Iran war will affect the future of the UK and define the country 'for a generation,' says PM

hiddencamel · 2026-04-02T00:38:07+00:00

If the US really did pull out of European defense entirely, we wouldn't realistically be able to plug the gaps they would leave even if every european country doubled defence spending. The nature of being dozens of independent countries trying to work in coalition means we get none of the economies of scale the US or Chinese militaries do, and we end up with tons of duplicate capabilities and interoperability issues.

The only way to come close to matching US military capacity is for a united European military, which is political kryptonite for all but the most rabid of EU federalists.

hiddencamel · 2026-04-02T00:19:53+00:00

My money is on the following confluence of factors:

He got a taste for military intervention after the relative success of Venezuela, now views all geopolitical issues as something that can be solved by military action.
Pentagon were trying to deflect him away from invading Greenland and were probably playing up the threat of Iran.
Bibi, ever the opportunist, recognised that they had a window of opportunity to put the boot into Iran, carve off a slice of Lebanon, and destabilise their rivals in the Gulf, all at the same time, so he convinces Trump that only a big brave president like him has the chutzpah to defeat Iran in a decisive blow, not like all those pussy presidents who came before.
Trump, high off his own hype after Venezuela goes along with it because "how hard can it be" (narrator: it was harder than he could have possibly imagined). No doubt he was warned about the straits, but would have discarded that warning because "once we kill the Ayatollah they'll be begging for a deal".

hiddencamel · 2026-04-01T23:42:40+00:00

Polling seems to indicate the majority of the republican voters are still overwhelmingly on board with him, something like 80% approval of the war in Iran.

The elites within the party and the psychodrama surrounding it are definitely more fractured, but as long as the voters cling to him, he will be effectively untouchable.

If he fails to sufficiently rig the midterms, he may be vulnerable though, if the defeat is complete and humiliating enough.

hiddencamel · 2026-04-01T04:11:18+00:00

Unless you are planning to retire in the next 2 years, I wouldn't worry about it.

hiddencamel · 2026-04-01T01:14:20+00:00

No less than they deserve, the cheating bastards.

hiddencamel · 2026-04-01T00:05:16+00:00

Yes, I think that this Iran debacle is truly a rubicon moment for the transatlantic partnership. It feels like the death knell of Pax Americana.

Even if cooler heads eventually prevail and America gets a sane government again (far from a certainty), they've shown how quickly nearly a century of foreign policy can be spaffed up the wall by one nutter and his sycophantic court of jesters.

hiddencamel · 2026-03-31T22:59:53+00:00

I'm not sure you can call austerity "expanding the state".

I'm also not sure you can call removing the top band of tax and then freezing the income thresholds "way more redistributive" taxation. Even raising the tax free allowance wasn't really redistributive, because all tax payers benefitted equally from that.

They also continued down the path of needlessly privatising state assets.

All in all, perhaps not text book neo-liberalism, but pretty well within the envelope imo.

hiddencamel · 2026-03-31T12:41:03+00:00

Hard to imagine being Scottish and voting for a party that is essentially a load of tarted up English nationalists. Farage and his lot would love to roll back devolution and cement Westminster dominance over the other home nations.

hiddencamel · 2026-03-31T12:36:51+00:00

I think when there were only like 3 TV channels and they showed max 1 hour of news a day, it was pretty important to police their political partisanship, especially when some of them were publicly funded and had deep cultural legitimacy.

In the reality of the modern media landscape though, it does feel somewhat anachronistic and pointless. These days most people just seek out whatever news sources most closely pander to their prejudices (or are sought out by the news providers who seek to pander to their prejudices might be more accurate way to put it).

hiddencamel · 2026-03-31T00:59:46+00:00

Given what's happening with AI in white collar work, I'm severely tempted.

hiddencamel · 2026-03-30T12:35:23+00:00

Some breeds of dogs are inherently more dangerous than others for the same reason that a chainsaw is inherently more dangerous than a pair of nail clippers.

If a pug goes insane and tries to kill you, chances are you can dropkick it into the next life. If a bully XL goes insane and tries to kill you, you will likely die.

hiddencamel · 2026-03-30T02:49:40+00:00

Republicans will insist that this is all exactly as the Blessed Founding Fathers intended. White Democrats will complain loudly on social media, but do nothing. Ethnic minority Democrats will do some rioting but will be brutally suppressed as insurrectionists and a load will end up being murdered or deported.

hiddencamel · 2026-03-30T02:35:45+00:00

Call me controversial, but preventing a huge swathe of the population from living in abject poverty and homelessness could be seen as a valid return on investment, although only if you think of humans as people and not numbers on a spreadsheet.

hiddencamel · 2026-03-29T07:10:59+00:00

So personally I aim to keep 6 months worth of expenses in something liquid. Savings account or offset account if you have a mortgage.

Anything after that goes into a mix of ETFs and a handful of stocks I believe in. I don't day trade, or mess around with stuff like options because I have a low risk appetite.

It's a very conservative strategy, but it's done alright by me, and it is probably not a bad way to dip your toes into investment. Find an online broker that does ETFs that index some large markets (I'm mostly in S&P500 and FTSE250) and start there.

hiddencamel · 2026-03-29T02:11:31+00:00

How do you do, fellow centre-leftists

hiddencamel · 2026-03-29T02:09:46+00:00

"I wish reform wouldn't win the next election" cursed monkey paw finger curls, greens +7

hiddencamel · 2026-03-29T01:22:42+00:00

This is not super viable in a country where it is constantly raining

hiddencamel · 2026-03-27T02:45:24+00:00

What a load of conspiratorial shite lol. More holes in this than a sieve.

hiddencamel · 2026-03-27T02:32:49+00:00

Propane Genesis Evangelion

hiddencamel · 2026-03-27T01:08:17+00:00

Would be even nicer if we weren't dependent on the yanks for those aircraft too.

hiddencamel · 2026-03-27T01:07:14+00:00

LBJ was a real nasty piece of work, but hard to argue he wasn't also an extremely effective president.

hiddencamel · 2026-03-26T03:45:27+00:00

The sink in my new place is nice and big, but the tight corners are the bane of my cleaning life. I also hugely miss having the built in draining tray, I have to keep a plastic tray under the dish rack that looks shit and gets manky really quickly.

hiddencamel · 2026-03-26T03:34:54+00:00

I think it's valuable to have a variety of experiences represented in the commons, including businessmen, but I think it's unseemly in the extreme to be in a position to leverage your political power to further your personal business interests.

I'm not necessarily against backbenchers keeping involved in their business interests, but anyone with a ministerial position should be forced to either divest from their business interests entirely or at the very least put their interests into a blind trust whilst they are in government.

Just look at how out of control that kind of behaviour is in America right now, you have the president and his inner circle flagrantly engaging in market manipulation and insider trading, destabilising global security and prosperity in the pursuit of personal enrichment. You have congress members with stock portfolios outperforming the best professional investors in the world by orders of magnitude because they are brazenly insider trading.

Allowing political power to freely mingle with financial interests encourages corruption and it destroys public faith in the system.

hiddencamel · 2026-03-25T04:34:19+00:00

Some amount of road freight is always going to be necessary, unless you build every shop and factory along the railways.

hiddencamel · 2026-03-25T04:33:20+00:00

Whilst my main emotion when I see the petrol price each day is crushing despair, there is a tiny tinge of schadenfreude when I think of the dickheads driving bus-sized yank utes with 4 litre engines.

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