Did We Miss Something?

Watching the speech from our Prime Minister, I suppose you could be forgiven for thinking he was trying to occupy more of the 'centre ground'. I mean he did mention that he wants "Everyone, no matter what background they come from, to have the same chances at a good life". Sounds promising. That is as long as you don't mind being saddled with a £50k+ debt when you come out of university. Or if you don't mind being a child growing up in poverty, thanks to his new tax credit cuts. Take a child growing up in an overcrowded house to working parents living in poverty, perhaps deciding whether the family can eat one or two meals that day. Then compare them to a child who lives in an upper middle class family, with their own space to do school work and a well balanced nutritious diet. Has taking the tax credits from the first child's family helped improve their chances in life to that of the second child or made the gap much larger?

Now lets look at another key part of his speech. Prisons. "We have the criminals attention so lets teach them, rehabilitate them and put them back to work". A very left of field sounding announcement if taken on its own. But it was followed by "We need to replace the antiquated Victorian prisons we have with modern facilities fit for purpose". Now this is the point the press seemed to brush over. Replacing old prisons with new. How are we going to do this and stick to the chancellors 'long term economic plan' of never ending austerity? I suggest the real message here is that we are seeking to privatize prisons. Yep thats right private prisons. Was this the real announcement covered in a cloak of lefty rhetoric?

The USA have a private prison system, A system where the government in many cases guarantees inmate quotas of 90% or more. How can they do this? How can you guarantee there will be enough criminals in the system at that particular time? The justice system in the states has come under fire from many accusations of corruption in recent times. Often pointed out is the terrible relationship between police officers and the Black and Hispanic population in the states. These two groups make up around 30% of the population yet 59% of the prison population. They also make up some of the most impoverished communities. It is often suggested that these two communities are unfairly targeted by police officers and harsher prison sentences are handed out.

What will our government offer private companies in the way of quotas? How will our prison population be made up? What if we cant match those quotas? Will we see an announcement of the government getting "tough on crime" in order to make up the numbers? There has always been a correlation between poverty and crime, are those new families pushed into poverty by the tax credit cuts more likely to end up in prison? Is this the new centre ground?


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Push the Button and keep us Safe!!!...........

A big debate has been surfacing around the need for Nuclear weapons. BBC's Question Time showed just how divisive the subject can be. So before we continue this article, we will start by making it clear that Lefthub is against nuclear weapons and the idea of them being a deterrent. Now lets look at some hypothetical uses of the nuclear weapons and how much of a deterrent they really are.

If Ukraine still had nuclear weapons, Russian troops would not be in their country.

This was a point raised by a member of the audience on Question Time. So lets examine this argument further. We must presume the questioner thinks that the Ukraine government could have threatened the Russian government with the use of Nuclear weapons should it invade with troops or continue an invasion. We can see where this view comes, from but there is a gaping flaw with the argument. Russia also have Nuclear weapons, and a lot more than the Ukraine. So they could simply counter by saying if you do fire nuclear missiles at us, we will wipe out your country with our nuclear missiles. This would most likely result with a stalemate of Nuclear weapon use and the invasion continues. That is unless the Ukraine would like to ensure the extinction of their citizens and fire the first missile.

Somebody, somewhere has fired nuclear missiles at us.

In this situation its too late. Thousands, millions or even all of us will be killed. Does the ability to fire a missile or two back give me comfort? Does that feel like justice to me? No. A nuclear attack on the UK would result as we said, in the loss of millions of innocent lives. Retaliating by firing back and killing millions more innocent people does not provide me with any satisfaction at all. Its most likely in fact that the people responsible for firing the first nukes would be tucked up safe and sound in a bunker somewhere, so we would only be killing more innocent people.

We pre-empt a nuclear attack and fire the first nukes. 

We gather intelligence that a nuclear attack could be imminent. The response is to striker first. Of course again this guarantees millions of lives lost. It also would all but guarantee a counter strike of nuclear attacks on the UK, even if we were wrong in the first place. Intelligence has proven to be wrong in the past countless times. Pre-empting a nuclear attack and striking first does nothing but guarantee nuclear war and destruction.



So for the sake of the argument lets imagine the UK is under threat of invasion from Russia, after all they seem to be the example the media continue to point to in order to justify the need for these weapons of mass destruction. As I sit here writing this blog, I contemplate how I would like us to face a Russian invasion. The loss of innocent life through war, be it English or Russian seems an abhorrent idea to me Personally I would rather rewrite the whole thing in Russian than be disintegrated as a result of Nuclear warfare. As ultimately that would be the choice when you bring Nuclear weapons into it. Surrender and be ruled by Russia or be Killed. Id sooner dig out my Ushanka-hat and pay my taxes to Putin than not exist at all and I imagine if the moment came most people would opt for Russian rule than death. Remember guys, "Безопасность прежде всего"





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