of any weapons system. WMD by their very nature cannot be sold to any Saudi et al. Hence we in the UK become the “bitches” to the pimps of the death and destruction on behalf of the veracious arms companies. These companies have become so accustomed to charge the earth for absolutely crap shit without much utility built into it other than death and destruction.

    Hence the huge bill for Trident, that incidentally we do not have the fire code for them! So if we were to call on our “investment” ie order to fire these, was sent to the submarine captain. Sadly he could only break wind and not much else in anger, until those good ol boys in US release the fire and activation code to us! This is kind of use of the propriety software, you can install it but if you want to use you have apply for an activation code.

    However our dear leaders cannot come out and admit to being the “bitches” so instead they have figured out stacks of stories included the appeal to the personal greed of their constituencies; “jobs at risk”!

    Fact that the oligarch owned media do not and will not hint at such imperial arrangements helps a great deal to perpetuate the absolute bunkum that is being fed to we the people in the way of disinformation. This is done in the way of “informing” us all, so that we all come to the “right conclusions”.

  • Alcyone

    John Spencer-Davis
    31 Aug, 2015 – 11:55 am

    “Craig Murray
    31/08/2015 11:28am

    “Chucking out Trident will cause job losses. Good.”

    Not good at all. Imagine being one of the people put out of work.”
    _____________
    I have heard of the milk of human kindness, but I never thought I would meet the original cow. However, I am now reminded that such is the source of all bullshit.

    Of all the people in the world, you are asking Craig to “Imagine being one of the people put out of work.”??!! Have you no idea what Craig has been persistently going through because he is a straight-talker and, unlike you, is true to himself? Have you no idea of his continuing financial difficulties which he has had the courage to be candid about? What is Craig supposed to do with your shallow “kind regards”?

    And are you not aware that there are laws in this country to deal with redundancies? Redundancies don’t only happen, potentially, at Faslane, they happen everywhere, every day! Are you seeking them out and blowing kisses and your ‘kind regards’ to them? So on top of being an arse, you are a fake. I fully agree with Craig that potential redundies at Faslane are a “good” problem to have. In fact I would go further and support the dismantling of the whole offensive military-machine and happily create a few more redundancies, while freeing up able-bodied, intelligent people to do more constructive work. After all, it is all about putting men and materials together in order to build anything. We need to build and not destroy.

    Now kindly bugger off with your ‘kind regards’ and next time please think before you speak. Before you try, as hard as you do, to appear such an empathetic man. Shallow arse.

  • Pan

    John Spencer-Davis
    31 Aug, 2015 – 4:05 pm

    “Lol we do seem to rub each other up the wrong way, don’t we?”

    Yes.

    “A shame, because I don’t think we are that far apart in our positions.”

    Quite possibly.

    Look forward to sparring with you again!

    Pan

  • bevin

    This discussion raises the question of what sort of economy we want. After a couple of centuries of liberal and neo-liberal political economy people are reluctant to face up to the fact that capitalism and what is known among satirists as the free market system leads inevitably to unemployment and enormous inequalities. Some people have enormous power while many others, without any resources but their potential to labour, starve without employment.

    Add to this the fact that the “free market” pays no attention to human-let alone social-needs and diverts scarce resources to the production of superfluous and in some cases suicidal goods-such as nuclear submarines armed with nuclear missiles- and there is a fairly clear case to discuss the possible alternatives to an economic system whose outcomes are rarely useful and potentially catastrophic.

    Craig is correct to suggest that almost anything is better than continuing the Trident project, but so are those who insist that there be immediate measures taken to bring about full employment and end the scandalous increase of real poverty, a famine in effect, which is driving people to suicide, crime, prostitution and other concomitants of a system which has never worked and is urgently in need of replacement.

  • glenn

    Another thing Pam and John have in common is this curious habit of signing their respective names each time, at the end of whatever they’ve written. Curious, because everyone can see the name of the author of each comment. It would be rather odd if it were signed as someone else – so why bother wasting space with the bleedin’ obvious on every single post?

  • Republicofscotland

    The Whitehall gazette aka the Telegraph newspaper, attacking Jeremy Corbyn, what surprise eh..

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/Jeremy_Corbyn/11834653/Jeremy-Corbyn-calls-death-of-Osama-bin-Laden-a-tragedy.html

    Don’t listen to unionist propaganda the North seas assets are still in big big demand. Scotland desperately needs independence to have control over its assets.

    The North Sea’s biggest gas field discovery in a decade has been approved for production by Britain’s oil and gas authority, paving the way for a £3bn investment from Danish giant Maersk that could supply 5pc of UK consumption.

    The Culzean field is the largest to be approved since East Bray in 1990 and is expected to hold up to the equivalent of 300m barrels of oil, Maersk said on Monday.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/11834680/Biggest-North-Sea-gas-discovery-in-a-decade-approved.html

  • John Spencer-Davis

    Glenn
    31/08/2015 5:16pm

    Usually, I am addressing someone directly, so I personalise my response.

    Sorry if it irritates you, but that really does not seem to me to be a good enough reason to change the way I am.

    I imagine it slides right past most people and they don’t care much, but it matters to me.

    If you mean Pan, I don’t think she or he does.

    John

  • Alcyone

    Pan
    31 Aug, 2015 – 2:24 pm
    “@John Spencer-Davis

    31 Aug, 2015 – 12:23 pm “They’re not demons for working where they do.”

    What are they then? Angels?

    @KingOfWelshNoir

    31 Aug, 2015 – 12:34 pm “I would never condemn a man for working in an armaments factory if it was the only way he could feed his family.”

    Working in a bomb factory is NEVER the only way to feed a family.

    I ALWAYS condemn the men, but especially the women (who should know better than the men) who build these foul manifestations of evil.

    I would sooner starve to death than work for an industry that is responsible for the killing and maiming of innocent men, women and children all over the globe.”
    _____________
    Well said, Pan!

    I am reminded of Einstein’s thinking. e live in a world today of cliched fools who masquerade as so-called intellectuals, devoid of statesmen and original thinkers. I thought it worthwhile to repeat a quote of this wise man:

    “He who joyfully marches to music rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.”

  • Alcyone

    John, I hope the lengths of my comments are to your satisfaction and intelligible!

    May I sign off with a 😉 ?

  • falloch

    I live just down the road from Faslane: the propaganda pre-indy-ref about job losses and the base closing was fervid, and there was a definite tension in the air, but YES was successful in the Helensburgh area and Brendan O’Hara’s now a very capable SNP defense spokesperson with local knowledge. No doubt the officer class and the transient submariners that stay in Faslane’s numerous halls of residence and go back Sarf when on leave either wanted Bitter Together or didn’t really care (8 months previous to indy-ref I had English-officer class neighbours just shrugging and saying ‘get this Scots-placating farce over with’ – they quieted down closer to September) but I’ve a few acquaintances amongst the MoD Police, who said there were LOADS of them that wanted YES. As for our Labour MSP Jackie Baillie: a few years ago, she (uninvited) attended a Hiroshima lantern floating at Helensburgh pier, and when confronted by local CND members about Labour’s abandoning unilateralism, said the moral argument was sound, but ‘putting morality aside, we need the jobs.’ The tragedy is that this is a locality where thousands of people derive their livelihood from a place whose only reason for existence is to threaten the lives of millions – and I am sure it casts a dark psychological shadow over the area: so many people who say ‘I hate working there, I hate what it stands for, but I need the money. At least, if it all kicks off, I won’t even know about it – I’ll be one of the first to go.’ Sad – and that’s before even addressing the fact that so much money is spent so uselessly, when it is desperately needed elsewhere. When I’m on the bus home and going past this huge razor-wire-enclosed complex, I feel like we’re under occupation.

  • Alcyone

    Glenn
    31 Aug, 2015 – 5:16 pm

    ” Another thing Pam and John have in common is this curious habit of signing their respective names each time, at the end of whatever they’ve written. Curious, because everyone can see the name of the author of each comment. It would be rather odd if it were signed as someone else – so why bother wasting space with the bleedin’ obvious on every single post?”
    __________
    Glenn, Ego?

    PS to be fair that is another of JSD’s distinctive trade marks to present himself as being somewhat more kindly, than the rest of us humans. Pan I think used it only once or twice probably in trying to mirror John’s ‘protocol’.

    Note also how is ‘kind regards’ drop off when he is in disagreement! Very selective compassion. Bloody fake, with not an original thought.

  • Resident Dissident

    “Add to this the fact that the “free market” pays no attention to human-let alone social-needs and diverts scarce resources to the production of superfluous and in some cases suicidal goods-such as nuclear submarines armed with nuclear missiles- and there is a fairly clear case to discuss the possible alternatives to an economic system whose outcomes are rarely useful and potentially catastrophic.”

    I very much doubt that free markets divert scarce resources to the building of nuclear submarines – even neo liberals accept that there are some common goods such as defence and law and order that have to be provided by the state rather than markets. As for the questions as to what goods and services should be provided by the State and what shouldn’t and how the National Investment Bank should work it is noteworthy how the far left really don’t have much of a clue in practice other than resorting to the usual shibboleths.

  • Alcyone

    Falloch
    31 Aug, 2015 – 5:34 pm

    Thank you for that nuanced and sensitive comment.

    I am more than confident that something substantially more constructive can be made out of the place and with its local people should the opportunity arise.

  • Alcyone

    John Spencer-Davis
    31 Aug, 2015 – 5:23 pm

    “Glenn
    31/08/2015 5:16pm

    Usually, I am addressing someone directly, so I personalise my response.

    Sorry if it irritates you, but that really does not seem to me to be a good enough reason to change the way I am.

    I imagine it slides right past most people and they don’t care much, but it matters to me.

    If you mean Pan, I don’t think she or he does.

    John”
    _______
    Why no ‘kind regards’ to Glenn? Is he less-deserved of your grace?

    Btw you do enjoy signing off your name regardless of whether your comment is personally directed or not. So that is a lie. You like to blow your ‘kind regards’ into the air.

    And what of your personalising your question of our host, i.e. asking him to “Imagine being one of the people put out of work” How sensitive was that?

    Finally I don’t think Glenn was getting irritated, nor am I, just an observation of distinctive redundancy! Ha, back on topic.

  • fedup

    free markets divert scarce resources to the building of nuclear submarines – even neo liberals accept that there are some common goods such as defence and law and order that have to be provided by the state rather than markets

    What sophistry?

    The companies getting the contracts for manufacturing the extortionately expensive and useless destructive constructs are indeed not the very manifestation of the “free market” claptrap.

    These crooks do not even worry about providing any warranty cover for these constructs, after all what terms of warranty can cover; blowing up the Earth to kingdom come?

    “Law and order” nice sound bite, the degree of the misrepresentation, obfuscates the fact that “scarcity of resources” economics instead of scarcity of human assets indeed can have weird consequences, included recourse to “crime” for survival of the very pervasive and plentiful human beings that are so despised by the neolibral tossers and the so called environmentalists alike. As the misanthropy and promotion of hatred of human being in one form or another carries on unabated.

  • KingOfWelshNoir

    Alcyone

    In rebuttal of my earlier comment you quote Einstein:

    ‘…how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.’

    This would be the same Einstein who fled Europe when the Nazis seized power and went to live in the US. Meanwhile many men from that country— soldiers whom he disparages — travelled in the other direction and laid down their lives to rid the continent of the Nazis. Perhaps he should have been a bit more grateful for their sacrifice.

  • Republicofscotland

    “To think public funds were used to commission this.”
    _________________

    Thanks for the link Mary, I’m no oil painting myself but IDS is indeed a ugly b*stard.

    He’s also a lying one too boot.

    Iain Duncan Smith’s biography on the Conservative Party website, his entry in Who’s Who, and various other places, state that he went to the Universita di Perugia in Italy.

    This is not true: his office now admit that he went to the Universita per Stranieri, which is also in Perugia.

    Mr Duncan Smith’s office has now admitted to Newsnight that he didn’t get any qualifications in Perugia or even finish his exams.

    The first line of Iain Duncan Smith’s biography, on the Conservative Party website, claims he was “educated at Dunchurch College of Management”.

    In fact, Dunchurch was the former staff college for GEC Marconi, for whom he worked in the 1980s.

    Mr Duncan Smith’s office has now confirmed to Newsnight that he did not get any qualifications there either, but that he completed six separate courses lasting a few days each, adding up to about a month in total.

    Betsy Fremantle Smith (IDS wife) was paid £18,000 from Parliamentary Staffing Allowance. The Commons Standards Committee, investigating the situation in 2003, found that she was doing non-constituency work.

    So here we have a guy who was nothing more than a grunt in the Scots Guards, and has no educational qualifications whatsoever, running UK’s welfare system.

  • Republicofscotland

    I am more than confident that something substantially more constructive can be made out of the place and with its local people should the opportunity arise.”
    __________

    Duh! You dont say where have you been for the past two years?

    There is only one opportunity and that’s independence, Faslane has been earmarked by the Scottish government’s (whitepaper) as a conventional naval base once Trident has been given the boot.

  • John Spencer-Davis

    Republicofscotland
    31/08/2015 6:58pm

    I would like to see the evidence put before the Commons Standards Committee that Betsy Duncan Smith was doing any work whatsoever that justified her being paid £18,000 of public money. I doubt that very much.

    A little while back I posted a link to the statement by Vanessa Gearson, who was well placed to know, that Betsy Duncan Smith did sod all. I’ll extract the relevant part(s) of her statement and post them up.

    Kind regards,

    John

  • Habbabkuk (la vita e' bella)

    Doris ( 13h41)

    “With CameraOn pushing off to lucrative City directorships in the not too distant future, Gideon sees himself as his successor …etc, etc..”

    __________________________

    That is the problem with having young Prime Ministers, they have years and years of active life left after they leave office.

    Personally I should like it to be legally necessary for a PM to be at least 50 years old (and 35 for MPs).

  • Habbabkuk (la vita e' bella)

    Doris ( 18h18 )

    “Falloch Also thanks from me for your comment and for its context in this thread.”
    ______________

    What was that about me on the last thread, sounding “magisterial”? 🙂

  • RobG

    @KingOfWelshNoir
    31 Aug, 2015 – 6:43 pm

    Although Einstein’s theories (E=MC2 and all that) were at the base of the development of the Bomb, Einstein himself never actually worked on the Manhattan Project, or any other a-bomb programs. Revisionist history says that this was because Einstein was considered a security risk, whereas the fact is that Einstein had morals and refused to take part in weapons of mass destruction.

    Even Oppenheimer, who headed the Manhattan Project, expressed grave doubts about the morality of the Bomb, and would later be hounded in the 1950s during the McCarthy witch hunts. One person who testified against Oppenheimer in the 1950s was Edward Teller, the ‘father of the H-Bomb’, who was a truly evil bastard.

  • Anon1

    “Craig is correct to suggest that almost anything is better than continuing the Trident project, but so are those who insist that there be immediate measures taken to bring about full employment and end the scandalous increase of real poverty, a famine in effect, which is driving people to suicide, crime, prostitution and other concomitants of a system which has never worked and is urgently in need of replacement.”

    A famine no less! Are we in danger of Bevin and the far-left over egging the pudding?

    Key word = replacement.

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