Monthly Archives: March 2018

Britain, Government, Military

The UK’s military capability is being drained by overseas aid

DEFENCE

BRITAIN’S military must stop being used as a ‘cash cow’ for overseas aid missions, the ex-armed forces minister has said.

Sir Mike Penning warns operations such as the Royal Navy’s task of rescuing migrants in the Mediterranean are ‘draining military capabilities’.

The senior Conservative says the Ministry of Defence must stop being seen as a ‘soft option’, warning that the backbone of the UK’s operational defence capability is being ‘stripped out’.

Sir Mike, who served eight years as a Grenadier Guard, says the cash for the Trident nuclear deterrent should be removed from the defence budget to free up more cash. ‘The MoD has got to stop being a soft option. It needs to spend what it has wisely and stand up to those who see it as a cash cow,’ he said.

The defence budget for 2016-17 was £35billion – of which around £2billion was earmarked for the annual operating costs of Trident.

Sir Mike warns that if the costs of the nuclear deterrent were not taken out of the budget then the MoD would be forced to cut more warships and troops.

‘The core and backbone of our operational defence capability are being stripped out at a time when our enemies are testing us every day’. He also says that the Department for International Development (Dfid) should shoulder the cost of more missions.

Sir Mike Penning, a former soldier who served eight years as a Grenadier Guard, said the cash for the Trident nuclear deterrent should be removed from the defence budget to free up more cash.

Britain should be proud of its commitment to aid spending, ‘but not if the cost is adversely affecting our military capability’. Sir Mike adds: ‘The question to be asked is why it should be our ships and troops being used when there are other ways to help.’

The Navy has been providing ships to rescue migrants and destroy smuggling boats in the Mediterranean since 2015.

Sir Mike says the aid ministry should be using its funds to lease other ships so naval assets could be freed up for other tasks. Emphasising the point that Royal Navy ships have helped to rescue thousands from the sea, he simply asks whether that is the best use of naval resources, and asks: ‘Why can’t we use some of the 0.7 per cent we have committed to international aid to lease ships that are much more suitable for the job?’

This would ‘free up the Royal Navy to do what they are trained and equipped to do – namely protect us… We should be using the Department for International Development cash where it is needed, not draining our military capabilities.’

A spokesperson for Dfid said: ‘Dfid works closely with the MoD to increase security overseas, and both departments want to use both the aid and defence budgets in the wisest way to boost our global influence and make the UK safer.

‘The International Development Secretary has had a series of meetings to see how the two departments can better achieve their aims.’

 

TRUE, with defence spending pared to the bone, former Armed Forces minister Sir Mike Penning asks a pertinent question. Why, he wonders, are we diverting warships from defending us to the job of rescuing migrants from the Mediterranean? There should be enough cash in our bloated foreign aid budget to lease far more suitable vessels for this task. Equally, we should ask what has happened to properly joined-up government?

 

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Britain, European Union, Government, Politics, Society

Britain lays down gauntlet to EU with ‘Brexit blueprint’

BREXIT

The British Prime Minister delivers her long awaited speech and blueprint for Brexit.

THERESA May has thrown down the gauntlet to Brussels by saying that the EU had a “shared interest” in making a success of Brexit.

In a long-awaited speech, the Prime Minister has set out a detailed blueprint for Brexit that would maintain trade links, while setting Britain free to decide its own destiny.

After Brussels accused her of “cherry picking” the parts of EU membership it likes, Mrs May pointed out that all trade deals work that way.

And, with the clock ticking down to Britain’s exit in March next year, she urged the EU to accelerate trade talks.

She said: “We know what we want. We understand your principles. We have a shared interest in getting this right. So, let’s get on with it.”

The speech, delivered last Friday at Mansion House in the City of London, follows weeks of Cabinet wrangling over how far to go in making a clean break with the EU.

In a decisive statement, Mrs May said she would lead Britain out of the single market, rejected calls to join a customs union, called time on the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice and vowed to end free movement of people.

The PM said Brexit would produce “a stronger, more cohesive nation”. And she dismissed calls for a second referendum, saying: “We won’t think again on Brexit. The people voted for it and it is incumbent on the Government to deliver it.”

But she also warned that making a clean break with Brussels would come at the price of reduced access to European markets. “I want to be straight with people – because the reality is that we all need to face up to some hard facts,” said Mrs May.

“We are leaving the single market. Life is going to be different. In certain ways, our access to each other’s markets will be less than it is now. How could the EU’s structure of rights and obligations be sustained, if the UK – or any country – were allowed to enjoy all the benefits without all of the obligations? So we need to strike a new balance.”

Mrs May’s intervention does appear to have succeeded in uniting the warring factions of the Conservative Party without immediately alienating Brussels.

In a speech that was long on detail, Mrs May:

. Rejected “unacceptable” EU plans to keep Northern Ireland in the customs union after Brexit, which she warned would break up Britain.

. Said the UK may continue to respect EU state aid and competition rules – a move that could frustrate a future hard-Left government bent on imposing socialism.

. Pledged to maintain regulatory standards that are “as high as” the EU’s, even if they are achieved by different means.

. Warned that the European economy would lose out if it tried to punish the City.

. Set out two options for maintaining light-touch customs arrangements between Britain and the EU.

. Confirmed she was willing to walk away without a deal if the EU tried to punish Britain.

She also said that Britain could pay to remain in EU regulatory bodies in areas such as chemicals, medicine and aerospace – promised to negotiate a deal on fishing that would give British trawlermen a “fairer allocation” of fishing rights and said that Britain would demand “domestic flexibility” in areas like the emerging digital sector to prevent tech start-ups being held back by EU red tape.

On the critical balance between divergence from EU rules and access to the single market, Mrs May said she expected many regulations for traded goods to remain “substantially similar” in the immediate future.

But, critically, she said Parliament would be free to change them in future “in the knowledge that there may be consequences for our market access”. She said disputes would be settled by an “independent mechanism” – not EU judges.

Mrs May said she would not be knocked off course by hardliners on either side of the debate, saying she wanted the count.

In the run-up to the speech, Eurosceptic MPs were on red alert for any signs of backsliding.

However, most appear content that Mrs May had struck the right balance. Former Conservative leader and Brexiteer Iain Duncan Smith described the speech as “pretty good”.

And Tory ex-chancellor Lord Lamont said it was now time for diehard Remainers on the Tory benches to stop undermining Mrs May.

Sarah Wollaston, a leading Tory Remainer, described the speech as “pragmatic and positive”.

But diehard Remainer Anna Soubry struck a sour note, about Mrs May’s blueprint, saying: “It will not deliver the same benefits, the positives to our economy, as we currently have.”

The EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier welcomed the “clarity” that Britain wanted a clean break, saying this would help Brussels finalise its negotiating guidelines.

 

AT the end of last week, and for the best part of an hour, Theresa May rattled off her Brexit objectives in a huge number of areas: agriculture, fisheries, migration, the Irish border, manufacturing, financial services, energy, science, haulage, nuclear safety, education and culture. People said they wanted more detail about her negotiating position prior to Britain leaving the European Union, and that’s exactly what she gave them.

What emerged was a pragmatic, common sense approach behind which she appears to have succeeded in uniting Cabinet colleagues as diverse as the Europhile Philip Hammond and the hardline Brexiteer Boris Johnson.

In some areas, Britain is bound to remain closely aligned with our partners’ rules and trading standards. But as Mrs May pointed out, this is true of every trade deal ever struck.

Crucially, however, the red lines the Prime Minister drew from the start remain intact. Come what may, we will be taking back control of our borders, laws and money – with British judges and a sovereign British Parliament no longer obliged to take orders from Brussels or the European Court of Justice.

For the avoidance of doubt, Mrs May spelled out yet again that this will mean withdrawing from the single market and customs union. There will be no second referendum.

. See also Britain will be entitled to walk away without a deal with the EU

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Arts, History, Science, United States

Quantum Leaps: Benjamin Franklin

1706 – 1790

Benjamin Franklin was one of the five men who drafted the Declaration of Independence of 1776. He was also a prolific scientist.

Benjamin Franklin had a rare genius. Unlike most of the scientists chronicled on this site who were known for their outstanding talents and contributions to science, the American Franklin was brilliant in a wide range of arenas. In a five-year period between 1747 and 1752, he contributed more to science than most scientists would achieve in a lifetime of dedicated study. Yet, during other periods of his life, he operated in, and conquered, completely different fields. He was a master printer and publisher, a successful journalist and satirist, an inventor, a world-famous ambassador and, probably most notably of all, a politician at a vital time in American history. Indeed, Franklin was one of the five separate signatories of the Declaration of Independence from Great Britain in 1776 and was a key participant in the later drafting of the American Constitution.

. Studying Electricity

Franklin does, however, merit an entirely separate entry for his achievements in physics alone – he was a pioneer in understanding the properties and potential benefits of electricity. Although the phenomenon of electricity had been noted since the time of the ancients, very little was known about it from a scientific perspective, and many considered the extent of its usefulness to be limited to ‘magic’ tricks. At around the age of forty, Franklin became fascinated by electricity and began to experiment with it, quickly realising it was a subject worthy of scientific study and research in its own right. So, he sold his printing interests and dedicated himself for the next five years to understanding it.

. Flying a Kite

Although Franklin wrongly believed electricity was a single ‘fluid’ (this was an advance on earlier theories which posited the idea of two different fluids), he perceived this fluid to somehow consist of moving particles, now understood to be electrons. More importantly, he undertook important studies involving electrical charge and introduced the terms ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ in explaining the way substances could be attracted to or repelled by each other according to the nature of their charge. He also believed these charges ultimately cancelled each other out so that if something lost electrical charge, another substance would instantly gain the amount being cast away. His work on electricity reached its peak in his now famous kite experiment of 1752. Believing lightning to be a form of electricity, and in order to prove it, Franklin launched a kite into a thunderstorm on a long piece of conducting string. Tying the end of the string to a capacitor, he was vindicated when lightning did indeed charge it, proving the existence of its electrical properties. From these results and realising the potential of a device that could deflect the harmful effects of lightning strikes away from buildings and property, he developed the lightning conductor.

Franklin had also published his text Experiments and Observations on Electricity, made at Philadelphia in America in 1751, which went on to inspire future scientists in the study and development of the uses of electricity.

. A Prolific Inventor

From 1753 the time Franklin dedicated to science reduced dramatically due to his taking up a new post as deputy postmaster general and, later, political and ambassadorial roles. He did, however, leave a legacy of other inventions from the wide range of experiments conducted throughout his life, including: an iron furnace ‘Franklin’ stove (still in use today), bifocal spectacles, the street lamp, the rocking chair, the harmonica, an odometer and watertight bulkheads for ships. Franklin also came up with the idea of Daylight Saving Time and was the first to charter the Gulf Stream from observations made by sailors.

A man of many talents, Benjamin Franklin was a successful inventor, politician, printer, oceanographer, ambassador, journalist and, of course, scientist.

. The Legacy of Benjamin Franklin

Franklin’s legacy, in addition to the many inventions such as lightning conductors, bifocal lenses and street lamps, was one of learning. He established one of the first public libraries, as well as one of the first universities: Pennsylvania, in America.

On a broader societal level, he established the modern postal system, set up police and fire fighting departments and established the Democratic Party.

He certainly lived up to his own quotation, ‘If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.’

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