[Tubby Isaacs]

https://uk.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/greenl ... -statement

This would seem to be the UK, together with France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland and Denmark making a strong joint statement on Greenland against Trump on 6 January.

Andy Beckett today:

some belatedly tough words from Starmer about Greenland on Wednesday

And BTL in response to someone calling him out.

You're right, Starmer did stand up to Trump effectively over Greenland on Wednesday. But the fact that's so noteworthy is because it has happened so rarely. He has been much slower to criticise Trump than Macron, Carney etc..

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... nald-trump

Andy Beckett has been around long enough to do better than this.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Man's a cunt.

[Tubby Isaacs]

He's an able writer, but he's decided to chase the easy clicks of "Starmer-establishment-loves America-Europe is standing up to Trump". Beckett at least doesn't crowbar in Brexit to this analysis, which others do.

[Youngian]

The governnment's short term tactics are clear- don't upset the orange man baby for the sake of Ukraine. Buy what is the government's future geopolitical security strategy? I know which way France, Canada, Germany and the Nordics are leaning. But for all I know the British position is lets cross our fingers and hope Trump is a just a passing Bobby Ewing in the shower bad dream.

[Tubby Isaacs]

On Trident? I don’t know. That is certainly a worry.

The UK has though tried to integrate with the EU more generally on Defence. (Some) EU members asked the UK for a ridiculous amount of money to join its programme properly.

[The Weeping Angel]

They're making a fresh attempt.

[Andy McDandy]

"Ya know what? I'm doing a new deal with the Krauts!"

[Bones McCoy]

"Ya know what? I'm doing a new deal with the Krauts!"

Two very different approaches to their military.

Britain may have a small military, but can check all the boxes for modern force:
Land, sea and air, all highly professional and mostly well equipped.

Germany is coming from a citizen army model and retains a multi-generational distaste for aggressive militarism.

One of the UKs weaknesses is procurement.
We have (to put it politely) made a total arse of new kit.
* The L85A1 was (in first issue) unreliable, fixed in the L85A3, that's a gap between 1990 and 2018.
* The development costs of the AJAX tracked infantry fighting vehicle have topped £3.8 Billion, it still induces nausea in most of its passengers.

By contrast, the German army has a Puma IFV and more servicable battle rifles.


I'll warm you, there's a lengthy ramble ahead.

The period between the first and second world wars saw significant shrinkage of military manufacture.
This resulted in closures (most prominently shipyards), mergers (the UK dominated by Enfiend, Vickers and Bedford) and a search for efficiency.

Even a world power like the UK realised we could not do it all.
We shopped around to fill emerging gaps in our arsenal.
The best known examples being the Swedish Bofors Gun and the American Tommy Gun.

Only the air industry escaped this shrinkage, maintaining a big range of manufacturers and volumes.
This owes a lot to the novel nature and rapid advances in aircraft technology.

The inter-war model isn't perfect, but does incorporate some examples of "good practice on a tight budget".


Wind the clock forward to the Cold War and NATO.
NATO may be many things to many people.
One of its major successes is as a standards organisation.
When NATO armies take the field, their infantry rifles, machineguns, light vehicle cannon, and field artillery pieces all use the same ammunition.
A Danish infantry commander could roll up at a British base and draw down fully compatible ammunition for his troops.

The kit they use is often different.
Most nations have a distinct national rifle, through the bullets and magazines are interchangeable.
We have different tanks and vehicles - politics affects procurement decisions.
But there are also joint development efforts - Eurofighter is well known.
Boxer is a German - Dutch developed 8 wheel infantry fighting vehicle used in many European armies.

What I would like to see:
Greater acceptance of mergers and standard kit.
Similar to the inter-war picture.
Instead of pissing almost 4 billion up the wall on AJAX, take a look at the best in class among our allies.
Adopt is, and get it built here.
Never underestimate the power of "We'll take 500, but you have to build a factory here".

I know there are brass in the services who insist on l specific localisations, often for good reason.
"The Dutch won't be operating in South Georgia".
So it's necessary to get not only the factory, but some input into the design process.
This isn't new - again harking back to the inter-war period.

Sweden didn't crank out Bofors Guns for themselves, Germany, Poland, Belgium, Greece, Italy, Dominions UK and Empire and the USA.
They lacked the capacity, so issued Licenses to major users, a right to manufacture at home and pay a fee for each one.
Both UK and USA customized the design for ease and speed of manufacture while still under license.

I would like to see the flexibility and standardisation of the best military kit expand.
Ideally under something like the inter-war licensing system, and with NATO continuing to manage the standards.
It won't be a quick thing to do.
The drawing board (computer) to prototype stage now costs billions.
I believe this will provide significant savings and deliver (that word) reliable kit, in volume, to the troops who need it.

[Youngian]

France's post war national defence procurement proved to be very costly and ineffective. The US is a country with a federal government that can dish out contracts to various states. And of course tie its NATO allies to US kit. One of a number of good reasons why high US defence around the globe isn't a charity that Trump thinks it is. Replicating this model among a collection of allied sovereign states is a trickier proposition but where there's a will...

[Bones McCoy]

France's post war national defence procurement proved to be very costly and ineffective. The US is a country with a federal government that can dish out contracts to various states. And of course tie its NATO allies to US kit. One of a number of good reasons why high US defence around the globe isn't a charity that Trump thinks it is. Replicating this model among a collection of allied sovereign states is a trickier proposition but where there's a will...

I know relatively little about modern stuff.
I got hooked on gluing plastic Airfix kits together and I latches onto the World War 2 aesthetic.

I heard last night that there are several supra-national initiatives, mostly grown from EU organisations.
https://defence-industry-space.ec.europ ... ndustry_en

Words like capability, joint development and gap analysis.

My previous long ramble took a lot from the alliances forming in the 1930s (in the face of aggression) and the shape of the resulting rearmament.
I heard Mark Carney's DAVOS speech this morning, and felt it ticked much of my thinking.
* Mid-size nations allying on common causes and values.
* If you're not at the table, you're on the menu.
* Don't be a "pick me" little country.


This stuff has worked, and can work.
It must be done right.
We won't achieve meaningful cooperation or integration if we only have a group of industry conglomerates.
For that we require alliances and national commitment.

[Tubby Isaacs]

They're making a fresh attempt.

Stella Creasey, to her credit, mentioned the behaviour of some EU members in her article about the need to get closer to the EU again. Usually, it isn't mentioned, just some stuff about "Starmer's red lines", or Starmer "refusing to say Brexit was a failure" every 5 minutes.

I hope some progress can be made on this. It's not obvious to me what massive point of principle is at stake here for the EU hardliners. The principle of non-members paying to participate in EU programmes is well-established, and the UK's just done it with Erasmus.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Latest attempt at "Starmer is actually more rightwing than Trump".

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ir-starmer

Wall Street landlords have met a surprising opponent in Trump. So why is Starmer courting them?
Adam Almeida

"Courting" here means trying to get homes built when there's a massive shortage of them. Quite how "Wall Street landlords" can raise rents in real terms by getting lots of houses built and then letting them out, isn't entirely clear.

Trump's opposition, assuming it amounts to anything beyond trying to extort the people building housing for rent, is just standard cross party populism. Citing this as some sort of serious marker of politics is like citing Trump's 2016 position that people like him were going to pay a lot more tax. Populists alight on anything convenient.

The Government has a plan to build more social homes, despite the Guardian's reluctance to remember it. But lots of the work on housing generally will have to be done by market-rate supply. Its BTL audience (who are always telling us too much money is spent in London, with some justification) seem to envisage a load more money being spent there to provide cheap flats for young professionals like them. Housing the London poor better is an important priority. Hard to see how why people like them are.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Bit of classic Guardian here.

City minister accused of ignoring £2bn car finance tax loophole
Critics say banks will be able to avoid tax on compensation payouts to victims of £11bn loans scandal

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... x-loophole

As always, the article has a point. Quite clearly, this money being paid out for wrongdoing could be a non-allowable tax deducting, as it would be for a bank. But that would have a large effect- car finance, an important sector, would have a fairly substantial hole which would likely need to be filled by increased charges. Would that be better for those costs to be spread over all tax payers, or just the much smaller number who might need car finance? Lots of electric cars won't get bought if we make finance much more expensive.

It's easy to tot up stuff like this and come up with some big figure for "corporate welfare" which can easily be abolished and used to fund everything we like. And in the interests of simplicity, this might be a good idea. But it's not as straightforward as these articles make it seem.

Another thing- this article says that this deduction will save the car finance industry £2bn. I keep hearing how business doesn't pay any tax. £2bn out £11bn is a decent amount of tax.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Hopes dashed as ‘Waspi women’ again denied state pension compensation

Great unbiased headline there.

I think I could invent an acronym and convince the Guardian that we were massively deserving of money off the Government.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2026/ ... mpensation


The Parliamentary Ombudsman is mentioned, like the Government (and previous government) overruling this obscure person's ruling is some sort of unprecedented shock. Perhaps this ombudsman could take up a few more causes which we could then consider the Government has a moral right to fund?

[The Weeping Angel]

https://www.eclecticblue.org.uk/sad-sweet-dreamers/

The editorial stance of The Guardian newspaper, as well as the opinions of its columnists, is of little relevance to The Great British Public. Certainly not compared to that of the Mail, Sun and the rest of the gutter press, which these days includes The Times and the Telegraph, who despite their declining readership retain a massive influence on our politics. Since around 1975, I have bought The Guardian, for specific reasons: its editorial and the opinions of its hacks were general close to my own. And let’s face it, generally speaking you are not going to buy a newspaper which relentlessly bangs out opinions you don’t share and even loathe, are you? (My late stepfather said he bought the Sunday Express “for the crossword” not because he always voted Conservative, which of course he did.) My political views have barely changed in 50 years. The Guardian has long left me behind.

I have not bought a physical newspaper in many years, preferring these days to access my news via the internet. Because I value good quality journalism, particularly that of a centre-left nature, I have paid an annual three figure subscription. I felt this was exceptionally good value given how much my partner and I devoured its content. But while my political views remain rooted in what I would call Blairism – I was a Blairite long before Tony came along – The Guardian has changed.

I have never forgiven The Guardian for its decision in 2010 to decision to urge its readers to not vote for Labour. The Guardian announced that “if it had a vote it would be cast enthusiastically for the Liberal Democrats. But under our discredited electoral system some people may – hopefully for the last time – be forced to vote tactically.” Labour had completed 13 successful years when under Tony Blair and then Gordon Brown the country had got better, as it claimed it would back in 1997. Not only had it repaired public services, especially the NHS, people were better off. Brown had even taken a leading role in the world’s response to the worldwide financial crash of 2008. The Guardian, however, was taken in by the suave bullshit of Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, a charlatan who ended up going into government with David Cameron’s austerity-heavy Conservative party and proceeded to wreak havoc with the country, particularly regarding the less well-off and the vulnerable. Fast forward 16 years and The Guardian is in attack mode, not so much against Nigel Farage’s increasingly fascist private company Reform UK Ltd, but against Labour itself.

Every day – and I am not exaggerating, here – I am treated to at last one article by one of the many Oxford educated middle class luvvies in its ranks attacking Labour and its leader Sir Keir Starmer. Now, there is not a single hack who so much as defends Labour, never mind writes positively about it. The attacks are utterly relentless and, in my view, part of a deliberate campaign to remove a democratically elected Prime Minister and his government.

Call me a snowflake, but I am not prepared to pay what is for me a substantial wedge in order to fund a relentless and frequently abusive and vicious anti-Labour campaign. I am very much in favour of a balanced debate because I do not suggest for a moment that Labour has got everything right so far. It hasn’t. But actually, away from the hysterical Guardian offerings, the government has actually done a pretty good job delivering on its election promises, on things like improving the NHS, bringing the railways under public ownership and many other things. If you glance across the pages of the paper, you would never know.

I have considered getting rid of my subscription for some time now and have now reached the point where I can no longer go on paying for something so opposed to the things and people I believe in. Some have suggested that The Guardian, unlike the rest of the press, is coming at Labour from the hard left and there is some truth in that. Hacks like the wretched Owen Jones, Aditya Chakrabortty and Andy Beckett are clearly enjoying their vicious and often personal attacks on Labour in general and Starmer in particular, while even so-called ‘moderate’ columnists like Polly Toynbee have turned against both, with varying degrees of venom. And what the paper doesn’t have is balance. I do not expect a Pravda-type sucking-up article about Labour every day, but I also do not expect the one-way traffic. In terms of conscience alone, I can no longer justify subscribing.

The Guardian boasts frequently that ‘Comment Is Free’ on its online pages, but it isn’t. The moderators of its comment pages do not tolerate alternative views, no matter how polite you are. A couple of years I was suspended from commenting on anything on its website for calling out its chief weasel Owen Jones, not even using the word weasel, which he is, or anything else derogatory. I just disagreed and I, a paid subscriber, was banned from commenting until I accepted that I must not say anything other than praise of The Guardian’s hacks. So much for Comment Is Free. At The Guardian these days, comment is only free if you agree. I’m not having that.

These days, The Guardian with its 60,000 readers (of its hard copy), is no better than the right-wing gutter press in its loathing of that rarity in British politics, a Labour government. Perhaps, there is an element of snobbery from within the paper since, as I pointed out earlier, the vast majority of its writers are Oxford University graduates and indeed some are products of elite private schools, and this Labour government is comprised almost entirely of state school educated pupils, including the Prime Minister himself. I certainly detect snobbery from the sneering hard left middle classes who quite fancy a hard left Labour government but unlike millions of working class people don’t really need one. It’s the old Bennite/Corbyn argument that they need to build ‘a movement’, not actually a government. Sad sweet dreamers, one and all.

When and if I let go of The Guardian I shall miss it. Their sports writers are outstanding, I love Alexis Petridis’s writing about music, John Crace’s political sketches are sublime, I love the travel articles and quite a lot else. But none of that can make up for the politics of the paper, which I predict will lean towards Zack Polanski’s joke Greens, the ultimate Toytown revolutionaries. Voting Green could well allow Farage to sneak into Downing Street – is that what The Guardian really wants? From where I am sitting, it certainly looks like it. And I am not paying for it to happen. I’ll certainly miss it, but then I thought I would miss a hard copy of the paper. I don’t.

I’m one of those people who would always vote Labour, even if a monkey was in charge. Indeed, I did exactly that when Jeremy Corbyn led the party to electoral disaster in 2019. What I won’t do is buy a newspaper that seeks to destroy a Labour government. Carry on attacking Labour but not with my money.

A few years ago, The Guardian suggested “journalism is in free fall.” Who knew they were talking about themselves?

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Spot on.
I am cancelling my subscription for precisely those reasons.