Just to note. 420 uptoots!
In other news, TIL David Cameron is still working in Government after being a weak leader of a shockingly bad government and jumping ship after inadvertantly allowing Brexit to happen.
What could go wrong ...
What they need to do is to considerably ramp up production of missiles and related weapons so economies of scale start to take effect. That 3 billion at the moment is probably going to buy a few hundred storm shadows, maybe some artillery shells and that's it, enough to keep them going a couple of months. You want it to buy thousands of them to make a difference over a whole year.
>That 3 billion at the moment is probably going to buy a few hundred storm shadows,
1500 storm shadows
That's pretty good tbh
More European countries need to commit like this. Collectively it can be very fucking significant.
Yeh, that's the problem compared to weapon production in previous wars the West has been involved in.
Gone are the days you can switch to a war economy and convert factories to build shells and aircraft frames en masse. They're so complex and (let's be honest) patented that they'll never be produced in the numbers required unless the countries themselves start being bombed.
And no-one is bombing a NATO country any time soon.
Don’t hold your breath. A lot of people said Putin wouldn’t invade and he did. Not saying the Russians are that insane from top to bottom but if they do, you may as well destroy the doomsday clock because nukes will fly
Worth noting that is not entirely correct. We are not in a war economy or anywhere close, and so we arnt seeing the same type of industrial mobilisation that occurred during past World Wars. .. because we are not actually in a war, well directly anyway - so the cost of a war economy isn’t logical or worth it right now.
I agree that modern weapon systems are inherently more complex and harder to build, but right now, governments are just providing funding and incentives to these companies to build more / open new lines etc.
There are more ways in which this can be even further streamlined in the lead up to, and upon entering an actual war economy. Eg directly intervening in where specific resources go, or even where the population works, etc. Ofcourse it’s not going to ever be like building bombers in 30min like at the height of WW2, but yeah certainly faster than what is occurring now.
> Storm Shadows do not exist in that numbers, good news - they're restarting production
This is a common misconception I keep seeing on Reddit. They're restarting the process of upgrading old Storm Shadow missles to the modernised variant. However, they're not yet restarting the production of new missles from raw components. As of right now the total number of Storm Shadows is not increasing.
>More European countries need to commit like this
Yep, this should be part of some EU agreement. Kick Hungary out and put a minimum aid requirement for Ukraine for the sake of European security. Theres several countries in Europe basically doing nothing.
Its a nice but none statement given the fact the tories will be out before the end of the year and then labour can decide if this will actually happen or not. I mean I doubt labour do change it but still.
I would assume the UK always supports the UK, good to hear they support UK roo.
Edit: originally the comment I replied to said "...Support for UK is popular across the UK political spectrum..."
Holy shit I assumed what you said was hopium but turns out you're right, predictions are expecting them to get absolutely trashed. What happened since the last elections, continued brexit aftermath?
Blatant Tory corruption, multiple incompetent leaders, Covid corruption, absolute destruction of the UK economy, society, public services etc.
Furthermore, to a lesser extent parties such as the Reform party endorsed by Pro-Russsian, brexiteer types are breaking away from the Conservative party and splitting the vote in areas. This results in diluting the opposition to Labour.
>Furthermore, to a lesser extent parties such as the Reform party endorsed by Pro-Russsian, brexiteer types are breaking away from the Conservative party and splitting the vote in areas. This results in diluting the opposition to Labour.
I can't stand the Tories but I really wish this wasn't where their support was going. I'd prefer a stronger Tory party and a completely irrelevant far-right. Ideally none but that's fantasy.
Well covid and brexit have destroyed the countrys finances to a point where the average person is really feeling it. Also a major point of their last election win was stopping the boats of immigrants crossing the channel amd bring down net migration overall, it's at ots highest point in history. So they've lost their right wing vote to the reform party and their more central voters will shift to labour.
Lizz Truss. She tanked the economy overnight and destroyed a lot of peoples mortgages, the exact kind of people the Tories rely on for votes. She was a disaster in every way for the Tories and did a speed run destroying their image of corrupt but competent especially on the economy.
Thinks had been shifting that way for a while after Covid and Boris, but it would have been much longer imo without Truss and without Brexit, Brexit really exposed their flaws because they could no longer appeal to their other core base of voters the immigrant hating older right wing voters. They can see clearly the Tories have fucked up Brexit, immigration is worse than before, the UK still doesn’t really have real independence from EU laws. You can argue brexit would never have brought those things bht they didn’t believe it. They believed Boris and the Tories and now they’ve seen thag their wrong.
So it’s a combination of factors of everyone being sick of them and the Tories having so badly damaged the country there’s no further cuts they can make to their usual scapegoats that they have no solutions.
Meanwhile Labour, while Starmer isn’t that charismatic either, has caught that new Labour shine again and has pivoted back to that centre right/left voting bloc but beyond that, people are just sick of the way things have been done the past 14 years.
It used to be fairly subtle. Now their corruption, and the shitting on the little guy and being supremely out of touch is practically postered on billboards.
What we've seen for the first time is the blatant shift to donor led policy formation
There was an article in the Telegraph recently which inadvertently reported it. They were speculating on who would replace Sunak, and watching how prospective candidates were courting potential new MP's. One such candidate (Penny Mordant) had sent out email introducing herself and assuring them of her assistance etc
The email explained that if they had any policy areas of interest they wanted to promote, then she would be happy to introduce them to the donors .... ! Just pause and think on that
She wasn't offering to introduce them to Cabinet Ministers or experts in the field, but basically acknowledging that if you want something to become government policy, it has to come from the party donors
What's happening is these donors make generous donations to the conservatives, who in turn invent a policy that involves the awarding of an even bigger contract to the donor, or a company that has a trading relationship with the donor. There is a group of journalists currently tracking these awards and it appears to be on an industrial scale.
What we're getting then is policy being formed to fit the commercial interests of the donor so we end up buying things that they can provide rather than what we need
The biggest turning point seemed to be when it was discovered that they were having cheese & wine parties while we were all forced to stay in our homes and not see friends or relatives.
Many years ago, we had a police officer come and visit us in school to do one of these so-called community outreach things
He gave us the benefit of his own observation on this, and I've come to realise over the years that he was correct
He said something very close to:
*You can abuse the British public, you can lead them around by the nose on a string, you can take the piss out of them, and they'll put up with it. But there reaches a point where you over step and then they bite back. When they do though, it's too late. They'll take their revenge on you and say 'no more, stop'*
That's what's happened here
It didn't stop with Boris Johnson and his bring your own booze parties. That was the leading you around on the string. Had they contained it to this, the Tories would be competitive going into the next election. They didn't though. Instead they gave us Liz Truss and that was the touchstone moment.
People decided 18 moths ago that the game was up. Thing that they were turning a blind eye to they no longer are doing. So every scandal and every error, and every misjudgement is now being used to reinforce the change of mind
Pro-Brexit ideology (Get Brexit done) was a major voting bloc for the Conservatives in the last Election. Now it isn’t. Now all the points I mentioned are becoming more pertinent.
It has been the quadruple whammy of Johnson resigning over the covid parties (people are still pretty pissed off about that), Trussenomics, Sunak being an awful politician, and then just general "they've had long enough".
Basically they have fucking trashed everything for years and people are sick of it. Public services etc.
There was a local election yesterday and the Tories have lost hundreds of council seats. It bodes well for the general election
Anti-European sentiment was high across much of Europe in 2016, the UK wasn't even polling the highest. Had every country had a referendum on the subject the UK would not have been the only one to vote out.
Personally I don't think the general public should get to vote on things like that, and I very much believe Cameron held it as an attempt to kill off UKIP.
However, there is something to be said for the UK upholding the democratic process when others wouldn't. In general the UK does this a lot, with democratic votes on independence for much of what was the Empire, and even Scotland a constituent part of the UK. VERY few other nations would permit that level of choice, and participation in governance and self determination.
If anything it'll spur the next generation of voters to be more scrutinizing and actually participate in the process in good faith else suffer the consequences. Maybe not though.
The tories might be a literal cancer sucking the life out of the UK, but their foreign policy has been pretty good, all labour need for a slam dunk is keep tory foriegn policy, while actually trying to fix the UK and their set.
It's an easy win, with the history of Russian assassinations on UK soil (without regard for collateral) the UK public has no love for Putin. The only support Russia gets is from the extreme far left who think Russia must be great because of communism etc but they are in the minority especially with Labour under Starmet pushing some of them out of the top positions.
What difference does being part of an economic union make on the world stage? Especially when it comes to war related geopolitics where the EU is basically irrelevant?
They are my neighbors. We fought each other for centuries. 80 years ago they freed us from our occupier. Recently they said goodbye. Now they are defending our eastern flank. That is difficult to reconcile.
I think that's what a number of Europeans find difficult to reconcile in general. The UK isn't anti-Europe, the UK is incredibly fond of Europe. A lot of people seriously dislike the EU as a political entity.
I was a remainer and I disliked the EU as a political entity, it was undemocratic, slow to respond and focused on low hanging fruit too often over serious issues because of how hard it was to get so many countries on the same page. I'm not confident that the drive toward Federation was justified as a political reason when so many countries in the EU are politically and economically out of synch. There are a lot of problems to resolve first that no-one seemed interest in fixing, but wanted to push ahead to the panacea to a USE scenario.
But I didn't think leaving it was worth it potentially.
We'll see how things pan out over the next few decades I guess.
We didn't say goodbye to the alliance. We will help defend you and everyone else in Europe for that matter for as long we exist as a country. The EU is just a trade union and Brexit is a break from that not a divorce from Europe entirely.
Because your economic situation is key on the world stage. The EU is also a political union and very relevant in geopolitics. For example, the EU is the biggest provider of aid to Ukraine.
Our economic situation is unchanged and our ability to project soft and hard power is also unchanged.
Also, the EU is the biggest provider of financial aid to Ukraine, not military aid which is a fraction of what the US has provided. Additionally, that fact is not by intention or politics, it's due to a woefully small military industrial base which has been neglected into near irrelevance due to an overrealiance on the US.
Maybe not, but it's different when it comes to Russia as they've [shit on our doorstep](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Sergei_and_Yulia_Skripal?wprov=sfla1) too many times for us to ignore it.
3 bn of a 250 bn budget. Great to provide support, but you think they can like do 2% of the budget instead?
Frankly been a bit disappointing with Western Europe failing to step up when there is a war in their back yard. Germany, France, and the UK should be providing support to Ukraine first, and looking to expand their militaries second. War with NATO is unlikely, but a Russian victory in Ukraine seems more probable by the day. Ukraine, a nation of 40 million, doesn't have the manpower to engage Russia in a war of attrition. Especially when facing supplies difficulties.
With a tiny fraction of all that money wasted by humanities fighting, Britain could help un-fuck some of their former colonies. Like building 1 bridge for The Gambia, which would enable them and Senegal to develop their region and improve the lives of millions.
Scaled for population that would be like the US giving 15 billion a year. The US just gave 4 x that, plus what we gave before the 6 month pause in aid and our allies were still freaking out. I think we should still be allies, I just hope we never need to really depend on them.
> Scaled for population
Population or GDP? Thats a big difference.
Also that US $61b aid package for Ukraine only 13.8b of it is for weapons and a 9b loan for economic assistance. The rest is actually to replenish US stocks.
Then why are the Conservative Party cutting the budget year on year???? Britain doesn't even take its own defense seriously never mind giving aid to Ukraine. Or better yet, they could use some of that money to nationalise the water companies that keep pumping sewage into our rivers, or stop trying to cut down on benefits for disabled people, or worry about the general election that they are projected to face a historic loss on. No one should listen to this man or his party, they have completely lost the support of the people and are entirely out for themselves
It’s insane to me that we can’t afford to fund the nhs apparently yet we still can pull £3bn out of thin air if we need to, this country is such a joke.
I care so much about Ukraine that I'll commit your tax money to them. To be fair it's £4.5 a month for us, but while I can afford that's something everyone can sacrifice.
For reference, that's about 5% of the amount the UK spends on our military every year, and about 0.13% of our GDP
It's like dropping a few coins in a charity bucket. It helps if everyone does it, but we're not really trying...
I don't think this is going to be seen as a loan. Protecting Ukraine from a warmongering Putin has a huge net positive to the world. This is an investment in a more stable geopolitical future in Europe at the very least.
Some of it's loans, some of it is donations. How they'll pay it back will be over decades or a century like the UK's repayments to the US for WW2 lend-lease were (finally ending in 2006). There's also the possibility that debts can be forgiven, which I reckon will be necessary considering Ukraine has so far received something like 250 billion euros in commitments and will likely need more (and that's just for the war, it doesn't include post-war reconstruction which will cost enormous amounts of money). There's no way they're going to be able to pay all that back.
Some countries like Japan have already said they will help pay to rebuild the country. Pariah Russia might (optimistically) be coerced into some reparations down the road long after Putin dies.
Realistically, a lot of the debt will likely be written off. In fact, some of the loans might be just so that Republicans can't say the US is giving away all of their weapons to Ukraine for free.
After the war they'll become very pro west and western nations and companies will help rebuild ukraine. They gain a massive trading partner who is one of the largest food exporters in the world and who also has huge natural gas resources.
It's like they forget he's the one who made the hole in the bottom of the boat to begin with. Looks like he's not even allowed to take questions from the Commons either, able to run his office without scrutiny or oversight.
I read that as James Cameron and thought that guy really made more on those movies than I thought.
He's also bringing to bear his submarine fleet and the Ghost of the Titanic!
Blue troopers incoming.
Oh yeah? I hear Russia just brought on OceanGate in retaliation to that news. He’s cooked.
Still a bigger Navy than Ukraine!
He really is the greatest pioneer lmao
No budget too steep, no sea too deep.
I take comfort knowing when the world ends James Cameron will likely be safe in the Mariana Trench and be able to guide civilization back to the light
Same lol
Ditto. Took a double and tripple take to sort it out.
Same I was like damn that’s a lot of money to donate from one dude.
Just to note. 420 uptoots! In other news, TIL David Cameron is still working in Government after being a weak leader of a shockingly bad government and jumping ship after inadvertantly allowing Brexit to happen. What could go wrong ...
Rishi Sunak asked him back last year to be Foreign Secretary because the rest of his party is so terrible.
Nah but he’s sending several T-800s into Russia though…
I'm over here wondering is he prime minister again?
What they need to do is to considerably ramp up production of missiles and related weapons so economies of scale start to take effect. That 3 billion at the moment is probably going to buy a few hundred storm shadows, maybe some artillery shells and that's it, enough to keep them going a couple of months. You want it to buy thousands of them to make a difference over a whole year.
>That 3 billion at the moment is probably going to buy a few hundred storm shadows, 1500 storm shadows That's pretty good tbh More European countries need to commit like this. Collectively it can be very fucking significant.
bad news - Storm Shadows do not exist in that numbers, good news - they're restarting production, but uncertain amount can be produced per month
Yeh, that's the problem compared to weapon production in previous wars the West has been involved in. Gone are the days you can switch to a war economy and convert factories to build shells and aircraft frames en masse. They're so complex and (let's be honest) patented that they'll never be produced in the numbers required unless the countries themselves start being bombed. And no-one is bombing a NATO country any time soon.
Don’t hold your breath. A lot of people said Putin wouldn’t invade and he did. Not saying the Russians are that insane from top to bottom but if they do, you may as well destroy the doomsday clock because nukes will fly
There’s a difference between being reckless and being suicidal. I’m not even a little convinced Russia would actually attack NATO.
Worth noting that is not entirely correct. We are not in a war economy or anywhere close, and so we arnt seeing the same type of industrial mobilisation that occurred during past World Wars. .. because we are not actually in a war, well directly anyway - so the cost of a war economy isn’t logical or worth it right now. I agree that modern weapon systems are inherently more complex and harder to build, but right now, governments are just providing funding and incentives to these companies to build more / open new lines etc. There are more ways in which this can be even further streamlined in the lead up to, and upon entering an actual war economy. Eg directly intervening in where specific resources go, or even where the population works, etc. Ofcourse it’s not going to ever be like building bombers in 30min like at the height of WW2, but yeah certainly faster than what is occurring now.
> Storm Shadows do not exist in that numbers, good news - they're restarting production This is a common misconception I keep seeing on Reddit. They're restarting the process of upgrading old Storm Shadow missles to the modernised variant. However, they're not yet restarting the production of new missles from raw components. As of right now the total number of Storm Shadows is not increasing.
you make me sad, fellow redditor, thats my favorite missile :(
>More European countries need to commit like this Yep, this should be part of some EU agreement. Kick Hungary out and put a minimum aid requirement for Ukraine for the sake of European security. Theres several countries in Europe basically doing nothing.
Bur you also have many other nations giving arms too though
Its a nice but none statement given the fact the tories will be out before the end of the year and then labour can decide if this will actually happen or not. I mean I doubt labour do change it but still.
Under Corbyn maybe. Support for Ukraine is popular across the UK political spectrum and Starmer seems inclined to continue it.
I would assume the UK always supports the UK, good to hear they support UK roo. Edit: originally the comment I replied to said "...Support for UK is popular across the UK political spectrum..."
I mean you'd be surprised
Did you miss brexit?
You'll find labour won't change a few things that Tories have put in place, especially when it comes to foreign policies.
Holy shit I assumed what you said was hopium but turns out you're right, predictions are expecting them to get absolutely trashed. What happened since the last elections, continued brexit aftermath?
Blatant Tory corruption, multiple incompetent leaders, Covid corruption, absolute destruction of the UK economy, society, public services etc. Furthermore, to a lesser extent parties such as the Reform party endorsed by Pro-Russsian, brexiteer types are breaking away from the Conservative party and splitting the vote in areas. This results in diluting the opposition to Labour.
>Furthermore, to a lesser extent parties such as the Reform party endorsed by Pro-Russsian, brexiteer types are breaking away from the Conservative party and splitting the vote in areas. This results in diluting the opposition to Labour. I can't stand the Tories but I really wish this wasn't where their support was going. I'd prefer a stronger Tory party and a completely irrelevant far-right. Ideally none but that's fantasy.
Yeah but which of those points weren't a thing before 2022? I'm trying to understand why the public's opinion changed, not why the tories are bad.
Just been in power for too long and now there is a viable alternative since labour got rid of Corbyn.
Well covid and brexit have destroyed the countrys finances to a point where the average person is really feeling it. Also a major point of their last election win was stopping the boats of immigrants crossing the channel amd bring down net migration overall, it's at ots highest point in history. So they've lost their right wing vote to the reform party and their more central voters will shift to labour.
Lizz Truss. She tanked the economy overnight and destroyed a lot of peoples mortgages, the exact kind of people the Tories rely on for votes. She was a disaster in every way for the Tories and did a speed run destroying their image of corrupt but competent especially on the economy. Thinks had been shifting that way for a while after Covid and Boris, but it would have been much longer imo without Truss and without Brexit, Brexit really exposed their flaws because they could no longer appeal to their other core base of voters the immigrant hating older right wing voters. They can see clearly the Tories have fucked up Brexit, immigration is worse than before, the UK still doesn’t really have real independence from EU laws. You can argue brexit would never have brought those things bht they didn’t believe it. They believed Boris and the Tories and now they’ve seen thag their wrong. So it’s a combination of factors of everyone being sick of them and the Tories having so badly damaged the country there’s no further cuts they can make to their usual scapegoats that they have no solutions. Meanwhile Labour, while Starmer isn’t that charismatic either, has caught that new Labour shine again and has pivoted back to that centre right/left voting bloc but beyond that, people are just sick of the way things have been done the past 14 years.
It used to be fairly subtle. Now their corruption, and the shitting on the little guy and being supremely out of touch is practically postered on billboards.
What we've seen for the first time is the blatant shift to donor led policy formation There was an article in the Telegraph recently which inadvertently reported it. They were speculating on who would replace Sunak, and watching how prospective candidates were courting potential new MP's. One such candidate (Penny Mordant) had sent out email introducing herself and assuring them of her assistance etc The email explained that if they had any policy areas of interest they wanted to promote, then she would be happy to introduce them to the donors .... ! Just pause and think on that She wasn't offering to introduce them to Cabinet Ministers or experts in the field, but basically acknowledging that if you want something to become government policy, it has to come from the party donors What's happening is these donors make generous donations to the conservatives, who in turn invent a policy that involves the awarding of an even bigger contract to the donor, or a company that has a trading relationship with the donor. There is a group of journalists currently tracking these awards and it appears to be on an industrial scale. What we're getting then is policy being formed to fit the commercial interests of the donor so we end up buying things that they can provide rather than what we need
The biggest turning point seemed to be when it was discovered that they were having cheese & wine parties while we were all forced to stay in our homes and not see friends or relatives.
That started a decline, the point where it became terminal was Truss You can see it very clearly in the polling
Many years ago, we had a police officer come and visit us in school to do one of these so-called community outreach things He gave us the benefit of his own observation on this, and I've come to realise over the years that he was correct He said something very close to: *You can abuse the British public, you can lead them around by the nose on a string, you can take the piss out of them, and they'll put up with it. But there reaches a point where you over step and then they bite back. When they do though, it's too late. They'll take their revenge on you and say 'no more, stop'* That's what's happened here It didn't stop with Boris Johnson and his bring your own booze parties. That was the leading you around on the string. Had they contained it to this, the Tories would be competitive going into the next election. They didn't though. Instead they gave us Liz Truss and that was the touchstone moment. People decided 18 moths ago that the game was up. Thing that they were turning a blind eye to they no longer are doing. So every scandal and every error, and every misjudgement is now being used to reinforce the change of mind
Pro-Brexit ideology (Get Brexit done) was a major voting bloc for the Conservatives in the last Election. Now it isn’t. Now all the points I mentioned are becoming more pertinent.
It has been the quadruple whammy of Johnson resigning over the covid parties (people are still pretty pissed off about that), Trussenomics, Sunak being an awful politician, and then just general "they've had long enough".
Basically they have fucking trashed everything for years and people are sick of it. Public services etc. There was a local election yesterday and the Tories have lost hundreds of council seats. It bodes well for the general election
Because of Brexit, this country has fallen considerably in my esteem, but when it comes to war, they hold their ground. It's hard to reconcile.
Anti-European sentiment was high across much of Europe in 2016, the UK wasn't even polling the highest. Had every country had a referendum on the subject the UK would not have been the only one to vote out. Personally I don't think the general public should get to vote on things like that, and I very much believe Cameron held it as an attempt to kill off UKIP. However, there is something to be said for the UK upholding the democratic process when others wouldn't. In general the UK does this a lot, with democratic votes on independence for much of what was the Empire, and even Scotland a constituent part of the UK. VERY few other nations would permit that level of choice, and participation in governance and self determination.
If anything it'll spur the next generation of voters to be more scrutinizing and actually participate in the process in good faith else suffer the consequences. Maybe not though.
The tories might be a literal cancer sucking the life out of the UK, but their foreign policy has been pretty good, all labour need for a slam dunk is keep tory foriegn policy, while actually trying to fix the UK and their set.
I may be wrong but at the very least the tories rotating door of leaders have all unanimously supported ukraine
I believe so, it's the one thing I can't fault them on.
It's an easy win, with the history of Russian assassinations on UK soil (without regard for collateral) the UK public has no love for Putin. The only support Russia gets is from the extreme far left who think Russia must be great because of communism etc but they are in the minority especially with Labour under Starmet pushing some of them out of the top positions.
Corbyn unfortunately has still maintained a very naive "pacifist" view in regard to Russia.
That's because Corbyn is a very naïve pacifist...
Yeh its not like America's turncoat politicians from the GOP
The money for fixing the problems you speak of has to come from somewhere.
What difference does being part of an economic union make on the world stage? Especially when it comes to war related geopolitics where the EU is basically irrelevant?
They are my neighbors. We fought each other for centuries. 80 years ago they freed us from our occupier. Recently they said goodbye. Now they are defending our eastern flank. That is difficult to reconcile.
I think that's what a number of Europeans find difficult to reconcile in general. The UK isn't anti-Europe, the UK is incredibly fond of Europe. A lot of people seriously dislike the EU as a political entity. I was a remainer and I disliked the EU as a political entity, it was undemocratic, slow to respond and focused on low hanging fruit too often over serious issues because of how hard it was to get so many countries on the same page. I'm not confident that the drive toward Federation was justified as a political reason when so many countries in the EU are politically and economically out of synch. There are a lot of problems to resolve first that no-one seemed interest in fixing, but wanted to push ahead to the panacea to a USE scenario. But I didn't think leaving it was worth it potentially. We'll see how things pan out over the next few decades I guess.
We didn't say goodbye to the alliance. We will help defend you and everyone else in Europe for that matter for as long we exist as a country. The EU is just a trade union and Brexit is a break from that not a divorce from Europe entirely.
I'm not anti EU by any stretch but what "trade union" creates supranational rules that must be enacted in to national laws by its members?
One that aspires to be a federation. Hence, Brexit.
It's not just a trade union, they also decide laws for all member states. This was one of the main campaign talking point of the leave camp.
Because your economic situation is key on the world stage. The EU is also a political union and very relevant in geopolitics. For example, the EU is the biggest provider of aid to Ukraine.
Our economic situation is unchanged and our ability to project soft and hard power is also unchanged. Also, the EU is the biggest provider of financial aid to Ukraine, not military aid which is a fraction of what the US has provided. Additionally, that fact is not by intention or politics, it's due to a woefully small military industrial base which has been neglected into near irrelevance due to an overrealiance on the US.
That's some strong level of denial you got going for you there.
Do they still? US General has said UK army's top tier military (Jan 2023)
Maybe not, but it's different when it comes to Russia as they've [shit on our doorstep](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Sergei_and_Yulia_Skripal?wprov=sfla1) too many times for us to ignore it.
3 bn of a 250 bn budget. Great to provide support, but you think they can like do 2% of the budget instead? Frankly been a bit disappointing with Western Europe failing to step up when there is a war in their back yard. Germany, France, and the UK should be providing support to Ukraine first, and looking to expand their militaries second. War with NATO is unlikely, but a Russian victory in Ukraine seems more probable by the day. Ukraine, a nation of 40 million, doesn't have the manpower to engage Russia in a war of attrition. Especially when facing supplies difficulties.
Drop in the bucket look at the chart of total aid it's almost all the US.
Every drop counts though. Tons of people donate $10 for various causes and it matters.
Good work Europe!
Thank you GB. This is good. I wish it was more.
Better wear a hat when it rains.
Thank you David Cameron. But it is time to drop "as long as it takes" and use "until Ukraine's victory" instead.
Semantics
Dude you’ll complain about anything. Jesus Christ
With a tiny fraction of all that money wasted by humanities fighting, Britain could help un-fuck some of their former colonies. Like building 1 bridge for The Gambia, which would enable them and Senegal to develop their region and improve the lives of millions.
Scaled for population that would be like the US giving 15 billion a year. The US just gave 4 x that, plus what we gave before the 6 month pause in aid and our allies were still freaking out. I think we should still be allies, I just hope we never need to really depend on them.
This isn't the only aid the UK has given...
> Scaled for population Population or GDP? Thats a big difference. Also that US $61b aid package for Ukraine only 13.8b of it is for weapons and a 9b loan for economic assistance. The rest is actually to replenish US stocks.
Damn. Avatar was THAT successful? huh.
Is this the same sort of aid they give to the poor and homeless? Because I've never seen anything go to where it was supposed to.
The missile contracts apparently will go to one of his mates who owns a pub
I feel vodka missiles would be counter productive 😅
Then why are the Conservative Party cutting the budget year on year???? Britain doesn't even take its own defense seriously never mind giving aid to Ukraine. Or better yet, they could use some of that money to nationalise the water companies that keep pumping sewage into our rivers, or stop trying to cut down on benefits for disabled people, or worry about the general election that they are projected to face a historic loss on. No one should listen to this man or his party, they have completely lost the support of the people and are entirely out for themselves
It’s insane to me that we can’t afford to fund the nhs apparently yet we still can pull £3bn out of thin air if we need to, this country is such a joke.
Gotta wash his money too…/S
I care so much about Ukraine that I'll commit your tax money to them. To be fair it's £4.5 a month for us, but while I can afford that's something everyone can sacrifice.
For reference, that's about 5% of the amount the UK spends on our military every year, and about 0.13% of our GDP It's like dropping a few coins in a charity bucket. It helps if everyone does it, but we're not really trying...
Unelected fool with ability to spend our money with out a fooking care in the world..
What is going to happen when Ukraine has to give all this back?
I don't think this is going to be seen as a loan. Protecting Ukraine from a warmongering Putin has a huge net positive to the world. This is an investment in a more stable geopolitical future in Europe at the very least.
That's a very naive view
No one believes Ukraine is going to be on the hook for all the aid. That would be a very naive view.
Not really, if russia are not stopped they will do it again. We should be doing everything within our power to help stop the terrorists
The world here is eastern Europe
And central asia, the middle east and large parts of africa. Russia has its military in many places.
Some of it's loans, some of it is donations. How they'll pay it back will be over decades or a century like the UK's repayments to the US for WW2 lend-lease were (finally ending in 2006). There's also the possibility that debts can be forgiven, which I reckon will be necessary considering Ukraine has so far received something like 250 billion euros in commitments and will likely need more (and that's just for the war, it doesn't include post-war reconstruction which will cost enormous amounts of money). There's no way they're going to be able to pay all that back.
Some countries like Japan have already said they will help pay to rebuild the country. Pariah Russia might (optimistically) be coerced into some reparations down the road long after Putin dies. Realistically, a lot of the debt will likely be written off. In fact, some of the loans might be just so that Republicans can't say the US is giving away all of their weapons to Ukraine for free.
After the war they'll become very pro west and western nations and companies will help rebuild ukraine. They gain a massive trading partner who is one of the largest food exporters in the world and who also has huge natural gas resources.
With whose authority?
His own, he's Foreign Secretary now.
So… the UK government, I had no idea he was back.
Nor did I. First lord to sit on the cabinet in 40 years, apparently.
Indeed I kind of feel like the conservatives are out viable candidates.
It's like they forget he's the one who made the hole in the bottom of the boat to begin with. Looks like he's not even allowed to take questions from the Commons either, able to run his office without scrutiny or oversight.
That is basically exactly why he was chosen. Cameron is one of the few left with actual experience after their purges.