A threat to National Security? Micheal Fallon The patronising smirk of Preti Patel The Conservatives wasting no time (even if they do waste everything else) in putting out the bile and smear on our new leader. The hysterical, scaremonger rhetoric pouring out of Central Office and obviously written by some demented troll in the back room, is repeated parrot fashion by Priti Patel and Michael Fallon and the press and television news stations lap it up as a cat would lap cream. Did anyone notice that the first few lines of the interview with Fallon were repeat ed on every news programme from 5pm onward and on Sky News (the same 10 second clip was show 4 times in the space of three minutes) and the smirking Patel filled our screens with her patronising manner as she repeated the party line. The BBC news channels and Sky news certainly were quick to accept government instructions and play their part in the smearing and vilificatio...
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http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/feb/24/britain-to-send-military-advisers-to-ukraine-cameron#comment-48036283 Britain to send military advisers to Ukraine David Cameron This is a very bad idea. Not from any pacifist or pro Putin/Russia ideal, but from the viewpoint of practicalities. "Advisers" are invariably shortly followed by "support units" who are again invariably followed by "aircraft in a supporting role" and so on until, low and behold, someone suddenly realises that we have a full blown military presence in region. As was the case in Viet Nam through to Afghanistan and Iraq, history has always shown us that "mission creep" is not a question of numbers, it is a question of timescale. There are those in this country, as many of the comments in this section demonstrate, who are clearly of a gung ho mentality and still believe that we should bomb and smash the Russians as that great political thinker Kenny Ev...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/ministry-of-defence-shakeup-in-chaos-over-conflicts-of-interest-8723165.html Ministry of Defence shake-up in chaos over conflicts of interest The Defence Secretary, Philip Hammond Another government "privatisation plan" causing chaos. This time its the turn of the £14bn defence agency that buys the armed forces’ tanks and missiles which is in crisis, due to potential "conflicts of interest". The track record of this governments obsession with privatisation is littered with mistakes, costly errors and un foreseen consequences. All this, in the pursuit of selling our assets to their friends in business and industry, in exchange for covert funding and favour in the boardroom. Thirty pieces of silver have never been so tarnished.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/oct/29/tories-lib-dems-trident Philip Hammond announces go ahead for nuclear deterrent replacement before review completed Defence Secretary Philip Hammond . £1 billion deal paves the way for Trident nuclear deterrent replacement The myth of the "independent nuclear deterrent" gets another breath of life blown into it by Hammond's decisions to award a further multimillion-pound contract for a new generation of nuclear missile submarines, clearly signposting plans to press ahead with a replacement for Trident. Since the 1980's, and even before then, there are those of us who have argued that the "deterrent" is not independent (as we have to obtain launch codes before we can use it) and it does not deter as was demonstrated by the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands to name but one example. The "threat" is an empty one now and always has been. However, successive war mongering...