She's a Tory-lite who abstained on a gaza ceasefire vote and ignored a man showing her pictures of his murdered family, before he was dragged off by police.

The nuclear deterrent submarines are the costly bit but they are the ultimate deterrent as they cannot be targeted.

It's a huge step to give it up even if it's unusable. Legality would be moot if they were used to put it mildly.

The question of what is considered an appropriate defence force has to be asked. We need to stop trying to police the world and leave that to the Yanks. Being an island is still a huge advantage against conventional forces provided you have a decent navy and airforce.

I'd start by sorting out the shambles that defence contracting appears to be and make a military career attractive enough for the forces sizes we need.

We should buy arms from Israel.

I agree we should build our own but we sold off our industry long ago. It needs kick started again.

Conspiracies everywhere!
It's because everything is always designed and masterminded by a genius creator!

This was because Cummings or whoever it was spilled the beans on the Dead Cat thing and now everyone thinks everything is a Dead Cat rather than just shit, incompetent, psychopathic nonsense. 

The Tory party has suffered (self inflicted) serious brain drain since Brexit. Some didnt want to be the party of Brexit so left by 2017 but mainly 2019, others were burnt out. Some of these other MPs with their hands in the till, or their pants, or someone else's pants were otherwise competent (not all mind). A good number have checked out as they plan their lives away from this zombified husk of a government that continues to limp along dropping festering lumps of flesh all in the name of Sunak's egotistical delusion.

Meanwhile the press 'report' on any scrap they can via Twitter, never naming their super valuable "Sources" of course. It matters not how accurate any of it is because there's another scabby lump of rumour to be commented on by that point.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cekl0m4d9mzo

Is it just me or is £3.6 million for a footbridge, no different to any other railway footbridge, rather high?  Maybe that figure includes every single facet of design/planning or whatever but even so I can't help but feel we should be able to put that together for much less.

There were concerns the structure could be "out of scale" with the B-listed Victorian buildings in Dumfries.

There's your money sink. Probably endless rounds of consultations and revisions before something got signed off. We tie our selves up in ridiculous knots sometimes in this country because of over sensitivity to "historical" buildings.

We should just allow people to buy crack and heroine and guns and tanks too. It's simply unconservative not to.

It's a silly way to implement it though imo. Just tax it into oblivion.* Some mates from school are down the pub in twenty years and some of them are allowed to buy cigarettes and some of them aren't. The cashier at the shop has to do the mental arithmetic to work out whether the birth date on the ID puts them over or under that year's age limit.

*Also 'unconservative'

I think that will be a fringe case. Most will just not smoke as it wont be a thing in their peer group, which seems to be why 99% of people start.
Also no metal arithmetic required. If DOB is after 2009, no sale. Its easier than current age restrictions.

Its already taxed to high heaven, its definitely in the unaffordable camp especially for the mess Gen A will inherit, who will be the first gen hit by it.

If I was to criticise it I would say its a bit pointless. Smoking is way, way down. The kids are more likely to start on vapes than cigs now. Really there are bigger fish to fry. Sunak needed a united win though, and it looks like even with this he will be shown up by his party.

Its amusing to see how the lobbyists are trying to dilute it. One suggestion is cigars would be excluded, not because there would be 18 year olds with big Arnie style cigars, but because they'll make cigarettes that are just, just cigars by the legal definition.

Vaping needs better regulation and enforcement of that. It seems like the wild west at the moment.

British enterprise right there.

They need a more reputable mouth piece, they are throwing their money away on her.

nick_md wrote:

They should only let cigarettes be sold in pubs and only if you've bought a pint at the same time because even quitters and non smokers will nab a cheeky drag when the suns out over a couple of pints.

The worst.

“Can I bum a fag off you?”

“10 years ago, yes”