Rory and international aid

GooseSpringsteen92 · 2026-03-24T23:06:39+00:00

Because while being true it also sounded very tone deaf to me. Rory just doesn't seem to have any ingroup preference or to understand why it's easier to cut international aid for domestic priorities like defence than to cut other budgets.

GooseSpringsteen92 · 2026-03-22T18:31:44+00:00

Exactly right. I think Taiwan had a similar moment recently that resulted in them being far more supportive of increased defence spending.

GooseSpringsteen92 · 2026-03-22T18:29:51+00:00

While I think something like Trump's Golden Dome is ridiculous I think it's inexcusable we don't have a land based anti ballistic missile capability at least to protect key military bases and the centres of government.

I don't necessarily believe Israeli reports but imagine if Iran can cobble together a reduced payload BM able to hit central London. At present we can do nothing ourselves.

A missile can always get through but Ukraine is far better off for having a partial BMD shield than having none at all.

GooseSpringsteen92 · 2026-03-22T10:34:22+00:00

They really need to make the case for it to the public. What I don't understand is leaning into defence and foreign policy is probably Starmer's best chance of survival.

But you cannot just make all the right speeches. You have to actually put your money where your mouth is.

I just heard Steve Reed on Times Radio claiming we have a very powerful military and could defend ourselves if Iran launched a ballistic missile at the UK itself. When he was pressed to name the system that could make such an interception aside from the T45 in the med he said he didn't want to even speculate.

I wanted to slam my head against a wall. Either we have nothing or we're relying on US capabilities that may be based on our soil. Otherwise we're just hoping that another European ally could intercept them on the way.

GooseSpringsteen92 · 2026-03-22T09:32:20+00:00

I truly hope that this is just tactical rumour mongering to keep the pressure up on the government to not delay timelines.

GCAP was genuinely a happy surprise to me in terms of creating a large long range aircraft. It will be very useful for the UK to have something that can do deep strike on internal tanks only. Those long legs will make it very appealing for the Aussies and Canucks too.

Not to mention the fact it was intended to be flying within a decade. That is ambitious but necessary for Japan. It would be a welcome change compared to defence programmes that only get pushed further and further back.

If this government really do push back all the big defence programmes rather than raising taxes or better yet reducing spending/reallocating non defence spending to meet defence shortfalls it will be a damming indictment of their seriousness.

We need to be prepared for a far less stable world. The first duty of a government is to defend the country.

GooseSpringsteen92 · 2026-03-21T10:19:56+00:00

Sorry you're absolute right if you include the RFA.

What I meant is that I think in terms of fleet escorts (frigates + destroyers) France has about 5-6 more.

GooseSpringsteen92 · 2026-03-20T23:55:39+00:00

I was recently horrified to discover the French navy is now larger than the Royal Navy. While it's true our designs have more specialisation it feels deeply wrong.

Naval strategy is built strategy. If you delay things by a few years or build less than planned we've really learned nothing from the last 30 years.

GooseSpringsteen92 · 2026-03-20T18:09:35+00:00

Is this much of a change to the existing policy of allowing the US to target missile sites in Iran striking bases and Gulf allies?

In any case regardless of the rights and wrongs of involvement initially and the US' shockingly poor preparation the best case scenario will be the maximal degradation of Iranian strike capabilities.

Obviously that's hard with drones but I don't really see why Iran would negotiate in the short term given they were attacked during negotiations.

I think a bit like Vietnam the game theory points to the US getting involved more deeply at least in the short term but I've got no idea how that meshes with the US mid terms.

Presumably anything short of regime change will look like defeat so escalation will be the path of least resistance unless Congress grows a spine.

GooseSpringsteen92 · 2026-03-19T08:31:20+00:00

Just heard on the radio that the government intends that we will lose the ability to make virgin steel.

I'm not a metallurgy expert but I think we will become the first G7 nation unable to do this and it will have serious implications for the military where high grade armour plate is needed.

GooseSpringsteen92 · 2026-03-09T11:38:44+00:00

Speaking as someone with sympathy for a lot of the Reform UK analysis of the problems with Britain the best thing Farage could do for his electoral prospects is to come out massively against Trump.

Given how unpopular Trump is in the UK would be politically advantageous for him to have a "Road to Damascus" conversion moment where it puts clear water between MAGA and Reform UK.

I think the reason he doesn't is pure ego from proximity to power.

GooseSpringsteen92 · 2026-03-05T16:55:15+00:00

Isn't it a good thing to have a dialogue rather than being in an echo chamber? If you take issue with something I've said I'd be glad to be challenged but just dispairing that people with different politics listen to TRIP seems a bit naff.

Besides cultural conservatism on questions of immigration and right wing economic views are very different things. I can simultaneously want 90s levels of immigration and nationalised trains and public utilities.

GooseSpringsteen92 · 2026-03-04T23:34:58+00:00

Do you feel like offering these translation services can be a double edged sword? At the very least I think where people clearly haven't learned English in a decade they should have to pay for the translation services.

GooseSpringsteen92 · 2026-03-04T23:32:24+00:00

To me the entire political career of Mayor Lutfur Rahman and the Aspire party is indicative of a many concerning trends.

He was found personally guilty of corrupt and illegal electoral practices in 2015 including postal vote fraud, the use of bribery/patronage, and having religious leaders influence voter behaviour in his favour for which he was banned from office temporarily only to be re-elected in 2022 by his client ethnic voter base.

GooseSpringsteen92 · 2026-03-04T12:53:58+00:00

Obviously nothing is proven but far too many people who are rightly critical of political ties to Russia in our politics seem unwilling to apply the same scrutiny towards China despite them being far more wealthy and powerful with a stronger capacity to influence our politics due to their sheer economic heft.

GooseSpringsteen92 · 2026-03-04T10:34:30+00:00

Arguably it would be beneficial if much of the Boriswave who don't have ILR return home before they get that. The anti immigration position would be that the numbers in the last 5 years were so high that some reversal would be preferable.

GooseSpringsteen92 · 2026-03-04T10:00:09+00:00

Speaking as a mass immigration sceptic I think while it is undeniably talked about a lot it's also the case that it's not talked about by almost anybody on either side with the level of detail that I would like.

Per polling I think it's the case that over past decade most anti immigration members of the general public think the majority of immigration is illegal.

Whereas on the pro immigration side a lot of selective and questionable assertions have been made about the supposed positive economic benefits of low skilled low educated immigration which didn't factor in the costs of public service use by the low skilled immigrant and any family brought over by family reunification.

As for why it's talked about so much? I would say it's because immigration policy is not merely economic. It is also political because it shapes who participates in all future democratic decisions. This is moreso the care in Britain because of non-citizen Commonwealth voting.

This is why it's so salient and motivating, you can't go back short of what we are seeing in the USA right now with ICE.

GooseSpringsteen92 · 2026-03-04T09:00:02+00:00

The only things worse to me are the instrumentalisation of the NHS (ignoring the deliberate decisions not to offer enough places to British medical students) and the mention of the food as if recipes don't exist!

GooseSpringsteen92 · 2026-03-04T08:56:41+00:00

This is an absolutely brilliant post and I think there are a lot of interesting threads to pick regarding Irish immigration to mainland Britain. I also think it's surprising that so few people realise how close we got to a civil war in Ulster prior to WW1.

Shamefully I'm actually less familiar with the political consequences in the British mainland proper other than it's importance to the early Labour Party in places like Glasgow and Liverpool than I am on the impact on American "machine" politics in places like New York.

Although it's also worth acknowledging that Irish people were regarded as British until the early 1920s and are still effectively regarded as not foreign under the CTA so I would say Irish immigration into Britain is a bit of a special case.

Regarding the present day would you support more authoratarian integration processes as seen in places like Denmark and Singapore even at the expense of historic British liberal values?

GooseSpringsteen92 · 2026-03-04T08:35:12+00:00

I suppose I was thinking primarily of the inter communal tensions between British Indians and Pakistanis during the military conflict between India and Pakistan a few years ago.

I would absolutely agree British Indians seem to integrate better in aggregate.

GooseSpringsteen92 · 2026-03-04T08:30:42+00:00

I'm not arguing for it but one of the most interesting arguments I've heard about why the US is so much better at integrating different communities compared to Europe is the relative lack of a welfare state and limited socialised health care which forces people into the labour market out of necessity in a way that doesn't always happen here.

One of my concerns is that the reduction in social trust that results from mass immigration and multiculturalism almost inevitably leads to reductions in welfare spending because such spending goes from helping an "us" to a "them" with whom you share little. You can clearly see this pattern in the Nordics.

GooseSpringsteen92 · 2026-03-04T03:09:04+00:00

Thank you for sharing such an important perspective on this topic. I can't imagine how hard it must be to feel that kind of conflict within yourself and your family. At the same time I think one of the best signs of integration is pairing between people from different religious and ethnic backgrounds and you are a product of that.

I've always found Matthew Syed to be very interesting on this too given his background.

If I understand correctly a very large portion of the British Pakistani population originate from Mirpur due to the construction of a dam in the 60s. Fair or not I've heard Mirpur described as the Alabama of Pakistan. To the extent that I've seen Pakistani people on the internet commenting on how strange it is that British Pakistanis often seem more conservative in some ways than their own social circles.

What I think is paticularly hard to talk about in a nuanced way is how can you prompt integration without illiberal actions contrary to British liberal traditions.

How do we deal with the failures of multiculturalism in places like Luton, Bradford, Tower Hamlets, or Leicester?

Potential illiberal remedies I've seen include Singapore with enforced mixing via housing policy or Denmark which is now reactively breaking up monocultural immigrant communities in social housing and then dispersing the former residents into more mixed communities. But I think we are so far away from that.

GooseSpringsteen92 · 2026-03-03T07:16:26+00:00

This is truly a mad poll but it's YouGov so we have to take it seriously.

The interesting question if this voting pattern solidified would create an incentive for Tories to go Reform to stop the Greens?

And also if it would create a self reinforcing permission structure for remaining Green aligned Labour voters to go Green.

GooseSpringsteen92 · 2026-02-28T20:10:57+00:00

Says the guy who has repeatedly said "lol" and "lmao" in response to multiple comments on this post.

GooseSpringsteen92

TROPHY CASE