ArabiaTerra

As an aetheist in a 'christian' country I have to say 'Thank God for liberal democracy' 'I can say what I think with no fear of the secret police knocking on the door' It's a freedom we treat all too lightly. God bless and good cheer to all on this festive period. Long live freedom

And a Happy New Year...

Username: surefireinvests, occupation: Pimp intrests: SEX seems a little obvious doesn't it

http://www.shetland-news.co.uk/pages/news%20stories/12_2006/survey_shetland_supports_windfarm.htm It seems that the majority supports the windygens. Has this idea been seriously considered? It seems like a way to nicely sidestep the quoted £1 billion cost of the interconnector. Just build a hydrogen powered power station and some storage on the Firth of Forth near the existing oil terminal and hook that to the grid. A couple of shuttle tankers could run between Sullom and the Forth. In addition, the resulting Hydrogen could be sold directly as fuel for vehicles. Surely all this could be done for less than a billion? It would also cover any variability in the supply of wind which seems to be the major arguemant against windfarms at the mo'.

Big Happy Birthday, Yowe. Hope it's no' broken. And a very Merry Xmas when it comes!

Bubblewrap bookmarked!

God, (green or blue, who cares) this debate is sooo boring! "Your team is the worst" "No your team started it" For f*ck sake grow up! Have you actually read some of the posts in this debate! The sectarianism is alive and well right here on Shetlink. It's PATHETIC! I know how to solve it :- Merge Rangers and Celtic into Glasgow Fc and merge Hibs and Hearts into Edinburgh Fc (Or you could just dynamite Celtic Park, Ibrox, Tynecastle and Easter Road) Merry Xmas all! (Ducks and runs for cover...)

My God! I can't believe those are real. What happened to our education system? 8O

It all comes down to ideology. Should the PO be run as a business? Or should it be run as an essential service a'la the DHSS? My vote is for an essential service (but nobody listens to me...) I think it is a no-brainer to increase the charge for a first class letter to cover the cost of delivery at least instead of the current system where they lose 20p ish on every letter sent. (That amount is a guess by the way, influenced by a dimly recalled news story, source forgotten.) A word on junk mail. I worked for the PO in the early nineties and even then they depended on junk for around 80% of their income, today it is probably closer to 95%. That means when you fill in that form to stop the junk you are reducing the PO's main revenue stream. (My God! 'main revenue stream', you've got me sounding like a bullshi... sorry, manager. The shame!)

I normally use Google, then I read this..... http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/12/dweebs_horndogs.php 8O

I think what evil inky was meaning was that time started with the big bang, ie, there was no 'before'. There is also a fundamental difference between science and religion. Religion says 'This is how it is/was/always will be'. Science says 'This is how it is/was/always will be, as far as we know at this time but this opinion is subject to change/modification due to new discoveries or the formulation of new theories which better explain the observed facts. Religion is not subject to change. Only denial.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QoGTu-oxlg I like this one.

What a fantastic idea!

10pm tonight , BBC2 A program about excessive bank charging. (I would have posted this sooner but I only just noticed it)

Who was Chechzlovakia threatening in 1938?

Anyone else want chip in on my side here? I'm feeling surrounded! Please..!

4 Subs with 50 warheads each 1 on patrol 1 tied up 'off shift' 1 on routine maintenance 1 on long term refit

I get the feeling I'm losing this arguement... However, (rallies for last stand) Lets say we did get rid off our bomb. That would leave France, India and the USA as the only nuclear armed democracys. Indias bomb is irrelevant to us as it is a short range weapon (and they are all pointed at Pakistan). That leaves the US and France. I don't trust the US (despite the 'special relationship'). Do you think the whole EU should depend on the French to provide a deterrant? I think we should pull our weight and provide our share. A contribution to the cost from our European collegues would be appreciated. Russia and China are friendly at the moment but I don't think we can rely on that. China is getting stronger all the time and will soon be the dominant economy in the world, Russia is recovering rapidly from Communism now that they have sorted out their oil and the Islamic world hates us (with good reason). I think this is a bad time to be dropping our guard. Nuclear weapons are evil, but they exist. Any country which does not have them is open to blackmail. Just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it won't happen in the future. Remember what happened to Europe in the thirties when Hitler started throwing his weight around. Yet in the twenties if you had told anyone what was about to happen you would have been laughed at.

I disagree, the only thing the Japanese army feared was dishonour. They were ready to take the whole country down with them, and as many British, US and Russian troops as they could. Remember, the Japanese invented the idea of the suicide bomber. It took a direct order from their God (the emperor) to make them stop. The fact that the Germans were brought down by an internal revolution is well known, but it must be said, their army was retreating so fast at the time we couldn't catch them. Britains 200 warheads would cause a Nuclear winter if all of them were used, but only 50 or so are at sea and available for use at any one time. The threat from radiation has been massively overestimated. After Chernobyl, scientists predicted around 10,000 additional childhood cancers due to low level radiation. So far they have found around about 100 directly attributable to the accident. Low level radiation appears to be much less dangerous than was thought. The end of the Nation State is the answer, I agree, unfortunately I can't see that happening anytime soon and until it does happen , we need to keep up our guard

True, but how would scrapping our nukes change that? The reason our nukes are in submarines is so that they can't be taken out in a first strike so we have more time to asses an attack and decide if it's genuine. My arguement is that proliferation will happen regardless of what we do. Recent events have shown that even the USA is powerless to prevent it. In fact the attitude of the USA is accellerating proliferation. Having our own deterrant prevents us being blackmailed by a nuclear armed opponent and that is all. Other threats such as terrorism will continue.

Not even the Americans with their vast military R&D budget have been able to come up with a creditable SDI prototype and their defence budget is almost as much as the combined budget of the rest of the world. The hydrogen bomb will be king for at least the next 30 years. Which is the rough lifespan of this Trident replacement we're discussing. After that... probably some kind of nanotech, but with a bit of luck we'll all have grown up a bit by then.

Yes.. maybe I could have worded that a little better. What I meant to say was that MAD doesn't apply in a global sense in the way it did during the Cold War. A nuclear war will no longer destroy the entire world. On the other hand it does apply between two potentially beligerant countries, but then thats the whole point of deterrance. You can't win a nuclear war so don't start one.

Just to correct a few misconceptions here: The Imperial Japanese Navy had been destroyed. Most of the cities of Japan had been levelled but the Army, which was mostly in China was largely intact and had vowed to fight to the last man. Even after the A-bombs were dropped ther was an attempted coup by militant army officers who wanted to continue the war. It took the intervention of the Emperor (regarded as a God) to get the army to lay down it's weapons. The city of Hiroshima had been spared conventional bombing so that it would present a pristine target for the first A-bomb. And there is an arguement sometimes made to say that the second bomb was dropped to impress/warn the Russians but I don't buy that. Remember the Japs did not surrender until after the Nagasaki bomb

OOh.... I appear to have touched a few nerves here. Where do I start... This was true during the Cold War when NATO and the Warsaw Pact had tens of thousands of warheads pointed at each other and an all out war would certainly have ended civilisation and probably all life on Earth in the process. I agree that that was insanity, but that is not what we currently face. Any future war is unlikely to involve more than a dozen warheads, which will be catastrophic for the countries concerned but will not threaten the whole of civilisation. MAD no longer applies. The USA's rampant imperialism is directed at countries which don't have a deterrant. North Korea lets off one primitive little A-bomb and the mighty US of A won't go near them. I can't think of a better arguement for deterrance. A few dozen warheads cannot destroy the planet, it would take thousands. MAD no longer applies. However a creditable deterrant can be acheived with a few dozen warheads. Once it is impossible for any one country to threaten any other, then we will have a chance to build a truly international society. I'm sorry, but that is simply wrong. That's rubbish, the USA have no need to invade Venezuela because Venezuela is no threat to the USA. Anyway the US is overstretched at the moment which is why they haven't attacked Iran. Absolutely. I agree with every word of that last paragraph. But I would also add that to be truly secure we not only need to stop interfering with other countries, but we need a creditable nuclear deterrant to stop them interfering with us. The US/NATO will not always be the dominant military power in the world and we need to be secure when our dominance passes on to someone else.

I disagree, Ally. As I said, detterance works, it is working for North Korea right now. And if Iran will feel a bit safer by having nukes then I don't see why we have any right to stop them from building them. I'm in favour of anything that puts an end to George W Bush's rampant imperialism. The USA is doing more to increase world instability than any other country at the moment. (though the recent US election results may have put a stop to that) The sooner individual governments realize that they have no right to impose their will on others, the better and if it takes rampant nuclear proliferation to ram this message home then so be it. Once everyone is secure behind their nuclear walls, we can begin to build the fair and equitable system of world goverment we so desperatly need. North Korea may be a f*cked up mess but so what? Thats a problem for the North Koreans and their immediate neighbours. It's none of our business, just the same as Saddam Hussain was none of our business. If Kim Il Jong developes missiles that can reach us... well thats what Trident is for.