trident

liberal NO! naive YES!

1. ministers are elected
2. it's supposed to work like this - we choose a parliament, the parliament chooses a prime minister and has the power to fire him/her.

The PM chooses ministers to form the government and they use civil servants to carry out their policies. Ministers and government are one and the same.

The military is subservient to the government and does what parliament through the government tells them to do. The cabinet takes evidence from the military but the final decision is taken by elected politicians with the support of parliament. Anything else is a military dictatorship.

the decision to classify anything is taken by elected politicians

they work for us. It's called democracy. And we have a right to say what we think.
There are no clouds of wise men sitting in Whitehall with the godlike power to fortell the future. It's a political judgement made by ......us ultimately.

And we should therefore have access to the facts on which these decisions are being made.

Of course there are state secrets which can't be made public but Trident is a sledgehammer and the reasons for supporting it are strategic not operational. We should not be carrying out broad strategies which a secret cabal of so-called experts have decided on without a public debate.

I give up.... national security should lie in the hands of menzies campbell and similar vessels of knowledge.

well now with this insider knowlage you seem to want to know, do you think your qualified enough to put a vote on wether we should buy more nukes or not ? i know i aint ! all i know is there is someone out there i have never met and every night i go to sleep in the knowlage that this guy is watchin out for me and my children and making sure that nothing is going to come and blow the shit out of us while we sleep , that guy has the heart of this nation on his conscience 24/7 and i'm pretty sure that if he thinks that we need these missiles to ensure the safty of this country then he know a hell of a lot better than i do . so who would you rather the security of this country be handled by mate i couldn't give two shit's if there are some dark secret society who really run thing tbh as long as they do a proper job and my family dont get bombed the shit out of then thats fine by me

At least he knew that Iraq was a mistake.........

Who do you think should decide? Shadowy experts? What if they are nuts?
Don't forget that half of MI5 were soviet agents at one time. At least with politicians they have to account for their actions.
Your belief in the right of the 'best men' to make decisions on our behalf is what led the German nation to murder your family.
Democracy may be crap but it is better than facism

man you are some stupid fucker. Go away and read 1984. And come back when you've understood it

why have you not answered my question ????

i dont need a book to tell me my thought's!!! seriously





why are you such a sheep that you NEED to argue a point to stand out , i gave my point and my reason for it and all you can do try and call names so fuckin what you read a book who's to say that book aint full of BS

I don't think you understand what British democracy is, democracy is not collective of shared responsibility.... It is the election of a party to govern our nation.

If every government decision was decided by parliment the nation would fall apart, of course the decisions of our nation should be decided by the government... if they aren't what's the fucking point of electing them?!?!?!?

You cannot equate British democracy to fascism.

And you're confusing the debate about whether or not we need nuclear weapons with whether or not we need a debate about whether or not we need nuclear weapons

I haven't actually indicated an opinion on whether we need them yet, I just think that before we spend £50bn on something that in all probability will never be used, we need a discussion. Clearly, if there is a likelihood that a state that might respond to nuclear deterrent might avoid a strike as a result, it's a miniscule price to pay.

It's too much money to place in the hands of unelected officials, who may have their own conflicts of interest, and are not as accountible for the decisions they make as elected officials.

exactly..... the ELECTION OF A PARTY not the subservience to a bunch of self regarding experts.
Once you cede power to anyone unelected you are on the road to dictatorship

yeh. wot he sed.

thats a good fair point to be honest mate! but like i said they know better than i do

.

a large proportion of the governing body of the MOD are elected officials?

And it is these elected officials that tend to act on the advice of the non-elected generals and military analysts... It is also these elected officials that have access to the confidential information that issues of national defence can be acted on.

Unelected politicians lack the knowledge on which an opinion can be formed, they also tend to have their own political agenda's... National security should not be manipulated to suit popularity agenda's.

there is no 'governing body of the MoD'. there is the minister of defence and the defence committee of parliament. All the rest work for them.....the elected politicians.
there are no 'elected officials" there are no 'unelected politicians'.
there are elected politicians and unelected officals. thats it.
we elect them to carry out our wishes. At least that's the way it's supposed to work
parties have a manifesto which they publish and are supposed to stick to but for huge matters of public concern we the people have a right to decide what is done in our name.
It is facist in the true sense of the word to beleive that only the elite can make these decisions. We are not stupid children

Secretary of State for Defence
Minister of State Armed Forces
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence and
Minister for Defence Procurement
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence and Minister for Veterans

Are all Labour ministers.

The only senior unelected positions are the chiefs of defence staff (who tend to be generals) and the senior civil servants... The governing body of the MOD are labour.

I think thats what I was saying.
point is we have a right to debate this issue in parliament or else what is it for?

parliment is place for politics... national security is something few politicans have any education or information on.

the BBC's headline today is about Iran and North Korea's nuclear arsenals.