Vice-Regal Saint: Grave Concerns
Voters want Britain to scale down world role? Long time traditional readers might now be asking themselves if they should scale down The Daily Telegraph's role. It has obviously gone to shite now that the great man - Lord Black - no longer owns it. If this poll is even the least bit scientific, it may be time to pull the rip cord. Niall Ferguson might be onto something when he says that Iran deliberately targeted the Security Council's weakest link:
Until this crisis, Iran had been on the diplomatic rack. Last weekend, the United Nations Security Council imposed new sanctions to punish the regime in Teheran for continuing with its nuclear programme. This reflected growing impatience, even on the part of hitherto indulgent Russia, with the Iranians' persistent defiance. But Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian President, is never to be underestimated. To regain the diplomatic initiative, he targeted the weakest link on the Security Council. This turns out to be us.
And all we seem to hear these days is how the Brits no longer have the stomach for it, or how the government plans to slash defence spending. I mean what signals are being sent to prevent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from thinking he's dealing with a nation of sissies?
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11 comments:
Not quite correct. We frequently hear that there isn't enough money for hospitals, our creaking infrastructure, our education system, securing our borders or hiring more police. Yet there is nearly always money for another military jaunt to a land we know little, and care even less about.
Then, to add insult to injury, we find out that our soldiers are given sub-standard equipment due to budgetary cuts, dying because they were given no body armour because it was too expensive, or massacred by Americans not looking where they are shooting.
The British people feel that there will be more money for what matters to us, if we stop spending so much time and effort trying to make the rest of the world a better place.
The Telegraph is still by far the best paper going in the UK, if not the world, and the only dependably traditional, monarchist, conservative perspective on world and domestic events.
The fact is, we are the world's 5th largest economy, and yet - thanks to Labour - now have the world's 28th biggest military. You cannot long remain the first if you insist on remaining the latter. More money passes through London everyday than any other city on earth: will that continue if our forces are reduced even further? In a world of increasing peril, I wouldn't be too sure.
Ryan, perhaps the UK should stop sending 7 billion pounds a year to the EU then. And if you don't care about what's going on in Afghanistan (Taliban), Pakistan (Al Qaeda) and Iran (nukes and hostages), all of which have direct national security implications for Britain, then at least care about what's going on in Londonistan and your own backyard.
"The British people feel that there will be more money for what matters to us, if we stop spending so much time and effort trying to make the rest of the world a better place."
I hesitate to accuse anyone of plagiarism, but I believe that line was originally uttered by Winston Churchill during his historic address of May 1940 to House of Commons. Nevertheless, I say "Bravo!" It is as inspiring now as it was then.
Burton
13 billion.We get a bit back as EU loans, which we pay back with interest.I'd happily stop it, where the EU is concerned. Sadly, as I'm only 28, I wasn't ever given a choice in that particular decision that saw us screw the Commonwealth over and ally ourselves with our traditional enemies.
There is also, always money available for projects abroad, for example, UK millions for Islamic schools in Pakistan, when people are dying in England due to certain cancer drugs being deemed "too expensive".
A lot of Britons, myself included, are tired of this. We would rather we spent our money on ourselves, to be blunt with you.
I think we, and to be honest, the rest of the Anglosphere, would be far better off reverting to Palmerston-esque "glorious isolation" and letting Africa/Middle East etc, go to hell in a hand basket, if they so wish. Let the Europeans and the UN wring their hands, and do absolutely nothing, as is their want, except this time, there'll be no US/UK/NZ Australia to sort the mess out then be treated with the EU and the UN's particular brand of sanctimonious moralising. They need us, not vice versa.
Burton:
As it happens, it was a purely spontaneous comment, but that's a person I don't mind being accused of plagiarising.=P
My friends, as I said in my first post back in December, Britain is in large measure increasingly over. It could really do with a new name to distinguish it from the vigorous, confident, Christian, conservative nation of old, and to really capture its whiney, petty, grotty insignificance and continental-inspired torpor and grime.
I offer Scott the name "Community of the Isles."
I can't help but think of how Brits felt even more pessimistic throughout the 70s until the Falklands campaign showed the old qualities may lie deep and dormant, but never dead. So argued Churchill when the UK seemed to give up all responsibilities and sought discussion and compromise (betraying France and breaking the Treaty of Versailles with the Anglo-German naval Agreement for example). He won that arguement to to Briatin's undying credit.
Cheer up lads, the hostages are coming home. Tony worked his magic and ignored our rash pleas to bomb Iran. He knew, even as we bickered about our weakness, that the people would not have supported tougher measures.
44% would have I read in one poll, but the doves have been proven right. It was rich that the Yanks were pounding their chests about what THEY would have done when they had had their chance back in 1979 which ended the same way with hostages eventually released, albeit nearly a year later.
One more point this morning to show the degeneration of Britain: Talking" CCTV cameras allowing operators to shout at people behaving badly are to be installed across England.
Still, this is heartening, isn't it?
http://www.speedcam.co.uk/gatso2.htm
Is Britain's future leader lugging a tire and a can of gas down a lonely road somewhere in the sceptred isle tonight?
Burton
"Community of the Isles"? No, sir, call it what many of us of Celtic blood know it as..."perfidious Albion".
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