David Cameron is utterly incompetent in Europe

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**Melissia**

Again, what's the difference? They obviously weren't respecting the UK much to begin with given the demands they placed upon Cameron, which is why he did what he did in the first place.

**AustonT**

So to summarize: you just hate that your PM who politically represents the will of the largest segment or coalition of segments of your country's people; is continuing a decades long policy of holding European hegemony at arms length. A policy I might add that has to this point served you (collectively) well. In it's place you would like to join the wild goat feth of the eurozones economic and political overlordship that has served Italy, Greece, and Ireland (among others) so well. Seeing as if the EU fails the UK retains all of it's trading partners without the EU's labyrinthine regulation, but if the UK happily pulls down it's drawers and takes the EU wienie and the EU collapses you simply fail with them. Bravo. I can see where your seething anger draws from.

**obsidianaura**

I'm not too worried about upsetting the EU goverments to be honest, it's the companies in those countries that interest me.

The more stable we can look the more they'll want to do their business here hopefully.

I don't trust Nicholas right now he's in re-election mode.

**reds8n**

obsidianaura wrote:

The more stable we can look the more they'll want to do their business here hopefully.

It's not really them we need to "worry" about or reassure.

..hmm.. what is this..?

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-12-12/china-to-withhold-eu-aid-unless-conditions-met-academic-writes.html

China will withhold aid to Europe unless it meets certain conditions, including its recognition of the Asian nation as a market economy, Yao Yang, director of the China Center for Economic Research at Peking University, wrote in a commentary in the China Daily today.

Failure of the euro would be bad for China, leaving the U.S. dollar as the single international reserve currency, he wrote. It would also mean the European market, China’s largest source of export demand, would be far weaker, he wrote.

China won’t provide substantial financial assistance to Europe without an “iron-clad” investment guarantee, Yao wrote.

..hmm..

well.. that could work out well for us. There's a fair few Chinese companies who are/about to float on the L.S.E. and, currently, the £ is seen as stronger than the euro.

CF :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-15924892
anyway..

England in effect is insular, she is maritime, she is linked through her exchanges, her markets, her supply lines to the most diverse and often the most distant countries; she pursues essentially industrial and commercial activities, and only slight agricultural ones. She has in all her doings very marked and very original habits and traditions.

In short, the nature, the structure, the very conjuncture that are Englands differ profoundly from those of the continentals. What is to be done in order that England, as she lives, produces and trades, can be incorporated into the Common Market, as it has been conceived and as it functions?

It was David Cameron who said ‘Non’ in Brussels in 2011. Yet, as he wielded Britain’s veto in the small hours of Friday morning, the British Prime Minister could easily have taken his script from Charles de Gaulle’s famous 1963 press conference in which the French President explained why, since we could never be good Europeans, he was keeping Britain out.

Plus ca change. Now, pro-Europeans like Charles Grant who despair at Britain’s place on the edge of Europe and Eurosceptics like the Daily Express who believe victory in our crusade is near’. agree that the events of the last few days have been momentous. What happens next may well be messier and more complicated, but the nature of this crisis does reinforce a core Eurosceptic meme – that, ultimately, our identity and interests are different from theirs. There are many cogent and plausible arguments against this view, as a matter of rational interests, but the history of Britain’s reluctant Europeanism might now also be seen as the failure, across sixty years, to make that resonate, emotionally, as a matter of identity. As a result, even many pro-Europeans may well begin to feel that there is a certain sense of inevitability to Britain, consistently the most reluctant of the European nations, opting to remain in its recurring comfort zone of semi-detachment.

Downing Street briefings push the idea that it was all a deliberate French trap to push Britain out of the door. Blaming the French will always have some resonance, even when the truth is more complex. It distracts attention from why the other 25 were onside, nine of them non-Euro members. (The last Labour government tried it too, blaming Jacques Chirac when there was no security council majority for a second resolution over Iraq. And even Brits who agreed with Chirac over Iraq didn’t trust the French President’s motives). At one level, the British and French narratives and briefings are the mirror image of each other - with all of the fault on one side and only sweet reasonableness on the other. Was perfidious Albion typically uncommunitaire in seeing Europe’s problem as England’s opportunity, or did the sneaky French lace the proposed Treaty with booby-trapped red lines the British could never accept? As each government spins one half of this story of mutual mistrust, so the British and the French narratives converge on the common ground that these are irreconciliable differences, as a matter of identity, so that we can never really be any more than the best of enemies.

So the most eye-catching quote of this summit was that of an unnamed French government source who declared that David Cameron was “like a man who turns up at a wife-swapping party without his wife”. To British ears, this sounds quintessentially French, albeit amoral, sexist and broadly incomprehensible, approaching the Cantona ‘sardines and trawlers’ class of Gallic insouciance. If you attempt to decipher it, it would not appear to offer the most attractive image of the European project, perhaps that getting the chance to screw others depends on bringing along your own people to get screwed.

But the argument for British exceptionalism, which appears to have defeated pro-European efforts for now at least, runs deeper. It is a matter of national psychology, of political culture, and of what the European project was about, including whether it should have any final destination at all.

Firstly, the British psychological contract with the European project has been different, and less positive, than for its European partners. Just about every other member of the European Union gained something important, in its sense of itself, when it made the choice for Europe. For France and Germany, it was the foundation of their ‘never again’ compact after seventy years of recurring conflict, giving security to France and rehabilitating Germany in a constructive and peaceful role for a democratic federal republic. Ireland used Europe to escape the shadow of England, and emerged a more confident young country. For Spain, Portugal and Greece after the dictatorships, joining Europe was a sign of modernity and democracy, while the central and East European countries were completing the dissolution of the iron curtain which had isolated them from the other half of the continent, by choosing to join when the wall fell in 1989.

For Britain, ending up in the European club was a story of disappointed post-war hopes and the need to face up to the reality of relative post-war decline. Britain had been in favour of Europe for the other Europeans, as a benign outsider while itself having bigger fish at the top table of geopolitics. After 1956, that was clearly a mistake, yet it took another generation of agonised uncertainty, first about whether to join, and then whether we would be allowed to do so, leaving an indelible sense that we were turning up to a party that somebody else had organised. We joined because we had no choice. And we stayed in, in 1975, around the psychological nadir of British fortunes, not so much with Beethoven’s ninth in our hearts, because relative economic decline meant that it was no time to leave a Christmas club, still less the Common market.

Secondly, Britain does politics differently. “England does not love coalitions”, said Disraeli. The European Union is above all an exercise in the politics of coalition, across 27 countries no less. But our institutions and culture are winner takes all, not give and take as being in our enlightended collective interest. We look at our first peacetime coalition for decades primarily through the lens of whether the LibDems or the Tories are guilty of the greater betrayal of their principles or their followers through the necessary evil of political compromise. Offered a more pluralist political system, voters rejected it, fearing it would introduce more messy compromises. It is hardly surprising that our history of engagement with the European Union, whichever party is in power, is dominated by the shadow of the handbag, ‘game, set and match’ to Britain, and the apparently irresistible urge to see European diplomacy as the continuation of war by other means.

Thirdly, the British have never believed in “ever closer union”. A European crisis usually looks like a moment to slow down, and to ask whether the EU has bitten off more than it can chew. But the instinctive answer of other European governments is that the answer to a faltering Europe is usually ‘more Europe’ to try to make the system more effective or more legitimate.

A lack of democratic connection because Europe has been built from above? Elect a European Parliament. Write a Constitution. The common currency in peril? Fiscal union. The metaphor of the bicycle which must keep going or fall over is popular.

The irony here is that this was the big argument about Europe’s direction which the British were winning. Over the last decade, the federalising instinct appeared to be past its high water mark. The widening of the EU to eastern and central Europe changed the balance of forces over whether it could get ever deeper too. Europe was in many ways becoming closer to the British vision of it. As the French worried about the dominance of the English language in Brussels, the British had an important opportunity to create new alliances, bolstering the traditional support of the Dutch, Swedes and Danes for close British involvement as a vital counterbalance to an excessively strong Franco-German motor of ‘core Europe’. A growth in public Euroscepticism, in Scandinavia and Germany, narrowing the differences which had underpinned the historic sense of British exceptionalism. There was a move away from a focus on flags and anthems as the EU seemed to be settling down into something the British could, grumblingly, live with – but the current crisis has seen the Franco-German motor, eventually, splutter back into life.

There is still, probably, grudging public and political consent for remaining in the club., though Thatcher’s children in the Tory class of 2010 are considerably more Eurosceptic than their heroine was in office. An in or out referendum would more likely be won than lost, especially in times of high economic risk. But there appears to be no political appetite or legitimacy for Britain to engage in deeper integration. If the club changes shape, we can’t keep up with it.

So David Cameron was naked in the conference chamber in Brussels. Had he thought there was a deal which was in Britain’s interests, he could not have brought it home and survived, without perhaps irresistible internal pressure for a referendum. Being the toast of the 1922, the Mail and the Express, and even Norman Tebbit was the safer course. (There ought to be some Progressive Conservatives saying to him, that “all of the wrong people are cheering”, as Dora Gaitskell did to her husband after his tub-thumping “thousand years of history” speech in 1962. But the Cameroons have always been quiet Eurosceptics, more concerned about the perceptions of a party that seems obsessed with ‘banging on’ about Europe than necessarily. Among the uber-modernisers, Steve Hilton drops heavy hints that he thinks Britain would be better off out. That used to be blue sky thinking. Now, who knows?

But it would be a mistake to think this hardening of the sceptic arteries in primarily an issue of party politics. In the post-Blair era, it seems likely that any British government would do something pretty similar to Cameron in the end – before picking a row with the French to cover it up.

That the alternative case is weak reflects the deep failure of pro-European advocacy in Britain over the last 20 years. Tony Blair made the case occasionally, almost always in pro-European speeches in Brussels and Warsaw and almost never in Britain. Michael Heseltine was on the Today programme this morning, retelling the story of missing the boat at the Treaty of Messina., using soundbites which have not changed a jot since the early 1990s. But Heseltine and Ken Clarke have no obvious successors in the Tory party to whom they will pass the Europhile torch. The Cameron government resurrects the tensions of the Major government by an external coalition after the Tory internal coalition narrowed. Labour had a passionate pro-European generation among the social democrats of the 1960s and 1970s. David Miliband may be the only fully engaged serious pro-European of the Miliband/Balls generation. But were the opposition led by the elder Miliband, I expect his shadow Foreign secretary would be saying exactly what Douglas Alexander has been saying, which is broadly as little as possible, beyond ‘we wouldn’t start from here’. The Liberal Democrats have been our most sincerely committed pro-European party. That was the issue which did most to determine that the young Nick Clegg could not be a Conservative. But they are muted this weekend not only because of the Coaliton – which ought not to be any impediment to David Laws, Ming Campbell or Charles Kennedy – but because it is not clear what convincing alternative narrative pro-Europeans have, especially if looking for something that plays beyond a small if committed liberal pro-European elite. (And the political and media debate rarely reflects the that the public are actually considerably more pragmatic about this than the political classes. Fabian Society polling published a year ago found that the public combine anxiety about the idea of Europe with pragmatic support for more Europe on the economy, the environment, jobs and growth and foreign policy).

But the European debate has always been about identity as well as interests. There has been an alternative history, which understands that Britain is more European than we habitually think. Paul Kennedy points out that the central priority of British foreign policy since 1066 has been to prevent any single power dominating the continental European landmass. The choice to fight the second world war, clouded in Churchillian cigar smoke and the magnificent rhetoric of “never surrender” national independence was, above all, a choice for Europe, for which the price was to trade in the Empire, even if Churchill declared that he had “not become the king’s first minister to preside over the liquidation of the British empire. He was wrong; that was the price for opposing appeasement, but we have never fully understood the choice he made either, which is why The Sun dresses Cameron as Winston on its front-page this morning.

It is a story told magnificently in Hugo Young’s magisterial account of our reluctant Europeanism, not insignificantly titled “This Blessed Plot”. For Young, it is the story of “how Britain struggled to reconcile the history she could not forget with the future she could not avoid”. But nothing is inevitable in democratic politics without political consent. It now looks as though Britain’s pro-Europeans have failed to secure sufficient political consent to be more than half-way in to the new Europe now being sketched. Without one day winning a referendum – whether ‘in or out’ or something else – it is difficult to see how this would change. And perhaps it is too late for that now.

Perhaps one of the reasons Euroscepticism resonates more is that British identity has been a curious mix of having perhaps the most global and the most insular identity of any major nation. Britain had the world’s largest Empire, yet always liked to believe it had been acquired, by accident, in a fit of absent-mindedness. We invented most of the world’s sports, and exported them everywhere, yet always seemed to begin by saying no when invited to take part in new-fangled World Cups or European Cups, as if we couldn’t see the point of playing with foreigners or, more accurately, weren’t prepared to take part in such multilateral initiatives when the rules were not invented here (and, sometimes, as with the European Convention on Human Rights, even if they were!). A large part of the psychological appeal of Euroscepticism is that it can simultaneously access these different motivations. It has an undoubted appeal to the Little Englander, and yet can deny that by pointing to broader global horizons.

It will take a long time for the dust to settle on what the new shape of Europe might mean for Britain’s place in the world. But the fallout seems likely to strengthen the sense that halfway in and halfway out is where the British will always feel most comfortable.

http://www.iaindale.com/posts/how-britains-pro-europeans-lost-the-argument

**Orlanth**

Joey wrote:
The Europeans will remember this, let's just hope we never need their help.

Joey wrote:
So how does being a dick to our biggest trading partner help things? The financial crisis won't last forever. We'll weather the storm, with or without southern Europe, and after that Britain will need all the European goodwill it can get.

Joey wrote:He was. Europeans now have contempt for Britain...

Sorry Joey you sound like you think Europe is doing things 'right' and Cameron is just putting a spanner in the works, for one motive or another.

You are only right in that there is resentment towards the UK, and discrimination against UK interests is possible. However you are entirely wrong in thinking that Europe was 'driven' to that by Camerons actions. The Anglophobic feelings from some EU leaders go a lot deeper than that, deeper than previous Tory administrations, deeper than Thatcher even deeper than De Gaulle. Europe sadly is driven at least some of the time by race politics, and its all too easy to raise those sentiments.

You see this, or you wouldnt be taliking about European long memories. France, Spain, Italy and Germany do things each others dont like from time to time, but they get on. If the UK rocks the boat however even you see a long term spell of ill will.

Let us translate this into what it really means, even if you do not see the conclusion.

Europe saying: 'Do as we want, without concessions, or feel the hate.'

Been there done that.

**mattyrm**

I read that quote by the French diplomat yesterday.. Gotta love him playing to the stereotypes.

No Baldrick we are stuck here. There's about as much chance of us moving as a Frenchman who lives next door to a brothel.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, The Sun made this, and everyone knows what a fine, impartial and reputable paper they are, so Cameron must be in the right.

**AustonT**

Does that picture mean "pluck you"? As in Poitiers?

**Easy E**

The UK are just delaying the inevitable still thinking of themselves as a world power.

Just become the United States of Europe and let's get on with this Multi-polar world peopel have been harpingon a bout for a while now. This foot dragging is getting tiresome.

**mattyrm**

Easy E wrote:The UK are just delaying the inevitable still thinking of themselves as a world power.

Nobody in the UK thinks of our country as a "world power" and nobody really cares. What I find laughable is that you actually think it is important?

Norway, Sweden, Finland, fething Lichtenstein?

Why is having a big military so awesome on a personal level? I'm sure that all the millions of American kids who don't get to eat tonight are mega pleased that they have a really big Navy watching over them.

**obsidianaura**

AustonT wrote:Does that picture mean "pluck you"? As in Poitiers?

I heard that it was down to when we used to be at war with the French our Archers when captured used to have their 2 fingers cut off so they couldn't draw a bow. So sticking up two fingers became an insult to the French.

Probably a myth but who knows?

As for the EU I would pull out as much as possible but keep in the single market so we can still trade cheaply.

Right now we pay for 12% of the EU budget and have very little to show for it.

Someone compared it to paying for gym membership and not using the machines.

**Do_I_Not_Like_That**

WE ARE A GREAT POWER! And we'll be back for the Americas. Their treachery has not been forgotten!

Any, a lot of people: newspapers,commentators, etc have went to great lengths to flag up the economic set backs the UK may face. And yet, nobody talks about democracy in regard to this debate. Nobody mentions unelected comissioners, president, and every other lackey and lick-spittle in Brussels.
When Sarkozy does something about French farmers milking CAP until it's dry, then I might take the guy seriously.
Rant over

**AustonT**

obsidianaura wrote:
AustonT wrote:Does that picture mean "pluck you"? As in Poitiers?

I heard that it was down to when we used to be at war with the French our Archers when captured used to have their 2 fingers cut off so they couldn't draw a bow. So sticking up two fingers became an insult to the French.

Probably a myth but who knows?

Agincourt was what I was thinking of, it may or may not be a myth but in the rivalry between Briton and France I can see the cheecky Brits doing it, although it certainly isn't the root of the middle finger.

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:WE ARE A GREAT POWER! And we'll be back for the Americas. Their treachery has not been forgotten!

Because if the Falklands taught us anything it's that the UK should be feared around the world after thier overwhelming victory over Argentina...
It's been a day or two now but the UKs last independent military experience wasn't exactly stellar.

**Easy E**

mattyrm wrote:
Easy E wrote:The UK are just delaying the inevitable still thinking of themselves as a world power.

Nobody in the UK thinks of our country as a "world power" and nobody really cares. What I find laughable is that you actually think it is important?

Perhaps you missed the smiley?

**ShumaGorath**

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:WE ARE A GREAT POWER! And we'll be back for the Americas. Their treachery has not been forgotten!

You can have Maine. It's yours as long as you promise to send people so that I'm not the only one here.

**Joey**

obsidianaura wrote:

I heard that it was down to when we used to be at war with the French our Archers when captured used to have their 2 fingers cut off so they couldn't draw a bow. So sticking up two fingers became an insult to the French.

Probably a myth but who knows?

As for the EU I would pull out as much as possible but keep in the single market so we can still trade cheaply.

Right now we pay for 12% of the EU budget and have very little to show for it.

Someone compared it to paying for gym membership and not using the machines.

The Agincourt thing is a myth.
http://ec.europa.eu/budget/explained/budg_system/fin_fwk0713/fin_fwk0713_en.cfm
That's what EU money is spent on. Britain pays £4.7 billion a year, after rebates. Decide for yourself if that's worthwhile.
Note that this works out at £12.6 million per day, NOT the £40 million per day spouted by UKIP/tories.

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:WE ARE A GREAT POWER! And we'll be back for the Americas. Their treachery has not been forgotten!

Any, a lot of people: newspapers,commentators, etc have went to great lengths to flag up the economic set backs the UK may face. And yet, nobody talks about democracy in regard to this debate. Nobody mentions unelected comissioners, president, and every other lackey and lick-spittle in Brussels.
When Sarkozy does something about French farmers milking CAP until it's dry, then I might take the guy seriously.
Rant over

The idea that our system is "democratic" is absurd. A handful of very wealthy people decided that David Cameron should be prime minister, and it was so. Elections do not equate to freedom and liberty, they just enthrall leaders to the whims of the hoi polloi.

AustonT wrote:
Because if the Falklands taught us anything it's that the UK should be feared around the world after thier overwhelming victory over Argentina...
It's been a day or two now but the UKs last independent military experience wasn't exactly stellar.

Argentina would have to be very foolish indeed to try to re-take the Falklands, Britain is militarily much more powerful than we were then, and Argentina is much less powerful.

**mattyrm**

AustonT wrote:
Because if the Falklands taught us anything it's that the UK should be feared around the world after thier overwhelming victory over Argentina...
It's been a day or two now but the UKs last independent military experience wasn't exactly stellar.

To be fair mate, modern warfare is nothing like it used to be. Could any country in the top twenty "easily" beat another one without using a nuke?

You could say the exact same about America's "overwhelming" victory in Iraq. We went at that place together with 150,000 Americans and 50,000 Brits and it's been emotional.

If America (biggest spenders) tried to invade Spain (15th biggest) it would be an impossibility to "hold" the place if that was your objective. The government would merely have to dish rifles out to all and sundry and let them crack on with the guerilla insurgency from hell. If your talking about absolutely smashing the gak out of somewhere, then the UK would easily be able to bomb the gak out of the Falkland Islands, but it was full of British citizens so that was a no go.

The fact remains that the only way to win the Falklands was by getting your feet dirty and yomping about the bastard place, and it is hard fething graft. I cant have seen the Americans having a much easier time of it, what advantage does hugely superior numbers get you there other than gak loads more blokes killed when they start shelling your enormous infantry battalions?

And disembarking from ships at San Carlos on East Falkland, Royal Marines yomped with all of their equipment across the islands, covering 60 miles in three days and carrying 100 pound loads and engaging the enemy all the while. You would breathe out of your hairy arse regardless of the flag stitched onto your uniform.

But this flag waving nonsense is beneath you, so lets not even bother with this tiresome "our military is biggest and therefore the bestest" debate shall we?

**AustonT**

mattyrm wrote:
AustonT wrote:
Because if the Falklands taught us anything it's that the UK should be feared around the world after thier overwhelming victory over Argentina...
It's been a day or two now but the UKs last independent military experience wasn't exactly stellar.

To be fair mate, modern warfare is nothing like it used to be. Could any country in the top twenty "easily" beat another one without using a nuke?

Absolutely not. There's plenty of example to point to that a top 5 nation isn't even can't subdue a bottom third nation like Russia in Chechnya, or the US in Afganistan or Iraq. My comment was more directed at "rah rah we'll come for you Colonials" and the Falklands were a bit closer at hand than say 1783 or 1814.

You could say the exact same about America's "overwhelming" victory in Iraq. We went at that place together with 150,000 Americans and 50,000 Brits and it's been emotional.

You might say that militarily the war was a resounding success, what there was of it, but the occupation has been miserable.

If America (biggest spenders) tried to invade Spain (15th biggest) it would be an impossibility to "hold" the place if that was your objective. The government would merely have to dish rifles out to all and sundry and let them crack on with the guerilla insurgency from hell. If your talking about absolutely smashing the gak out of somewhere, then the UK would easily be able to bomb the gak out of the Falkland Islands, but it was full of British citizens so that was a no go.

As a point of fact for no particular reason I added up the defense spending of all current EU members and the UK (whatever your status counts as) it's roughly half the US spending. In a comparison what we are getting for that spending is dismal. Subject for another time.
When it comes down to it most modern governments lack the will power to commit to such an undertaking. There is a level of brutality and sadism necessary to subdue a hostile nation that requires more troops and innocent blood than any English speaking nation is willing to commit.

The fact remains that the only way to win the Falklands was by getting your feet dirty and yomping about the bastard place, and it is hard fething graft. You would breathe out of your hairy arse regardless of the flag stitched onto your uniform.

truer words have not been spoken.

But this flag waving nonsense is beneath you, so lets not even bother with this tiresome "our military is biggest and therefore the bestest" debate shall we?

to be fair what I wrote was entirely in response to something else, and I really had no flag waving intentions(it still happened).
I probably could have put this in the section above, but you and I can probably agree that a narrow victory in 82 was probably the best thing that happened to the Royal Armed Forces. The invincible was about to be retired, the army and marines were in general draw down. The Falklands gave that crazy old witch of yours the fire she needed to keep the UKs forces from being a shadow of what they are today. Nothing sells defense spending to proud Brits like "almost lost to a country around the world that speaks Spanish." now despite the numerical disparity betwixt your country's gun toting psychopaths and mine Britain maintains a force to be reckoned with at a fraction of the cost.

**mattyrm**

Automatically Appended Next Post:

AustonT wrote: My comment was more directed at "rah rah we'll come for you Colonials"

Yeah but considering that is wholly ridiculous I thought his comment was in good humour and yours really wasn't, but either way it's a silly thing to talk about so ill happily shelve this increasingly off topic discussion.

AustonT wrote:The Falklands gave that crazy old witch of yours the fire she needed to keep the UKs forces from being a shadow of what they are today.

Hey I've no great issue with anything else you wrote, but leave Maggie be.

**Toastedandy**

After playing as the English through many centuries of total war, this is all I have to say.

**Mr Hyena**

Just become the United States of Europe and let's get on with this Multi-polar world peopel have been harpingon a bout for a while now. This foot dragging is getting tiresome.

Why would we want to join a united europe that has no interest in the desires of the british people and in which we'd have no say? A place that has the weak Euro?

No thanks. Lets stick with whats kept us right so far. Let Germany get its WW1 dreams with other nations.

**AustonT**

mattyrm wrote:
Automatically Appended Next Post:

AustonT wrote: My comment was more directed at "rah rah we'll come for you Colonials"

Yeah but considering that is wholly ridiculous I thought his comment was in good humour and yours really wasn't, but either way it's a silly thing to talk about so ill happily shelve this increasingly off topic discussion.

Humor is not my strong suite, I was not attempting to respond in humor. It would be disingenuous for me to attempt to claim I did now.
Mea Culpa

AustonT wrote:The Falklands gave that crazy old witch of yours the fire she needed to keep the UKs forces from being a shadow of what they are today.

Hey I've no great issue with anything else you wrote, but leave Maggie be.

Ahh but you knew who I was talking about and the easily incited lefties doing their TL

R scan didn't see: Margaret Thatcher...but now that balloon has gone up.

**obsidianaura**

The main cause of problems for the UK in the Falklands as I see it was the Argentinian Airforce.

What would have been better would have been to use Vulcan Bombers to bomb the airfields in Argentina.

But would that have made it a proper war?

**Kilkrazy**

We only got a Vulcan over to bomb the airstrip in the Falklands by the skin of our teeth.

We couldn't have bombed the airfields in the mainland.

**AustonT**

A problem that *Should* be solved by 2016.

**Kilkrazy**

We've got cruise missiles now, so it wouldn't be a problem now.

**AustonT**

The last solid open source numbers I saw for RN Tomahawks put their numbers at or close to 100, and solely in the hands of the submariners. I was actually referring to the Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales which should hopefully launch in 2016 and 2020. I am eager to see how the electric drive system operates on such a large ship.

**obsidianaura**

Kilkrazy wrote:We only got a Vulcan over to bomb the airstrip in the Falklands by the skin of our teeth.

We couldn't have bombed the airfields in the mainland.

Oh ok, I thought the whole point of the Vulcan was it was supposed to be able to nuke anywhere (not that I'm suggesting we'd even consider doing that to Argentina)

**AustonT**

Oh ok, I thought the whole point of the Vulcan was it was supposed to be able to nuke anywhere (not that I'm suggesting we'd even consider doing that to Argentina)

The Vulcan was due to be retired in 82 and only had range of a shade over 2000 miles (2500 maybe).
The other V Bombers the Victor and Valiant both outranged her (6000 and 4000 miles respectivly) The Valiant having already been retired at the time. They were essentially medium range bombers, The RN had the requirement to deliver nukes anywhere in the world.

**Joey**

The Royal Navy still has Trident, 200 nuclear war heads mounted on submarines capable of being anywhere in the world.
As others have said, Britain would never nuke Argentina over the Falklands but it's worth remembering.

**AustonT**

Joey wrote:The Royal Navy still has Trident, 200 nuclear war heads mounted on submarines capable of being anywhere in the world.
As others have said, Britain would never nuke Argentina over the Falklands but it's worth remembering.

What relevance exactly did this bring to the table? That a missile system not in service in the RN until 1994 would have somehow impacted the war that ended 12 years before? Or that the conservative party that just vibrates you out of your skin on the original issue of this thread both procured them and saved them from the axe?