To be fair, it is happening on the sofas in a Starbucks in Brighton.

Mandelson says it’s too early to force Jeremy Corbyn out | Politics | The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... -force-out

As cold as you'd imagine. And that's not even Mandelson; make sure you read the full thing.

Of course by saying that what he's actually saying is 'For God's sake, somebody unhorse Corbyn immediately, but don't link any of it with me!'

Mandelson was up to be Chancellor of the University I work at. This is a largely ceremonial elected post in which staff, current students and graduates all get a vote. There was him, a local entrepreneur and a fairly well known poet. Mandelson has absolutely no connection with the University at all. Never lived in Manchester, didn't study at the University, nothing. The other two had strong local affiliations. It was noticeable that on the ballot papers they had to list ten people who nominated each candidate. The other two had a mix of academics, staff and associated people. Mandy's application had lots of people with words like 'executive' and 'Senior Vice' (an oxymoron that has always wound me up) in their job title.

Basically the large majority of the electorate said 'well, he's nothing to do with the university and we don't like him all that much anyway' and voted for the other blokes. In the end the poet won and Mandy came bottom out of three. Really, really bottom. Apparently some people who consider themselves to be Very Important were livid .

The University board press release that announced the result said 'They would find another role in which Mr. Mandleson could contribute to the University', no mention of the guy who came second at all. So yeah, democracy!

Not so much Mandy individually (although I'm no fan) but people like Mandy.. I have nothing really other than contempt for them. well, maybe a bit of pity on a good day.

Sounds about right lol.

Jeremy Corbyn happy for Labour to have 'difference of opinion' over Trident | Politics | The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... rs-nuclear

Jesus wept, the three who keep appearing in the press there need to sit down and have a bloody chat. But to my mind it should be a free vote in parliament.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34399565

You can never EVER rule out taking off and nuking the site from orbit

Personally I agree with him.

Would he say he’s use Trident or not? Either way, the headlines would go against him. He might as well go with his convictions. He is a CND supporter. Everyone knew that.

Quite so. Earlier in the week the papers couldn't decide whether the not having a debate about trident was a blow to him because he wanted one, or a blow to him because he didn't. They were just all certain it was damaging to him .

Mind you, if he does use Trident, I expect a lot of people will never vote for him again.

Oh very droll.

i remember several years ago when Putin was asked about the UK’s nuclear deterrent he replied 'what nuclear deterrent'. about sums it up really
we do not need nuclear weapons, we would never use them or be allowed to use them, it is a total waste of money having or replacing them ...

From what I’ve heard about Trident, its use is not our decision anyway.



http://www.publications.parliament.uk/p ... 86we13.htm

So, we’d only press “the button” if the US president phones up and tells us to.

The idea of deterrence doesn't actually work that well if you are concerned about fanatics and nutters anyway which is the way the nature of the threats we face is heading.
Deterrence might have been effective against Russia during the cold war and these days against China as well, but only because our relative small arsenal was backed up by the thousands of warheads the US has.

The deterrence principle of MAD also doesn't work with some of the newer countries that are acquiring weapons - Pakistan, India and North Korea arguably don't currently have the necessary facilities to enable them to retaliate to an attack so they'd have to fire first and damn the consequences (use it or lose it in other words).
We're also pretty much buggered if a terrorist organisation gets hold of a nuke or two - they aren't going to necessarily be worried about retaliation and who or where would you shoot back at? These people aren't nations with a capital city (at least not yet) and defined borders after all.

To my mind, the principles on which nuclear weapons are held as a deterrent have been gradually eroding ever since the Cold War ended.
All they really get you now is a bit more consideration in the UN security council and maybe your own seat.
It's mainly that nobody who has them wants to admit they're wasting billions of pounds maintaining something that they never actually want to use, in our case may not even be able to use without US permission or assistance, and that they may not actually have a target to use against if it ever actually came down to it.

Given how much of the UK the Chinese government (in one or other of it's many forms) owns, I can see them being quite reluctant to bomb us to be honest.


Quite. Certain weapons work well against certain types of target. Strategic nuclear weapons are no good at at all in an 'informal' dispersed war, which is more or less where we currently are with islamic fundamentalism. We'd be much better off dropping the £100b on better strike aircraft/special forces equipment/drones etc. Much better bang for the buck. However you do have to account of the fact enemies can change over a period of decades, which is the operational life of modernised Trident. The question is not 'is Trident any good to kill or deter our enemies now' it's 'Is Trident any good to kill or deter our enemies whoever they may be for the next 30 years'. The answer to that may well still be 'no' of course.



Agreed again. A lot of the arguments in favour of trident basically boil down to 'because we HAVE to!', there's no actual rational justification of it going on. Aside from the fact that the superpowers pretty much ignore even the UN Security council rulings when they feel like it, so even having a seat at that table is not really all THAT valuable.

Jonathan

In a sense, then, having nukes has become not a necessity (if they ever were), but just as a result of international political dogma. It’s the thing to be seen to be doing, and we are doing it because all or friends are doing it too. There’s certainly no benefit to it, and if the next argument is “because jobs” then you can easily argue that if the skills and brains behind the nukes are that good, then they can be turned to more peaceful tasks, and we can get on with being one of the first nations to enter the ever affluent post nuclear era.