The Widowmaker
The greatest intellectual weakness of the independence movement is its attitude towards Trident, and trying to reason with people about it (whether readers or other independence activists) is consistently one of the most frustrating aspects of writing Wings, because nuclear disarmers and Unionists are equally impervious to logic on the subject.
The UK’s nuclear “deterrent” – or as it was more accurately and memorably described by the former Vulcan nuclear bomber squadron commander Air Commodore Alastair Mackie, “a virility symbol, like a stick-on hairy chest” – is the greatest gift to a future Scottish independence negotiating team imaginable.
The rest of the UK gets a lot of economic and infrastructural benefits from Scotland, like water and energy, but ultimately it’s not massively bothered about those. Water is not yet a critical area and energy can be sourced elsewhere, and in any event Brexit shows us that the UK is more than willing to do itself enormous harm in the service of ideological political goals.
But Trident is a whole different kettle of sweaty underwater men.
Nuclear weapons are vital to the British state’s perception of itself as still being a world power. In 2012 the Telegraph quoted a Ministry of Defence source as saying:
Mull over those words for a moment – in particular the words “first priority” and “any price”. We all know that’s true. The UK giving up its international virility symbol is inconceivable, and there’s simply nowhere else credible as a base for it in the short to medium term. Any negotiator worth a candle drools uncontrollably at the thought of having that card to play at any time as Scotland tried to haggle itself a good divorce settlement from its much larger and more powerful now-neighbour.
It is – irony of ironies – the nuclear deterrent in Scotland’s arsenal, with the important difference that this one is actually useful. Any time the discussions got a bit sticky, the Holyrood team would need only say “Hmm, actually can we go back to Trident for a moment?” and Westminster’s representatives would cave like an overbaked soufflé, because a nuclear submarine and missile base is the single, solitary, sole and only thing Scotland has that the UK absolutely will not countenance being without.
Want maximum co-operation over the border? Want Scotland’s share of UK debt wiped clean? Want Boris Johnson to run up and down Sauchiehall Street wearing nothing but a Jimmy hat? You can have it all, so long as you let Britain hang onto Faslane for a few years. For that, and for that alone, they’ll give us anything we want.
This is despite the fact that most halfway-intelligent politicians on all sides publicly admit that Trident is useless. The former Tory defence secretary Michael Portillo called it “past its sell-by date, a tremendous waste of money, [kept] entirely for reasons of national prestige” in 2013, while Tony Blair’s 2010 memoir said of it that “The expense is huge and the utility non-existent in terms of military use”, only to then conclude that getting rid of it would be “too big a downgrading of our status as a nation”.
In other words, they can’t let it go so we’ve got them over a barrel on it. And yet most of the Yes movement would – with a recklessness bordering on criminal insanity, as well as contemptuous disregard for the entire future of the nation – throw away that inexhaustible trump card for nothing more than a piece of infantile virtue-signalling. It’d make a saint despair.
And the fact is that there isn’t a single coherent argument for the policy, only emotion. It’s true that nuclear weapons are terrible things. That’s pretty much the point of them. They’re so terrible, in fact, that after two small ones were used 75 years ago none have ever been used again, despite the decades of almost constant worldwide wars involving nuclear-armed countries (let alone the tensions of the Cold War).
The US and the USSR didn’t use them in Korea. The Americans didn’t use them in Vietnam, even though they humiliatingly lost a grim 20-year war to a poor, backwards nation in Indochina, and they didn’t use them against Iran or Iraq. The UK didn’t use, or even threaten to use, them against Argentina, even though Argentina is very far away and (unlike Vietnam) had no allies who might have retaliated on its behalf. Israel hasn’t used them against the hostile Arab nations that surround it on every border. India and Pakistan have resisted the temptation to start lobbing them at each other despite the depth of their enmities.
Those demanding the immediate removal of Trident portray themselves as “anti-war” campaigners, yet it’s not with nuclear weapons that every war since 1945 has been conducted. The scoreboard of deaths in war since Nagasaki more than three-quarters of a century ago reads:
Nukes United 0
Conventional Weapons FC untold millions
(Vietnam’s own casualties in its war alone are reckoned at between one and three million, not a single one of them to a nuclear weapon. Indeed, Hiroshima and Nagasaki between them accounted for just 0.5% of World War 2’s total deaths, with the other 99.5% down to cuddly, traditional, old-fashioned killing methods.)
The truth is that if every nation on Earth had nuclear weapons, and ONLY nuclear weapons, there would never be another war anywhere on the face of the planet, because even the craziest dictator would know that the first shot would instantly escalate into total global destruction, with nobody (and certainly not him) left alive to rule the ashes. And if you don’t believe me, ask Kim Jong-Un.
Conventional weapons, not nuclear ones, are what actually make wars possible. True pacifists would be demanding the abolition of tanks and jet fighters and frigates and helicopters, not nuclear missile submarines, yet many of the most vocal nuclear disarmers want MORE money spent on conventional forces instead.
As for the supposed unique “immorality” of nuclear weapons – apparently based on the fact that they kill in large numbers and “indiscriminately” – ask the citizens of Stalingrad or Dresden or Hamburg or Cologne or Tokyo or Guernica how moral it feels to be bombed by lovely, homely old non-nuclear explosives, or how discriminating the firestorms were and how many burned and suffocated to death in them.
(The publication below is in newsagents now, btw, and quite a read. And yes, that bottom picture is an open-air mass funeral pyre in the streets of a German city, next to the ashes from a previous one. But everyone on it died conventionally, so it’s fine.)
The “Operation Meetinghouse” conventional bombing raid by the US Air Force over Tokyo on 9 March 1945 killed more civilians than the attacks on either Hiroshima or Nagasaki five months later, but I’m sure the fact it involved non-nuclear incendiaries made everyone on the ground feel a whole lot better even as their skin burned off their skeletons and their lungs filled with choking smoke.
There are no moral bombs. Be against them all or don’t be against any of them.
The arguments about “safety” are no less idiotically bogus. To the very best of my knowledge not a single death anywhere in the world has ever resulted from a nuclear weapon accident, unless one fell over and squashed somebody. Nor is it ever likely to, because nuclear weapons are things that people tend on the whole to be quite careful about handling.
(For comparison, roughly 20 people a year in the UK die from falling out of bed and about five a year are killed by a bee.)
Imbeciles love to circulate social-media memes of an explosion at Faslane turning Scotland into irradiated rubble as far as Aberdeen and bemoan our largest city being “next door” to the weapons, but the scientific reality is that even the nightmare scenario of a Trident warhead somehow detonating on the base by accident (something which is in every meaningful sense completely physically impossible) would likely kill a few hundred people, a couple of thousand at most. The western edges of Helensburgh would get shoogled around very slightly for a couple of seconds but Glasgow would barely even notice it happening.
Now, that’d be an awful, terrible thing – and I have friends in Garelochhead, so it’s not a NIMBY position – but it’d also be about half as many as died from the Scottish Government’s incompetent handling of COVID-19 in care homes in 2020, something about which the nation largely shrugged its shoulders and went “Och well, it’s still better than England, isn’t Nicola doing a grand job?”
And it’d be in the same sort of ballpark as the record 1,339 Scots who died from drug misuse or the 1,190 from alcohol abuse in the same year, about whom almost nobody seems to give much of a toss either. (And grimly, those two figures are actual annual occurrences, not a wildly unlikely hypothetical one-off.)
And yet nobody ever questions the Yes movement’s clamour for Scotland to give Trident its marching orders on Day One of independence. The policy of removal is an article of faith, a sort of cheap moral totem pole for how we could run our affairs better than Westminster has, even though not a single Trident missile (or Polaris ones before it) has ever done anyone in Scotland or anywhere else a single iota of harm.
(Indeed, the Trident base supports a useful number of jobs and businesses, although nowhere near as many as Unionists claim and only a fraction as many as the same amount of money spent on something else could do. But if we were leasing the base out we’d get the best of both worlds – those jobs and businesses would still be supported, but Trident would be an income source to Scotland rather than a cost and we’d have all the extra money to spend.)
Conversely, the substantially worse independence settlement that we’d get without conceding the use of Faslane for 10 years or so WOULD do great damage to the lives of the people of Scotland, but apparently that’s something that just has to be sacrificed for the sake of hollow, useless, pointless, student-level piety.
(Because not only would we lose all the concessions we could force in return, and not only would we lose the billions a year in rental we could charge for the base, but we’d also have greatly antagonised our main neighbour and trading partner in general and made them want to be as unco-operative as possible, and that’s just not a smart or helpful way to get your fragile new nation off the ground.)
Of course, one could make the argument that if there are any remotely competent strategists in the SNP who’ve somehow survived Nicola Sturgeon’s string of purges of independent thinkers, they’re simply keeping quiet about this for now for the sake of not alienating the mass of Yes supporters. Should independence be safely secured, one could conceivably argue, then a grown-up approach to the subject could magically appear in negotiations.
That at least makes sense on one political level. But (a) instantly U-turning on one of your core commitments and betraying your own voters is a pretty dreadful way to kick off your new independent country, and more to the point, (b) a more measured and considered approach might actually be a significant help in winning you the vote in the first place. (Both in terms of making it happen at all, and then getting over 50%.)
For a start, over half of Scotland wants Trident to stay on principle – let alone for the pragmatic political/financial reasons – and aren’t we supposed to be trying to win those people’s votes? And secondly, if the UK didn’t think that its nuclear penis substitute might be at risk, would it be so implacably hostile to independence at all?
After all, we’re supposedly a big economic burden, we’re definitely a constant political pain in the arse, and we know from polling that most UK voters aren’t actually all that fussed if Scotland leaves. Oil money is nice but is balanced out by higher spending. Faslane is the one thing that makes London dig in its fingernails and cling onto us.
Saying “Trident must leave our country, but in the interests of safety and security and goodwill we’ll lease you Faslane at a sizeable rent for 10-15 years while you sort out somewhere else to put it” would be a far more mature policy, a far more rational one, a far more honest one, one that’s backed by 80% of Scots and one that might actually make independence more achievable in at least a couple of ways, as outlined above. Ironically, one of the No campaign’s most potent weapons would be defused.
(This article is long enough already without going into the wider issue of NATO, which is another glass jaw for the indy movement, being consistently backed by a very large majority of Scots.)
Unfortunately much of the Yes movement appears far more concerned with feeling superficially morally superior and being able to scream “BAIRNS NOT BOMBS!” as a counterpoint to/substitute for any reasoning on the subject. Fair enough. You do you, kids. But since not a single nuclear-weapons state has ever disarmed itself in human history, it’s just possible that a bit of tactical reflection on achieving your aims might not be entirely amiss.
Trident is purely symbolic. It has no military function, and represents no actual danger to anyone in Scotland or anywhere else. What it does serve as is a benchmark of how pragmatic and realistic our politicians are, and how serious the Yes movement is about not just winning independence but making a success of it.
Dismayingly, the omens on those things do not look good, and there are no signs of any grown-ups entering the room any time soon. And until they do, the issue of defence will continue to be an indy-killer.
Well hallelujah, so glad you have raised this issue.
For all the time I was in SNP I gave the others in my branch and MSP and MP this argument.
All ignored it, obviously as they are/we’re all unionist vichy devolutionists.
So let’s hope when your blog article gets around those like Joanna Cherrie, Angus MacNeil and others with backbone will start to use it.
Unfortunately Alba are also stupidly promoting kicking out Trident so alienating so many potential voters.
The best policy is simply to say….After independence we will have a referendum on Trident and the people of an independent Scotland will decide.
But No. They would also prefer to be seen a virtue signallers and that is why unfortunately they will get nowhere even as the SNP implodes.
“not a single nuclear-weapons state has ever disarmed itself in human history”
*cough* Ukraine *cough*
Although admittedly that doesn’t support the argument for getting rid of Faslane, Russia would’ve been less likely to invade had Ukraine still had some nukes, and I agree with your views above.
I can’t argue with a single word here. Absolutely spot-on analysis. BTW, there’s two typos where you meant ever but typed never. Sorry, that’s my OCD.
Excellent analysis of a pragmatic position. It is deeply embarrassing that the country of Hume, Carlyle and JM Barrie has not one single politician who is willing to use logic to arrive at real solutions to suit the people of Scotland.
Moreover the Yes campaigners have completely sidelined the conservatives of this country. The number of conservative voters has hovered between 20% and 30% over the last few decades. While these voters were all considered as “Unionist” that need not now be the case.
After all, in an independent Scotland there will still be around 20%+ of the population who will be conservatives. (And an SNP that will be the cast off skin of a snake.)
Excellent article, Rev. I had got to the point of thinking I was alone in thinking much the same as you have stated here. My opinion of nuclear weapons has moved on a lot from my teenage CND days, and the bargaining chip it offers an independent Scotland is so obvious I don’t see why it’s not a regular talking point.
I remember reading about the fun times at the Las Vegas resorts in the 50s.. They used to have a big countdown clock so guests would not miss the next nuclear test some miles away.Look it up.
The only sensible solution to Trident is that “Trident must leave our country, but in the interests of safety and security and goodwill we’ll lease you Faslane at a sizeable rent for 10-15 years while you sort out somewhere else to put it”.
There is no chance of it being dismantled/moved elsewhere in any timeframe less than 10-15y, I’d think 20-25y is more realistic. Even the most diehard Trident must go-ers should be able to see that.
It is inconceivable that any competent negotiating team wouldn’t do as you suggest but, of course, that presupposes that we would actually have some competent negotiators.
rUK really have no viable alternative options.
* Milford Haven lost its oil refinery but gained two LNG plants. Royal Navy (submarine division) famously ran into the Isle of Skye, fancy putting them in close proximity to tankers carrying LNG?
* Barrow-in-Furness is entirely unsuited, it can’t even launch submarines except in exceptional tidal conditions.
* Southampton and Portsmouth are highly problematic due to underwater topography and in any case are way too adjacent to population centres (where it matters).
* Berths at the French facilities in Ile Longue are limited and the loss of prestige having to beg the French for help would cause the English psyche to spontaneously combust.
* Kings Bay in Georgia is perhaps more feasible and it has the facilities to handle Trident missiles. Again, loss of face is applicable.
Wide scale propagation of connections between the US State Department and the SNP (Yousaf, Gilruth, Grady, Crawley, Blackford, S. McDonald and soon to be Forbes), suggests Foggy Bottom is preparing a fall-back position.
Scottish independence is tolerable to the State Department in extremis, but only if certain geopolitical caveats are met.
As long as the time period is set and the commitment to get shot of them genuine I don’t see anything controversial in this at all. its obvious actually and we might finally get a decent cut of that coin for a few years given that they are built in Barrow and serviced in Devonport. Investment in military and nuclear power in the northwest of England in particular is enormous.They won’t have major problems finding them a home elsewhere
NATO membership I disagree with. I prefer neutrality. Avoid like the plague getting involved in the politics of the major powers or we lose part of our Independence straight away(See Germany of today as a study). We would have to be pragmatic there as well though for example allowing passage for Nato operations through our waters. There aren’t any countries we want to be at odds and none we want controlling the actions of our reps, mps etc to the detriment of the Scottish people, their rights and interests. Sticking two fingers up to friendly countries on the other hand would be an embarassment.
In 2016 Westminster committed to the extremely expensive replacing of the current Vanguard class subs with the Dreadnought class which are now being built. This fact helps to make the bargaining position of an independent Scottish government even stronger.
thanks rev – the nukes are a huge negotiating chip in OUR favour
chest wig – more like a cucumber down the pants
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAargSCXQaQ
the trident subs are worn out and can be heard all over the atlantic, militarily they are useless; the new dreadnought class has already started constructuction so “it’s on”.
the galling thing, even for a britnat, is while france has an independent deterrent, britain does not – it came out some years ago the nukes are only rented from the americans at huge cost.
– chances are the launch codes are not in no 10, but the US ambassadors safe, the reasons being the cambridge spies ensured the americans could never trust the british ever again, and certainly not get their mitts on anything valuable/dangerous – as far as the cia were concerned, the british were full of communists, homosexuals
to a poweful nation, the nuke is useless, but their one use is to ensure the territorial integrity of small nations – which is why the norks and israelis love’em
If an indy Scotland wanted to really play “realpolitik” it might demand one boat and 16 missiles for our own nuclear deterrent. Now sit back and watch their jaws hit the floor.
A thought provoking article based on sound logic.
At the moment the nukes will be based at Faslane without our position and with complete contempt for our views.
OR
A fixed time scale and very high rental charge with agreement only after all other post Indy negotiations completed.
It makes sense but unfortunately we have the dickheads in the SNP dancing to their Green Masters at the moment.
I do not, and will not, trust London without a cast iron contract and to appease the Scots the timescale for removal has to be realistic. 10 years would be to short for London and 50 years would be too long for many Scots.
The key point for people to grasp is “It is there now”, “It is staying there under the Union”.
Shout and scream or use the lever.
Perhaps one day we will have high quality politicians fighting for us instead of current TransCult Mafia.
Interesting to think (well, interesting to me, anyway) that a proportion of the payment for a 15-20 year lease of Faslane/Coulport (do we include the arsenal of Glen Douglas also?) could well assist in funding the initial costs of setting up, equipping and training a Scottish Self Defence Force with ground, naval and air capabilities suited to our requirements.
Just, please, get any naval coastal or fast deployment vessels designed & constructed after consultation with some of our own marine experts. I bet Professor Baird has a few sympathetic and competent numbers in his Rolodex.
Radiation. Yes, indeed. You hear the most outrageous lies about it. Half-baked goggle-box do-gooders telling everybody it’s bad for you. Pernicious nonsense. Everybody could stand a hundred chest X-rays a year. They ought to have them, too.
Brilliant, pragmatic argument, Rev, and, although I detest the very thought of Trident, it has often passed through my mind that we could lease it for a number of years in exchange for our independence, but also a decent start. Any potentially untoward interference from rUK in our affairs could be seen off quickly, and from day one, with the threat that we will cease to host it. I think they lie anyway when they say that it could take years to dismantle. That lie alone should tell us their mindset.
The Russian Federation managed to dismantle all of theirs on foreign soil (independent republics, Ukraine, etc., after the collapse of the Soviet Union) within two to three years. In International law, it is incumbent upon the continuity state to remove all these nuclear weapons as they are, legally, the continuity state’s property, so we should be wary of Westminster porkies. People say that Ukraine could have held on to the nuclear weapons to keep Russia at bay. That could not have happened unless Ukraine offered to lease their bases to Russia, and that would have left them in no better a position.
In two minds about this, but I do see the implications. Gut feeling says, get rid, but reason says, use as bargaining tool and keep for a few years, but the time-scale must be prescribed and written on tablets of stone from the outset. You are totally correct about conventional weapons: they have killed millions and millions and millions.
Actually, as an anti-nuclear virtue signaller, you have given me food for thought regarding the timescale of removing Trident.
I am also opposed to other bombs, and I notice you make no mention of the depleted uranium that NATO dropped on Iraq all through the 1990s.
The SNP don’t have any intention of being in the position of negotiating our independence, and since there are NO adults in any room and the party is completely bereft of strategists, these issues remain moot.
Excellent analysis.
Scotland doesn’t want or need nukes. However, their departure has to be negotiated with Englandshire and the USA.
And it is the USA that will call the shots.
I agree with Mr Anderson we desperately need rid of the transcult mafia.
Fully agree that the best idea is a 10-15 year lease (with renegotiation at that stage if they have no alternative by then). I enjoyed bairns not bombs during indy, but for me that was about spending priorities. If we’re not spending on trident the rUK can knock themselves out with the stuff.
There have been a few deaths due to nuclear weapons accidents, but mostly confined to Los álamos and not involving full weapon but radioactive core during teats/demonstrations (demon core). Wholly avoidable and I’d hope no chance of happening 70 years later.
Well according to Billy Connelly they are full of doughnuts. So that’s that settled. Let’s get back to laughing at Useless.
Re nuclear weapons, back in the 50s/60s the US developed a small scale nuclear warhead which was to be fired at close range from a mortar. It never went beyond production and training as the crews possibly realised that it would be a one way trip. Those that were produced were put into storage and lost.
The SNP/Greens/Labour/Lib Dems and some of the Tories and quite possibly some of Alba would gift Faslane to Trans Youth Scotland to protect trans kids.
The US and the USSR didn’t use them in Korea. The Americans didn’t use them in Vietnam, even though they humiliatingly lost a grim 20-year war to a poor, backwards nation in Indochina, and they didn’t use them against Iran or Iraq. The UK didn’t use, or even threaten to use, them against Argentina, even though Argentina is very far away and (unlike Vietnam) had no allies who might have retaliated on its behalf. Israel hasn’t used them against the hostile Arab nations that surround it on every border. India and Pakistan have resisted the temptation to start lobbing them at each other despite the depth of their enmities
But we also know we came terrifyingly close to nuclear war several times. McArthur wanted to use the bomb in Korea for example, so really what has saved us from nuclear war is a mix of politics, diligent members of the military and sheer blind luck. Also, up til the last 15 or so years we’ve had people in government and the military who remember what happened in Japan in 1945 or are fully aware of the consequences. I fear now we’ve got people who think a ‘limited’ nuclear war is winnable.
Saying “Trident must leave our country, but in the interests of safety and security and goodwill we’ll lease you Faslane at a sizeable rent for 10-15 years while you sort out somewhere else to put it” would be a far more mature policy, a far more rational one, a far more honest one, one that’s backed by 80% of Scots and one that might actually make independence more achievable in at least a couple of ways, as outlined above. Ironically, one of the No campaign’s most potent weapons would be defused
The problem with that is that we’ll create a stalemate as no country breaking up will let a part leave it to retain nuclear weapons. I agree Trident is a substantial negotiating tool but realistically the RUK will have Trident out of an Indy Scotland ASAP.
Conventional weapons, not nuclear ones, are what actually make wars possible. True pacifists would be demanding the abolition of tanks and jet fighters and frigates and helicopters, not nuclear missile submarines, yet many of the most vocal nuclear disarmers want MORE money spent on conventional forces instead.
This is where you separate actual pacifists from sloganeering. There’s a debate to be had as to whether an Indy Scotland should be in the arms industry but it’ll never really be had so the Trident debate will carry on.
I do think we need shot of Trident from a purely financial point. The UK doesn’t need to spend money on such things while people starve or in fact, at any time, but the war/defence industry is worth too much in money, investment and jobs for any politician to seriously oppose it.
Unfortunately much of the Yes movement appears to care more about feeling superficially morally superior and being able to scream “BAIRNS NOT BOMBS!” as a counterpoint to/substitute for any reasoning on the subject. Fair enough. You do you, kids. But since not a single nuclear-weapons state has ever disarmed itself in human history, it’s just possible that a bit of tactical reflection on achieving your aims might not be entirely amiss.
Indy Scotland wouldn’t be disarming. We’d be a new country setting out our rules and being nuclear weapon free would be part of that. Opposing these things on moral and emotional grounds is perfectly valid. There’s a load of perfectly good intellectual reasons to oppose nuclear weapons on emotional grounds. Where realpolitik comes in is with the negotiating as said.
All of this is academic of course. We’re not getting independence for a generation at least. We’ve thrown away our best chance nine years ago and any other chance to even push for referendums have been wasted. Now the independence movement is splintered & the supposed party of indy doesn’t want it because that’d mean giving up power. Things might change when Labour win seats off the SNP next year but really, things are over indy wise until the grifters and lunatics are flushed from Scottish politics.
Shame that responses are blocked Rev.
This article appears ti touch some nerves somewhere.
‘Things are over indy wise until the grifters and lunatics are flushed from Scottish politics’
I dont think the answer is just replacing them with the grifters and lunatics of the london liebor party.
So simple really…MAKE THEM PAY.
The highest estimates for deaths in the Bush/Blair initiated Iraq invasion of 2003 is 1,033,000.
Even the conservative figures are in hundreds of thousands.
The Iran/Iraq US backed war is up to 2 million.
Modern conventional weapons can now easily target individuals.
Anyway, purely as a «cynical» child of the 2003 «war of liberation», if they think that their toy beats the other guys’ toys…MAKE ‘EM PAY! till the pips squeak.
Enough of that wokish virtue flashing.
Let us «cry» all the way to the national bank!
The priority is rUK vote on the rUN Security Council? Absolutely!
The rest is based on psoodoscience..
23 died in Ch3rnobyl apparently. 1985.
Sheep farms in Galloway still having their flocks bought up in 2012. Yes!
Ookraine theme?
M4cKinder?
“I agree Trident is a substantial negotiating tool but realistically the RUK will have Trident out of an Indy Scotland ASAP.”
But the point is, “ASAP” in the case of Trident *is* 10-15 years at a minimum. Building a nuclear submarine base is an extremely non-trivial task.
“Shame that responses are blocked Rev.”
Eh?
If Gaddafi or Saddam had nuclear weapons would the West have intervened?
Not accusing the rev of blocking responses.
But posts, unless spelled madly, don’t arrive. FYI.
So much common sense here (although in general, common sense is not as common as it should be). We badly need some proper adults who have it in abundance in charge of our country.
I’m not holding my breath…
Using the nuclear blast site you link…
If you click “Trident” in the drop down options it’s 455 kilotons not 100, and its blast area reaches Greenock. Since it’s a surface detonation you should click the fallout impact button too. There would be thousands of immediate fatalities and tens of thousands of injuries.
The missiles that Russia or China are likely to target on Faslane are much bigger and the blast area could easily reach Glasgow and the fallout could easily reach Aberdeen.
Finally, somebody on the independence side is asking the question about the small-c conservative element of Scottish society — “aren’t we supposed to be trying to win those people’s votes?” Well done, Stu, very well said indeed. The great fault line running through the independence movement is that a huge number of supposed “nationalists” are actually just frustrated political left-wingers who see an independent Scotland as the vehicle to advance an ideology they’re unable to peddle to the UK as a whole. It’s why the trans cult have colonized the SNP. The point is that they really don’t care about Scottish independence as a thing in itself, and unless this is recognized, it’s going to kill the entire movement stone dead. Unfortunately, far too many so-called “nationalists” would sooner continue in the Union than have their ideological purity besmirched by association with social conservatives and their filthy votes.
John C.
“All this is academic of course”
And as nuclear power as a negotiating tool raises further questions if discussed prior to solving the route to independence of Scotland,
With the devolved Scottish government and party politicals in that pretendy government deliberately blocking all political routes out,
First we must deal with what is actually preventing us from even “beginning” those nuclear negotiations later on,
And could Scotland be in a Stronger political position than England in those negotiations,
Fist find you route to start independence: If the prevention to Scotlands independence is the second rate Colonial devolved governance that the Westminster parliament has sent to manage Scotland under their Westminsters legislation of what Scotland is allowed to do or not do according to the Acts sent under the Scotland act.
We are fighting with our hands tied behind our backs and Scottish politics trussed up like a prisoner.
Secondly, you must pick your negotiating team,
Our negotiating team in 1706/1707 was one and the same side of the coin, the commissioners for negotiations.
Are we stupid enough to repeat this political ” coup” in Scotland?
Using the legislated branch office of Westminster sent to Scotland namely the devolved Scottish, under the ” Scotland Act” which breaches the fallacious Articles of the treaty of union government.
This is…….Westminster negotiating with Westminster on our behalf.
Scotland politically will be slaughtered with that ” one side of the same coin” repeat Scenario.
Nuclear is an excellent negotiating tool for Scotland with England for finances and income,
But After we have with, (no doubt) secured and found the root forward to independence for Scotland.
England is not going to fear or negotiate with a Scotland that has no teeth.
Or a Scotland that is governed by itself in their own branch office.
It is a good bargaining chip for us – amongst others.
However, I think there’s a player in this game who absolutely will NOT play ball with us.
The USA provides the warheads and will do what they like with them I suspect – and no doubt with WM’s blessing.
For instance, if we said ‘Get them out of here in 15yrs’ and they don’t take them – how do we do it? Where do we take them? With the way America is going, I can see the USA invading Scotland on the made up principle of keeping ‘the world safe from the Scots’
Same goes for the rusting decommissioned, contaminated subs that have been moored at Faslane for decades.
On the back of the hellish situation HS2 is in after nearly 6yrs of planning,drilling, demolishing nature and property at a disgraceful cost, I don’t know if we can rely on the rUK to produce a safe harbour for their Nukes on time.
Sure, the money will be good – but I really do want rid of Trident and its contaminated shit left behind.
I guess the main thing is, we won’t actually know how the world will be in the future. Hell, who’da thought we’d be up to our necks in this keech even 6 years ago.
Once upon a time, there was thought to be ZERO chance of Scotland ever becoming independent and thus as part of the UK, being anti Trident especially as it’s sited in Scotland was a perfectly reasonable position and one I shared.
Then, for a brief time under Salmond it appeared the chances of independence were very good and thus, I was happy to lease bases for Trident for a DEFINED period of time for mega bucks (but certainly not forever) as a neogitiating trump card. Assuming the problem of the nuclear non proliferation treaty could be resolved first obvs.
However under no circumstances do I want nuclear weapons controlled by a foreign power(s) indefinitely on Scottish soil. If there is an overrun of the agreed moving date (this is the UK we are talking about) then the penalty clause costs them MEGA MEGA bucks as an incentive to get their project finished.
I suspect however the rUK’s negotiating position would be for Scotland to host them forever and that they would withhold their “consent”/agreement for indy it they didn’t get it. So what then?
If you click “Trident” in the drop down options it’s 455 kilotons not 100, and its blast area reaches Greenock. Since it’s a surface detonation you should click the fallout impact button too. There would be thousands of immediate fatalities and tens of thousands of injuries.”
“In UK usage Trident II missiles are equipped with a warhead called Holbrook[45] and have a maximum yield of 100 kt.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UGM-133_Trident_II#Warheads
(Blast area is of course also affected by geography. There’s a reason Faslane is where it is.)
“The missiles that Russia or China are likely to target on Faslane are much bigger”
If there’s a nuclear war, rather than an accident, everyone in the Northern Hemisphere is fucked wherever in it they live.
An excellent analysis and article on a carefully swept under the carpet issue in the SNP years.
One or two points:
The Americans had deployed nuclear capacity in Vietnam and some’ upper level US ‘strategists’ were itching to use nukes.One can only assume that they decided the possibility of retaliation by other nuke capable powers was too great.
Secondly nukes are often justified on cost basis. The ‘kill per buck’ ratio is much greater for nukes than it is for conventional arms. This type of calculus is used to justify Trident by those masterminds embedded in the bowels(i.e. excrement passages)of Westminster and MOD.
It is also reported that the US has developed ‘mini’ nukes, the theory being that these would avoid protracted conventional warfare. One has to suspect that such weapons may be available in Ukraine if the calculus of that war were to provide justification/advantage for their use.I imagine that algorithm is constantly assessed in the pentagon. It would be illogical to conclude that other nuclear capable powers have not developed similar capacities.
In 1706/1707, queen Annes selected the Commissioners for negotiating on Scotlands behalf.
She also selected the commissioners for negotiating on Englands behalf.
This would be a repeat of old history if we allowed one and the same Westminster legislation politicians employed under oath to negotiate on our ( Scotlands) behalf,
And the Sovereign Scots in 1707 never asked where or why Queen Anne of England, France and Ireland had her authority from as (she had never “officially” been Crowned Queen of Scots) , like all the other monarchs of Scotland in history had,
She presumed the position of monarch of Scotland without a ceremony, without investitures, without the Scottish oath of monarchs, without a Scots crown placed on her head,
This means she was not union monarchy of Scotland and England.
This also means she could not give Scottish royal assent to join the two separate kingdom as one kingdom of great britain,
That is one constitutional reason why the monarchs of England cannot wear the crown of Scotland.
The two kingdoms of Scotland and and England are still two separate kingdoms.
Will we let or trust Englands Sovereign Westminster parliament and their own legislated branch office in Scotland negotiate on behalf of both Sovereign Scots and our separate territorial kingdom again,
and will we never question, will we never learn.
The logic of this position is inarguable – though the bears of little brain that comprise * Trans * snP will no doubt be choking on their decaf , Fair Trade , organic coffee in self-righteous disagreement . Logic – of any kind – being alien to them .
Ditto , the now fait accompli , no debate shibboleth that Independence axiomatically means an iScotland becoming an EU member – but let’s not discuss a Scottish currency , eh ?
At the very least , these two subjects should be quietly dropped from any conversation/campaign re Independence and if pressed on the subjects respondents should state they are among the many things that will be debated AFTER Independence , and be put to referenda to determine what the will of the people is regarding them .
According to an ex soviet general the war plan for the UK was 3 massive H bombs – one an airblast over harthill, about 20M – a hot day in salsburgh.
Another aspect of the nukes is this – you want them gone, but done in an orderly way – and you want them to clean up their mess properly. MOD always make a mess and with nukes, multiply by 10; e.g. the radiation at dalgety bay (never buy a house on ex MOD land);
Re explosions.
Why was there a crater in Lebanon?
Why was there damage to the basin wall on 911?
Why did the blast strip concretete from the rebar in Bali?
Excellent article that handily illustrates two principles that we all have to be good with if we are to become an independent country:
1. The goal of national and administrative independence, until it is achieved, is the pre-eminent and single objective of the entire independence movement.
2. We, as a country, are not some kind of magical unicorn place of political enlightenment, we are much like everyone else, in fact occasionally more backwards. Thinking this is a luxury of our position as a colonised culture. In order to achieve independence, see point 1.
Rinse, repeat until clean.
Ah Stuart you were probably right on this up to 10 years ago, but after the people’s revolution of the Brexit vote, I’d say you’ve missed the boat (or nuclear sub!) on this argument.
Most English voters don’t care about the U.K. having nuclear weapons, and after the Brexit cultural revolution established their awareness of the power of the popular vote, it’s very likely that they would also dare to vote for a party that chose health spending over a replacement for Trident at the tens of billions – they don’t even want to spend money on a railway line to the north. Especially after watching the uselessness of nuclear weapons in defending Ukraine.
It’s only the U.K. establishment (and Americans) that want the U.K. to retain nuclear weapons, and they’re power is diminishing rapidly after Brexit.
I agree with some of the article but not all of it, English and US subs pollute our waters, nukes travel through our largest cities at night, in which a fire after a collision or an attack could result in disastrous consequences for the inhabitants of Edinburgh or Glasgow.
Another point is that Faslane would end up a English/US enclave, we’d get so used to the money that Trident and its polluting subs would be here to stay.
As for the Falklands War, its though that the MoD sent nukes to the Falklands.
“A number of sources have indicated that a submarine equipped with Polaris strategic nuclear missiles – then Britain’s major nuclear weapons system and the forerunner to the current Trident – was diverted to the South Atlantic within range of Argentina.”
https://www.declassifieduk.org/did-uk-deploy-nuclear-armed-submarine-to-falklands-conflict/
No one actually believes that English/US nukes would be booted out of Scotland on day one of Scottish independence, but in my opinion we should urge our neighbour to remove them as soon as possible, in the event of the unthinkable (a nuclear war) Faslane would be a high priority target. Yes conventional weapons have killed millions upon millions of people over the centuries and beyond, but nukes have the ability to end mankind, and all other life forms on the planet a frightening thought.
Accidents and security around nuclear subs which holds these powerful weapons isn’t always what the MSM portrays it to be.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/royal-navy-investigates-trident-whistleblower-william-mcneilly-who-claims-nuclear-programme-is-a-disaster-waiting-to-happen-10256148.html
https://theferret.scot/tag/trident/
As for no madman/men would dare start a nuclear war for fear of the consequences, only time will tell.
* South Africa unilaterally disarmed their (small) stockpile of nuclear weapons.
Britannia used to rule the waves. Until they over reached in the Suez canal in 1956.
at the start of the 20th century. 1 fifth of the worlds ships were built on the Clyde. The second city of the empire. Now we cant even build ferries. It’s a tragedy.
Since 1979 the conservatives party, have entirely dismantled the former British Empire. British Steel, British Petroleum, Rolls Royce, British Airways, water and electricity. British Rail. The list goes on 82 assets that made a nation sold off.
Britain doesn’t rule anything. It is nothing. It offers no social mobility. And even since leaving the European union, and being the commonwealth they still hate the immigrants. The orange halls are dwindling. There is nothing to be proud of.
The Commonwealth imprint, what has it done? It means nothing to the indigenous subjects of the Crown. No one wants to host the sporting competition.
I grew up watching pirates of the Carribean and learning about how we discovered the world. It certainly was an impressive feat to dominate the world and the worlds oceans. But it is consigned to history like the Roman Empire. A lot of countries speak English and provide us good holiday destinations.
Back at home scots suffer. our votes dismissed. The land of invention inventing nothing. The land of enlightenment and the top 200 universities. It’s all gone.
Instead we’re paying through the roof to fund the NATO war. We could be wiped out at any second ask the people of Hiroshima and Nagazaki. The nukes didn’t keep them safe. It’s impossible to not be morally superior by saying Bairns Over Bombs.
They just don’t want to lose their seat on the UN security council. It means nothing to us. We’ve decided to go it alone outside the EU. We’re building nothing. We are nothing.
Can’t help but chuckle at the btl posts on here making such statements as “well said, Rev, i’ve been saying this for years” etc.
You all must be new to WOS because that’s been Stuarts position for as long as he’s been producing articles on Wings, as far as i’m aware.
I thoroughly recommend, during quieter moments when you all have some time to kill (or even as some bedtime reading) work your way through the WOS Archives to discover a treasure-trove of political articles of this quality. You may even come across one of his earlier articles on this topic. 😉
PS: There are also quite a good few contributions in the Archives from the equally brilliant Scott Minto. Fill yer boots, folks!
Anyone remember this? It was withdrawn by the BBC the day before it was to be transmitted, but I was fortunate enough to see it when it was being shown at the camp cinema at RAF Wattisham. Not funny, when someone uses a nuke. The blast is just the start of the problem. The complete breakdown of society was the most unamusing aspect. I’ve never forgotten the scene in The War Game when the Police formed a firing squad to execute looters. Also members of the public executing Policemen in the street with their own Webley. I once read that MI5 reckon that revolution is only three missed meals away.
https://archive.org/details/TheWarGame_201405
This is all Britain wants to keep. The nukes. And they can’t say they are peace keepers either. Look how they handed Afghanistan back to the Taliban.
The Queen is now deceased. Her former territories all independent.
They have stolen Scottish culture for so long. Previously banning outlawing our Tartan. And now, the highlight of our Royal Military Tattoo at Edinburgh Castle… We’ve got to sing God Save the Queen instead of flower of Scotland. It’s an insult to our heritage.
I’m not proud to be British. I’m a Scotsman. Britain has disinherited me just like it has disinherited everything that held it together since 1980s. They can thank their very own conservative party for deconstructing the empire for their own selfish greed.
The youth of today hate Britain. For example. Cutting down the Hadrians wall Sycamore tree. Just goes to show you how feral things are becoming.
We need independence to build our own country now more than ever. We need to restore national pride. through independence.
50,000 supporters at Hampden Park, booing the British national anthem when England came to play. They don’t have their own anthem. The natives are restless. Time for Independence. Away from the toxic class system and war mongering by the deep state.
I am of the opinion that technology and costs of replacement will see ‘boomers’ rendered obsolete in a couple of decades.
The ability for space-based systems to ‘see’ through the water column of oceans and track wake disturbance will render these large submarines ‘visible’ and therefore vulnerable to preemptive attack.
Hypersonic missiles will also become the darling of the defence procurement establishment.
Therefore Faslane as a bargaining chip for Indy negotiations has a limited shelf life IMHO.
The heaviest ship sunk during WW2 was the Japanese aircraft carrier Shimono which was it’s maiden voyage at the time. It was something like 70,000t and so comfortably bigger than anything else sunk and it was sunk by a small US submarine.
Stories like this mean that submarines are held in the highest regard amongst military folk. Nuclear weapons likewise and so the combination of the two is irresistible and that has been the case for decades. Aircraft evolve, tanks, drones and all the rest of it but nuclear submarines are capable of inflicting most damage on the enemy by quite a big margin.
In a mature independent nation (with its own broadcasting powers) this and many other controversial issues would’ve been debated at length.
It doesn’t matter if people agree with Rev’s stance or not, the point is that it’s a perfectly valid and well-reasoned argument which should’ve been aired and thrashed out decades ago.
WM must be ‘intensely relaxed’ that we’re too busy arguing over GRA, DRS, ferries etc.
So glad to see you bring this up again. I agreed with the strategy entirely when you first mentioned it some time ago and have spoken about it to people since all of whom agreed. It’s so ridiculous to risk the biggest goal in Scotland’s history for short term virtue signalling.
There are two alternatives to Faslane already planned up. It would cost a few billion long term, but the subs could move there into temporary shelters in a couple of weeks.
So the main argument isn’t an Ace card.
Captain Yossarian @6.36am 28 September said that he was going to take leave of Wings for ‘a few years’.
Taking ‘a few years’ to mean 3 or more, this implies that one day on planet Yossarian is equivalent to 1 Earth year (or more).
Pity, I was hoping to welcome him(?) back after independence.
“but the subs could move there into temporary shelters in a couple of weeks” Not in a million years. There’s a ship-lift at Faslane, accommodation for hundreds of crew and an armaments base 10 miles away in Couport which can safely store and load/unload the missiles. Faslane/Coulport is irreplacable, certainly in the short-term.
APaedoAbroad obviously feels aroused to share facts on this subject.
It’s not killing people. It’s just business.
Johnlm – Forgive me – I needed a break from the vengeful spinster. I remember Fergus Ewing saying the worst thing the SNP ever did was elect Humza instead of Forbes and I agree with him on that.
https://twitter.com/offtopicscot/status/1707837628073025923
The Russians claim that there are only two types of naval craft – submarines and targets.
For those that say there was/is no UK alternative to Faslane. Bollocks.
A very close family member was a staff officer for FOSNI (Flag Officer Scotland and Northern Ireland) back in the 50s/60s when it was being decided where the best place to base the submarine deterrent would be. The winner was Plymouth, Falmouth area. The reason for that being is that they have all the requirements such as a skilled workforce and road and rail links, but above all there is immediate access to the Western Approaches. The Subs can leave the harbour and are straight into deep water allowing them to submerge.
What they didn’t reckon on is that many of the Naval brass have large mansions in that area. The recommendation was thus buried. ‘Stick that nuclear stuff in Faslane, well away from us’. That was what they were told.
Nukes are nasty, as are the régimes that own them…..but you cannot uninvent them.
However, you can if possible, give the ego inflated possessors a good run.
How much ya got?
Decisions, decisions.
Loch Long is between 60 and 90m deep and it is as close to the open sea as you are ever going to get. In the 60’s there may have been a number of options, each viable enough. But Faslane and Coulport have been developed year on year since then and are virtually irreplaceable. You cannot just tie-up a nuclear submarine anywhere and to anything and whatever you build needs to be to nuclear standards, which is seismic standards, plus. If you have ever seen the shiplift at Faslane you would appreciate that is not something that can be recreated easily or quickly or without enormous cost.
An absolute stoater of an article from Rev Stu.
Never have I seen so much logic, rationality and plain old-fashioned common sense written about Scotland and Indy in one hard-hitting article.
Rev Stu, your country needs you.
Get yourself into politics. Do it now.
Stoker: I think most of us already knew that. It is, perhaps, an argument that has found its time? Isn’t that the point of a resurrection?
“The youth of today hate Britain. For example. Cutting down the Hadrians wall Sycamore tree. Just goes to show you how feral things are becoming.”
David Hannah.
Meanwhile in my home town Glasgow, its the council that’s doing all the cutting down of trees.
https://nitter.net/909isLive/status/1708008264443539474#m
Molesworth.
meanwhile the European Parliament doesn’t make claims it just does hypocrisy.
https://nitter.net/ClareDalyMEP/status/1706987144063877200#m
For anyone wondering what the Baku Trophy Park is, here’s and explanation.
https://www.persecution.org/2021/04/13/azerbaijan-opens-trophy-park-celebrating-genocide/
Captain Yossarian says:
Anyway, I’m going to take my leave of Wings for a few years. I’ve got the Wings bunny-boiler on my case and I really cannot be arsed with it.
https://wingsoverscotland.com/the-widowmaker/#comment-2792946
Captain Yossarian says:
Johnlm – Forgive me – I needed a break from the vengeful spinster.
We don’t want nuclear on our patch, but we want to be under the umbrella of nuclear NATO.
@David Hannah 3:33
“offers no social mobility”
“hate the immigrants”
Soz an a’ that, but you’re just making a fool of yourself.
Plenty of the “hated immigrants” use your so-called non-existent social mobility to get themselves into positions where they are now telling us what to do and coining it in. I could reel off a list of names, even from memory, but frankly, I can’t be arsed. We all know who they are – they are seldom out of the media spotlight.
Soz if you can’t rustle up any social mobility for yourself. Being prepared to graft used to do the trick in Scotland. I incline to the belief that still works.
Totally agree. I would have gine with 5 to 10 tears and no new generation.
The rent should be what ever they calculate our current defect to be
Captain Yossarian
Welcome back.
Keep telling it as it is, and illigetimi non carborundum.
Is it Derek!
Is Derek the Wings bunny-boiler, the vengeful spinster. 🙂
I can’t believe it!
David Hannah says:
30 September, 2023 at 3:33 pm
Britannia used to rule the waves. Until they over reached in the Suez canal in 1956.
It’s a matter of opinion, but it’s my belief the UK is already heading full steam ahead for another Suez.
It’s my prediction that sooner or later, the US is going to lose interest in it’s proxy war, particularly once it’s clearly facing the imminent defeat of it’s “investment”. The ground is already shifting I think. It’s a question of when, not if, it takes a step back.
When that happens, the UK Government will be compelled to humbly follow suit, because otherwise, if it persists with it’s warmongering, the continues to supply weapons and technology to the war zone, it will find itself isolated, with NATO humiliated, (and to a large extent disarmed), but the UK will also be confronted by a vengeful enemy far, far more powerful than Egypt in 1956.
“IF” that’s the direction events take, the prospect of retaliation against the UK for it’s interference and role as shit-stirrer in chief, is something I’d be taking very seriously indeed. That’s where a Suez style humiliation awaits, that, or an actual hot shooty-gun war kicks off.
If I was a defence strategist in Whitehall, I would be extraordinarily careful about deploying the UK Aircraft Carriers, because if they’re down there, “ruling the waves” near the disputed waters around Taiwan, well, you know what they say. Accidents happen when people play with guns, (or hypersonic anti shipping missiles).
I very much agree there is leverage in “how” we rid Scotland of Nuclear weapons, but we shouldn’t ignore the possibility of putting the damn things out of commission altogether, and doing the whole world a favour, by disarming one of the most thug like, psychotic and dangerous governments on the planet.
As a boost for Scottish Independence? Not sure. I dunno, who can say these days?
But to boost the prospects for an Indy Scotland’s International Recognition? Well, there’s a lot more yays than nays in it I think.
Now do you begin to see why Alf Baird is on to something, and Scotland should be thinking along the lines of a neutral, (that is US, BRICS and EU friendly), Trade Port and mass maritime freight handling facility at Scapa Flow?
I’ve said it before, and I mean it. Scotland could be the Istanbul of Western Europe with the GIUK gap as our Bosporus, bringing trade to us, and we are right at the confluence of the sea lanes, the crossroads where where economic Continents come together.
Scotland’s future as an Independent Nation has so much potential, on so many levels, that to coin the Jaws phrase, we’re gonna need a bigger
boatCountry. With luck, Scotland’s next immigration crisis will be trying to cope with our diaspora coming home.Give it a decade or two, and we Scots won’t want to talk about the time Scotland was subjugated, in penury, trapped in an involuntary “Union”. Nobody will talk about it because we’ll be so downright embarrassed that we put up with the plundering of our Nations wealth for over 300 years.
The Union will be a dot in our rear view mirror.
My only problem using Trident as leverage, is that “leverage” means ultimately handing the damn things back to London. Let’s score a goal for neutrality and just destroy them.
There is no such thing as a limited Nuclear War. Strike begets counter strike.
Let Scotland take it’s lead from Vasily Aleksandrovich Arkhipov; the man who saved the planet in 1962, by doing what was right, not what he was told.
Rev Stu is talking more sense than any of the politicians again.
Vile.
This is a bit silly for various reasons, not least the idea that English negotiators would place such an amazingly high value on contining the nuclear status quo, but the most glaringly obvious is that the submarines already have alternate operating and missile loading bases.
They refit in Devonport, coming and going quite happily, and conduct missile firings out of Kings Bay, with existing arrangements in place for pooled use of resources with the Americans.
I’m sure the Royal Navy would be sorry to lose Faslane, but the Admirals would have an alternative plan in place before they’d finished their first G&T of the day they found out it was going.
@Ruby
He’s frit. Ran away. He’ll run again. Empty shell.
The problem for the uk the existing obligations under various nuclear agreements mean is if there is secession the new country is not allowed to inherit the nuclear bombs.
If we dissolve the union the decision is less clear.
They will need to come to the table knowing their place. They will no longer be the master
Would the west have meddled in Iraq or Libya if they had had nuclear weapons?
And secondly, if the UK didn’t think that its nuclear penis substitute might be at risk, would it be so implacably hostile to independence at all?
That’s interesting!
Any reason why Scotland couldn’t have negotiate some sort of deal with Westminster re Trident on one of their many trips to London begging for an S30?
ie Give us an S30 and we will ensure everything goes smoothly with regards to Trident.
What John Main said
George @7.28pm.
The answer to that question is of course no, whether you like the likes of Iran or North Korea their strive for nukes and to attain them changes the narrative for any nation wishing to overthrow them. When Mordechai Vanunu whistleblew that Israel had obtained nukes, Iran knew that it had to develop them to balance this out.
Libya didn’t have the nukes required to ward off Nato, and now its a failed state in turmoil, the recent collapse of the Derna dam is a by-product of decaying infrastructure since the Nato invasion of the country.
I meant this: ” An absolute stoater of an article from Rev Stu.
Never have I seen so much logic, rationality and plain old-fashioned common sense written about Scotland and Indy in one hard-hitting article.
Rev Stu, your country needs you.
Get yourself into politics. Do it now.
No need to worry about indy negotiations: Serving the UK’s King / head of state is the sworn role of our “pro-indy” politicians.
(ISP / Colette Walker excepted.)
It’s incredible how so many proclaim the people of Scotland are sovereign then defend the likes of Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon swearing servitude to the English king as their sovereign and overlord, like a bad remake of the Outlaw King.
The only political organisation that I ever joined was CND. I’d like them gone, but having them away on day one was never going to happen.
Removal after a time is fine by me.
“It’s my prediction that sooner or later, the US is going to lose interest in it’s proxy war”
Breeks.
Unlikely, America is now a corporatocracy, that’s spun to look like a democracy, there’s far too much money to made out of the conflict in Eastern Europe for it end abruptly.
As for nukes in the dis-united kingdom, Westminster/Whitehall see retaining them as a necessity afterall how could you look the other P5 members in the eye if your the only one at the table without them, its a pride thingy.
Unfortunately Scotland is along for the ride, for now at least.
I have said since before 2014, whatever deficit the English Gers figures say we have (currently £19.2bn/yr) on the day we become independent, will be the rent value for Faslane and Coulport, an independent Scotland will be debt free from day one, but using that figure and the revenue figures just announced in recent weeks, that would bring Scotlands fiscal surplus to £35 billion a year, we as an independent nation are stinking rich.
https://x.com/offtopicscot/status/1708215023808520219?s=20
Faslane is a military base and in the event of independence it would be a foreign military base. A country is not independent whilst it is being militarily occupied, you only need to look at the some 150 US client states to see that. Cuba has been trying to get the yanks out for 60 years. You think that is a fair price for a handful of baubles and some more empty promises?
Republic of Scotland: I can’t believe they are cutting down the trees in Suchiehall Street. That must be for their Israeli military surveillance system to spy on the activists heading to freedom square… My feelings are well known on Susan Aitken and I wont repeat them.
Breeks: “Scotland could be the Istanbul of Western Europe with the GIUK gap as our Bosporus, bringing trade to us, and we are right at the confluence of the sea lanes, the crossroads where where economic Continents come together.
Scotland’s future as an Independent Nation has so much potential, on so many levels, that to coin the Jaws phrase, we’re gonna need a bigger boat Country. With luck, Scotland’s next immigration crisis will be trying to cope with our diaspora coming home.”
Brilliant post. Thanks for writing love it. Let’s bring the diaspora home to Glasgow. We can do it with Independence!
We can restore the glory to the River Clyde with Independence. We become the maritime nation. We can be neutral like Switzerland.
Let’s bring the world together in harmony, bound together just like Auld Lang Syne! ahah! YESS
nukes aren’t all bad –
“The first to be hit will be London. It’s crystal clear that the threat to the world comes from the Anglo-Saxons,” he added.
(where is the lie?)
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/18990716/russia-nuke-london-first-world-war-three-putin-ally/
now you ask for the section 30 from whatever remains in the crater
Breeks,
you need to look at a map and marine AIS tracking sites.
Hardly any ships go close to Orkney, because it’s out on the far north west arse end of Europe, and hundreds, if not thousands of miles away from the markets. Making Scapa Flow into a transshipment place is the most bonkers idea since someone decided to turn a Poly in Edinburgh into a “University” and give out titles to fools.
There ain’t no money in it.
Sorry Rev, great article but Trident isn’t purely symbolic and it serves a frontline military function today. It’s a highly accurate and effective nuclear warhead delivery system. You note it’s economic benefits but it also has a broader value within NATO and to those of us who enjoy NATO protections.
We disagree on independence, but I thought that was a sensible well argued piece. Sadly, for you, no evidence that the current SNP leadership is sensible or able to think like this.
On the costs of Brexit – I voted Remain, btw, the article in the renowned Brexit loving Beeb on ‘growth’ since 2019 indicates that that there’s something more than Brexit to blame for the slow growth of the UK economy.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66957412
Yes. Nailed it, as usual. It’s daft to rule out using such a powerful bargaining chip.
@Breeks 7:05
The problem with Breek’s wishful thinking is that it’s not just the UK that gets left exposed if the US walks away from The War.
It’s half of Europe too. Half a dozen states will cease to exist, other than as occupied colonies. Another half a dozen will be on a permanent war footing. The EU will be effectively ended as maybes tens of millions of refugees flood west in desperate search for the benefits and advantages we currently enjoy.
This is what a few have been praying for since their favourite imperialist aggressor kicked it off in February last year. The mystery of why they believe this will somehow benefit either Scotland or iScotland remains just that – a mystery.
I keep hoping Breeks or somebody else will enlighten us with their wisdom.
https://caltonjock.com/2023/03/29/the-politically-motivated-persecution-of-alex-salmond-the-finger-of-accusation-points-at-former-mi5-spy-crown-agent-david-harvie/
The present nuclear submarines were built in the late 1980’s in Barrow. They have a floating pontoon jetty at Coulport for arming them and disarming them that is built from reinforced concrete and is something like 8-stories deep, most of it underwater. The submarines, which are about four times bigger than diesel-electric submarines can be accommodated fully inside this jetty which has overhead cranes and all the rest of it. This is the type of thing that exists at Faslane and Coulport and hardly anyone is aware of but which would be difficult to recreate anywhere else. Realistically, more like 50-years rather than 10-years to replace all of it.
Finally, they are talking about scaling back HS2 because of rising costs. If they had to declare Plymouth a nuclear construction site and start building a replacement for Faslane and Coulport there, for example, the same would happen. Costs would rise sharply but they couldn’t contain it or scale back or cancel and so I don’t reckon it will ever happen.
Do we have the skills to even do it now since we cannot build nuclear power stations any longer?
Secondly, Trident undoubtedly costs Billions per year to run and is difficult to support and to put-up any sensible argument for keeping it. However, it does raise us to near the top of the defence league and Fred Goodwin and his team cost us a Trillion, which is a thousand Billions, during the banking crash. Has everyone forgotten about that?
I agreed with this proposition the first time you posted it rev, the drawback which is even more apparent now is that there is NO ONE competent enough to carry out any meaningful negotiations after indy
As we all know politicians have and are currently selling us down the swanney , what an enormous gift we would give to any individual politician to allow them to negotiate a deal like this, the riches they could accrue in selling us out would be mind boggling , and the damage they could inflict on Scotland afterwards would be equally mind boggling
Have we not learned our lessons in trusting these people, have we not suffered enough over the last 9 years of lies , corruption and incompetence, is it only sturgeon and her acolytes that we should be wary of, have we not been outraged and angered that every one of the troughers in HR have sat back on their well padded arses and allowed the deviant to destroy any semblance of democracy that we had
we allow politicians to dictate to us their feelings and their policies and then get upset when they are wrong especially when we know they are wrong
Alex Salmond agreed to a constitutional franchise on our freedom that was dependent on people from other countries agreeing to that freedom and allowed the country that we sought freedom from to appeal to those same people through lies and fear to vote against our freedom (IT WORKED) and yet Alex Salmond has STATED that should another referendum take place the same franchise that defeated our freedom will be used again
ANY decision with the magnitude of importance that trident has MUST be put to a referendum of the people with a full explanation of any implications re the various outcomes , we cannot allow vested interested parties or individuals to sway the argument or continue to sell out our nation , we HAVE to learn from 2014
The article is nonsense. In todays world a nuclear deterrent is a necessity to balance rogue countries nuclear capability. If Ukraine had kept its nuclear deterrent instead of getting rid of it based on the West’s promise to protect it in the future we would probably not be at war in Ukraine now. If an independent Scotland ever happens it would need to keep Faslane to gain entry to Nato. All Nato countries must store nuclear weapons on their land if required to do so by Nato on no membership allowed. The articles stance has no reality in it and highlights other areas of complete rubbish put forward by supporters of an independent Scotland that will never happen.
Those that remember the Falklands war may remember that the UK had 2No submarines there. One of them sank the General Belgrano and after that the Argentine navy retreated back to base and played no further part in the war. The Belgrano was sunk using torpedoes of the type last used during WW2. So, modern submarines are very effective and the type used in the Falklands conflict may have been the older Polaris submarines.
Great article, thanks.
Conflating twathater and Captain Yossarian’s posts @2:39 & 3:57 am, a good demonstration of Humza’ s star quality in the long term might be if he’s able to call the rebels back in to set about thrashing out an interest rate freeze at 0% on all mortgages taken out before labour saved the bankers (2008).
A committee to compensate responsible householders for interest payments incurred during the years lost arguing over an appropriate number of penises for women (amongst others) would also be positive imho – particularly if it paved the way to general damages and civil asset forfeitures in respect of the gross negligence and extreme moral hazard arising.
@twathater 3.57 am
Alex Salmond is indeed on record as rubbishing calls for franchise restriction. I was as the Alba event in Edinburgh where both he and Tasmina Sheikh poured water on the idea. I can quote his actual words, not I suspect that it would do any good. I remember “indigenous Scot” Gareth Wardell looking like he’d chewed a wasp when he heard it.
Surely the issue for nativists supporting franchise restriction is no different from that facing those opposing NATO membership, or insisting country 404 had it coming, or that vaccination is a WEF plot, or that global warming is a hoax: the overwhelming majority of Scots disagree with them.
Whether a post indy Scottish government holds referendums on issues like NATO membership, whether to retain the monarchy or EU membership remains to be seen. It would seem sensible, but it’s quite possible they will simply allow parliament to decide based on what is in their platform for government.
Supporters of fringe views should probably be careful what they wish for. As most of the comments on this thread (and on X/twitter) show, they’re not going to win.
Another insightful article rev. If we ever achieved independence we would need you at the negotiating table instead of the pinecones we have at present. I have always been concerned as to the ability and commitment of those who would deal with the sharks of Westminster in that event. We do have a few but they are few.
As in any breakup the division of shared assets is central.
A messy business, tedious and rancorous e.g all those British museum artefacts etc the nuke base option might leap frog much of that.
How much you offering? We’ll start from there Britannia, shall we?
Britannia needs energy but all at sea as to where to get it.
https://archive.ph/i8ewi
Another bit of leverage an astute leader would exploit.
No amount of Strictly come Rutherglen prancing is gonna save the current guy.
Old ma Britannia needs energy but all at sea as to where to get it.
https://archive.ph/i8ewi
Another bit of leverage an astute leader would exploit.
No amount of Strictly come Rutherglen prancing is gonna save the current guy.
Captain Yossarian says:
1 October, 2023 at 5:26 am
…. So, modern submarines are very effective and the type used in the Falklands conflict may have been the older Polaris submarines.
The Falklands war was over 40 years ago, and the General Belgrano was first laid down 47 years before that, in 1935 and survived WW2 as the American light cruiser USS Phoenix.
No weapon is truly obsolete if it gives you the advantage over an enemy who has no defence against it, but the object of the exercise is “not” to find yourself in the latter predicament. Unfortunately I think that’s precisely where we are.
There is a body of opinion that all submarines will be obsolete by 2040 because better technology will make the seas transparent. Submarines will have nowhere to hide, no element of surprise, nor the means to defend themselves against the drones which will be sent to destroy them.
Part of the reason I believe the USA will try to extricate itself from Yookrane is because pretty much all conventional NATO weaponry has proven itself inferior to expectations. All parties concerned now have to redesign what warfare actually means. It’s already happening.
American plans to upgrade the older generation of Abrams tanks have been dropped because even before they’re deployed, the widespread destruction of NATO armour from it’s MRAPs and Bradley’s, through to Leopards and Challengers, has uncovered their strategic weakness and obsolescence, while in contrast, the Ruskian electronic warfare and air defence has proven itself superior. Not 100% absolutely effective, but adequate.
But by a wide, wide margin, the most profound development in this conflict in Yookrane has been the introduction of the terrifying concept of drone warfare, whether its the Lancet, or the crude but effective improvised hand grenade slung beneath an ordinary drone.
There seems nowhere safe to hide, even in trenches, and no doubt we will see the legacy of this “new” terror in decades of PTSD from survivors.
What strikes me too, is the “cinematic” view of war we are witnessing. Not just the tragedy of corpses, but all to frequently, the literal instant of a man’s death. Sometimes there is footage of the same strike from multiple perspectives. Your death can now be filmed in triplicate. When an “ordinary” drone finds it so easy to find and lock on to a target, what kind of devilish technology is actually doing the “accurate” targeting?
There is even evidence of a drone you can buy on Amazon trying to destroy an actual helicopter in flight.
This “new” warfare is also in its infancy. So crude, there are examples of soldiers 3d printing plastic parts to enhance the aerodynamic accuracy of their grenades, and yet, all we hear about these days is AI.Just wait until the two come together.
The age of drone warfare has arrived, and the ramifications are truly profound. There has never been warfare like this before.
One of my favourite films for a long time was the 1984 film Dune, and in it, there is a scene where Paul is targeted by a “hunter killer” a mini drone which hunts it’s target by pheromone signature, then movement in the last few feet, then stabs them with a lethal toxin. Who knows? Maybe science fiction is already science fact, but what Dune didn’t anticipate was there being absolutely hundreds of the damn things targeting people on sight.
I have to admit too, when you watch a Lancet of death “glide” serenely into it’s target, I am reminded of another Dune phenomenon, where it’s the slow blade which penetrates the shield.
This conventional war is extraordinarily unconventional, and how humanity regroups after this is actually quite terrifying. There has to be Peace, and an end to this carnage.
TURABDIN
Surely today’s received wisdom is that all the stuff in the British Museum is colonialist theft? And as snow-white Scotland was never colonialist, or so it is frequently claimed on here, then rUK can keep the lot?
Haha, I crack me up.
But we could cut the Gordian knot on the divorce negotiations by taking a pro-rata approach, based on population size. So Scotland gets to keep 10% of the assets values, and shoulders 10% of the debt.
I write “assets value” as most assets are not portable. Thus, having worked out the value of what we can keep, we would assign fixed infrastructure as ours, up to that value. Probably still take the SNP numpties 10 years of rancorous negotiations to sort that out, mind. But who else are we going to get?
Maybes Rev Stu? On the strength of the above article, he has the common sense approach that will be needed.
And he’s back with more poorly informed twaddle.
The 21st century is not going to go smoothly, I think we can all see that. 404 is the testing laboratory in which the effective weapons are being designed, developed and proved – Breeks has that part correct at least.
Strange that he can’t see just how necessary that makes it for the big players to maintain involvement. The technology is indeed evolving rapidly. Sit on the sidelines for a couple of years, and everything you have in your armoury will be obsolete.
As China is not yet getting involved, that places them at a particular technological disadvantage. Exactly the same disadvantage that will impact the west if we unilaterally disengage too. Conversely, 404 is providing us with a priceless opportunity to bring our tech and tactics up to cutting edge levels.
Whilst I can’t rule out the possibility the west might make a historic error, just look at our politicians FFS, I think that even they can see this needs to continue for as long as it takes.
‘The UK didn’t use, or even threaten to use, them against Argentina’
…we can’t be absolutely sure about what happened behind the scenes among allies.
There was a very sudden & strange shift in American and French attitude as the Task Force headed south. It happened when Thatcher put on a slightly flakey, almost tearful show about how determined she was. Nuclear weapons depend on others thinking you are crazy enough to use them if pushed too far. America went from placating South American countries to all out support for U.K. (incl Sidewinder) and France screwed their Exocet sales pitch by handing over helpful data.
They were scared about what she might do with a looming election.
At the time Polaris was definitely capable of independent launch, I’d be surprised if Trident didn’t now have some safeguards against USA being held over a barrel… but they have to keep the illusion of independent launch.
As you say, the British do really value nuclear weapons. I think they’d be inclined to do a ‘Guantanamo Bay’ solution & hold Clyde Naval Base by force if pressed too hard. It’d cost their image but they don’t care.
Getting rid of these dangerous weapons from Scotland is generally a positive for Independence support. A definite but practical withdrawal date with a lease is possibly the best way …perhaps include a doubling cost clause for every year beyond that agreed.
David Hannah 10.24pm.
Glaswegians are part of an active living-lab experiment right now. The University of Glasgow is involved its a compliant UK institute its also a well known Britnat friendly safe space, housing the John Smith Centre.
“The University of Glasgow, in partnership with Glasgow City Council, are working on a £10.2 million research programme: GALLANT – Glasgow as a Living Lab Accelerating Novel Transformation. Funded by UKRI NERC as part of their Changing the Environment investment, University researchers are helping the city move towards climate resilience whilst tackling health, social and economic inequalities.
GALLANT will use Glasgow as a living lab to trial new sustainable solutions throughout the city. GALLANT takes a whole-systems approach. While addressing the city’s key environmental challenges, the programme will consider the co-benefits and trade-offs for public health,”
Trade-offs?
https://www.gla.ac.uk/research/az/sustainablesolutions/ourprojects/gallant/
https://www.ukri.org/who-we-are/how-we-are-governed/
One of the partners in this experiment is C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group. The initiative is steered with money and leadership from above, noticeably from billionaire Michael Bloomberg.
The organization functions as a way to lock big cities to certain policies.
The live lab experiment on Glaswegians is called Gallant.
I want everything that belongs to Scotland in the British Museum back in Scotland.
The highland clearances they siezed all the treasures as well as getting rid of the people. The Lewis Chessmen, ivory trust chess set sperm whale that featured Harry Potter. Origins a mystery speculated at being traded from Trondheim in Norway.
I interperate that chess board, a reminder that Scotland and the Scots are the oldest nation in Europe.
We are the ancient nation of Scotland we are the oldest. And a trading European nation since medieval times when William Wallace wrote the letter to the leaders to say that Scotland is open for business.
https://electricscotland.com/history/germany/commerce.htm
But I don’t have any affinity to Canada or its Totem poll. I find it astonishing that the SNP are spending hundreds of thousands of pounds in sending it back. Shouldn’t Canada Pay if they want it that badly?
The British Empire was an empire. Our Story hasn’t been told. The highland clearances aren’t told. We need to tell the story to our children and grandchildren sons and daughters of Scotland.
“Whilst I can’t rule out the possibility the west might make a historic error, just look at our politicians FFS, I think that even they can see this needs to continue for as long as it takes.”
Y’know the American’s used to say that the Saudi’s wanted the US to fight Iran to the very last American soldier, that phrase now has new players Nato wants the Yuk-ies to fight the RF to the very last man.
The huge Industrial weapons suppliers are in charge of this conflict not the politicians a by-product of this is that the MIC’s new weapons can be tested live in combat, there’s no need for Truman style lies to drop the bomb here.
At least the Polish have begun to see the light.
Scotland and the Scots. When William Wallace wrote the letter to the leaders of Hanseatic league. Scotland is open for business!
Scotland’s been there before the British Empire. Scotland will be there, after the British Empire.
I don’t agree with pulling statutes down or repatriating the treasures on our museums.
We’ve been ethnically cleansed from our own land in the past. I want the goods back in Scotland.
I don’t agree with pulling the statues of slave owners down. Or apologising or rationalising or justifying their slavery.
Especially when enlightenment Scots like Sir David Brewster spoke out against, Scotland’s slavery in the 1800s while others kept their house boys locked away.
A wee plague will do. Slave owner.
JOHN MAIN
Everything gets thrown up in the air in a break up situation. There are things you want and things you’re not interested in, that goes without saying.
However, at the negotiation interface you need to have the mentality of a sharp eyed and ravenous wolf. Three hundred years of marriage, which some Scots might deem an abusive one, has acquisitions and liabilities needing close investigation by a team of «gifted» experts in political divorce who are prepared to push that envelope to the edge, no sweat.
I believe the Scots term for such a type is «gallus», the kind of chutzpah that could in certain circumstances get you hung, assuming you let yourself be caught.
Do not see anyone among the current leader batch demonstrating the quality.
Breeks – When the Shimona was sunk, the submarine passed just underneath one of the cruisers which as accompanying it. Also, the Belgrano had such thick WW2 armour that only a couple of WW2 torpedoes could break through it. As you say, the evolution of arms that work against those that are proven not to work is surprisingly slow.
David Hannah@11.02am.
When I was kid I used to visit the Glasgow Art Gallery and Museum, the wee T-Rex was on display then, that’s how long ago it was, and Jacobite swords the Basket Handled broad swords were on display with their inscription on them freedom for Scotland and no union, these swords were soon removed and placed into storage.
Even James VIIIth (The Old Pretender as he was known) had these kind of inscriptions on his sword.
“‘Prosperity to Schotland and no Union’ and ‘For God my Country and King James the 8”
https://www.nms.ac.uk/explore-our-collections/stories/scottish-history-and-archaeology/the-jacobite-challenge/the-jacobite-challenge/jacobite-broadsword/
@Republicofscotland says:1 October, 2023 at 11:10 am
At least the Polish have begun to see the light.
Sure, in this case, the light showing them that it’s their turn next.
There’s some electioneering going on, that’s true, so some volatile sections of their electorate need some raw, red meat to keep them onside. Once the election is over, things will settle down.
The Poles have hundreds of years of history telling them what happens when they get relaxed about their Eastern neighbours.
Republic of Scotland. It just makes me angier. We’re not lab rats in Scotland. The John Smith Masonic lodge for liberals is a preferential treatment club for the globalists.
It should be shut down. A grooming gang. A gentrified mafia for wanna be Johnny English MI5 types. None of them are any good at running the country. They are as bad as the Eton boys conservatives. The place should he shut down and funded.
I feel sorry all the, students of Glasgow University. Freedom of Speech must be under attack. And they are destroying Glasgow. We’re not subjects. We’re not lab rats.
Shut down their criminal enterprise that’s what I say. Kezia Dugdale is obviously contaminating the minds of would be intelligent people to be dull and boring.
@Douglas says:1 October, 2023 at 10:48 am
I think they’d be inclined to do a ‘Guantanamo Bay’ solution & hold Clyde Naval Base by force if pressed too hard. It’d cost their image but they don’t care
No shit, Sherlock! Put some money on it – that’s the safest bet you will ever make.
Tell you something else. Any risk, and I mean any to any nuclear material, weapon, stores, knowledge, etc. and the entire international community will be cheering on rUK forces as they do whatever it takes to get it back under control.
Cheered on too by the rational, sane Sovereign Scots.
The only risk to image lies in ever letting this stuff out of sight and control in the first place.
As for Breeks and his “Let’s score a goal for neutrality and just destroy them”, that’s weapons-grade piffle.
Love learning about geopolitics from John Main.
The William Joyce de nos jours.
“There’s some electioneering going on, that’s true, so some volatile sections of their electorate need some raw, red meat to keep them onside.”
Ha, we all know what that means a BUK missile attack on Polish soil blamed on the RF, but carried out by some other party to get the Poles back on track.
John Main says on 1 October 2023 at 10:13 am: “But who else are we going to get? Maybes Rev Stu? On the strength of the above article, he has the common sense approach that will be needed.”
This reminded me of a recent question i pondered to myself: If i were to organise a team of 10 indy negotiators who would be in that team? And in all honesty, as hard as i could, i could not get beyond Alex Salmond & Stuart Campbell.
Bearing in mind at least 2 or 3 of that team would have to be suitably qualified legal experts, i truly struggled to think of another 5 folk i consider to have what it takes not to sell us short, folk i could have total trust in. Maybe others on here could proffer their own suggestions?
Talking of “legal experts”, folks, i see the BBC in Scotland are promoting an up-and-coming fly-on-the-wall documentary mini-series called “The Firm”, all about the SNP’s “famous Scottish Human Rights Lawyer” Aamer Anwar and his law firm and their involvement in some high profile cases.. LOL! It’s due to start on Sunday 8th October at 9pm on BBC Scotland.
Thinking outside the box here.
Could we get John Main to negotiate on our behalf.
Also APaedoAbroad, with his experience in the Signals Regiment, has control of the cupboard with the white flags, I understand.
And of course, Humza Yusless and Leslie Evans.
Sorted.
@Johnlm says:1 October, 2023 at 11:45 am
Love learning about geopolitics from John Main
Nae probs loon, happy tae help ye oot.
Maybes aince ye’ve learned a mickle, ye could post some o yer ain wisdom on here tae. Dinna ye be shy noo.
Aye a first time fir a’thing.
@Captain Yossarian
Nice commentary Captain, up until:”There has to be Peace, and an end to this carnage.”
Oh, despair! But, I think you’ll agree, it seems more than a tad arrogant, not to mention foolish, to imagine, given the countless recorded instances throughout history of the absence-of-peace, that warring is ever likely to be eradicated by its central protagonist: human-kind. If only for that reason alone, the Rev’s argument re: Faslane, holds-water.
@john main
I do post on here.
They probably got lost among your pebbledashing.
Try researching your opinions.
“Aye a first time fir a’thing”
“You know what, Robbo, I don’t have a fucking clue.
…..
“There’s a welter of contradictory claims, statistics and facts online. I don’t have the time to wade through them.”
John Main @10.54am 17 August 2023
What a ridiculous op ed, the atomic bombs are totally bogus, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were carpet bombed like Dresden, to get rid of munitions at the end of the war as Japan and Germany had long surrendered when these atrocities were carried out. Go back and look at all the test footage from Bikina Atoll etc, it’s all faker than covid.
Here’s a good place to start for those still wrapped up in this fairytale, Stu. http://mileswmathis.com/trinity.pdf
Johnlm says on 1 October 2023 at 12:24 pm: “Thinking outside the box here. Could we get John Main to negotiate on our behalf.”
Fuck no! He’d have all of Europe against us before he even sat down at the negotiating table.
“Also APaedoAbroad, with his experience in the Signals Regiment, has control of the cupboard with the white flags,”
🙂 LOL! That’s an even bigger ‘Fuck no!’ than Mains.
South Africa and Ukraine have both given up nuclear weapons in the past.
Other than that, I agree wholeheartedly with this article and have for a long time thought the Yes movements stance on trident a bit misguided, to put it mildly, and makes us look like a bunch of hippie’s quite frankly.
Let’s use our geography to our advantage, it is our best way to be respected as a nation-state, not just in London but in Washington and Brussels through NATO
@covidhoax says:1 October, 2023 at 1:09 pm
A late entry, but congratulations, you’ve scooped the thread.
And against some stiff opposition too. Well done.
The opening salvo on nuclear weapons should centre around Scotland retaining a fair share of the nukes, while England and Wales would be obliged to move their share to a new location, which would be a very costly logistical nightmare for all concerned.
After putting the shiters up the London delegates with this insistence, we can then slowly bring them round to a position where the weaponry continues to be shared by all nations on this island, and that they can stay at Faslane indefinitely under a no-cash deal.
No rent, no costly schemes for a new Scottish defence force, and no risk for our English friends about being caught on the hop by adversaries while new arrangements are bedding in. The nuclear weaponry can continue to be a pooled resource. Same with the Army.
There is no reason why the island cannot continue to be defended by a shared force, unless some bratty and belligerent negotiator wants to cut everyone’s nose off just to spite everyone.
Much like the currency non-issue, continuity where defence is concerned is in EVERYONE’S interests.
Either the English can senselessly engage in a costly and time consuming relocation and construction project for their share of the missiles, or they can see the sense in continuing to pool this resource with their fellow islanders.
The choice would be theirs.
Our English friends should be given two concrete options regarding the nuclear missiles:
1, Leave Scotland it’s share of the nukes, and transport their own share southward, at great cost and with much logistical stress being involved.
2, Continue to pool this resource while maintaining a shared defence force for the benefit of all on this island.
The second option could involve a no-cash deal to leave the missiles at the existing facilities in perpetuity.
“Either the English can senselessly engage in a costly and time consuming relocation and construction project for their share of the missiles”
Andy Storrie.
I doubt the English and their counterparts with nukes in mind at Faslane the USA, will just up sticks and leave after we dissolve this shit union, infact I’m of the opinion like parasites they’ll dig in even deeper and try and hew off the surrounding area and declare it UK/American soil.
As old nick himself said (Henry Kissinger) to be the USA’s enemy is dangerous, to be it ally is fatal.
Scotland has no military forces yet, we are at the mercy of England and its partner in Faslane the USA. We need powerful allies for this job.
Anton Decadent: nice Repo Man ref! “Eyes melt, skin explodes, everybody dead!”
Rump Yookay would be a much shrunken force globally, after Scottish independence. Its UN Security Council seat, like those of the other four permanent members depends on retaining a credible nuclear deterrent.
But before we address the Trident question, IndyScot could itself lodge a claim to be the ‘continuity state’!After all, the Kingdom of Great Britain was proclaimed by James VI, King of Scots, in 1603. He inherited the Kingdom of England from his mother’s regicide, Henry of England’s bastard, Betty Bullen.
The UN member, known as the United Kingdom, evolved from that seminal constitutional event by various parliamentary stages: 1706/07, 1800/01 and 1921/22. AND the nuclear deterrent, the permanent member’s meal ticket, is based in Scottish waters.
Would such a claim be serious- or seriously entertained by the UN? That would be to miss its purpose: to have shit running down the legs of those whose primary mission is keeping a Rump Yookay bum on one of those five seats. Of course, we would pre-notify our Whitehall negotiating partners to gauge their reaction, picking up clues as to later responses to Trident bargaining.
For those above commenting on the proximity of Faslane to Glasgow I’d just like to point out that there’s more Fissionable material at AWE Burghfield and AWE Aldermaston than there ever is in Faslane, given the amount always at sea. The warheads are regularly transferred up and down the UK’s motorways for maintenance and decommissioning.
And FWIW the distance between Burghfield/Aldermaston and Central London is approx 40 miles. So whatever problem Glasgow is faced with the South East of England is also faced with the same problem.
The fact that we’re even living with and still discussing the utterly appalling evil being discussed here is more than enough evidence that it’s time to ban the male of our species from EVERYTHING to do with societal decisionmaking.
It’s all madness, destruction, immorality, and terrible decisions and outcomes, everywhere you look.
The taking off and putting back on of the warheads are done not at Faslane but over in Coulport in a building built to contain explosions.
The third stage fuel tanks full of hydrazine are placed around the warhead. Hyrdrazine is famously unstable why one of the worst nuclear accidents is a wrench dropped onto the nose cone of a minuteman missile. THAT is why it matters.
If the hydrazine goes up it spreads plutonium and tritium all over those lochs.
That you do not appreciate this tells me the vacuity of your arguments Stu.
Did you miss that there are worries that an accident happened at Coulport which is being covered up? This just lately.
@muscleguy
30 seconds internet research tells us that Trident missiles use solid fuel stages. Which is exactly what we should expect, given the missile has to be ready for launch for long time periods. Hydrazine is a liquid.
Not really sure what you are writing about – soz.
Maybes dial down the dissing of Rev Stu until you can get your own facts straight?
An excellent analysis of where trident sits within the Scottish independence campaign. THIS, is the kind of discussion and debate the indy movement needs, not the frankly childish virtue signalling, principally advocated by the Green party – but happily cheered on by the SNP.
Grown up political thinking you might call it. Something which is clearly beyond the cognitively challenged likes of Lorna Slater and thon Harvie person.
What is interesting is that this article puts it in context. It is the reality, and it actually made me think about my own stance regarding trident. Context is everything, since it is easy to misleadingly overstate damaging effects. For example, there are a lot of people in Scotland, and regularly we see claims about how awful road deaths are (which they are), yet almost ten times as many folk die every year from the cold. Do we see the same degree of moral outrage and virtue signalling?
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/23770042.cold-home-deaths-scotland-double-cost-living-crisis/
https://www.transport.gov.scot/publication/reported-road-casualties-scotland-2021/trends-in-the-reported-numbers-of-injury-road-accidents-and-casualties/#s9
Context is everything.
I guess nobody really cares if (mainly) old folk die in their houses from the cold.
I actually agree with the points made in the article on trident. It is indeed, along with some other things, like Lossiemouth, and our electricity generation, one of the key bargaining chips to hold England’s feet to the fire, come independence. We all know they CANNOT be trusted on any level, which is why the term ‘perfidious Albion’ even exists.
An excellent article. Mibbes somebody like Humza the useless might read it, and start working on some adult politics and policies for the SNP.
“South Africa and Ukraine have both given up nuclear weapons in the past.”
Ukraine was never in operational control of any nuclear weapons, and it’s highly debatable whether South Africa ever was.
“Sorry Rev, great article but Trident isn’t purely symbolic and it serves a frontline military function today. It’s a highly accurate and effective nuclear warhead delivery system. You note it’s economic benefits but it also has a broader value within NATO and to those of us who enjoy NATO protections.”
How do you know? How many warheads has it ever delivered?
“This is a bit silly for various reasons, not least the idea that English negotiators would place such an amazingly high value on contining the nuclear status quo, but the most glaringly obvious is that the submarines already have alternate operating and missile loading bases.
They refit in Devonport, coming and going quite happily, and conduct missile firings out of Kings Bay, with existing arrangements in place for pooled use of resources with the Americans.”
You should perhaps click some of the links.
“Ah Stuart you were probably right on this up to 10 years ago, but after the people’s revolution of the Brexit vote, I’d say you’ve missed the boat (or nuclear sub!) on this argument.
Most English voters don’t care about the U.K. having nuclear weapons”
(1) Yes they do, it’s overwhelmingly backed in polls.
(2) What voters think is of no importance, as every UK party campaigns actively on a platform of keeping them.
“The article is nonsense. In todays world a nuclear deterrent is a necessity to balance rogue countries nuclear capability. If Ukraine had kept its nuclear deterrent instead of getting rid of it based on the West’s promise to protect it in the future we would probably not be at war in Ukraine now.”
Ukraine never had operational control of any nuclear weapons. The most they could have done would have been throw them at the Russians.
“If an independent Scotland ever happens it would need to keep Faslane to gain entry to Nato.”
This is purest guff. Iceland has no military at all and is defended by NATO. Scotland would be the same, for the exact same reason – its position at one end of the GIUK Gap.
You’re completely wrong about Faslane. In the highly unlikely event of independence, the UK will adopt a position wrt the base and will not budge and there will be absolutely nothing at all anybody attempting to negotiate on the Scottish side will be able to do about it. It is very important which is why Scotland will not get the chance to make demands over it. If they do the UK will play the hardest of hard balls and Scotland will be told what is going to happen and will have no option but to accept. The UK has so many negotiating cards and an independent Scotland so few that just believing you can say no and the UK will acquiesce it is beyond naïve.
Just checked a few of the polls done recently, and it isn’t a big majority that want Trident replaced, given there is a large proportion of don’t knows.
If the choice was framed in terms of twice as much to spend on the health service versus weapons we’ll never use, I suspect most would vote for the former. I think post Brexit the population is becoming disconnected from the old empire establishment and accept a much less significant global role for the U.K.
Political parties don’t need to consider it yet, so they’re not offering it as an election option. In 10 years time however…..
although I am somewhat more ambivalent on the subject than you, I appreciate your moving the discussion onto more adult and realistic ground, at last.
Coming late to this – I think the analysis of the importance and relative ‘safety’ of Trident is spot on. There’s a lot of utter rubbish talked about this.
But an independent’s Scotland’s commitment to NATO – which includes Trident – is of critical importance to ensuring the good will the US, just as much as the UK if not more, in any future constitutional arrangement. The alternative – a freedom to court the Russians or the Chinese, with the GIUK gap unpoliced – is unthinkable and probably wouldn’t be counternanced. Don’t forget the pressure applied by the US to the UK government over Brexit arrangements in NI – you really think iScotland’s new politbureau wouldn’t face an even more painful set of thumbscrews? The EU isn’t a player in the defence space so largely irrelevant here – NATO is what matters.
And while planes and tanks and special forces have a role, the UK’s main functional role in NATO is its ability, should the need arise, to effectively control the North Atlantic and keep the Russians (and potentially the Chinese) penned in. Anything else (such as the ludicrous trip to the South China Sea) is just political posturing.
Scotland is of course absolutely critical to that, but the US doesn’t have an appetite for any more Irish-style freeloading, pretending to be neutral for its own internal political reasons while the UK and US pick up the tab for its defence.
An independent Scotland would need a lot of help and goodwill from the US (as well as the rUK – who once resigned to the idea surely wouldn’t want a failed state on its doorstep) to get its new central bank and currency arrangements off the ground, get inward investment flowing, handle the uncertainties of government borrowing, and so on.
Hence I don’t personally think it’s the get out of jail free card many think it might be.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-deploy-nukes-britain-first-time-15-years
This post aged well eh?
It would seem perhaps taking a second glance at this opinion in the current global climate might be in order.