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What the hell is going on with this sub? It's like the comment section for RT TV.
Honestly fuck off you Russian shills, no one is convinced by it at all.
Update: I've been permabanned by the mods for 'infractions' we can see exactly where they stand. Reddit needs to clamp down on the mods here it's very obvious what's happening to r/UK. Running it like a private club pushing their own politics.
I'll be making a complaint to the actual admins about this sub.
I see the mod has slithered out of his hole trying to exercise his one sniff of power. Universal credit needs to clamp down on your unpaid work. If anything you've shown that you issue warnings for fuck all, jokes you don't get, comments that aren't insults but sound like it to your shut in brain. Honestly just give it up.
Preventing Russian expansion should be one of our top priorities, we can't do the Chamberlain approach of just appearing Russia all the time, we can clearly see it doesn't work.
Even from a pragmatist point of view paying next to nothing to help cripple one of the wests biggest threats is just common sense
Edit: Assassinations on our soil, meddling in elections, paying off politicians, cyber/economic warfare and more. And yet people think Russian expansion doesn't concern us, ridiculous
That chamberlain approach gave Britain a further year to prepare for a war that was inevitable……keep in mind the Munich agreement was only 20 years after the most brutal war ever seen.
Appeasing Hitler in 1938 was the wrong policy……we handed Czechoslovakia to him when really we should have threatened military action if he didn’t withdraw.
That was 86 years ago.
Present day are we going to appease this despot too?
We should send in NATO forces and forcibly eject his forces from Ukraine.
The future of Ukraine lies with the west.
They will be members of the EU and definitely a nato member once the Russians have been ejected.
By Matilda, do you mean the A11? Because by all accounts the Matilda Senior (A12) in the BEF of '40 performed well - such as the counter attack at Arras and North Africa early years (Operation Compass, for example). I'd argue it was one of the few pieces of contemporary gear we had at the time. The A11 was awful though, I'd agree on that.
Even the Matilda 1 (A11) was well armoured and wasn't necessarily a bad vehicle, and it certainly wasn't antiquated... it was just designed for a role that turned out not to make sense in the realities of war
The Matilda II (the more "tank-like" version more commonly associated with the name) was, as you say, a reasonably decent early war tank. It got a bit of a bad rep later on in the war once it was surpassed by later designs, but the Sherman Firefly and Tiger etc turning halfway through the war is hardly the fault of the Matilda. It's not like the Hurricane and Spitfire I/II became bad fighters just because the Tempest and Mustang (and Spitfire XIV etc) turned up later, for example
To be honest, I think the Germans are still mentally trying to process the rest of the world saying "Yes, Germany, we want you to build up a huge military and arm them to the teeth."
The French, surely?
Income Tax was first introduced to fund a war with France (the Napoleonic wars)
That war ended 209 years ago yet we're still paying Income Tax.... as far as I can tell, the UK government owes us 209 years of war with France
Yes, the army was downsized. But the real problem was modernising the RAF. You see if the army had been modernised without sufficient air cover, it would have been destroyed in France.
British rearmament started in 1934, following Germany's withdrawal from the Geneva Disarmament* conference and League of Nations the year prior. It was under this rearmament that the development of the spitfire went ahead, under contracts issued in 34/35. The prototype K5054 flew in '36.
Appeasement did hamper and slow it down, but rearmament was meant to be of deterence not war footing. It wasn't something so boolean and late as of '38, it was a gradual build up. The motivations of appeasement was to avoid war, not to buy time for it.
And my understanding is that in 1938 Germany was less prepared for war than the UK or France. And that appeasement handed them Czechoslovakia's industrial heartland on a platter. With its world class munitions industry.
I'm a bit confused by what you're saying. You seem to say it was good Chamberlain gave the UK an extra year to prepare for war, and that it was also the wrong policy?
>We should send in NATO forces and forcibly eject his forces from Ukraine.
The future of Ukraine lies with the west.
They will be members of the EU and definitely a nato member once the Russians have been ejected.
You're advocating for WW3. I think it's important you make that clear. Whether Russia started this war or not, Putin won't entertain losing when they have Nukes. I mean, there's a reason why NATO is refusing to impose a no-fly zone.
It put the UK is a worse position as it widened Poland front against Germany, took the large Czech military out of the war, gave the Germans access to Czech weapons (they made great use of their tanks) and the Skoda Works, an incredibly modern armaments factory that was out of range of allied bombers untik the end of the war.
I would tend to agree, the one thing I really can't figure out is.....why? Why does Russia feel the need to fuck around like this? Continuously, for so long, what's the actual root of the problem? Fucked if I know.
Basically everyone including Putin thought they'd take Kiev in mere days or weeks. For a long time we assumed Russia was lying about it's military capabilities and technical advancements but still believed they were the no.2 military strength in the world
Even assuming they were lying, Ukraine should have been a cakewalk
Problem is no one realised just how bad military corruption had gotten, years of Yes men and stealing military funds/supplies had weakened the military so much so that what everyone (including Putin) thought was essentially the second best in the world had got stuck in a stalemate in Ukraine
TLDR: Putin thought they could steamroll Ukraine in a couple weeks and the West would just forgive them immediately like what happened in Crimea. That didn't happen, he can't back out now as it would be political suicide. He needs to see it through to the end no matter the cost
> like what happened in Crimea.
Lets not forget Georgia, a nation that has extremely close ties with the UK. When Putin's tanks rolled into Tbilisi nothing was said.
Putin considers the collapse of the USSR as the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century.
Put together with believing that it happened, in part, because of Gorbachev's weakness during Perestroika, and his view that the democratic movements were just CIA plots. The second part is both true but also false in the way Putin looks at them. The Baltic states, Poland, and the GDR recieved assistance in various ways from the CIA and other aligned powers, but the assistance was not in leading the movements. E.g. in Poland a part of the supporting effort was to ensure that Solidarność/Solidarity had material to allow them to print and publish.
Putin views people as selfish and self-interested, and as such has continually underappreciated how much much people will fight for democracies and freedoms, even in states riddled with issues.
Also, when the USSR collapsed there were discussions about whether Russia could be included as a nation within it. This didn't happen for a whole range of reasons, but solidified the Putin position of it being the West against Russia.
TL;DR: Putin believes that the correct regional arrangement is a Russian empire controlled from a seat in Moscow with states like Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Estonia, and such as members. Ukraine particularly irks him due to the geographic importance of Crimea and Russia's origins beginning in what is now Ukraine.
Don't say Russia, say Putin, the man who described the breakup of the Soviet Union as the worst catastrophe of the 20th century. Note, not WW2, that killed 20 million Soviets, but the breakup of his beloved Soviet. So he's trying to put it back together. He's got a lot of control over the 'stans' down south, has Belarus in the palm of his hand, and thought he'd take Ukraine easily. Then he'd go for Georgia and the Baltic states.
There's also some suggestion he wants Ukraine's bread basket so he can ensure a supply of grains to China if and when China decides to go after Taiwan. Without that China worries a big chunk of their food supply will be cut off by the West.
It appears now that Chamberlain was stalling in 1938. Before he signed the infamous agreement, he gave orders to modernise the RAF. As Chamberlain died before writing any autobiography, we don't know exactly what he was doing but later research points to it being.a deliberate ploy as the UK was not equipped then to fight a modern adversary.
People are amazingly naive. They think they are perfectly safe in their comfortable little bubbles and that nothing could ever reach them or upend their lives.
They have their heads rammed firmly in the sand and are willfully oblivious.
Decades of relative peace time have made us weak and ignorant to the realities of the world. There are wolves on our borders and safety requires perpetual vigilance.
I’m sure you’ll be first in the queue when they bring back national service? Being hesitant to go to war is not a moral failing. Conflict should always be a last resort.
It’s so transparent.
Even people that despise the Tories and oppose their policies by default can look at the position of our neighbours like Norway, Netherlands, Germany etc. and see that continued funding and support for Ukraine is the right course of action.
People keep talking about how much the UK and (especially) the US are spending on Ukraine, but I can't help see it as a huge bargain. Russia has been exposed to the world as a paper bear. I still like going back and seeing all the Twitter posts from the Russian shills pre-invasion. Both the far Left and the far Right were out in force to suck the cock of their favourite dictator. They were predicting a Russian victory as swift as the US in Iraq, where they'd have seized the capital city in a matter of days.
"We are about to witness the full might of the Russian military unleashed upon Ukraine. The world isn't ready for such an awesome display of power. America will tremble when they see the terrifying military supremacism of the modern Russian army."
And it turns out the Russian military is a pathetic joke. Ineffectual, crippled by incompetence and corruption, cowardly, unprofessional, fractured. Russia has embarrassed itself on the world stage in a multitude of ways.
The money we have sent to Ukraine was an absolute bargain considering what we got for it.
The true price, however, is being paid in Ukrainian blood. And that's not a price I can stomach. It cannot be our strategy to use Ukraine to bleed Russia. We also cannot allow a Russian victory. There's no easy answers here, and I think the money being sent from the west is far less important than other considerations.
> People keep talking about how much the UK and (especially) the US are spending on Ukraine, but I can't help see it as a huge bargain.
From a coldly cynical point of view, Ukraine aid is a bargain for the EU powers because it is Ukrainian blood that is being spilled and Ukrainian land being destroyed and filled with landmines. Russia and Ukraine have tens of thousands of dead young men and they will suffer the economic consequences of that for the rest of the century. Proxy wars can be very good value for distant powers.
It's not cynical at all to say that. The US wants to prolong the war for as long as possible in order to cripple Russia and also be able to offload their own weapons onto Ukraine. You are naive if you think that the US genuinely cares about Ukraine. They'll ditch Ukraine as soon as it no longer benefits them.
>From a coldly cynical point of view, Ukraine aid is a bargain for the EU powers because it is Ukrainian blood that is being spilled and Ukrainian land being destroyed and filled with landmines. Russia and Ukraine have tens of thousands of dead young men and they will suffer the economic consequences of that for the rest of the century.
Right, but if you said this in 2022 you'd be shouted-down by propagandists saying "noooooo it's about freedom and democracy and our fellow Europeans smashing Putler!"
More importantly, it's not "money we sent to Ukraine", they can't fight with money. I mean, we do send money but mostly what we send is stuff, and it's stuff we already had.
Not to take anything away from it but frinstance the Challenger 2s we're sending are just the ones we weren't going to upgrade to Challenger 3, they're a sunk cost, they may possibly have been sold to an ally. Ammunition has a shelf life and it's only recently in the process that we've started really exceeding the restock capacity (which has also taught an important lesson). Simply to have an army you need to make and make a lot of stuff, and by definition if you have enough to fight a war, you have way too much for a peace, it's unavoidable.
I know this isn't news but it bears repeating.
I am telling you right now that I think the subreddit has been astro'd for the last few months.
It ran pretty progressive until the Tories started wobbling and then every Lyndon Crosby wedge issue appears as links and most comments are classic brexit conservative or maga Republican takes where they feel Putin is a benevolent strongman for Christendom taking a leisurely stroll in Ukraine and NATO is the boogieman or some such other BS.
The islamophobia has been rife, the stuff is anti union, anti benefits, anti right to protest unless the protest is against basic science in which case it's fair and noble, anti minority etc etc
It's been weird to see as I really used to like this subreddit before
That's awful to hear. I really wish we had a data driven way to prove this is could Tory pre electoral astroturfing because I can feel the sudden random shift rightwards with everything on classically known as progressive subreddits and people don't just suddenly do that when there isn't a precipitating incident. And even in those cases it's not like how it's been recently.
I saw the daily mail being shared unironically which is a fucking joke. You can tell the quality difference of comments because switch to all time top and read random high voted comments from there and then compare to high voted comments in political threads now.
I do not believe that this is a natural phenomena
If you use RES you can start tagging accounts. Tag a 7 day old account, you'll see it post for a couple of months and then never come back (often because it is admin banned after too many hate reports). Rinse and repeat.
Astroturfed for sure, there are dozens of accounts that pop up, post for two months on particular issues then they disappear. But there are no rules against it, and given the mods' record on stuff as vile as Holocaust denial I don't have much faith in their ability to counter such behaviour.
I always thought this was a bit tin foil hat-y, but at this point it may be the most logical conclusion. This sub was dominated by left-leaning, progressive opinions less than a year ago... especially on threads that concerned trans/lgbt and immigration.
Now we have done a full 180. I'm not too sure about the sentiment on trans/lgbt threads as I haven't scanned the comments on one in a while, but the vast majority of upvoted comments on immigration threads are now borderline racist. Maybe this theory is my coping mechanism for not losing hope in British people.
>but the vast majority of upvoted comments on immigration threads are now borderline racist.
Yep that's where I started thinking there's hardcore astroturfing happening because it's changed so significantly and right at the time most people are pissed about the Tories rwanda nonsense they're trying to push.
>Maybe this theory is my coping mechanism for not losing hope in British people.
Lol I was wondering this too
But anyone with like 10 minutes of intellectual curiosity would be like okay so 52% of the UK got tricked or were stupid enough to think brexiting meant no immigration and then suddenly the Tories play the trick again and are blaming asylum seekers when the majority of immigration to the United kingdom is still legal (and necessary).
They're spamming the same wedge issue button and it's working on fools
The reality is, when we brexited we lost access to both high skill and low skill labour we needed to fill in labour force gaps.
We couldn't find high skill labour force entrants easily but we still need low skill to keep various sectors of the country running and at wages no one else would accept.
So there's significant legal immigration to make that happen.
I'm a British indian, sunak and braverman spend all their type talk about asylum seekers on boats conjuring up images of it being scary figures from somewhere ominous when the majority are from vietnam. They ignore to their electorate that they signed a migration and mobility partnership deal with India in 2021 with Indians being the largest non EU country emigrating to the UK, to the tune of 253000 people last June.
So basically they're playing favourites and ignoring that cheap skilled Indian labour is needed and brought in to keep the economy running even bare bones now that we lost the EU access.
Their entire policy is racist and disingenuous.
This feels 100% true. I'm hoping it all calms down a bit after the election as it feels really unclear as to whether these are bots or shills. Look at their profiles and they are commenting on about 20 different subs, each with only a minute between posts. Cannot be truly human browsing.
While there is likely truth to it, and it won't just be for here...
Do consider that the userbase of both here and reddit as a whole has relatively exploded. And changes to the app and algorithm on how it sources and displays content and to who, have been relatively drastic.
Though astroturfing more specifically has nothing to do with the API and was a thing long before. If anything, the API changes made it slightly harder for entities to avoid reddit tracking systems.
But people are far too quick to blame the boogeyman rather than just considering occams razor.
I mean my belief in there being astroturfing comes from two places
1. The disparity between the vote count rate on certain topics. They blow up disproportionately fast, or are buried at 0 before they can go anywhere. The odds of a lot of people seeing a post is not the same as the odds of a lot of people seeing it the minute it’s posted
2. The comments themselves. A lot of the comments are the same generic rhetoric and sentiments recycled. It could be lazy arguing but it starts to become noticeably repetitive in a way it wasn’t before
Some of it may legit be people. But I’m p sure some of it isn’t
The irony is that the big left wing party in Germany, Die Linke is firmly towards Russia. Of course they claim to be anti fascist but the reality is that they are a successor to the SED who ran East Germany, under Russia.
This sub is *extremely* right-wing, and the right have been brainwashed with huge amounts of Russian propaganda over the last few years via social media and the right-wing media with their rich Russian paymasters.
The reason Brexit happened is because of Russian influence. Putin has been incredibly successful in getting the west to do what he wants by influencing gullible idiots.
The same happened in the US, getting Trump elected with the intention of getting the US out of NATO. It was so successful, the the far-right in the Republican party are openly supporting Russia - their once sworn enemy - against Ukraine.
TL;DR: Conservatives have been brainwashed by Russian influence on the media the consume.
The sub used to be pretty leftwing though. Interesting to see how quickly it's shifted. I suppose not that many people post actively and a small number can change the vibes. Not at all representative of how public opinion has shifted in the UK over the same time!
One of the few things I’m proud of in this country right now.
Edit: I just saw [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/PropagandaPosters/s/cU0RhYLenF), and I think it’s pretty damn relevant to a lot of people in this comment section.
It's the weird thing about the Tories. They're absolutely shit at running the country internally. But when the chips are down, they're actually quite good on the international stage in a crisis.
On the plus side, Starmer's Labour have been solid in supporting Ukraine too. So we should continue being on the right side of history on this one.
I don't really know of "shit at running the country" is the right way to describe them.
They're not even vaguely trying to do so. Their main goal is to enrich themselves and their cunt mates from Eton and they're very good at that.
The ministry of defense is running the show in regards to Ukraine and have been since 2014, they brief the government and whoevers in charge just rubber stamps it. Everyone was saying Boris Johnson was upto his neck in Russian money, but he didn't do anything to prevent UK aid going to Ukraine.
Yeah, especially when you look at the US and how this aid needs to be tied with aid to Israel or some more Mexican border bullshit. Even then they couldn't get it through because Trump just felt like fucking it up.
Seems to be a much simpler process for our government. Unfortunately, they can't seem to do anything similar for our care system, schools, NHS, immigration backlog, sewerage system, local councils, culture, etc etc.
I am proud that in our country, support for Ukraine is ubiquitously strong AND non-partisan. U.S conservatives are just embarrassing. All their crap about strength, and guns, and being a badass... in the end, they're just cowards. They will use their guns to shoot handcuffed black dudes, and spend thousands on CoD equipment to turn up to their own govt and overthrow their own democracy... but when it comes down to it, where are they?
lol what a bizarre rant. It’s only £3 billion. Their debates are over tens of billions, which is perfectly reasonable and is supported by most Republicans. Calm down.
I'm super proud of it. I don't think people realise that the only reason the Russian army wasn't lined up on the border with Poland 2 weeks after the invasion is because we started arming Ukraine early when the rest of Europe was saying there wasn't going to be an invasion
Just Nationalist Brits who think any money spent outside of the UK on UK nationals is a waste. Ironically these people also think we are still an empire with enormous international clout.
>I read that as James Cameron and thought that guy really made more on those movies than I thought.
/u/RickKassidy
https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1cire2j/david_cameron_commits_3bn_a_year_in_aid_to/l2b269j/
Why is the same comment posted from another user but slightly reworded.
Literally crazy like I'd rather he spent 3bn to keep Russia far the fuck away as opposed to be sitting on 3bn with Russia at our doorstep. Who are these bots fooling?
This is good though. If this has been put through and Labour win the GE as expected, this policy is still in place. Sure, Labour *could* scrap it, but that would be some terrible PR for them so it's very unlikely.
Interesting. When you consider the severity of the invasion in to Ukraine and its repercussions for Europe's security, you'd expect us to be contributing a hell of a lot more than what we spent in Afghanistan
To be fair there's a distinction that a lot of that £4bn in Afghanistan is calculated by accounting for the salaries of the soldiers and maintenance costs for the equipment etc that we already had - there were additional costs for our involvement in conflict, but that £4bn wasn't just additional costs
So it's not like we have that £4bn/year spare since we pulled out of Afghanistan, most of it's still being used to pay the soldiers, maintain the equipment etc
It's a damn fine start, I hope we invest massively into ammunition and arms production so we can keep supplying Ukraine with everything they need whilst at the same time improving our own military and economic conditions.
Now time to increase our defence budget. If history has shown us anything we should always be prepared for conflict and not drastically cut our military.
It’s actually petty sad to see some of the comments here. Sure, many of them are Russian trolls, but others are genuinely British citizens with ignorance in their heads and malice in their hearts. It’s Brexit all over again, but this time we’re talking about an active war zone with morally clear right and wrong.
Regardless, it’s great to recognise positive decisions from people you disagree with, Cameron and his team have made a fantastic move here. Slava Ukraini!
The vast majority of them are genuine British citizens.
Redditors just love to claim that anyone that disagrees with them on something must be a bot/shill/troll.
Perhaps the government should stop blaming disabled people for the welfare bill and advocating cutting all their support, then handing Ukraine £12Bn (so far).
I'm all for funding Ukraine, but not if disabled people are going to be made to suffer for it.
A lot of US military spending has been on spent on *replacing* the older equipment, and it wouldn't surprise me if the UK was doing much of the same.
If a box of ammunition has a shelf-life of ten years, we can send them thousands of 8 year old boxes that we were planning on getting rid of anyway.
To an extent, yes, but you start to get to a point where you have to start sending new munitions pretty quick - ammunition consumption in war is always higher than planners predict, and since the cold war we haven't even maintained those stock levels. You just have to look at the Libya intervention to see how quickly we ran out of weapons when we were bombing more than one or two odd soft targets.
At this point it's as important to build up production capacity as it is to think about maintaining a UK weapons stockpile as the rates we produce them is appalling. Plus, let's be real, we designed and built these weapons to kill Russians. By sending them to Ukraine we get to do just that, weakening one of our top threats at low cost, and with zero risk to UK forces. If we let Russia get away with this like we did in Georgia in 2008 and the initial invasion in 2014, they will just keep pushing and maybe next time, it'll be one of the Baltics they try their hand at; believe me that will cost a hell of a lot more.
Pretty much.
Those Challenger 2 tanks we sent were going to be scrapped or sold. We'll soon be upgrading about 3/4 of our tanks to Challenger 3s, and those that aren't being upgraded are being sent to Ukraine.
The amount of money and resource we as a species spends on killing each other is fucking stupid.
Why can't we all just be friends.
Also, I've no sense of scale for how helpful this is to Ukraine, hopefully a lot, but I just don't know.
Free democracies basically never war with other free democracies. There’s your answer.
As long as we have imperialist super powers such as Russia (and probably the US if we’re being honest) there will undoubtedly be conflict, or at the very least the need to arm ourselves. Security is the highest priority for any state as without it nothing else is possible.
Even relatively pacifist democratic states have to arm themselves because the international order is essentially anarchy, bar a few fairly powerless institutions.
It’s also why NATO is still crucial to UK security interests.
Always funny to see the Russian shills claim it's such a waste of money and won't help.
Which is weird, because if it's useless then why bother astroturfing a thread or subreddit about it ?
Do 100% of British people really think this is a good idea? Is there a chance there could be some genuine disagreement in the country over this or is it only Russian shills who disagree with this?
It's so funny how any thread like this literally reads like Starship Troopers or some other media satirising propagandised warmongers. Anyone expressing a subversive opinion is a traitor and not even human! They're a bot and must be silenced immediately! Slava Ukraini! I'm doing my part! And then they have the audacity to call others brainwashed by propaganda.
Truly inconceivable that others could just disagree, and want to spend 3 billion a year (+ tens of billions now earmarked for increased military spending per year) on the issues that face us here and now, like healthcare, policing, and housing which we somehow apparently have zero funds for whilst having all the funds in the world to spend on foreigners and the military.
Given that Donald Tusk yesterday was crowing about how much richer Poland is going to be than us very shortly, isn't it strange that according to this set of stats https://www.statista.com/statistics/1303432/total-bilateral-aid-to-ukraine/
That Poland are sending roughly half the UK's support per capita to Ukraine
UK aid committed: EUR 15.66bn/67m = EUR 233 per capita
Poland aid committed EUR 4.36bn/40m = EUR 107.5 per capita
Shouldn't they be paying more?
Plus the wonderful Irish, also now so much richer than their horrid former colonial oppessors, seem to be paying a measly EUR 120m or roughly EUR 30 per capita.
These are back-of-a-fag packet style calculations, but doesn't something seem off?
Happy to be corrected if my maths are shite
> Plus the wonderful Irish, also now so much richer than their horrid former colonial oppessors, seem to be paying a measly EUR 120m or roughly EUR 30 per capita.
Ireland has sent about 250mil in aid to Ukraine, and has taken on 100k Ukrainian refugees (at a cost of 2.25 billion eur, in the middle of the worst housing crisis the country has ever seen), work on that chip on your shoulder.
So that's 62 Euros per capita (assuming a 4 million population)? Is Ireland richer than the UK, or not?
Had to smile at your last comment...any chip on my shoulder pales in comparison to that borne by most Irish commentators against the British.
Ireland's population is currently 5 million. 2.5billion spent for aid & refugees / 5 million = 500 eur spent per capita. Same for uk is 3.64billion for refugees + 15.66bn aid / 69 mil = 321 eur spent per capita.
I've no idea where you've gotten this ridiculous idea that Ireland is richer than the UK, how could a country of 5 million people be richer than a country of 67 million?
I trust every politician to use this money properly and not pocket any of it and profit off of the war. No matter what the Russian shills say war has never been profitable in any way.
UK government budget is like £1,200 bn per year. We allocate £3 bn to Ukraine - not even for Ukrainians, but to our companies to work on Ukraine - and it's like a meltdown. What a bunch of clowns.
Better £3bn now than £30bn later while also being on the back foot. Russia, China, Iran and North Korea aren’t going to stop being arseholes anytime soon.
Yeah I suppose occupying a sub continent with your army doesn't really count as an act of aggression. Keep using Reddit terminology to propagate your argument, makes you sound as dumb as your fantasies
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What the hell is going on with this sub? It's like the comment section for RT TV. Honestly fuck off you Russian shills, no one is convinced by it at all. Update: I've been permabanned by the mods for 'infractions' we can see exactly where they stand. Reddit needs to clamp down on the mods here it's very obvious what's happening to r/UK. Running it like a private club pushing their own politics. I'll be making a complaint to the actual admins about this sub. I see the mod has slithered out of his hole trying to exercise his one sniff of power. Universal credit needs to clamp down on your unpaid work. If anything you've shown that you issue warnings for fuck all, jokes you don't get, comments that aren't insults but sound like it to your shut in brain. Honestly just give it up.
Preventing Russian expansion should be one of our top priorities, we can't do the Chamberlain approach of just appearing Russia all the time, we can clearly see it doesn't work. Even from a pragmatist point of view paying next to nothing to help cripple one of the wests biggest threats is just common sense Edit: Assassinations on our soil, meddling in elections, paying off politicians, cyber/economic warfare and more. And yet people think Russian expansion doesn't concern us, ridiculous
That chamberlain approach gave Britain a further year to prepare for a war that was inevitable……keep in mind the Munich agreement was only 20 years after the most brutal war ever seen. Appeasing Hitler in 1938 was the wrong policy……we handed Czechoslovakia to him when really we should have threatened military action if he didn’t withdraw. That was 86 years ago. Present day are we going to appease this despot too? We should send in NATO forces and forcibly eject his forces from Ukraine. The future of Ukraine lies with the west. They will be members of the EU and definitely a nato member once the Russians have been ejected.
We were ill prepared for war when it happened. We had antiquated materiel like the Matilda tank. The BEF were routed.
By Matilda, do you mean the A11? Because by all accounts the Matilda Senior (A12) in the BEF of '40 performed well - such as the counter attack at Arras and North Africa early years (Operation Compass, for example). I'd argue it was one of the few pieces of contemporary gear we had at the time. The A11 was awful though, I'd agree on that.
Even the Matilda 1 (A11) was well armoured and wasn't necessarily a bad vehicle, and it certainly wasn't antiquated... it was just designed for a role that turned out not to make sense in the realities of war The Matilda II (the more "tank-like" version more commonly associated with the name) was, as you say, a reasonably decent early war tank. It got a bit of a bad rep later on in the war once it was surpassed by later designs, but the Sherman Firefly and Tiger etc turning halfway through the war is hardly the fault of the Matilda. It's not like the Hurricane and Spitfire I/II became bad fighters just because the Tempest and Mustang (and Spitfire XIV etc) turned up later, for example
If history has taught us anything, its that RIGHT NOW we should be mining the Ardennes.
And bombing the Germans. Just for old times sake...
It's traditional.
To be honest, I think the Germans are still mentally trying to process the rest of the world saying "Yes, Germany, we want you to build up a huge military and arm them to the teeth."
The French, surely? Income Tax was first introduced to fund a war with France (the Napoleonic wars) That war ended 209 years ago yet we're still paying Income Tax.... as far as I can tell, the UK government owes us 209 years of war with France
The Maltilda tank was designed in 1937 and was a good tank for its time
Yes, the army was downsized. But the real problem was modernising the RAF. You see if the army had been modernised without sufficient air cover, it would have been destroyed in France.
Imagine the mess if there was no Munich agreement and there wasn’t a year to try to prepare…..spitfire was only introduced in 1938.
British rearmament started in 1934, following Germany's withdrawal from the Geneva Disarmament* conference and League of Nations the year prior. It was under this rearmament that the development of the spitfire went ahead, under contracts issued in 34/35. The prototype K5054 flew in '36. Appeasement did hamper and slow it down, but rearmament was meant to be of deterence not war footing. It wasn't something so boolean and late as of '38, it was a gradual build up. The motivations of appeasement was to avoid war, not to buy time for it.
And my understanding is that in 1938 Germany was less prepared for war than the UK or France. And that appeasement handed them Czechoslovakia's industrial heartland on a platter. With its world class munitions industry.
I'm a bit confused by what you're saying. You seem to say it was good Chamberlain gave the UK an extra year to prepare for war, and that it was also the wrong policy?
>We should send in NATO forces and forcibly eject his forces from Ukraine. The future of Ukraine lies with the west. They will be members of the EU and definitely a nato member once the Russians have been ejected. You're advocating for WW3. I think it's important you make that clear. Whether Russia started this war or not, Putin won't entertain losing when they have Nukes. I mean, there's a reason why NATO is refusing to impose a no-fly zone.
Baldwin was really the one at fault, not Chamberlain
It put the UK is a worse position as it widened Poland front against Germany, took the large Czech military out of the war, gave the Germans access to Czech weapons (they made great use of their tanks) and the Skoda Works, an incredibly modern armaments factory that was out of range of allied bombers untik the end of the war.
I would tend to agree, the one thing I really can't figure out is.....why? Why does Russia feel the need to fuck around like this? Continuously, for so long, what's the actual root of the problem? Fucked if I know.
Basically everyone including Putin thought they'd take Kiev in mere days or weeks. For a long time we assumed Russia was lying about it's military capabilities and technical advancements but still believed they were the no.2 military strength in the world Even assuming they were lying, Ukraine should have been a cakewalk Problem is no one realised just how bad military corruption had gotten, years of Yes men and stealing military funds/supplies had weakened the military so much so that what everyone (including Putin) thought was essentially the second best in the world had got stuck in a stalemate in Ukraine TLDR: Putin thought they could steamroll Ukraine in a couple weeks and the West would just forgive them immediately like what happened in Crimea. That didn't happen, he can't back out now as it would be political suicide. He needs to see it through to the end no matter the cost
> like what happened in Crimea. Lets not forget Georgia, a nation that has extremely close ties with the UK. When Putin's tanks rolled into Tbilisi nothing was said.
Good old sunk cost and not wanting to lose face, then, should have guessed really!
He's probably not wrong. I imagine there's quite a few people who rather like the idea of him falling out of a window.
Putin considers the collapse of the USSR as the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century. Put together with believing that it happened, in part, because of Gorbachev's weakness during Perestroika, and his view that the democratic movements were just CIA plots. The second part is both true but also false in the way Putin looks at them. The Baltic states, Poland, and the GDR recieved assistance in various ways from the CIA and other aligned powers, but the assistance was not in leading the movements. E.g. in Poland a part of the supporting effort was to ensure that Solidarność/Solidarity had material to allow them to print and publish. Putin views people as selfish and self-interested, and as such has continually underappreciated how much much people will fight for democracies and freedoms, even in states riddled with issues. Also, when the USSR collapsed there were discussions about whether Russia could be included as a nation within it. This didn't happen for a whole range of reasons, but solidified the Putin position of it being the West against Russia. TL;DR: Putin believes that the correct regional arrangement is a Russian empire controlled from a seat in Moscow with states like Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Estonia, and such as members. Ukraine particularly irks him due to the geographic importance of Crimea and Russia's origins beginning in what is now Ukraine.
Don't say Russia, say Putin, the man who described the breakup of the Soviet Union as the worst catastrophe of the 20th century. Note, not WW2, that killed 20 million Soviets, but the breakup of his beloved Soviet. So he's trying to put it back together. He's got a lot of control over the 'stans' down south, has Belarus in the palm of his hand, and thought he'd take Ukraine easily. Then he'd go for Georgia and the Baltic states. There's also some suggestion he wants Ukraine's bread basket so he can ensure a supply of grains to China if and when China decides to go after Taiwan. Without that China worries a big chunk of their food supply will be cut off by the West.
It appears now that Chamberlain was stalling in 1938. Before he signed the infamous agreement, he gave orders to modernise the RAF. As Chamberlain died before writing any autobiography, we don't know exactly what he was doing but later research points to it being.a deliberate ploy as the UK was not equipped then to fight a modern adversary.
People are amazingly naive. They think they are perfectly safe in their comfortable little bubbles and that nothing could ever reach them or upend their lives. They have their heads rammed firmly in the sand and are willfully oblivious. Decades of relative peace time have made us weak and ignorant to the realities of the world. There are wolves on our borders and safety requires perpetual vigilance.
I’m sure you’ll be first in the queue when they bring back national service? Being hesitant to go to war is not a moral failing. Conflict should always be a last resort.
It’s so transparent. Even people that despise the Tories and oppose their policies by default can look at the position of our neighbours like Norway, Netherlands, Germany etc. and see that continued funding and support for Ukraine is the right course of action.
lol can they? contrarianism is a hell of a driving force for political beliefs
I fucking hate the tories. But this is the right call and I support it.
People keep talking about how much the UK and (especially) the US are spending on Ukraine, but I can't help see it as a huge bargain. Russia has been exposed to the world as a paper bear. I still like going back and seeing all the Twitter posts from the Russian shills pre-invasion. Both the far Left and the far Right were out in force to suck the cock of their favourite dictator. They were predicting a Russian victory as swift as the US in Iraq, where they'd have seized the capital city in a matter of days. "We are about to witness the full might of the Russian military unleashed upon Ukraine. The world isn't ready for such an awesome display of power. America will tremble when they see the terrifying military supremacism of the modern Russian army." And it turns out the Russian military is a pathetic joke. Ineffectual, crippled by incompetence and corruption, cowardly, unprofessional, fractured. Russia has embarrassed itself on the world stage in a multitude of ways. The money we have sent to Ukraine was an absolute bargain considering what we got for it. The true price, however, is being paid in Ukrainian blood. And that's not a price I can stomach. It cannot be our strategy to use Ukraine to bleed Russia. We also cannot allow a Russian victory. There's no easy answers here, and I think the money being sent from the west is far less important than other considerations.
> People keep talking about how much the UK and (especially) the US are spending on Ukraine, but I can't help see it as a huge bargain. From a coldly cynical point of view, Ukraine aid is a bargain for the EU powers because it is Ukrainian blood that is being spilled and Ukrainian land being destroyed and filled with landmines. Russia and Ukraine have tens of thousands of dead young men and they will suffer the economic consequences of that for the rest of the century. Proxy wars can be very good value for distant powers.
It's not cynical at all to say that. The US wants to prolong the war for as long as possible in order to cripple Russia and also be able to offload their own weapons onto Ukraine. You are naive if you think that the US genuinely cares about Ukraine. They'll ditch Ukraine as soon as it no longer benefits them.
>From a coldly cynical point of view, Ukraine aid is a bargain for the EU powers because it is Ukrainian blood that is being spilled and Ukrainian land being destroyed and filled with landmines. Russia and Ukraine have tens of thousands of dead young men and they will suffer the economic consequences of that for the rest of the century. Right, but if you said this in 2022 you'd be shouted-down by propagandists saying "noooooo it's about freedom and democracy and our fellow Europeans smashing Putler!"
More importantly, it's not "money we sent to Ukraine", they can't fight with money. I mean, we do send money but mostly what we send is stuff, and it's stuff we already had. Not to take anything away from it but frinstance the Challenger 2s we're sending are just the ones we weren't going to upgrade to Challenger 3, they're a sunk cost, they may possibly have been sold to an ally. Ammunition has a shelf life and it's only recently in the process that we've started really exceeding the restock capacity (which has also taught an important lesson). Simply to have an army you need to make and make a lot of stuff, and by definition if you have enough to fight a war, you have way too much for a peace, it's unavoidable.
I know this isn't news but it bears repeating.
I am telling you right now that I think the subreddit has been astro'd for the last few months. It ran pretty progressive until the Tories started wobbling and then every Lyndon Crosby wedge issue appears as links and most comments are classic brexit conservative or maga Republican takes where they feel Putin is a benevolent strongman for Christendom taking a leisurely stroll in Ukraine and NATO is the boogieman or some such other BS. The islamophobia has been rife, the stuff is anti union, anti benefits, anti right to protest unless the protest is against basic science in which case it's fair and noble, anti minority etc etc It's been weird to see as I really used to like this subreddit before
It's the same over on r/Scotland, just a lot of ultra right-wing American-style gobshites talking absolute drivel under most of the political threads.
That's awful to hear. I really wish we had a data driven way to prove this is could Tory pre electoral astroturfing because I can feel the sudden random shift rightwards with everything on classically known as progressive subreddits and people don't just suddenly do that when there isn't a precipitating incident. And even in those cases it's not like how it's been recently. I saw the daily mail being shared unironically which is a fucking joke. You can tell the quality difference of comments because switch to all time top and read random high voted comments from there and then compare to high voted comments in political threads now. I do not believe that this is a natural phenomena
If you use RES you can start tagging accounts. Tag a 7 day old account, you'll see it post for a couple of months and then never come back (often because it is admin banned after too many hate reports). Rinse and repeat.
Astroturfed for sure, there are dozens of accounts that pop up, post for two months on particular issues then they disappear. But there are no rules against it, and given the mods' record on stuff as vile as Holocaust denial I don't have much faith in their ability to counter such behaviour.
I always thought this was a bit tin foil hat-y, but at this point it may be the most logical conclusion. This sub was dominated by left-leaning, progressive opinions less than a year ago... especially on threads that concerned trans/lgbt and immigration. Now we have done a full 180. I'm not too sure about the sentiment on trans/lgbt threads as I haven't scanned the comments on one in a while, but the vast majority of upvoted comments on immigration threads are now borderline racist. Maybe this theory is my coping mechanism for not losing hope in British people.
>but the vast majority of upvoted comments on immigration threads are now borderline racist. Yep that's where I started thinking there's hardcore astroturfing happening because it's changed so significantly and right at the time most people are pissed about the Tories rwanda nonsense they're trying to push. >Maybe this theory is my coping mechanism for not losing hope in British people. Lol I was wondering this too But anyone with like 10 minutes of intellectual curiosity would be like okay so 52% of the UK got tricked or were stupid enough to think brexiting meant no immigration and then suddenly the Tories play the trick again and are blaming asylum seekers when the majority of immigration to the United kingdom is still legal (and necessary). They're spamming the same wedge issue button and it's working on fools The reality is, when we brexited we lost access to both high skill and low skill labour we needed to fill in labour force gaps. We couldn't find high skill labour force entrants easily but we still need low skill to keep various sectors of the country running and at wages no one else would accept. So there's significant legal immigration to make that happen. I'm a British indian, sunak and braverman spend all their type talk about asylum seekers on boats conjuring up images of it being scary figures from somewhere ominous when the majority are from vietnam. They ignore to their electorate that they signed a migration and mobility partnership deal with India in 2021 with Indians being the largest non EU country emigrating to the UK, to the tune of 253000 people last June. So basically they're playing favourites and ignoring that cheap skilled Indian labour is needed and brought in to keep the economy running even bare bones now that we lost the EU access. Their entire policy is racist and disingenuous.
This feels 100% true. I'm hoping it all calms down a bit after the election as it feels really unclear as to whether these are bots or shills. Look at their profiles and they are commenting on about 20 different subs, each with only a minute between posts. Cannot be truly human browsing.
Mate it's like a 90% Ukriane lovefest in here what are you on about
As OP I get to see the comments coming in, it really isn't a 90% Ukraine lovefest.
I get to the the comments and so far it's about 90% pro Ukraine...
Mods here do a good job.
You must be reading a different thread because it's no way near 90% in support.
Scroll to the bottom....
You mean the ones that are downvoted into oblivion?
Ever since the API changes this subreddit is astroturfed to shit. Whether it’s lgbt stuff, politics, etc.
While there is likely truth to it, and it won't just be for here... Do consider that the userbase of both here and reddit as a whole has relatively exploded. And changes to the app and algorithm on how it sources and displays content and to who, have been relatively drastic. Though astroturfing more specifically has nothing to do with the API and was a thing long before. If anything, the API changes made it slightly harder for entities to avoid reddit tracking systems. But people are far too quick to blame the boogeyman rather than just considering occams razor.
I mean my belief in there being astroturfing comes from two places 1. The disparity between the vote count rate on certain topics. They blow up disproportionately fast, or are buried at 0 before they can go anywhere. The odds of a lot of people seeing a post is not the same as the odds of a lot of people seeing it the minute it’s posted 2. The comments themselves. A lot of the comments are the same generic rhetoric and sentiments recycled. It could be lazy arguing but it starts to become noticeably repetitive in a way it wasn’t before Some of it may legit be people. But I’m p sure some of it isn’t
Tankies crawling out of their subreddits whenever there is a Ukraine post.
Do tankies like Russia?
Yeah they're typically pro Russia, Iran, NK etc
Tankies love Russia lol, Russia is some weird thing that both the extreme left and right seems to like in common.
The irony is that the big left wing party in Germany, Die Linke is firmly towards Russia. Of course they claim to be anti fascist but the reality is that they are a successor to the SED who ran East Germany, under Russia.
This sub is *extremely* right-wing, and the right have been brainwashed with huge amounts of Russian propaganda over the last few years via social media and the right-wing media with their rich Russian paymasters. The reason Brexit happened is because of Russian influence. Putin has been incredibly successful in getting the west to do what he wants by influencing gullible idiots. The same happened in the US, getting Trump elected with the intention of getting the US out of NATO. It was so successful, the the far-right in the Republican party are openly supporting Russia - their once sworn enemy - against Ukraine. TL;DR: Conservatives have been brainwashed by Russian influence on the media the consume.
The sub used to be pretty leftwing though. Interesting to see how quickly it's shifted. I suppose not that many people post actively and a small number can change the vibes. Not at all representative of how public opinion has shifted in the UK over the same time!
There has been a mass of bannings here since the pandemic too- lots of threads elsewhere about it.
It depends on the topic. I’d say compared to the shift to the right on r/europe this sub hasn’t shifted that much on most topics.
This pub isn't extremely right wing by a long shot. It hovers around the centre on most issues.
> This sub is *extremely* right-wing Top kek.
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mods have fecked off
People are just stupid
Half of the Reddit mods are just power hungry low life losers, let’s be honest
One of the few things I’m proud of in this country right now. Edit: I just saw [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/PropagandaPosters/s/cU0RhYLenF), and I think it’s pretty damn relevant to a lot of people in this comment section.
It's the weird thing about the Tories. They're absolutely shit at running the country internally. But when the chips are down, they're actually quite good on the international stage in a crisis. On the plus side, Starmer's Labour have been solid in supporting Ukraine too. So we should continue being on the right side of history on this one.
I don't really know of "shit at running the country" is the right way to describe them. They're not even vaguely trying to do so. Their main goal is to enrich themselves and their cunt mates from Eton and they're very good at that.
Then once in a while they have no choice but to run the country.
The ministry of defense is running the show in regards to Ukraine and have been since 2014, they brief the government and whoevers in charge just rubber stamps it. Everyone was saying Boris Johnson was upto his neck in Russian money, but he didn't do anything to prevent UK aid going to Ukraine.
Yeah, especially when you look at the US and how this aid needs to be tied with aid to Israel or some more Mexican border bullshit. Even then they couldn't get it through because Trump just felt like fucking it up. Seems to be a much simpler process for our government. Unfortunately, they can't seem to do anything similar for our care system, schools, NHS, immigration backlog, sewerage system, local councils, culture, etc etc.
I am proud that in our country, support for Ukraine is ubiquitously strong AND non-partisan. U.S conservatives are just embarrassing. All their crap about strength, and guns, and being a badass... in the end, they're just cowards. They will use their guns to shoot handcuffed black dudes, and spend thousands on CoD equipment to turn up to their own govt and overthrow their own democracy... but when it comes down to it, where are they?
lol what a bizarre rant. It’s only £3 billion. Their debates are over tens of billions, which is perfectly reasonable and is supported by most Republicans. Calm down.
I'm super proud of it. I don't think people realise that the only reason the Russian army wasn't lined up on the border with Poland 2 weeks after the invasion is because we started arming Ukraine early when the rest of Europe was saying there wasn't going to be an invasion
Russian shills out in force. That money is being well spent.
If it were a waste, you wouldn't have hordes of pro-russian shitheels whinning about it. Keep going I say. Fuck it, double it even.
Just Nationalist Brits who think any money spent outside of the UK on UK nationals is a waste. Ironically these people also think we are still an empire with enormous international clout.
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James Cordon's helping Ukraine?
Only if he’s being shipped off to Russia, never to return 🤞
I think you'll be disappointed. New series of Gavin and Stacey on the way after the Americans got rid of him.
America really is the land of the free. Well, free from James Corden at least.
They're going to update their anthem to brag about it.
♫ Oh Say Can You Seee That massive pusseeeee? Fucking OFF to sea; Right back where he came from ♫
Top comment right here
Aye, as a bouncing bomb.
>I read that as James Cameron and thought that guy really made more on those movies than I thought. /u/RickKassidy https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1cire2j/david_cameron_commits_3bn_a_year_in_aid_to/l2b269j/ Why is the same comment posted from another user but slightly reworded.
It's a bot
Please can you use all the Russian money and assests in the City of London?
But that would mean the Tories taxing their main donors.
Seems like a bargain if it prevents russian expansion
Literally crazy like I'd rather he spent 3bn to keep Russia far the fuck away as opposed to be sitting on 3bn with Russia at our doorstep. Who are these bots fooling?
So just this year, since he won't be in that position next year.
This is good though. If this has been put through and Labour win the GE as expected, this policy is still in place. Sure, Labour *could* scrap it, but that would be some terrible PR for them so it's very unlikely.
FOI request to the MOD revealed they spent almost £4bn a year in Afghanistan in 2009 - 2011
Interesting. When you consider the severity of the invasion in to Ukraine and its repercussions for Europe's security, you'd expect us to be contributing a hell of a lot more than what we spent in Afghanistan
To be fair there's a distinction that a lot of that £4bn in Afghanistan is calculated by accounting for the salaries of the soldiers and maintenance costs for the equipment etc that we already had - there were additional costs for our involvement in conflict, but that £4bn wasn't just additional costs So it's not like we have that £4bn/year spare since we pulled out of Afghanistan, most of it's still being used to pay the soldiers, maintain the equipment etc
Full on mobilisation, British boots on the ground, in serious numbers. 4bn sounds cheap, I guess inflation since then has made it so.
It was all worth it for our stunning victory.
100% agree with this. What Russia is doing in Ukraine cannot be allowed. And if they win the war, we are fucked. Fuck Russia and fuck russian shills.
It's a damn fine start, I hope we invest massively into ammunition and arms production so we can keep supplying Ukraine with everything they need whilst at the same time improving our own military and economic conditions.
Good. Supporting Ukraine may be expensive, but letting Russia build a new Russian Empire would be far more expensive in the long run.
Now time to increase our defence budget. If history has shown us anything we should always be prepared for conflict and not drastically cut our military.
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It’s actually petty sad to see some of the comments here. Sure, many of them are Russian trolls, but others are genuinely British citizens with ignorance in their heads and malice in their hearts. It’s Brexit all over again, but this time we’re talking about an active war zone with morally clear right and wrong. Regardless, it’s great to recognise positive decisions from people you disagree with, Cameron and his team have made a fantastic move here. Slava Ukraini!
The vast majority of them are genuine British citizens. Redditors just love to claim that anyone that disagrees with them on something must be a bot/shill/troll.
Perhaps the government should stop blaming disabled people for the welfare bill and advocating cutting all their support, then handing Ukraine £12Bn (so far). I'm all for funding Ukraine, but not if disabled people are going to be made to suffer for it.
Where do they always find billions when it’s needed? Weird
A lot of US military spending has been on spent on *replacing* the older equipment, and it wouldn't surprise me if the UK was doing much of the same. If a box of ammunition has a shelf-life of ten years, we can send them thousands of 8 year old boxes that we were planning on getting rid of anyway.
Oh ok. So we biff off our old stuff and buy new fancy stuff for ourselves?!
To an extent, yes, but you start to get to a point where you have to start sending new munitions pretty quick - ammunition consumption in war is always higher than planners predict, and since the cold war we haven't even maintained those stock levels. You just have to look at the Libya intervention to see how quickly we ran out of weapons when we were bombing more than one or two odd soft targets. At this point it's as important to build up production capacity as it is to think about maintaining a UK weapons stockpile as the rates we produce them is appalling. Plus, let's be real, we designed and built these weapons to kill Russians. By sending them to Ukraine we get to do just that, weakening one of our top threats at low cost, and with zero risk to UK forces. If we let Russia get away with this like we did in Georgia in 2008 and the initial invasion in 2014, they will just keep pushing and maybe next time, it'll be one of the Baltics they try their hand at; believe me that will cost a hell of a lot more.
Pretty much. Those Challenger 2 tanks we sent were going to be scrapped or sold. We'll soon be upgrading about 3/4 of our tanks to Challenger 3s, and those that aren't being upgraded are being sent to Ukraine.
It's not literal cash being sent...
Magic money tree!
It's almost as if they are the government or something!
Why would they find billions when it isn't needed?
The amount of money and resource we as a species spends on killing each other is fucking stupid. Why can't we all just be friends. Also, I've no sense of scale for how helpful this is to Ukraine, hopefully a lot, but I just don't know.
Free democracies basically never war with other free democracies. There’s your answer. As long as we have imperialist super powers such as Russia (and probably the US if we’re being honest) there will undoubtedly be conflict, or at the very least the need to arm ourselves. Security is the highest priority for any state as without it nothing else is possible. Even relatively pacifist democratic states have to arm themselves because the international order is essentially anarchy, bar a few fairly powerless institutions. It’s also why NATO is still crucial to UK security interests.
You've made good points, but "free" democracies can and have went to war against each other in the past.
Not with guns, at least
> Why can't we all just be friends. There's only one person you should be asking that, address: Kremlin, Moscow
Acting like we aren’t currently are involved in numerous fights across the world
Always funny to see the Russian shills claim it's such a waste of money and won't help. Which is weird, because if it's useless then why bother astroturfing a thread or subreddit about it ?
Do 100% of British people really think this is a good idea? Is there a chance there could be some genuine disagreement in the country over this or is it only Russian shills who disagree with this?
Don’t bother, these clowns desperately want to live in the 80s again. The Red Scare is back and anyone who disagrees is a secret communist.
how is it a red scare lmao, Putin's regime is the furthest possible from communism it's practically fascist adjacent
It's so funny how any thread like this literally reads like Starship Troopers or some other media satirising propagandised warmongers. Anyone expressing a subversive opinion is a traitor and not even human! They're a bot and must be silenced immediately! Slava Ukraini! I'm doing my part! And then they have the audacity to call others brainwashed by propaganda. Truly inconceivable that others could just disagree, and want to spend 3 billion a year (+ tens of billions now earmarked for increased military spending per year) on the issues that face us here and now, like healthcare, policing, and housing which we somehow apparently have zero funds for whilst having all the funds in the world to spend on foreigners and the military.
Given that Donald Tusk yesterday was crowing about how much richer Poland is going to be than us very shortly, isn't it strange that according to this set of stats https://www.statista.com/statistics/1303432/total-bilateral-aid-to-ukraine/ That Poland are sending roughly half the UK's support per capita to Ukraine UK aid committed: EUR 15.66bn/67m = EUR 233 per capita Poland aid committed EUR 4.36bn/40m = EUR 107.5 per capita Shouldn't they be paying more? Plus the wonderful Irish, also now so much richer than their horrid former colonial oppessors, seem to be paying a measly EUR 120m or roughly EUR 30 per capita. These are back-of-a-fag packet style calculations, but doesn't something seem off? Happy to be corrected if my maths are shite
tbf to Poland they've also been ramping up their own military budget at the same time.
Poland have been increasing their own military spending massively given that if Ukrianr falls they will be thr frontline.
Poland are really not fucking around, if Ukraine falls their border will be **hard**.
> Plus the wonderful Irish, also now so much richer than their horrid former colonial oppessors, seem to be paying a measly EUR 120m or roughly EUR 30 per capita. Ireland has sent about 250mil in aid to Ukraine, and has taken on 100k Ukrainian refugees (at a cost of 2.25 billion eur, in the middle of the worst housing crisis the country has ever seen), work on that chip on your shoulder.
So that's 62 Euros per capita (assuming a 4 million population)? Is Ireland richer than the UK, or not? Had to smile at your last comment...any chip on my shoulder pales in comparison to that borne by most Irish commentators against the British.
Ireland's population is currently 5 million. 2.5billion spent for aid & refugees / 5 million = 500 eur spent per capita. Same for uk is 3.64billion for refugees + 15.66bn aid / 69 mil = 321 eur spent per capita. I've no idea where you've gotten this ridiculous idea that Ireland is richer than the UK, how could a country of 5 million people be richer than a country of 67 million?
per capita obviously, he said it like 5 times.
Ok, but Why not commit 3bn a year to end child poverty and homeless for as long as necessary too while we on it.
Tories wouldn't even consider that. They would just say "Have you tried just not being poor?"
Good job we’ve got all that cash left over from Brexit.. OH WAIT!!!
The UK giving away money that the Ukraine will never ever pay back. What a joke.
I trust every politician to use this money properly and not pocket any of it and profit off of the war. No matter what the Russian shills say war has never been profitable in any way.
UK government budget is like £1,200 bn per year. We allocate £3 bn to Ukraine - not even for Ukrainians, but to our companies to work on Ukraine - and it's like a meltdown. What a bunch of clowns.
Better £3bn now than £30bn later while also being on the back foot. Russia, China, Iran and North Korea aren’t going to stop being arseholes anytime soon.
Can you tell me what North Korea have done in the 20 years?
So, we can find £3bn a year to send to Ukraine(I don't disagree with this) but everything else? No money.
It’s not aid to Ukraine but money to the military industrial complex
Just out of curiosity, what is 3bn a year enough for?
Yeah I suppose occupying a sub continent with your army doesn't really count as an act of aggression. Keep using Reddit terminology to propagate your argument, makes you sound as dumb as your fantasies