Antiboyscout wrote: ↑Wed Jul 24, 2019 2:54 amBut she's still and island, and she still has the 2nd or 3rd most powerful navy in the world. This makes her flexible in ways Germany and France can't be.
U-hu.
[...]
On paper, the Royal Navy’s 89 ships include one helicopter carrier, six amphibious assault ships, six destroyers, 13 frigates, seven attack submarines and four ballistic-missile submarines. The rest are minesweepers, survey ships and other support vessels, many no larger than the U.S. Coast Guard’s small patrol ships.
Only the six destroyers, 13 frigates and seven attack submarines can be considered true frontline vessels, with adequate sensors, weapons and protection to fight and survive in a battle with a sophisticated foe. The other ships require escort through dangerous waters.
[...]
But that’s assuming there are enough sailors to operate the ships. The Royal Navy has shed people faster than ships. Britain had 39,000 sailors in 2000. It now has a little more than 29,000, at least 2,000 short of its authorized strength.
Fleet planners tried to address the personnel shortage by sidelining two of its most powerful ships. This summer, for example, the Royal Navy placed the large Type 23 frigate HMS Lancaster in “extended readiness”: It was tied up pierside, its crew assigned to other vessels.
[...]
Last month, the new attack submarine HMS Ambush collided with a merchant vessel off Gibraltar. The sub suffered serious damage and limped back to Britain for repairs that could take months, if not longer.
That accident reduced the Royal Navy’s undersea combat strength by nearly 15 percent. It was a stark reminder that Britain has almost no naval strength in reserve.
[...]
Source: [url]https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uk-military-navy-commentary/commentary-what-the-u-s-should-learn-from-britains-dying-navy-idUSKCN10L1AD[/url]
The article is from 2016. And let's make special mention of the UK's largest and most powerful vessel, HMS "Queen Elizabeth". The aircraft carrier that has no aircraft. By contrast Germany offers 65 commissioned ships including 10 frigates, 5 corvettes, 3 minesweepers, 10 minehunters, 6 submarines, 11 replenishment ships and 20 miscellaneous auxiliary vessels and we are not even trying to be a naval power...
Riedquat wrote: ↑Tue Jul 23, 2019 7:30 pmThat's no point. Yes, there are issues with democracy in the UK (there's a very good argument that a change of party leader who's also a sitting PM should trigger a general election) but that in no way makes complaints and dissatisfaction about a lack of democracy elsewhere illegitimate. At least he'll have to face a general election in a few years (if he lasts that long).
True, but this shows the hypocracy at work and how little it really has to do with the theme announced. People decry a lack of control when their means of control are the issue in the first place, yet somehow think that leaving the EU gives them back control even though they are left with the exact same means of control. Remember how the EU is structured? It does have an elected parliament (which is admittedly weak) and a comission which is staffed by people "elected" by the national governments. In essence, the people responsible for the laws that are allegedly so opressive are the same people that sit in their government and guess what the Brits are left with once they leave the EU?
I've written this elsewhere, what is happening here is a projection of a domestic political crisis that will not at all be solved by that projection and now that Boris Johnson has been "elected", it just emphasizes how truely fucked up the british political system and establishment is and how quite the contrary of a solution BrExit really is, because it obviously makes everything worse, even before the BrExit even happened.
The EU meanwhile, I have no doubt, is and will be blamed for everything, including the "election" of Boris Johnson, even though the EU is literally doing nothing except waiting for Britain to sort it's shit out, since almost three years now, just watching while the UK deconstructs itself further and further.
Riedquat wrote: ↑Tue Jul 23, 2019 7:30 pmthose who refuse to rule out no deal (which is just writing "SCREW ME OVER!" on your forehead)
For better understanding: What is writing "screw me over!" on your forehead? The act of refusing a No Deal?
Riedquat wrote: ↑Tue Jul 23, 2019 7:30 pmThose who'll try to force no deal through, those who refuse to rule out no deal (which is just writing "SCREW ME OVER!" on your forehead), those who are desperate to do anything rather than face the results of a democractic vote to leave, those who think negotiation is "here's what we want, you agree", I've a pretty dim opinion of the lot of them.
On the contrary, you are seemingly painting a very dim picture of everything. You don't qualify NoDealers beyond wanting to "force their deal through", you seem to count refusing a No Deal as "screw me over!" and consider people who do not want to leave at all as desperate. You are making the same mistake as the BrExtremists and completely disregard the opinion of everyone outside of NoDeal and in particular those 49% of the british population that does not want to leave. Why exactly are those 49% of people suddenly supposed to be on board with BrExit, when they feel it is not in their interest? Is the UK suddenly a totalitarian state where the opinion of 49% of the people does not count? A state where those 49% of people have to be on board with the ideas of the 51% automatically? I'm fairly certain that is not how a democracy works, that is how a dictatorship of the many works. A democracy is defined by how it deals with the minorities, even though I sincerely doubt that you can argue in good faith, that 49% are truely a minority.
In essence, what the UK has to deal with here is a justified lack of trust in their democractic representation and political establishments, because the governments have shown themselves either incapable or unwilling to deal with domestic issues, like the deconstruction of the industrial basis, the absurd focus on financial products in London to the detriment of literally everything and everyone on those islands. The erosion of the public sectors, like infrastructure, education, health and the military services, as well as a complete inability to deal with the segregation and ghettoisation (for lack of a better word) of society, even furthering those problems by the aforementioned erosion of the public sectors and an increasing spread between rich and poor or, to call the child by it's name, large scale povertisation of society.
And not a single one of those problems are caused by the EU. Literally all of them have their roots in domestic decissions made before the UK joined the EU and the perpetual inability to deal with those issues ever since, even furthering them by their domestic policies with a frightening regularity.
But hey, let's elect people like Jacob Rees-Mogg into parliament and make Boris Johnson our prime minister. That'll solve all the problems, right? Right? Right...
"If you get shot up by an A6M Reisen and your plane splits into pieces - does that mean it's divided by Zero?
- xoxSAUERKRAUTxox