In the last century the UK twice was dragged into world wars. The small armies of peacetime were soon retreating and subject to huge loss, with the need to recruit, train and equip much larger armies after the war began.In each war innovation and greatly expanded industrial output transformed our force, with new tanks, planes, and types of munition.
To fight those wars we still had capacity to make steel, explosives and other essentials and intellectual property to make competitive planes, ships and weapons. By 1943 we were making 26,000 planes a year despite bombing of factories and sinking of imports . Today we have run down our steel, chemicals and other essential raw materials for defence. We buy planes and weapon systems that need components and sometimes permissions from overseas. In the two world wars our enemy sought to blockage us, sinking many of the ships bringing imports. An island nation needs to be able to make and grow things for ourselves to make it easier to survive a war.
The National Security Council needs to do more work on ensuring our defence spending buys domestic capacity and the rights to make the weapon systems here. The MOD needs to overhaul its procurement. There have been too many budget overruns and delays, too many one offs and variations after the programme has started. We need to able to make more standard guns and ammunition, more drones and good value missiles.
February 19, 2025
It would be a very good aim to acquire our defence needs as byproducts of normal commercial production where possible. A classic example being jet engines from Rolls Royce.
The essential building block to self reliance is abundant cheap energy. We have it, but currently blocked for totally insane political fantasy reasons. What we do extract is rendered ineffective and grotesquely expensive by a business plan that is required to be totally rethought. It is only with it that the manufacture of explosives for instance can be effected as a byeproduct of a commercial petrochemical industry.
Another key element is self reliance in basic food production. Currently our commercially inept and inexperienced government is intent on the destruction of our farming base.
Those who have been politically responsible for our current armed services could not have done a worse job had they been in the pay of our enemies.
Mass immigration, some of it of terrorist intent, is a serious security threat and the result of political incompetence. Enoch Powell’s ignored warnings have now been dwarfed by modern day reality. The Isle of Man would no longer have the capacity to neutralise the threat.
The key to UK security is to be known to be militarily so strong that no potential enemy dare risk threatening us. In the past we have only been threatened by those who judged us to be weak. Morally, industrially, militarily, and in government, be in no doubt, we are currently on life support.
February 19, 2025
Indeed Ed Miliband’s moronic CO2 religion is totally incompatible with a competent and effective defence policy. You also have to control our borders from potentially dangerous and violent invaders.
“You only deter or win wars if you make enough weapons” indeed and the right effective weapons.
Just as you only control crime with suitable deterrents to it and by not importing hundreds of thousands more people often with criminal intent. This government is doing neither not did 14 years of the Con-Socialists.
February 19, 2025
“JD Vance’s speech wasn’t just cynical, it was naive” says Daniel Finkelstein in the Times today. This pretend Tory Finkelstein is wrong almost a frequently as that other Times chap Matthew Parris and Daniel is not even funny with it like Parris.
J D Vance was spot on!
February 19, 2025
It’s really funny that they don’t know that! They are so out of touch that we can’t even try to educate the, we must just replace the whole mob –
February 19, 2025
All obvious requirements for any State serious about it’s own defence – and all totally ignored by successive governments in recent decades. However, we the Citizens of the United Kingdom have been equally to blame, being willing to accept the nonsense that lies behind so much of modern politics. It should be no suprise that we find ourselves much diminished, increasingly diluted, often derided and frequently ignored. Hang your head in shame Britons, for look how lowly we have become .
February 19, 2025
‘It would be a very good aim to acquire our defence needs as byproducts of normal commercial production where possible. A classic example being jet engines from Rolls Royce.’ – well said.
February 19, 2025
I think a classic example of outstanding military deterrence is President Reagan’s approach to the USSR in the 1980s. In 1983 he deployed Pershing 2 nuclear weapons to West Germany and nuclear GLCMs to UK, Italy, Netherlands and Belgium. The purpose was to equate the nuclear deployment by the USSR (as they had been increasing it for many years prior).
That nuclear deployment demonstrated the US’ capability and just as importantly Reagan’s seriousness about preventing any attack of Europe. Not only did his strategy work it also was a big contributing factor that actually broke Communism itself.
It is a lesson that deterrence works (if it is effective). Right now we need to urgently deter Russia but North Korea, China and Iran are watching too and probing for weakness. Our message to all of them should be unequivocal – we have awesome capability and we will use it if you attack.
February 19, 2025
Western military capability is qualitatively obsolete.Just one example:
Asia Times,12/2/25:”US Sentinel Missile Stalls as China,Russia Steam Ahead.” by Gabriel Hondrada.
“ICBM work pause could weaken US nuclear readiness while China & Russia rapidly expand their advanced missile arsenals.”
And where are the west’s hypersonics?How do you counter Russia’s Oreshnik(you don’t!)?You can’t even challenge the Houthis effectively in Yemen.
“The past is a foreign country” and a number of posters on this site seemed to have retired there!
February 19, 2025
And,from the Sirius Report, this morning:”New Chinese Military Technology Renders US a Sitting Duck in South China Seas.”
Also,we should all be prepared for a possible desperate Ukrainian false flag operation(in which the UK will almost certainly be involved) to upend the US-Russia rapprochement.
Marco Rubio:”America needs to take advantage of the incredible opportunity to partner with Russia geopolitically,on issues of common interest and economically.”
February 19, 2025
💯
We need a whole new Defence Industry and mindset.
I’m afraid the Admirals and Generals can only advise on weapons that are now obsolete.
People actually think we can arrange to shoot down hypersonics – you have to have that assistance of cocaine to claim to do so.
February 19, 2025
I wouldnt want to repeat what the UK is capable of doing unilaterally. You and the Asia Times evidently havent got a clue. That extraordinary capability has kept us and Europe safe since WW2 and it still does and it always will!
February 20, 2025
So why so afraid of Russia?
February 20, 2025
“You are making the same mistake every dying empire makes-believing its own propaganda.”
February 20, 2025
Mitchel, I have not seen any British propaganda. I researched our nuclear capability 2 years ago. It is evident you have not done this. I am not going to repeat what the UK is capable of doing as that is not how we British behave.
Lynn, we dont want war in Europe. All Russian threats to Europe must be deterred just like President Reagan managed to do. We will not be physically attacked ever owing to our astonishing nuclear capability.
I will not be responding to this thread further as I dont want to bother Sir John with it anymore.
February 19, 2025
Agricola you make very good points but I’m afraid it’s too late. The industries like aluminium, fertiliser, steel etc will never come back with the lunatic Milibrain in government. The last 30 years has seen our forces decimated to fund ever lexpanding welfare. Today we shell out vast sums of money to pay for invaders.
The American umbrella has been used to shelter Britain’ just as much as the EU. and now Trump has called time. Maybe, just maybe there will be recognition from the government as to the parlous state we are in but I won’t hold my breath.
February 19, 2025
Certainly not under Starmer, if his reputation as an ‘internationalist’ is correct. Far more likely is he’ll sign the UK up to some pan-european defense compact, that does a lot more talking and regulating than defending. Laws, and therefore lawyers, are only useful if all interested parties respect them; Putin has proved he doesn’t.
February 19, 2025
Neo-colonialism (as opposed to plain old-fashioned colonialism) utilises banks rather than tanks and lawfare rather than warfare.
Warfare has made a comeback in grand style and is overturning western neo-colonialism.
February 19, 2025
Agree Ian. The current lot will carry on doing what the previous Tory lot did which was to carry on doing what the previous Labour lot did,
February 19, 2025
@Ian wragg +1
Milibrain had an idealogical Marxist Plan last time around that has found a resurgent drive with his fellow Marxist traveller TwoTierKier
Why does Parliament our MPs our Government ‘hate’ the Country and its people so much?
February 19, 2025
What do we need for defence? I suppose it would include some basics:
– cheaper, home-produced energy,
– an industrial base and allied technical skills
– good agricultural base, not too reliant on imported fertilisers
– an economy that has a surplus which can be put into weaponry and armed forces.
There are other issues, though, including:
– do we have a country that a plurality of its citizens think is worth defending? And by extension, what has to be done to make it, and its governance more popular?
– do we favour a fortress policy, or do we want to expand our power, influence, territory?
– would we use nuclear weapons for mutually assured destruction?
– do we trust our citizens to be a home guard?
– do we have controls on the military industrial complex, to deter sleaze, waste, regulatory and societal capture (i.e. deep state malevolence).
– what are the threats?
…etc, etc, etc
There are so many issues involved.
February 19, 2025
For our defence, we also could do without a National Debt that’s already at the level expected after having been engaged in a protracted war.
February 19, 2025
You also need a government that is seen to have determination, a working compass and some backbone. All are lacking with Starmer, Lammy with his Chagos lunacy), Cooper Balls, Ed Balls, (he, worse of all has a compass 180 degrees out but combined with his deluded zeal), Lord Hermer… a team even more appalling than Sunaks net zero Con-socialists.
February 19, 2025
@Wanderer +1
“cheaper, home-produced energy,” instant top priority
February 19, 2025
All good points need to be debated in Parliament / media etc
February 19, 2025
Our wonderful government appears not to trust the citizens to own pointed knives, so I think a Home Guard is out of the question.
February 19, 2025
Good morning.
Who is the enemy ? China is too far away. Russia cannot attack us, unless it goes through a lot of well armed countries such as Poland, Germany and France.
For the life of me I cannot see who is a direct threat to these islands ? Can our kind host please name one or two, as I cannot think of any ?
Beyond our shores we do indeed have interests such the Falklands. But here too I do not see a ‘significant’ threat. Our intelligence services I would hope would be better informed.
If we want to talk about real threats to our national survival, I think we should look to the slow disintegration of our nation, democracy and economy. Here is were the real threat lies.
February 19, 2025
‘If we want to talk about real threats to our national survival, I think we should look to the slow disintegration of our nation, democracy and economy. Here is were the real threat lies.’
– great point. We still need strong defence. But agreed.
February 19, 2025
You need the right weapons too – no point in taking a knife to a gun fight or a bow and arrow to a musket range.
We need to develop fighters, naval craft and drones along with cyber tools to win from a distance. Tanks revolutionised warfare but may now be passee
February 19, 2025
We have plenty of fighters over 18-year-olds in the UK who like to carry arms and knives. Perhaps we should tell them if caught, we’ll be giving them a month of peacekeeping training and putting them in the Ukraine to keep the peace for three or six months, longer if they stabbed someone.
February 20, 2025
That is an interesting idea.
February 20, 2025
Great idea.!
February 19, 2025
Over the last 50 years, with a brief semi-respite under Thatcher thanks to the Falklands conflict, the Establishment has deliberately and systematically destroyed our ability to go to war or even defend ourselves if attacked by a belligerent. Dismantling our borders has left us vulnerable to every terrorist and potential terrorist from the middle east, northern Africa and Asia.
Currently, they are importing around 50,000 potential terrorists across the channel every year and are making British taxpayers provide them with the life of Riley; they’re destroying our steel-making capabilities and they’re wrecking family farms, making us dependent on foreign imports.
Net Zero is destroying our energy supply our manufacturing base and the finances of every household.
Sheep fear “the big bad wolf” (ie Putin). But it’s the “kindly shepherd” they trust (the British Establishment) who rounds them up and sends them for slaughter.
Reply Our border and Intelligence services are meant to look out for terrorists. Your figure greatly exaggerates the threat
February 19, 2025
@Donna. Great last paragraph. As Mark B asks, what is the threat? I can’t see any likelihood of any foreign nation invading us. I can see greater and more immediate threats posed by the likes of antidemocratic, authoritarian rejoiners and anglophobes.
February 19, 2025
Yes they are ‘meant to look out for terrorists’ Sir John, but we know that they are now very successful if indeed they are doing what they are meant to do.
February 19, 2025
R to R
As we have so often seen, it only takes one !
February 19, 2025
reply to reply….’we’ve never had a threat like that before, so didn’t plan for one’. the dog that never bites.
February 19, 2025
I must disagree with you Sir John, It seems to that with the daily killings in Britain these days we are on the death slide!
February 20, 2025
We don’t know how well our Intelligence Services are performing since we only hear about their failures, which are fairly regular these days. How do you know I am exaggerating the risk of importing 50,000 young, mostly male, fighting age criminal migrants from the Middle East, North Africa and Asia? We have no idea who these people are; they’re not vetted in any way and they are given a very comfortable life and let loose in British communities where the “temptations” for people from violent and misogynistic cultures are obvious … and frequently taken advantage of.
February 19, 2025
Over the past three years the MoD have gifted about 40% of the Royal Artillery’s guns including 100% of our British built heavy, tracked AS90 self-propelled howitzers to Ukraine – including about 80% of our stock of 155mm shells
The Army, under it’s Mobile Fires project, wished to replace the AS90 with the highly thought of S Korean K9 tracked, armoured self-propelled 155mm howitzer. The S Koreans were offering to build them in the UK, transferring intellectual property, digital technology and offering support in a purpose built factory in the Midlands.
Sunak, influenced by that well known military expert Grant Schraps, ignored advice from artillery specialists in the MoD and the Army itself and took the decision to purchase the more expensive Boxer-based RCH155 artillery system which will be mostly built in Germany by the German defence company Krauss-Maffei Wegmann.
If only the politicians would stay out of things where they have no specialist experience. The RCH155 system mounted on Boxer will be a 6X6 wheeled machine – not tracked – unsuitable for winter warfare, susceptible to shrapnel and small arms fire and is clearly unbalanced and top-heavy.
February 19, 2025
I’ve been watching PBS programmes about Roosevelt, and it mentioned that once the US, ‘the arsenal of democracy’, had got geared up it was making combat aircraft faster than the USSR and UK combined.
February 19, 2025
And now Russia is out producing the whole of NATO by a multiple of close to 4.
February 20, 2025
But only defensive weapons! *sarc*
February 19, 2025
Well they would, they didn’t have the German Army, Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine to deal with.
February 19, 2025
The US developed such a vast war economy that it has had to be continuously at war ever since to avoid a depression.
February 19, 2025
War is so old hat. The enemy no longer need to declare war, they just come to live amongst us. In a few generations they take control, simples.
February 19, 2025
Thats my fear old man!
February 19, 2025
Trouble is, you can’t smelt iron without producing carbon dioxide. So the question is, which is more important? Winning a war, or protecting the planet from destruction? And the answer from those leading all the main parties, except Reform. is that the planet is more important. It makes me so angry, but there is nothing I can do about it.
February 19, 2025
We do need higher production capability at home for our defence.
However, the notion of war being won by the country with the greatest manufacturing output and numbers of fighting people disregards other powers.
There are many, which may be decisive, and include:
Germs, whether legal or not
Communication changing enemy’s attitude and behaviour
Hostage taking
Weather
Blockades
New alliances
Pivotal actions
Economics
Access to essential materials
New discoveries, and any existing secret devices held in readiness
February 19, 2025
Given that none of Mr. Redwood’s list of ‘we needs’ can, or will, happen – it’s too late, we’re a mess now – we ought to concentrate on our independent nuclear deterrent.
And, given we do not have the ability (and, hopefully, the desire) to ever be involved in war abroad – we should concentrate on being self sufficient in food, energy and essential goods.
February 19, 2025
You win wars also if you have reliable allies which we havn’t at the moment – UK defence has been allowed to run down – geo-politics has been turned on its head – Zelensky was wrong for starting the war – Putins Russia is correct in everyway – and the only thing that matters now is ‘deal making’ and tariffs’ – am I forgetting something?
February 19, 2025
Daft comment.
February 19, 2025
Yes,Realpolitik!
February 19, 2025
Maybe the government should issue a leaflet to tell the general public what to do in the event of an invasion.
That would ask the questions as to whether the British public want a country they are willing to defend, or to continue in this delusion it’s a country of which they need to be wokefully ashamed.
February 19, 2025
The leaflet might start with ‘how to tell a boatload of illegal immigrants from a boatload of invaders’.
February 19, 2025
We need our troops at home. The existential threat to us is at home. Our borders are being breached at home. We need the guns here at home – as they do in France and in Italy.
I see absolutely no point whatsoever worrying about fighting for Ukraine and defending its borders when UK towns and cities are being swamped by young men who are already criminals by the way they got here, cost the state £4.3bn a year. Then the cost (and intentions) of those who got here legally.
Why would anyone want to join the British Army now ?
Please base all future posts on the economy of the massive changes in British culture, religion, trustworthiness (lack of) and the possibilities of sectarianism and even civil war at some point. This rather than the fantasy projections based on a country that no longer exists.
Factor in the brain drain too and the cost of unsupported – responsible – parents left behind in the UK (stripped of their pensions) left in a condition that they did not plan and reliant on the state despite all the planning and decent things they did, including raising an educated future generation that no longer wants to live here.
It is ‘winning’ wars abroad that got us into this situation. We now have men among us who wish to continue those wars on our streets.
February 19, 2025
I would be a little more optimistic. My impression is that our top military have been looking very carefully at the implications of the Ukraine war, and are putting the emphasis on our high-tech capabilities, not 20th century hardware like tanks and aircraft carriers. Also, large armies are needed only to defend very extended front lines, as in Ukraine, which may be exceptional. The sort of wars to be fought in future may well not be like that. What defeats, or at least very seriously slows down, an invading army is high-tech deployment of the kind Britain has used successfully in Ukraine – air and sea drones, high performance missiles, surveillance, intel etc. Just as we mustn’t confuse today’s situation with the 1930s (as some still do occasionally on this site), we mustn’t in future try to fight the last war.
February 20, 2025
Agreed, Hat man. Knowledge of what is most effective and using it efficiently achieves the intended result.
February 19, 2025
All important points… we did fail to live up to our defence responsibilities in times past, and now even more so. We have a fraction of the armed forces we need to defend ourselves, and if Starmer gets his way what forces we have will be severely depleted by fighting in the Ukraine war.
Trump is right that we shouldn’t depend on other countries for our defence, likewise we should not be fighting other country’s wars.
If we weren’t wasting countless £billions on alleged aid we could actually afford a real army, but these days we are run by internationalism, which means wealth transfer and us as second class recipients.
When are we going to see a proper investigation into the waste and corruption associated with UK-Aid?
Just like much of Europe, We are unfit to fight another sustained war, anywhere, let alone defend ourselves effectively. The warmongers of Europe and our very own PM seem determined to stretch our debt and limited capabilities to bursting point for no ACHIEVABLE objective – So what good will that do us all?
February 19, 2025
…and you only win a war if you prosecute a war ….a war has never been won by peace-keepers; only prolonged
February 19, 2025
Surely we know that it is ludicrous to deploy weapons systems which require a foreign entity to supply or to supply parts for maintenance? The French in the Faulklands war taught us that lesson. They were not fighting us, for those who wish to believe they are our ‘friends and partners’ – they just took the side of our enemy.
We cannot deploy armed forces abroad. That will be the signal for the mighty and aggressive alien force within the U.K. to attack. We will need all our forces to defend us at home.
We need unmanned air weapons, unmanned maritime weapons and nuclear warheads which everyone understands are deployed on certain conditions – they need to know what conditions just as Putin has told us the conditions under which the Russian nukes are AUTOMATICALLY deployed. This so our enemies can avoid those conditions at all costs – one being invading our islands or territories.
We need to manufacture all that we require, to grow all that we require.
In perfect circumstances we need to deport the standing army within this country that does not have a desire to see it survive.
We should rejoice that Russia’s Putin and the USA’s Trump will take imminent nuclear war off the table probably next week. That they will reach a broad understanding of each others security concerns. They need to stop threatening each other and have a formidable defence.
The EU, NATO, the UN and the Commonwealth need to be dismantled. Every country must elect people who can get in with their neighbours behind a secure garden fence.
February 19, 2025
Our defence industry is a job creation scheme rather than a serious capability to deter
putative hostile powers. Aircraft carriers are as obsolete as the capital ships Churchill sent to intimidate the Japanese. Tanks are vulnerable to drone attack despite highly protective armour.
If we don’t have the capacity to manufacture weapons systems autonomously, we should either create that capacity or rely on other capabilities to defend ourselves. However, we need to focus on building weapons of the present and future rather than those of the past.
February 19, 2025
One thing our war leaders did not need to worry about in either war was primary energy. This country used the coal reserves to power the war machine.
Today we have dismantled our primary ebergy infrastructure and leaving ourselves open for bad actors.
February 19, 2025
O/T thelancet.com 18/02/2025 ‘Changing life expectancy in European countries 1990-2021’
Of the 20 countries and areas studied, only Norway improved over the period, the three worst are Scotland, Wales, and NI, and England is in 7th position having gained 0.25 year between 1990-2011, 0.07 between 2011-2019 but lost 0.60 year in 2019-2021 making it the overall worst over the 31 years 1990-2021 (-0.18).
February 19, 2025
Whats this got to do with making weapons, do you think its a job for pensioners?
February 19, 2025
Sir John
“You only deter or win wars if you make enough weapons” it takes many, many years for industry to ramp up production.
It takes just as many years to ramp up and train people to be effective tools.
The UK Government has depleted every chance of the UK being able to respond. It has offshored not only our industry but also our energy production.
The ‘Wally’ look at me on the World Stage TwoTierKier is neglecting the UK and the management of it. Instead he has a dream of an EU that can agree and have a single plan to defend the Continent.
February 19, 2025
Much of what was considered UK defence, its technological lead and manufacture has been dissipated abroad primarily assimilated in to Foreign State-owned Industries. These Countries grabbed the technology as it would enhance their industrial base, their GDP, their Wealth.
It is the UK government that facilitated the removal of our Industry, the then to stamp out any future resurgence stamped out energy industry with their inflated pricing structure.
The French Government were put in charge of the design of our Air Craft Carriers, the much media hyped ‘Storm Shadow’ is French and made in France. The command and control of our submarines – French. The Update and maintenance of our Tanks German. Main components of our Navy Vessels Spain and Poland.
The point being made we now can’t create our own defences without it being subject to the Whims of Foreign powers. We had a lead we could look after ourselves and the UK Government threw it all away with their ‘fingers crossed’ behind their back.
February 19, 2025
This is what Trump says after getting a few details and proofs from the horses mouth yesterday.
‘If Russia wanted to destroy Ukraine, it would have done it 100%, – Trump
They did it 20%, but not 100%. If they wanted to do it 100%, it probably would have happened very quickly,” he said.
He also demanded that Zelensky report on the fate of the $350 billion transferred to Kiev. “Where is all this money?” he asked.
Zelensky’s popularity stands at 4% – there must be elections in Ukraine before Ukraine can join the talks.
February 19, 2025
I wonder if that is above, or below, Two-Tier’s.
February 19, 2025
The Hill.com said in Nov 24 “Ukrainians’ approval of President Volodymyr Zelensky and their national government has dropped more than 15 percentage points since 2023, a new Gallup survey revealed….According to Gallup, the drop is steepest among people who live in eastern Ukraine, the area closest to the front line of war….The survey also found that Ukrainians’ confidence in their government has dropped significantly since 2022, from 60 percent to 28 percent this year.
Did Trump say where he got the popularity rate of 4% from?
I’d like to know where Trump got the $350 billion transferred to Kiev source from? That’s being disputed, although how people without the facts available to the President know that I ponder.
February 20, 2025
Your second question is easier to answer, a-tracy. Over the years the White House announced the value in $ of the massive military and other assistance it was providing to Ukraine. Anyone with a calculator could do the arithmetic. Why don’t you go ahead, if you think Trump’s figure is wrong.
February 20, 2025
Zelensky’s popularity is at 57% (Kiyv’s Institute of Sociology), 10% higher than Trump’s.
There was no UK general elections between 14/11/1935 and 05/07/1945. The GE due in 1940 was cancelled because of WW2. In case the PotUS doesn’t know it, the war is the reason why the elections due in Ukraine in March 2024 have not happened yet.
newsweek.com 19/02/2025 ‘Did the US give $350 bn to Ukraine, as Trump claims?’
No, it appears to be that $183 bn had been voted for Ukraine by the Congress, of which $130.1 bn had been obligated and $86.8 bn disbursed in fiscal years 2022-2024.
According to the World Bank $350 bn is the cost to rebuild Ukraine.
Reply Elections cancelled with agreement of Opposition who were jn the wartime government.
February 19, 2025
To be able to make weapons, you need the technology, the industrial base. The UK Government this Century has raped the Country by getting rid of the technology – to Foreign Powers, then forcing the off-shoring of its Industry – then just to ensure that no one tries to fill the hole they ensured UK energy would be imported and controlled by Foreign Government and supplied to the consumer at 4 times it can be had elsewhere.
This was a UK Government ‘fighting the People’
February 20, 2025
Yes, basically they’ve disarmed us.
February 19, 2025
“To fight those wars we still had capacity to make steel, explosives and other essentials….”
Net Zero is designed so that we will not have the industrial capacity to defend ourselves and electrification together with low energy density, chaotically intermittent weather dependent power will only mean energy insecurity.
Net Zero is the country’s biggest national security threat which is why it is pursued by the fifth column. It has absolutely nothing to do with saving the planet. Adding 1 or 2 more molecules per 10,000 in the atmosphere of CO2 is not going to cause climate breakdown. Even the UN’s IPCC Working Grouo 1 (“The Science”) can only come up with a maximum warming of 1.2 degrees C for a doubling of CO2.
February 19, 2025
And yet with just an increase of CO2 concentration of just 45% (from 280ppm in 1850 to 410ppm now) there seems to be a heating of 1.5C. How do you explain that?
Does it mean that IPCC is actually underestimating the effect of the greenhouse gases?
wmo.int 10/01/2025 ‘WMO confirms 2024 as warmest year on record at about 1.55C above pre-industrial level’
(From HadCRUT5, NOAAGlobalTemp v6, GISTEMP, Berkeley Earth, JRA-3Q, ERA5)
February 20, 2025
Causation or just coincidence?
February 20, 2025
Yes, a very subtle but good question, which I think you might be able to answer for/by yourself looking at Figs. 2 and 3 of the quoted reference (Fig.1 being the coloured ‘tapestry’).
February 19, 2025
The UK’s absent PM and Government appears to be using the excuse of European Security as its need for appeasement of its bosses. While keeping up the fight against the People at Home
February 19, 2025
OT but has there EVER been a quarter when the BoE’s inflation prediction has proved to be correct ? It is amazing they get it wrong so often when they only have to get within +\- 0.1%. Stagflation looms.
February 19, 2025
Am just watching to see which country breaks ranks and extends an invitation to this Trump fool to visit?
February 19, 2025
You need a hand break turn to face the facts and the truth.
February 19, 2025
Offer a round of golf, preferably where he can cheat?
February 19, 2025
Whoever is smart and a skilful ambassador and strategist.
February 20, 2025
The Lord Mandelson?
February 19, 2025
We must get rid of Net Zero before we imagine we can rebuild our defence capabilities.
February 19, 2025
It is now obvious that traitors have been bravering away crippling Great Britain and we now do not have the ability to train and form and Army to defend our country. The puppets of the WEF have achieved that! We won the last war because we had the ability to make our own Steel and other metals like Aluminium , brass etc and we had the trades to ise the material— the corrupt have worked well and succeeded in destroying that ability.
It would take years to recover our ability to ship build, make ammunition, guns and tanks, we are defeated by stealth of the slimesof the far left! I prey for my children and their offspring!
I tell them they must refuse to go to war as they will be slaughtered ! Our country is nolanger worth fighting for!
February 19, 2025
In the event of war, couldn’t we just order what we want from Amazon for next day delivery?
February 19, 2025
We’ll need more than guns and weapons we’ll need merchant ships and ports we need trained mariners. We need to grow more of our own food and we need to get the young people out there to be fit and working – double the army size – it is doubtful now whether we can continue to rely on old friends therefore we’d better have a rethink about all of this – preparation has to begin sometime so why wait – we can all see the storm clouds gathering.
February 19, 2025
Incidentally, because electronic jamming is pretty easy to achieve, the latest Russian drones are guided by fibre optic cables.
February 20, 2025
defensefeeds.com 09/01/2025 ‘How do fiber optic drones work? Everything you need to know’.
Russia has them but it looks that Ukraine also has those: Banderyk-Strichka, Khyzak-Reboff.
And not everybody thinks they are so great: en.defence-ua.com 23/08/2024 ‘Wired FPV drones on optical fiber: a dead end, a band aid, or a new technological breakthrough?’
February 20, 2025
There are plenty of uploads on the military sites of Russian fibre optic drones destroying or damaging Ukrainian armoured vehicles,stalking at just above ground level,entering open doors etc to find their targets.I wouldn’t trust any Ukrainian source-we know from the USAID revelations they are almost all western funded.
February 20, 2025
and the Ukrainians spotted telltale light on them, tracked them and blew up their base.
February 19, 2025
If you look at all the famous political leaders throughout history, what’s their greatest weakness: HUBRIS.
When you look at the history books, so much talent but undermined by hubris.
Ozymandias is NOT sentimental. It is 100% accurate of this reality. And the most ‘successful’ leaders – with the greatest long-term legacy – are those like Cyrus the Great who spent so much time battling their own hubris more than any mortal enemy.
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart.[d] Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
No thing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.’
Trump (and Putin) are demonstrating classic Ozymandias over Ukraine.
February 20, 2025
I was just wondering when the Great Cyrus was going to make a re-appearance!