How about that old slag Thatcher for creating an underclass in our society that will never go away now?
I'd dig her up and have her in the dock along with Phoney Tony.

In other news - I'm happy to report that after an extensive international procurement exercise involving me, my online financial specialists, Walmart and a specialist distribution operative, I took delivery of 4,000 pieces of PPE; prior to the Tory rebranding, traditionally and perhaps colloquially known as ordering a 4 pack of bog rolls off of Asda.

8,000 pieces if it's 2-ply. Your cup runneth over if it's 3-ply.

Quote IR80="IR80"StIll waitong for Blair to face trial....'" I wonder who helped in arming Iraq? https://www.ft.com/content/52add2c4-30b ... 144feabdc0 or who voted for it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_P ... on_of_Iraq

Quote IR80="IR80"StIll waitong for Blair to face trial....'" I wonder who helped in arming Iraq? https://www.ft.com/content/52add2c4-30b ... 144feabdc0 or who voted for it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_P ... on_of_Iraq

Who keeps arming Saudi Arabia, who kept supporting South Africa during apartheid and who treated a known dictator and murderer of his own people.

Whilst ever we manufacture arms/ships/aircraft/tanks i.e. items used in warfare we have to sell them to somebody - not sure we can sell it all to Switzerland?

Do we really ??

Yes, manufacturing these items would mean that we COULD sell them to other nations but it doesn't mean that we HAVE to ??
We could just produce equipment for our own armed forces and not feel that we have to supply other nations / groups.

Of course there can be deals done to reciprocate the supply of arms but, when we begin to offer such things to "unstable" governments / nations, there is always the danger that they will be used either against us or against our allies.
The only reason that some of these things are sold to "dodgy" organisations is to make money.

Not the only reason surely. There are the 135k quality jobs and that's just those directly employed. How many would be lost if we stopped exports?

And there is the conundrum.

If we are saying that there has to be that number of employees within the industry, to enable us to arm and protect ourselves and the consequence of that is that there will be "X" spare capacity, then a decision has to be made as to whether to allow the excess "stock" to be sold elsewhere and how to control those sales or, should the industry be "shrunk", in order to prevent having to "chase" sales to "dodgy" customers.

You would think where the supply of arms is concerned, it should be on a defence and safety remit and not just selling additional arms because we have over capacity ??

So if you were in charge how many of those people would you sack? And therein lies the problem. I wish, like you, that it was a perfect world without the need for arms. But it isn't and if we don't sell them someone else will.

If we were a member of the EU we could have a coordinated manufacture & procurement policy plus a ready market, hence an economy of scale.

There is an episode of 'Yes Minister' where Jim Hacker faces a moral dilemma when he learns that British manufactured arms are ending up in the hands of Italian terrorists.

Brings a little humour to your comments and is worth a look.

"Yes Minister" Series 3. Episode 6. "The Whiskey Priest".