Oh look I’ll just pull 5 billion out of my ass, 5 billion I claimed never existed last year.
Military industrial complex on action
To the people who said we need to look after our own before we help refugees because we can’t afford both:
The scariest thing is everybody is doing the exact same thing they did in the run up to WW2. Prior to WW2 there was a proxy war going on in Spain, there’s currently one in Ukraine. 🤔
Well its not like the military didn’t need it, but it certainly doesn’t look good considering how much they’ve insisted their is no money for all the other services they’ve been slashing to the bone.
I can’t imagine the striking unions are going to miss this.
Frankly it’s not enough.
Much of our armour and sp guns are in dissaray. The troops accommodation and sites are falling apart. There is little ammo left. Troops numbers are lowest they have been for generations. We have no spare jets for ukraine (what happens when they start getting shot down? We don’t have back ups.) All the stuff at ashchurch is in piss poor condition.
This 5bn is pissing into the wind.
They can find money for some things then, just not our key workers.
It’s about time Western Europe took Chinese and Russian threats seriously, combined we have an impressive modern fighting force but in needs further modernisation and expansion.
The Tories have spent the last 6 months going on about how there’s no money for nurses and teachers but now within a week they’ve found £5bn for the military and £0.5bn to give to France to supposedly stop the small boats. Rishi must have got his magic money tree back!
Not a lot really when you consider one of the Elizabeth class carriers was £5 billion, so an extra ship, whoopee.
It’s amazing how they can pull large amounts of money from nowhere when it best suits them,
– spend it on healthcare for your citizens? Nah
– spend it on intimidating other countries? Hell yeah!
Can we not just clap for the military and get the kids to draw jets and missiles with chalk on the pavements?
£5bn is fuck all in the grand scheme of things, especially when you look at the (open source) information of what’s in the pipeline.
Defence is expensive and that’s without the minimum spend of 2% GDP required by members of NATO. You can track the table below (since the 60’s) and align that with certain world events which shocked us all financially. You also need to remember that since the end of WW2 as technology has advanced and become more integrated, reducing our number of required assets as we can do more with less, they are also vastly more expensive. There has also been a drastic reduction in required manpower which includes many cost savings.
This spending announcement may grit your shit a bit if you only have the bandwidth to process what’s happening locally on a social level but we are a destructive species and we need to be prepared.
Speak softly and carry a big stick – Theodore Roosevelt 1900.
Clown show of a political party, with head clown as PM
Perhaps spend some of that money investigating Russian interference into British politics and democracy, and the links the Tory party and MPs have with certain Russian individuals and money.
Oh right yeah sorry I’m being stupid.
When hospital staff want a decent wage it’s all “…but where is the money supposed to come from?!”, but they can just drop billions on military.
As there is no real physical threat from china or Russia, whats the 5bm for? China is not going to invade the UK or Europe. Russia likewise isnt either.
They gave it to all those frauds who claimes the self employed covid grant
Most of it goes to Trident. The rest is off to Ukraine.
We need to spend £5bn because our economy isn’t backed by anything. Spending your money on the military is what western governments do instead of backing it with Gold.
That’s £5bn that will struggle to fill the multi-billion funding shortfall.
More PR spin from this joke of a Government.
But politicians love China, they certainly accept enough money from them.
If you think any of that will actually go on making the uk more secure by updating and maintaining the armed forces, you are kidding yourself. Maybe a billion might be spent on that but can bet your ass that the money has already ben earmarked for ‘defense projects’ aka funnelling the money into the military industrial complex of companies owned by the tories and thier friends so they can steal even more.
I’m calling it now. In 5 years, we won’t have anything to show for this 5 billion investment except a few billonars with even more money.
Why waste the money? Lets just become russian and chinese, who’s up for it?
There are more than a dozen countries between the UK and China, how can China threaten the UK??? The UK government should use taxpayers money to improve the economy of the UK instead of helping the US fight wars in the far east
To those exclaiming ‘Why are we spending so much money on defence when the NHS is a shambles?!”
The first one is a necessity – we’re in a proxy war with Russia, China is stirring and it will only get worse. The Powers-That-Be would never risk losing their cushy positions of wealth and influence by not ensuring we’re adequately able to resist.
The second is *intentional.* Run the NHS into the ground, let people suffer and die, and then when you sell it off to private companies, people are relieved instead of enraged.
This is straight out of the neoliberal playbook. If still in doubt, have a read about the Mont Pelerin Society. Authoritarianism while making sure everything (and I mean *everything* is for sale) is essential to the philosophy.
Meanwhile jr doctors and train staff are on strike
The fundamental fact of the matter is that this won’t make a meaningful difference at all for the armed forces. Most of this is going to help replace Trident, and the rest to help rebuild our ammo stockpile and support for Ukraine. Which means we still have too few tanks, planes, and ships. We still have far to few men, living in an ageing, poorly maintained, decrepit defence estate, with far too many senior officers who focus more on being zeitgeisty, than improving the operational capabilities of the armed forces. The world is becoming increasingly dangerous, and we urgently need to start building mass in the armed forces
Good, but not good enough. The Royal Navy needs more ships, more submarines and (along with the RAF) more aircraft and the people to operate them.
Whilst Russia is concerning, I will never understand the paranoia surrounding China. Has China ever taken an aggressive action towards us?
Indeed, considering the economic benefits that a strong relationship with China could bring, it seems irresponsible to be picking a fight with a country capable of putting pressure on Russia from the east, whilst we and our allies in Europe put pressure from the west.
Don’t have money to pay nurses, teachers and rail workers, and looting from tax payers, but always have money for military industrial complex. No one is ever going to invade this fcked up country but still spending billions to fck up other nations.
I can understand saying how Russia’s a threat to UK, even though i don’t agree, buts how’s China a threat ?
I know that this sub is largely anti military spending, but sincerely if you cannot see why this is necessary after watching Russia literally just invade a sovereign democracy over territory 12 months ago then I don’t know what to say.
It has to take a priority over other things, really.
If we taxed the rich we could afford to spend more on both the NHS and the Armed forces. Just a thought
I’m left wing but it’s absolutely naive to think we don’t need to modernise our armed forces. Read a history book ffs
Hopefully we’ll put the £5bn to good use and invade France with it
Let’s spend millions on help to eat which spread covid, useless ppe which cost billions, business covid loans which scammers abused and cost billions, £5 bn on military, billions on expensive nhs suppliers. The magic money tree exists!
When it comes to homelessness and helping people living on food banks and hungry school children in poverty, the magic money tree doesn’t exist!
I’m more concerned about heating my house than non existant threats.
What’s that, a quarter of the sum they wasted/paid to associates over track and trace?
We are a country that spends nearly £30billion on alcoholic drinks and nearly £25billion on tobacco annually.
Increasing our military spend up to just over £50billion doesn’t seem that outrageous when you realise it’s less than we spend on booze and fags.
To think there were people who were in favour of reducing military spending. You have to be able to defend yourself or you’re opening yourself to being bullied and strong-armed politically, or just outright murdered if some other nation turns particularly aggressive.
And the future is uncertain, things can always change no matter how unlikely it seems.
40 comments
Oh look I’ll just pull 5 billion out of my ass, 5 billion I claimed never existed last year.
Military industrial complex on action
To the people who said we need to look after our own before we help refugees because we can’t afford both:
The scariest thing is everybody is doing the exact same thing they did in the run up to WW2. Prior to WW2 there was a proxy war going on in Spain, there’s currently one in Ukraine. 🤔
Well its not like the military didn’t need it, but it certainly doesn’t look good considering how much they’ve insisted their is no money for all the other services they’ve been slashing to the bone.
I can’t imagine the striking unions are going to miss this.
Frankly it’s not enough.
Much of our armour and sp guns are in dissaray. The troops accommodation and sites are falling apart. There is little ammo left. Troops numbers are lowest they have been for generations. We have no spare jets for ukraine (what happens when they start getting shot down? We don’t have back ups.) All the stuff at ashchurch is in piss poor condition.
This 5bn is pissing into the wind.
They can find money for some things then, just not our key workers.
It’s about time Western Europe took Chinese and Russian threats seriously, combined we have an impressive modern fighting force but in needs further modernisation and expansion.
The Tories have spent the last 6 months going on about how there’s no money for nurses and teachers but now within a week they’ve found £5bn for the military and £0.5bn to give to France to supposedly stop the small boats. Rishi must have got his magic money tree back!
Not a lot really when you consider one of the Elizabeth class carriers was £5 billion, so an extra ship, whoopee.
It’s amazing how they can pull large amounts of money from nowhere when it best suits them,
– spend it on healthcare for your citizens? Nah
– spend it on intimidating other countries? Hell yeah!
Can we not just clap for the military and get the kids to draw jets and missiles with chalk on the pavements?
£5bn is fuck all in the grand scheme of things, especially when you look at the (open source) information of what’s in the pipeline.
Defence is expensive and that’s without the minimum spend of 2% GDP required by members of NATO. You can track the table below (since the 60’s) and align that with certain world events which shocked us all financially. You also need to remember that since the end of WW2 as technology has advanced and become more integrated, reducing our number of required assets as we can do more with less, they are also vastly more expensive. There has also been a drastic reduction in required manpower which includes many cost savings.
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/GBR/united-kingdom/military-spending-defense-budget
This spending announcement may grit your shit a bit if you only have the bandwidth to process what’s happening locally on a social level but we are a destructive species and we need to be prepared.
Speak softly and carry a big stick – Theodore Roosevelt 1900.
Clown show of a political party, with head clown as PM
Perhaps spend some of that money investigating Russian interference into British politics and democracy, and the links the Tory party and MPs have with certain Russian individuals and money.
Oh right yeah sorry I’m being stupid.
When hospital staff want a decent wage it’s all “…but where is the money supposed to come from?!”, but they can just drop billions on military.
As there is no real physical threat from china or Russia, whats the 5bm for? China is not going to invade the UK or Europe. Russia likewise isnt either.
They gave it to all those frauds who claimes the self employed covid grant
Most of it goes to Trident. The rest is off to Ukraine.
We need to spend £5bn because our economy isn’t backed by anything. Spending your money on the military is what western governments do instead of backing it with Gold.
That’s £5bn that will struggle to fill the multi-billion funding shortfall.
More PR spin from this joke of a Government.
But politicians love China, they certainly accept enough money from them.
If you think any of that will actually go on making the uk more secure by updating and maintaining the armed forces, you are kidding yourself. Maybe a billion might be spent on that but can bet your ass that the money has already ben earmarked for ‘defense projects’ aka funnelling the money into the military industrial complex of companies owned by the tories and thier friends so they can steal even more.
I’m calling it now. In 5 years, we won’t have anything to show for this 5 billion investment except a few billonars with even more money.
Why waste the money? Lets just become russian and chinese, who’s up for it?
There are more than a dozen countries between the UK and China, how can China threaten the UK??? The UK government should use taxpayers money to improve the economy of the UK instead of helping the US fight wars in the far east
To those exclaiming ‘Why are we spending so much money on defence when the NHS is a shambles?!”
The first one is a necessity – we’re in a proxy war with Russia, China is stirring and it will only get worse. The Powers-That-Be would never risk losing their cushy positions of wealth and influence by not ensuring we’re adequately able to resist.
The second is *intentional.* Run the NHS into the ground, let people suffer and die, and then when you sell it off to private companies, people are relieved instead of enraged.
This is straight out of the neoliberal playbook. If still in doubt, have a read about the Mont Pelerin Society. Authoritarianism while making sure everything (and I mean *everything* is for sale) is essential to the philosophy.
Meanwhile jr doctors and train staff are on strike
The fundamental fact of the matter is that this won’t make a meaningful difference at all for the armed forces. Most of this is going to help replace Trident, and the rest to help rebuild our ammo stockpile and support for Ukraine. Which means we still have too few tanks, planes, and ships. We still have far to few men, living in an ageing, poorly maintained, decrepit defence estate, with far too many senior officers who focus more on being zeitgeisty, than improving the operational capabilities of the armed forces. The world is becoming increasingly dangerous, and we urgently need to start building mass in the armed forces
Good, but not good enough. The Royal Navy needs more ships, more submarines and (along with the RAF) more aircraft and the people to operate them.
Whilst Russia is concerning, I will never understand the paranoia surrounding China. Has China ever taken an aggressive action towards us?
Indeed, considering the economic benefits that a strong relationship with China could bring, it seems irresponsible to be picking a fight with a country capable of putting pressure on Russia from the east, whilst we and our allies in Europe put pressure from the west.
Don’t have money to pay nurses, teachers and rail workers, and looting from tax payers, but always have money for military industrial complex. No one is ever going to invade this fcked up country but still spending billions to fck up other nations.
I can understand saying how Russia’s a threat to UK, even though i don’t agree, buts how’s China a threat ?
I know that this sub is largely anti military spending, but sincerely if you cannot see why this is necessary after watching Russia literally just invade a sovereign democracy over territory 12 months ago then I don’t know what to say.
It has to take a priority over other things, really.
If we taxed the rich we could afford to spend more on both the NHS and the Armed forces. Just a thought
I’m left wing but it’s absolutely naive to think we don’t need to modernise our armed forces. Read a history book ffs
Hopefully we’ll put the £5bn to good use and invade France with it
Let’s spend millions on help to eat which spread covid, useless ppe which cost billions, business covid loans which scammers abused and cost billions, £5 bn on military, billions on expensive nhs suppliers. The magic money tree exists!
When it comes to homelessness and helping people living on food banks and hungry school children in poverty, the magic money tree doesn’t exist!
I’m more concerned about heating my house than non existant threats.
What’s that, a quarter of the sum they wasted/paid to associates over track and trace?
We are a country that spends nearly £30billion on alcoholic drinks and nearly £25billion on tobacco annually.
Increasing our military spend up to just over £50billion doesn’t seem that outrageous when you realise it’s less than we spend on booze and fags.
To think there were people who were in favour of reducing military spending. You have to be able to defend yourself or you’re opening yourself to being bullied and strong-armed politically, or just outright murdered if some other nation turns particularly aggressive.
And the future is uncertain, things can always change no matter how unlikely it seems.