Best Of

Again, this is the organisation Farage and (by her own account) Badenoch wish to emulate.

ICE detain husband of Democratic congressional candidate—who is also a disabled U.S. Army veteran.

He is wheelchair bound—after suffering severe injury during training for deployment in Iraq.

Agents arrested him one interview and a ceremony away from becoming a U.S. citizen.

Zahid Chaudhry has been awarded multiple medals for his service:
▪︎Army Service Ribbon
▪︎Global War on Terrorism Service Medal
▪︎Armed Forces Reserve Medal
▪︎Reserve Achievement Medal
▪︎National Defense Service Medal
▪︎Recruitment Achievement Medal
▪︎Army Strength Management Award

After 124 days in detention a federal judge finally ruled he had been wrongfully detained.

Zahid Chaudhry is currently waiting for his new hearing—living back at home with his wife and 2 U.S. citizen children in Tacoma, Washington.
https://x.com/LongTimeHistory/status/2033151726543307030

This is ridiculous. He’s not cheating the system. He’s following it. He’s playing by the rules and lost four months of his life.

Personally I find it ridiculous that because both Badenoch and Farage have said quite rightly that if we are going to deport the numbers that everyone agrees that we should (or have I been imagining Labour supporters critiquing the Boriswave), we will need an ICE-style organisation, that this apparently translates to replicating ICE's every foible. This is 12-year old level debating.

What are these numbers that "everyone agrees" ?
Which "foibles" would you personally eschew ? (Most are inherent in the organisation; if you don't want them, you don't want an ICD style organisation.)

Childish debating is pretend that to explicitly choose an organisation as clearly alien to our democracy as ICE as a model should somehow be exempt from ridicule and contempt.

How is it alien to 'our democracy' to deport people who have no right to be here? And if it isn't alien to do that, if the scale of numbers needing to be deported, and being unwilling to be deported demands it, why would it not be a good idea to have an agency dedicated to the task? The only question is the one Taz poses - whether it is wise to make the direct comparison to ICE, or whether it gives fodder to idiots. I don't know the answer to that. I suspect the idiots would be making the comparison and drawing the idiotic inferences even if Badenoch and Farage were calling our version the cuddly lift home service.

We already have an agency dedicated to the task of deporting illegal immigrants. A friend of mine works for it, though she does spend most of the time lounging around the house at the taxpayers' expense waiting to be called up for an assignment.

I’m greatly enjoying this outbreak of “I agree with Ed?” on PB.

NB. The major problem with the French nuclear deterrent is that their submarine launched ICBMs are (I believe) too thicc (as the kids would put it) to fit in our launch tubes. Completely rebuilding our submarines to accommodate French missiles is probably not a realistic proposition.

We make our own bombs (admittedly to a mostly US design, but we have that design) with our own fissile material & have our own submarines. The thing we don’t make is the missiles & it’s high time we started on our own ICBM program.

Maximum chaos / entertainment option: put Cummings on the job. He’d love it, would probably be quite good at running the program in a Musk-esque fashion. A program run by him wouldn’t cost a fortune & it would annoy the MoD so much that they’d probably agree to whatever you demanded in the hope that it would prevent you putting him in charge of anything else.

(Cumming past Russian links might be an issue with this otherwise great plan possibly? I propose it mostly on the principle of maximum entertainment potential.)

I'm for task forces being used to get past blobbery in all cases. The MOD and its partners should not be allowed within a mile of developing this.

Again, this is the organisation Farage and (by her own account) Badenoch wish to emulate.

ICE detain husband of Democratic congressional candidate—who is also a disabled U.S. Army veteran.

He is wheelchair bound—after suffering severe injury during training for deployment in Iraq.

Agents arrested him one interview and a ceremony away from becoming a U.S. citizen.

Zahid Chaudhry has been awarded multiple medals for his service:
▪︎Army Service Ribbon
▪︎Global War on Terrorism Service Medal
▪︎Armed Forces Reserve Medal
▪︎Reserve Achievement Medal
▪︎National Defense Service Medal
▪︎Recruitment Achievement Medal
▪︎Army Strength Management Award

After 124 days in detention a federal judge finally ruled he had been wrongfully detained.

Zahid Chaudhry is currently waiting for his new hearing—living back at home with his wife and 2 U.S. citizen children in Tacoma, Washington.
https://x.com/LongTimeHistory/status/2033151726543307030

This is ridiculous. He’s not cheating the system. He’s following it. He’s playing by the rules and lost four months of his life.

I’m greatly enjoying this outbreak of “I agree with Ed?” on PB.

NB. The major problem with the French nuclear deterrent is that their submarine launched ICBMs are (I believe) too thicc (as the kids would put it) to fit in our launch tubes. Completely rebuilding our submarines to accommodate French missiles is probably not a realistic proposition.

We make our own bombs (admittedly to a mostly US design, but we have that design) with our own fissile material & have our own submarines. The thing we don’t make is the missiles & it’s high time we started on our own ICBM program.

Maximum chaos / entertainment option: put Cummings on the job. He’d love it, would probably be quite good at running the program in a Musk-esque fashion. A program run by him wouldn’t cost a fortune & it would annoy the MoD so much that they’d probably agree to whatever you demanded in the hope that it would prevent you putting him in charge of anything else.

(Cumming past Russian links might be an issue with this otherwise great plan possibly? I propose it mostly on the principle of maximum entertainment potential.)

The weapons we build are actually to joint US/UK designs - US version of the weapons integrate the UK features and they were designed by teams with UK members. The French were really upset that we got the designs for non-symmetric primaries for free, for example.

Just ask the French nicely to get a piece of their independent nuclear deterrent. It wouldn't be nuclear independence per se, but closer collaboration with a regional power on an approximately equivalent level may be preferable to being the(very) junior lickspittle partner in an unstable coalition with the USA, who appear to have quite a low opinion of us.

This is possibly the most idiotic thing I've read on PB all month.

Perhaps a joint programme with Putin would suit you better?

I always play the post not the man, so I'll just observe that recently your posts have been baleful, resentful hyperpolitical drivel, that always seems to come from a very bleak place. Feel better.

The problem we currently face is a nuclear programme that depends on another independent nation, who are free to elect someone that we cannot depend upon, and who may oppose our interests.

Enter stage left the utterly loony idea of 'a piece of' the French nuclear deterrent. Quite apart from the idea of France nuking someone because they've nuked Britain - thus laying France open to nuclear attack being f***ing idiotic, what if they go and elect Marine Le Pen? Who do you suggest we go to for 'a piece' then?

It's a classic of unserious remoaner guff from the 'serious people in the room'. Completely deranged, but it involves throwing money at the French combined with a nice bit of eating crow for the Brexiteer crowd, so it must be a great idea.

So why couldn't we, with more resources, and presumably access to what we would need, do the same?

Organisational capture of the government by BAE.

If we did succumb to the grip of national neurosis and decide we need nuclear weapons then the least shit way of doing it probably to license the M45 design from Airbus then build a facility in the south of England to build and maintain them. Expecting to generate the requisite industrial and scientific capacity at Faslane is a complete non-starter no matter how politically convenient that would be.

We'd also need a test range though we could probably bribe some remote shithole like Nauru to host it for us. And a range instrumentation ship like the French Navy's Monge. And a degaussing facility, this probably could be built in Faslane,

100bn+? Just think of all the benefits we could cut! Exciting times ahead for our program of national rebirth.

I’m greatly enjoying this outbreak of “I agree with Ed?” on PB.

NB. The major problem with the French nuclear deterrent is that their submarine launched ICBMs are (I believe) too thicc (as the kids would put it) to fit in our launch tubes. Completely rebuilding our submarines to accommodate French missiles is probably not a realistic proposition.

We make our own bombs (admittedly to a mostly US design, but we have that design) with our own fissile material & have our own submarines. The thing we don’t make is the missiles & it’s high time we started on our own ICBM program.

Maximum chaos / entertainment option: put Cummings on the job. He’d love it, would probably be quite good at running the program in a Musk-esque fashion. A program run by him wouldn’t cost a fortune & it would annoy the MoD so much that they’d probably agree to whatever you demanded in the hope that it would prevent you putting him in charge of anything else.

(Cumming past Russian links might be an issue with this otherwise great plan possibly? I propose it mostly on the principle of maximum entertainment potential.)