The downfall of Japan – politicalbetting.com
The downfall of Japan – politicalbetting.com
6 August 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the first atomic bomb being dropped on HiroshimaOur recent survey finds most in major European nations think the atomic bombings were not morally justified, with Americans split 38%-35%yougov.co.uk/internationa…
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Hindsight is a wonderful thing sometimes.
Ah-ha, this kiss you give
It's never ever going to fade away
To me this polling is verging on "ask a stupid question". It's making a moral judgement in circumstances which are so far from our experience and time that it is massively problematic.
We can read the history, and the testimonies - but I think as a polling question it is pretty meaningless.
How did Churchill assess this in his writings?
Most of the scientists on the project did; the rest not so much.
Truman didn't really even make the decision to drop the second bomb - he'd effectively handed over operational control to the military, once the decision to use a nuclear weapon had been made. The strict decision protocols didn't come into existence until quite a bit later.
https://order-order.com/2025/08/05/exc-trump-could-still-block-starmers-chagos-deal-after-house-appropriations-intervention/
Honestly I would rather just give the bloody thing to America, at least we wouldn't have to pay them to take it.
As was the issues of fallout - which is why both Nagasaki and Hiroshima were airbursts. Which reduced the fallout to pretty much zero. The Trinity test wasn’t an airbust - the tower wasn’t that high - and produced a fair amount of fallout.
The thing that was a surprise, was that prompt radiation* from the bombs (X-rays, gamma, neutrons) could make people sick, due to the unexpected number of survivors closer to the explosion. The thermal and blast protection of even flimsy buildings had been underestimated, massively.
*radiation from the actual explosion
The Red Army was invading from the north using millions of troops no longer fighting the Nazis since VE Day. The Allies had naval and air supremacy, allowing USAF to firebomb Japanese cities at will. Japan by the end had no hope, as was obvious to anyone bar its military leaders following the cult of the Samurai. Thankfully Hirohito fell for the American atom bomb bluff – that they could drop one a day until there were no Japanese cities left, when in truth they had built only two bombs and could not make more for months.
The reason for two bombs being dropped was assumed by everyone in the project.
There were two routes to the bomb (there are more, but it’s not sure anyone has ever used them) - Uranium 235 and Plutonium 239.
Plutonium was a secret at this point. Extracting Uranium 235 by enrichment (what the Iranians are going for) is a vast, expensive business*. More so at the time, when it had to be invented.
The Japanese knew all about the theory of nuclear fission. And had done some lab scale experiments in Uranium separation. Most physicists at the time thought it was either impossible or would take years to extract enough to make one bomb.
Indeed, immediately after Hiroshima, Japanese physicists told the Japanese government that it might take years for the Americans to make a second bomb.
Nagasaki was about making the production line evident.
*To run one of half a dozen processes, the US used all the silver bullion in the Treasury (thousands of tons) to make wire for electromagnets.
More likely is that Hirohito used the shock of the bomb to get the military to give up - having started the effort in June of that year.
How many rock bands were / are named after features of WW2. It seems to be what I might call a 1970s Crass thing.
I have:
Joy Division - forced camp brothels at Auschwitz etc. Choosing both names are very male things to do imo.
Spandau Ballet - disputed, but allegedly the "death dance" done by a person being hanged, or shot with a machine gun.
Preventing the slaughter of a full born invasion is a perfectly defensible moral position but as ever plenty of less noble motives swirling about.
Ref 31 (+2)
Lab 22 (-1)
Con 18 (-2)
LD 14 (+1)
Grn 7 (=)
SNP 3 (=)
In your opinion, which one country would you say contributed most to the defeat of Germany in World War 2?
Surely the answer is Germany.
General Groves held it up - specifically the shipment of the core (the famous Demon Core) - and awaited Presidential orders.
The plan was 19th August. The next 3 weapons would be ready of September. 3 more in October.
After that, accelerating production of nuclear material, using material for gun type weapons in implosion weapons (much more efficient) and an improved design would all boost delivery to 10-20 weapons per month.
Spandau Ballet itself seems to be traced to a 1953 article in the London Daily News
Heirs of Joy Division New Order a v.obvious example.
Without the horrors of the Hiroshima and the Nagasaki bombs, and just test blasts, would the world have stepped over the brink? Maybe.
I am not convinced that the 2 bombs were intrinsically less moral than the bombing of Wassaw, Rotterdam, Coventry, Stalingrad, Dresden or worst of all the Tokyo firebombing. All were targeted at civilians in a way that we would be appalled at now. All were evil.
I know the US didn't come in until the end of 1941) Japan wouldn't even have had the successes they did in 1941.
They only did so because attention was absent or divided, once it was not complete defeat was rapid and inevitable - despite the horrific casualties.
This was after both atomic bombs, the Russians in the war and slaughtering the Japanese army. The Americans had stopped building submarines - because there was nothing left to sink. Shipping had completely stopped. Allied battleships were bombarding the Japanese coast - in sight of land. The rice harvest had failed and would mean mass starvation that winter.
The plan was to carry on fighting - mass suicide attack on an American invasion. Including the entire post 12 aged population, armed with bamboo spears. Yes, really. Because in the best Hagakure style death was better than dishonour.
At this point Hirohito broke the rules and announced he was voting. And ended the war.
The War Faction responded by launching a coup. Which only failed because of a blackout caused by a conventional American air raid.
They even tried to launch a kamikaze attack on the American fleet after the surrender message was sent. What happened is unclear - it seems possible that they were shot down by *Japanese* aircraft, directly ordered by the Emperor.
Defending against an aggressor.
Edited autocorrect.
Even if it is not WW2 associated (possible) if the name is chosen it will be so associated.
The little matter of 70,000 odd deaths from targeting Nagasaki, in order to make the production line evident, was a delegated decision.
Nearly every country had produced a similar computing bombsight.
The problem was, to get accuracy, you needed to fly in a straight line at fixed speed. In daylight. This was found to require Victoria Cross levels of courage.
What produced crazy accuracy - plus or minus a few yards - was Oboe. At night. This electronic navigation system was so accurate that it found errors in how maps were joined together - the maps were about 200 yards off.
By the end of the war, a “playing card” formation of Mosquitos (5 typically) could virtually guarantee a hit on a point target - 90%+ - one of their bombs would get the target. From 30k feet at night.
Personally, I'm with Sir Arthur Harris, on this:
The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.
And manpower.
But war is not rational, especially for the instigator. Ask Hamas or VVP what happens if the enemy fights back.
Including those that died from radiation long after the Japanese surrender?
https://obr.uk/docs/dlm_uploads/PSF-commentary-June-2025.pdf
This morning’s ONS release estimates that borrowing in the first three months of 2025-26 totalled £57.8 billion. This is £7.5 billion above the same period last year, which is exactly in line with our March forecast monthly profile. Central government receipts and spending are both broadly in line with the forecast profile.
In the monthly profile consistent with the forecast in the March Economic and fiscal outlook we expect lower borrowing in the second half of 2025-26 relative to 2024-25. This is based on a sharp expected rise in capital gains tax around the end-January due date, lower debt interest payments in the second half of the year, and lower central government net social benefits which were unusually backloaded last year.
One thing Leon missed (unless I missed Leon not missing it) was the Speculum (as apparently we now call it) won a libel action. The interesting thing is that one of the lawyers has the same name of a former pb stalwart (although iirc Morus was based in America so it's probably just a coincidence).
Mohammed Hegab v The Spectator (1828) Limited & Anor
https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ewhc/kb/2025/2043
Taxes to be raised to cover £49 billion shortfall by end of parliament.
We are really in a mess. Anaemic growth and a burgeoning debt and borrowing costs.
Not all labours fault. Tory legacy was shit and the two NI cuts reckless but she’s played a bad hand poorly.
https://x.com/salisburysuk/status/1952982735460679777?s=61
It was the inability to resupply and replace that defeated the Japanese forces, despite capturing the oil and rubber of the Dutch East Indies. They couldn't replace the ships lot at Midway, and the retreat from Port Moresby in the battle of the track was as much due to supply logistics as to dogged Australian resistance.
Fierce fighting was still going on even in the weeks prior to the Hiroshima bomb. An Australian cousin was decorated in this campaign in July 1945.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aitape–Wewak_campaign
A screenshot from Marine Traffic showing AIS (ie nav beacons) of ships going along rivers into Russia from the far north as far down as eg Mongolia. It's growth is one side effect of the North Asia route opening up, though I'm sure the trade has been there for a long time. You will probably need to enlarge for detail.
Source is my favourite shipping Youtube channel, this deep link:
https://youtu.be/PZdSAIMoI2w?t=359
(If I need a link to WW2, at least one German Commerce Raider entered the Pacific by going the Northern Route - before they fell out with Stalin.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na_h-Eileanan_an_Iar_(UK_Parliament_constituency)
The last time the Liberals or Liberal Democrats secured over 8% of the vote in that seat was in 1966. The last time they won it was in 1929 (or 1931 if you count the National Liberals as Liberals).
You still appear to be confusing it with Orkney and Shetland.
Edit - the same logic was applied to Orkney/Shetland, Ynys Mon and the Isle of Wight (two seats).
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/06/gary-lineker-itv-game-show-after-bbc-exit/ (£££)
The Japanese plan was to die fighting the invasion - mass suicide attacks. Including the civilian population, armed with bamboo spears.
There was also a famine coming - the Japanese Military plan to deal with that was to reserve food for the military and let the civilians starve.
The US military casualties were computed using the results of previous battles. They were stilling using the Purple Hearts (medals for the wounded) made in response to the expected numbers, today.
The invasion of Japan would have been a mass slaughter. It would have killed millions of Japanese - probably a serious percentage of the entire population.
(As it happened, after the first major raid on Tokyo killed 100,000, better preparation reduced the numbers in later raid by an order of magnitude.)
I'd agree the Hiroshima bomb was no less moral than the earlier raids; all were intentional mass killing of civilians.
And Hiroshima might have ended the war at a stroke.
£50 billion by 2028/9 isn't quite as bad as it sounds and it'll be easy for some to think that means £50 billion of tax rises now which it doesn't.
Again, we come back to the questions which have afflicted us since 2008 - to reduce the deficit and reduce borrowing, what do we do? Do we raise taxes, do we cut spending? Do we do both? If we do the former, which taxes do we raise? If we do the latter, which areas of public spending do we cut and what will be the impact of both the tax rises and the spending cuts?
Rather like the "boats", plenty of complaining and plenty pointing out the problem but little in the way of practical, workable and coherent solutions. I do think Starmer and Reeves were unwise in ruling out changes to Income Tax and VAT before the election - that was boxing themselves into a corner for no reason.
Maybe as successful as Genius Game on the same channel.
I think the answer is that yes, as a brute calculation more lives probably were saved by dropping the bomb. Forecast allied deaths for an invasion were of the order of 250k to 1 million, with the same for the Japanese. Plus wounded (3-4x as many?). Plus civilians.
But it's all guestimates and orders of magnitude.
But were more Japanese not killed by conventional area bombing than at Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
But that was a thing the Conservatives wanted anyway and actually they were right to want it. The Isle of Wight, the Outer Hebrides and Orkney and Shetland are all rather special cases.
Ynys Mon perhaps less so, but as it's one of the poorest and most neglected areas in the whole UK I'm not sorry it's got a dedicated MP.
The should just bite the bullet, break a pledge or two, and raise income tax as well as looking at council tax bands/land tax for starters.
But it’s a mammoth task and not an easy one especially given they fold to their backbenchers when trying to make modest changes to spending as we saw with welfare. A so called cut was simply slowing the rate of growth.
~ "Britain made a commitment"
It was also a bit odd to hear the BBC Radio 4 talks on the subject this morning, which portrayed Hiroshima as some sort of bucolic paradise (children going to school, grandparents tending gardens etc) whereas in fact the place was at the heart of the Japanese military-industrial complex. It was a shipbuilding centre, and the population was entirely devoted to the war effort, whether they were civilians or not.
Someone was going to develop one.
And although Hitler was against the use of chemical weapons, given his experience in WW1, he was not against the use of other 'vengeance' weapons. If he had a nuke, he would have used it. So would the Japanese (though a delivery system would have been problematic if they wanted to bomb the US...). Stalin would have nuked Berlin without a second's thought.
Given that, it's probably best that the US did develop it first.
They were a generation who were still enduring a war in which 50,000,000 had already died, entirely needlessly. Rotterdam, London, Coventry, Hamburg and Dresden weren't just words to them. Anything that was likely to end the agony quicker was worth trying. And the atom bombs were likely to, and indeed did, just that. They may also have contributed to avoiding a third world war with Stalin over Greece, Turkey or Berlin or a full war with Mao over Korea.
So while I hope, entirely unrealistically, that no bomb, either conventional or nuclear, is ever used again, if there's a similar decision, whereby a quick nuclear strike will probably end a much bloodier conventional war, I hope whoever has the decision takes it.
It is indeed ironic that the most devastating weapons man has ever devised may have saved more lives than most medical innovations.
Freezing fuel duty has cost the govt £80bn in tax over the last decade. Petrol prices are similar to their 2010-2015 averages, far cheaper in real terms with inflation elsewhere. 5p on petrol feels an obvious one that should have been done last budget and makes a big dent in that 40/50bn.
And £40bn or £50bn could easily be added or lost simply by the global economy improving or worsening.
Uniquely, what you say about boundaries is not true in the case of the Western Isles - the Boundary Commission cannot amalgamate the boundaries of that constituency, unlike every other constituency in the country. Clegg insisted on including that in the 2011 Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act that as the Lib Dems had traditionally been popular there, and Cameron understandably agreed to get the Act through. It has 21k electors compared with more than three times that for the average UK constituency.
In fact, of course, they did disastrously in the subsequent election, and have never recovered. So his gerrymandering didn't help his party. And it should certainly be removed, like the other constitutional abortion that Lib Dem rigging, the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, has been.
So I'm afraid the ignorance comes from you.
White vs Itauma
Itauma is the great, er, white hope coming up from the amateurs (24-0-0, 12KO) while Whyte is the old war horse with a dodgy chin (or rather, a dodgy habit of getting sparked out via upper cut).
And yes he is looking good since he turned professional (12-0-0, 10KO) However, if you look at Itauma's pro record there is nothing to see. Most of the people he has fought have been journeymen or people who have been minding their own business on a Thursday and been phoned up and asked to appear at York Hall on the Friday to fight Itauma.
This is not to say that Itauma isn't super easy on the eye. He can bang and he is a boxer (cf AJ). But he hasn't faced anyone who can give him a proper run for his money and Whyte might just be that person. Although old(er), he is or can be a formidable opponent and I don't think Itauma will have faced anything like Whyte's resilience (as long as he avoids the upper cuts) or competence.
Now, much of this is well known but on bf Itauma is 1.14 while Whyte is 9.2 with the draw at 32. Both the latter are worth a pound or two of anyone's money.
Let's hope that they are raised by at least a little more in some places so we can afford to start rebuilding at least some areas of our wrecked society.
What killed the Conservative majority in 2017 was the two terrorist outrages during the campaign itself, alongside insistence that Tory police cuts had made no difference. Suddenly Labour was the party of Law and Order.
And parroting Crosby's slogan ‘strong and stable’ does not work when you are neither.
However, what they are responsible for is planning and communications. I have no idea what their plan is for debt and deficit, for funding the interest payments and paying the loans back. I have no idea what their plan is for running a balanced budget, putting inflation under 2%, and borrowing only to invest.
The same is true elsewhere. Housing, smashing the gangs, NHS etc. I don't expect it to be sorted, but the voters expect top quality, non evasive, question answering communication about their promises and plans.
You can't blame the last government for your own failure to plan or communicate.
However they were still first strike attacks and the use of nuclear weapons in a similar way today would not be justified given nuclear missiles today are even more powerful and deadly
Police canvassed were not happy about cuts either true
https://www.oddschecker.com/boxing/moses-itauma-v-dillian-whyte/winner
The only counterargument that I can see is that it opened the Pandora's box of nuclear weapon use. I agree with @TSE that we can only hope it is not ever dipped into again.
Relevant to the bombing in WW2, but no less to the bombing and starving of Gaza.
The much harder question is whether there is a package of policies that will both make a meaningful improvement to the state of the nation and be tolerated by enough of the electorate. It might be that those two circles on the Venn diagram no longer overlap at all.
Give it a devolved city government, waive almost all planning regs, let it compete on corporate tax rate with Ireland, give it the same status as NI vis a vis the EU, link it up with NPR as well as HS2. We could do all that at the same time as those other big projects: the reclaimed doggerland metropolis in the North Sea, the ceding of the Isle of Portland to Spain, and replicating the Saudi city of “The Line” from Merthyr Tydfil to Castell Coch.
Later there was a lantern ceremony in the river when they set afloat and afire hundreds of lanterns on the water.
And it was the same trip that, when in Tokyo, we decided to go to Yoyogi Park to see all the Elvises which was about 10 mins (google: 5km) from where we were staying. When we started out there was a huge march in progress and when we got to Yoyogi on the tube the march was still going. As many deep as the pro-Pal ones in London but for miles and miles and miles. And the reason for the march was that it had been proposed that an American nuclear submarine would be allowed to dock in a Japanese port and this was a demo against that proposal.
But also, and I know we have discussed this previously on PB, there was also a sense (this was several decades ago god help me) that Japan hadn't moved on from the war and couldn't see what they had done wrong. Many certainly weren't in "apology" mode a la Germany following WWII.
TMay 317 seats
Social care played a part, obviously. Everything played a part. But it was the public's visceral reaction to piles of dead children at the Ariana Grande concert a few days later that was decisive.
"The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans to cancel $500m (£376m) in funding for mRNA vaccines being developed to counter viruses like the flu and Covid-19.
The move will impact 22 projects being led by major pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer and Moderna, for vaccines against bird flu and other viruses, HHS said."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c74dzdddvmjo
There's a possibility that RFK Jr's hands will be bloodier than Stalin's or Hitler's. All it will take is another pandemic. And perhaps not even that.
The question was the ratio of Allied casualties to Japanese. The estimate was that 35% of the allied forces landing would be casualties - over a quarter of a million. The Japanese would lose 5 times that number - at least.
Japanese casualties would mostly be dead.
Given the ideas for suicide charges by civilians, the slaughter would probably have been worse.
What Labour should have learned from Blair and New Labour is that you should put the divisive stuff in the manifesto because that would have bound MPs to measures like cutting the WFA rather than blindsiding them and causing a rebellion.
Not only is it a massive public good in creating vaccines, protecting the future public, attracting scientists, attracting jobs but it could also see windfalls such as the Covid vaccines did for those companies, the potential spin offs - we’ve seen the money that the fat jabs have generated and who knows what else will come from these vaccine research teams.
There could be few better uses of taxpayer money at the moment, could have used Chagos money of course but happily those millions are helping Mauritians escape the terror of income tax.