The state of the UK

[Scot Dutchy]

WTF!!!

Trident nuclear warhead numbers set to increase for first time since cold war

Defence and foreign policy review expected to signal rise, in move analysts say is diplomatically provocative

Downing Street’s integrated review of defence and foreign policy is expected next week to signal a potential increase of the number of Trident nuclear warheads for the first time since the end of the cold war.

Whitehall sources indicated that a cap on total warhead numbers – currently set at 180 – is expected to increase, although the exact figure is not yet known, in a move that analysts said was diplomatically provocative.

The UK’s stockpile of nuclear weapons peaked at about 500 in the late 1970s, but had been gradually decreasing ever since as the perceived threat from the Soviet Union and now Russia had been assumed to be decreasing.

The last strategic defence review, in 2015, committed the UK to “reduce the overall nuclear weapon stockpile to no more than 180 warheads” by the mid 2020s – and reducing the numbers of operationally available warheads to 120.

What do you need them for?

[pErvinalia]

To use on the US when Trump gets back in in 2024

[Svartalf]

WTF!!!

Trident nuclear warhead numbers set to increase for first time since cold war

Defence and foreign policy review expected to signal rise, in move analysts say is diplomatically provocative

Downing Street’s integrated review of defence and foreign policy is expected next week to signal a potential increase of the number of Trident nuclear warheads for the first time since the end of the cold war.

Whitehall sources indicated that a cap on total warhead numbers – currently set at 180 – is expected to increase, although the exact figure is not yet known, in a move that analysts said was diplomatically provocative.

The UK’s stockpile of nuclear weapons peaked at about 500 in the late 1970s, but had been gradually decreasing ever since as the perceived threat from the Soviet Union and now Russia had been assumed to be decreasing.

The last strategic defence review, in 2015, committed the UK to “reduce the overall nuclear weapon stockpile to no more than 180 warheads” by the mid 2020s – and reducing the numbers of operationally available warheads to 120.

What do you need them for?

My best guess would be a cheaper processing of power plant waste.

[Scot Dutchy]

Cap on Trident nuclear warhead stockpile to rise by more than 40%

Exclusive: Boris Johnson announcement on Tuesday will end 30 years of gradual disarmament

Britain is lifting the cap on the number of Trident nuclear warheads it can stockpile by more than 40%, Boris Johnson will announce on Tuesday, ending 30 years of gradual disarmament since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The increased limit, from 180 to 260 warheads, is contained in a leaked copy of the integrated review of defence and foreign policy, seen by the Guardian. It paves the way for a controversial £10bn rearmament in response to perceived threats from Russia and China.

The review also warns of the “realistic possibility” that a terrorist group will “launch a successful CBRN [chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear] attack by 2030”, although there is little extra detail to back up this assessment.

It includes a personal commitment from Johnson, as a last-minute addition in the foreword, to restore foreign aid spending to 0.7% of national income “when the fiscal situation allows”, after fierce criticism of cuts in relief to Yemen and elsewhere.

Britain is lifting the cap on the number of Trident nuclear warheads it can stockpile by more than 40%, Boris Johnson will announce on Tuesday, ending 30 years of gradual disarmament since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Britain has far fewer warheads stockpiled than Russia, estimated to have 4,300, the US on 3,800 or China, which has about 320. But each warhead the UK holds is estimated to have an explosive power of 100 kilotons. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of the second world war was about 15 kilotons.

Which enemy are they aimed at? The USA?

[Scot Dutchy]

The Chumocracy reaches even lower depths.

Four aides to PM suggested Tory-linked firm for Cabinet Office work

Staff including Dominic Cummings recommended hiring Public First for research on ‘levelling up’

Four of Boris Johnson’s most senior staff suggested that Cabinet Office civil servants should hire a company owned by Conservative party allies, one of whom co-wrote the Tories’ 2019 election manifesto.

Within weeks of Johnson’s election victory in December 2019, civil servants received recommendations to hire Public First to research voter opinions on the key manifesto promise to “level up” provincial towns.

The prime minister’s then chief political adviser, Dominic Cummings, director of communications, James Slack, then head of communications at Downing Street, Lee Cain, and director of the No 10 policy unit, Munira Mirza, all suggested Public First for government work.

Mirza had just co-written the manifesto with Rachel Wolf, who owns and runs Public First with her husband, James Frayne.

Wolf has previously worked as an adviser to Johnson, Cummings and the Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove, and since the election she has urged the government to focus on making small improvements in provincial towns. Frayne has also previously worked alongside Cummings and Gove and has done extensive research on the politics of provincial towns and how the Conservatives could win working-class voters from Labour.

[Scot Dutchy]

Chumocracy keeps pouring it out.

UK furlough scheme pays out millions to foreign states and tax exiles

Qatari owners of Harrods and the Ritz claimed £3m alongside payouts to Saudi royals and British National party from Covid job support scheme

The foreign royals and billionaire tax exiles collecting UK’s furlough millions

Billionaire tax exiles, the British National party, Saudi royals and oil-rich Gulf states have claimed millions of pounds in taxpayer-funded furlough money, the Guardian can disclose.

The revelations, based on analysis of government information, have sparked dismay among MPs at the use of a scheme designed to support struggling businesses and prevent mass unemployment, with one complaining of public money being scattered “like confetti”.

Beneficiaries behind companies that have drawn on the coronavirus job retention scheme include:

Members of the Saudi royal family

Qataris behind Harrods and the Ritz

The ruler of Dubai

Tax exiles Jim Ratcliffe and Guy Hands

Billionaires Evgeny Lebedev, Len Blavatnik and Mohamed Al Fayed

The British National party

The government first published information about claimants last month, when it released data on the 750,000 businesses using the scheme in December 2020. Since then, details of some claimants have emerged, including Tony and Cherie Blair, and golf courses owned by Donald Trum

WTF!!!

[Scot Dutchy]

It is just too funny. How incompetent can you get?

How long until Priti Patel's next brainwave: housing asylum seekers on the Falklands?

In a typically inept week for our flag-festooned government, the home secretary wins top prize for incompetence

Gibraltar: for some the least appealing rock, bar Paul Burrell. News that the British overseas territory is being considered by the Home Office as an asylum-processing location, along with the Isle of Man, turns out to be exactly that – news. News to Gibraltar and news to the Isle of Man, whose chief minister responded tartly: “Along with ideas to build a road tunnel under the Irish Sea or a bridge above it, this latest idea simply adds to the rich tapestry of life we are dealing with at present. April 1 isn’t until next month.” We’ll pop him down as a maybe.

So, then, to Priti Patel’s plan to overhaul the asylum system, a plan she has brilliantly failed to mention to the territories about to get a shoutout. Can it really be just six months since Patel was looking at processing asylum seekers on Ascension Island, a place as volcanic as her own temper? Can it really be just the same six months since we learned she’d considered giant wave machines to force boats back to France? Can it really be just four years since Michael Howard was suggesting Theresa May would go to war with Spain over Gibraltar, just like Margaret Thatcher went to war over the Falklands? Can it really be that Patel has yet to cross the streams and alight on the idea of processing asylum seekers in the Falklands?

The badge-kissing inhumanity of it all was not a subject on which Boris Johnson seemed especially willing to be drawn during last night’s Downing Street briefing, where he opted for the easier role of a man solely concerned about unscrupulous smugglers. Incidentally, I was puzzled to see he didn’t use the special new £2.6m press conference room for the event. What are they doing? Keeping it for best? At this rate, participants will only be allowed to use it if they keep the plastic showroom covers over all the fittings, like the driver of a new car who wants it to stay showroom fresh, no matter what an uncomfy ninny it makes him look.

[Scot Dutchy]

More Chumocracy but this time David Cameron.

David Cameron texted Rishi Sunak to get Covid loans for Greensill, says report

Former prime minister said to have sent multiple messages to chancellor to access funds for doomed lender

New questions are being raised over David Cameron’s attempts to lobby government on behalf of doomed lender Greensill Capital, after he reportedly contacted the chancellor’s private phone in hopes of securing special access to hundreds of thousands of pounds of emergency Covid loans.

The Sunday Times reported that the former prime minister, who was an adviser and shareholder in Greensill, sent multiple texts to Rishi Sunak in April 2020, in hopes of gaining access to cheap, 100% government-backed loans through the Covid corporate financing facility (CCFF).

Greensill hoped to use the money to lend cash to its clients, which included Liberty Steel’s owner, GFG Alliance. However, granting Greensill access to the CCFF would have meant bending the rules, since lenders are not meant to borrow money through that programme.

Most of Cameron’s texts to Sunak went unanswered, the newspaper said. The chancellor reportedly backed officials who said Greensill did not qualify for the scheme and referred Cameron to senior officials at the Treasury – including the permanent secretaries Tom Scholar and Charles Roxburgh – who were later contacted by the former prime minister.

Just taxpayers money.

[Brian Peacock]

Greensill pioneered Supply Side Refactoring, a method of turning due invoices into debts that can then be offset against tax liabilities.

Basically, instead of paying your suppliers Greensill offers to pay them 90% within 30 days or a 100% in 90 days. Greensill then turns your invoices into a debt which your company can even buy into and/or trade in. Debts are offset against profits for tax purposes, so instead of supplier invoices being processed as a running cost through turnover they're processed as losses and liabilities. As the money you owe to Greensill is wrapped as tradable assets then buying it back qualifies as a business investment. It's a way for the tax office to subsidise your supply chain.

So I'm not surprised that Cameron, with his 'totally legal' offshore wealth hoarding, would champion a company that came up with such a ridiculous Ponzi scheme.

[Scot Dutchy]

You just wonder how many other Ponzi schemes exist in the Chumocracy.

[Brian Peacock]

Greensill are Australian. The big accountancy firms earn a good chunk of their money from subverting the tax regimes across the globe.

[JimC]

Greensill are Australian. The big accountancy firms earn a good chunk of their money from subverting the tax regimes across the globe.

Mea culpa...

[Hermit]

Greensill are Australian.

Was. Greensill Capital has filed for insolvency. Bloomberg and other publications are already writing about the company in the past tense. I expect to read an obituary fairly soon.

[Brian Peacock]

Yeah. Creating a bank to lend you money you're never going to be able to pay back is bound to put a business on a bit of a sticky wicket with the regulator. You know a company is in trouble when even KPMG and Deloitte won't take it on as a client. Still, I somehiw doubt Lex Greensill CBE will suffer any sleepless nights over the collapse of his business, let alone experience gnawing pangs of remorse or troubling anxieties about the quality of prison food.

Also, it turns out Greensill is a wholly British afair: registered in The City, HQ in Norwich - so I apologise if I sullied the otherwise unblemished good name of your country when i suggested it was an Australian concern.

[Hermit]

Also, it turns out Greensill is a wholly British afair: registered in The City, HQ in Norwich - so I apologise if I sullied the otherwise unblemished good name of your country when i suggested it was an Australian concern.

No wucking furries. Big business has essentially been supranational for decades, so it is irrelevant what country a corporation's founder, Chair or CEO was born in. Look at Rupie. He became a US citizen because it benefited Newscorp at the time. Had it been more advantageous to seek citizenship in Somalia or Eswatini, he would have done that.