General community for news/discussion in the UK.
Less serious posts should go in !casualuk@feddit.uk or !andfinally@feddit.uk
More serious politics should go in !uk_politics@feddit.uk.
Try not to spam the same link to multiple feddit.uk communities.
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.
Posts should be related to UK-centric news, and should be either a link to a reputable source, or a text post on this community.
Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.
If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread.
Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.
Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.
Reducing dependence on crackpot America is good in my book, as long as we're not going to just spend that budget with them anyway.
But for gods sake get rid of the tax exemption on wealth to pay for it instead of cutting things that people actually need.
I think the 3% target is intended for the next parliament though. The target he wants to hit in this parliament is 2.5% from 2027 onwards.
I guess raising defence spending makes sense so that the UK can better protect itself from threats like Russia.
........ and the United States. These tiered increases aren't going to do much at all in the short term. UK does have nukes which protect it's borders, but it's not going to do anything for mainland Europe.
Apparently France may use its nukes to protect Europe, according to The Telegraph (whether they're right, I don't know). Maybe Europe together should develop a joint nuclear weapons program. Then British nukes wouldn't have to depend on US missiles anymore.
The prime minister, in an unexpected statement in parliament, announced spending would be increased to 2.5% of the UK's GDP by 2027.
He also announced the government would cut back on foreign aid, reducing current spending from 0.5% of GDP to 0.3%.
Bit depressing that they can find the cash for weapons.
Jeremy Hunt wants to cut benefits to pay for this increased defence spending. They'll do anything before taxing rich people more.
Bit depressing that they can find the cash for weapo
Defence increase (by 2027) is entirly funded by aid reduction.
So seems that was the only way to fund it.
to be fair, having a better funded and equipped military gives us the ability for more 'foreign action' which could be used in place of 'aid' in certain circumstances.
Def a better manned military dose. Well-trained disaplined manpower can be the most helpful aid to many a crisis.
Unfortunately, equipped depends very much on the type of equipment. With the modern military, less spending goes on such equipment. As more effort is made to move personnel from the field. IE remote combat.
wars are won with technological edges.
wars are have been with technological edges.
But mass population of economic differences can also overwhelm that edge.
Unfortunately the world has changed over the last 20–30 years. Technological edges have less(but still some) effect sue to ionformation technology changes and the ability to extract it.
IE, unless that edge is such a huge change that we are basically talking a new scientific disapline/form of technology. The ability and history of global communication means nations can copy the principals and develop similar design. So the war returns back to speed and ability of implementation. IE finance and population.
The only way a technology can now outweigh that is if the tech is so different top that being used. The opponents cannot formulate a basic theory of its methodology of function. IE the new discipline idea I pointed out above. This is due to war being so much more viewable due to the availability and distribution of video and communication. Deployment of weapons in a manner that cannot be seen and understood by your opponents, impractical.
Of course, this is only a hypothesis. But a logically well backed one. That military professionals are now having to consider with long term planning.
"we haven't had free health care ever" ~ americans
"Your government spends more per capita on healthcare through Medicare, Medicaid and government employee insurance than any country with universal healthcare" ~ the rest of the world
So they read the transatlantic cables, and this is what they come up with?
All around a win for China it seems.