Daily Archives: November 22, 2015

Opinion – Police cuts deal made despite terror threat, says George Osborne | UK news | The Guardian

November 22, 2015 By in Austerity, Defense Policy, Fiscal Policy, Foreign Policy, George Osborne, Growth, People, Politics, Public Services Reform Tags: , , , , 1 Comment
Conservative Party (UK)

Conservative Party (UK) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with my conservative political views but I find myself in agreement with the left-leaning Guardian in its reporting of the George Osborne interview by Andrew Marr on the BBC (also left-leaning).

The Guardian reports that Chancellor Osborne refuses to rule out cuts to policing in Wednesday’s spending review, which will include cuts to many government departments.

Source: Police cuts deal made despite terror threat, says George Osborne | UK news | The Guardian

Personally, I found Osborne shifty in his answers to Andrew Marr. I actually turned the TV off because I could not continue to listen to Osborne.

In comparison and to my amazement, I found myself in complete agreement with every word of John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor.

Despite my conservative political views and traditional support of the Conservative Party, I have been highly critical of the austerity cuts. In particular, I have maintained for some time that defense cuts were excessive. I sense that George Osborne will back-peddle quickly and sanction an emergency increase in defense spending. I fear that the UK public is not ready for cuts to the police on top of existing austerity measures.

The UK must learn from France, it is not the time for the traditional fiscal compact. Even the EU recognizes that emergency defense spending should be treated as exceptional.

Thoughts?

Opinion – Morning Star :: When will Britain learn? More war is not the answer – Lindsay German – John Gelmini

November 22, 2015 By in Business Administration, David Cameron, Defense Policy, Foreign Policy, People, Politics Tags: , , , Leave a comment

The war we are already engaged in is with militant Islam the world over and the 11% of so-called moderate Muslims who actively support ISIS and other groups allied to them or of a similar persuasion. A further 25% of Muslims believe that Islam is incompatible with Western liberal democracy, which is based on Judeo-Christian ethics, so we may have to accept that unless their thinking can be brought into line with ours, that we have a 5th column in our midst, not just in the UK but more or less worldwide.

As Dr Alf says, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, Kuwait and Qatar have all either directly or indirectly supported ISIS.

In addition, the UK is selling arms to these countries, and allegedly allowing a London bank in the City to funnel money to the Turkish secret service which buys arms for ISIS.

Whilst ISIS can be defeated by force of arms, we also need to tackle the countries which fund terrorism through appropriate intervention. This point has been underlined by Lord West in the Daily Mail.

John Gelmini