POLLING DAY AS IT HAPPENS: TELEGRAPH TV LINK

I can't believe this is happening. They actually haven't got anyone at all who's ever been heard of? No wonder it was such a disaster.

It really is all happening, Sabot - and probably best observed from a safe distance.

Now what???

OMG.......

It didn't help anyone have warm feelings towards our very own WMDs when Devonport said they wouldn't take them because they are 'too dangerous' to have near civilian populations - I have NO idea what the MoD thinks the Clyde basin is....

My goodness.  That is outrageous.  They just don't seem to care?

No, they don't, Lily - Scots lives seem to count for less:

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/scottish-lives-considered-cheap-by-uk-1523923

TRIDENT nuclear bombs are too risky to be based in the south of England, but it’s fine for Scotland, according to the UK government.

The Ministry of Defence says that the nuclear submarines currently housed on the Clyde could not be moved to the Devonport base in Plymouth because an accident there would endanger too many lives.

Responding to a Freedom of Information request from the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the MoD said: “Neither the Devonport naval base nor the dockyard safety case permit the berthing of an armed submarine.”

At least 11,000 Plymouth citizens could be killed in a worst-accident scenario envisaged by the MoD, and that is deemed an unacceptable risk.

Why then does the MoD insist it’s fine to keep these killers anchored just 40 miles from Scotland’s biggest city and centre of population? Put starkly, Scots lives are worth less. Back in 2000 the MoD envisaged a hypothetical accident involving Trident in Faslane. It concluded “societal contamination” resulting from such a disaster was OK.

No wonder CND have thrown their weight behind an independent Scotland.

It’s the only way to get rid of these obscene weapons, whether we live in Devon or Dumbarton.


http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jan/04/mod-nuclear-submarines-scotland-plymouth

The MoD has revealed that the safety arrangements for Devonport do not permit the presence of submarines carrying Trident nuclear warheads. The MoD's safety experts are not considering changing that.

The problem is that the dockyard is in a densely populated area and, if there were an accident, thousands of people would be at risk. The worst accident scenario envisaged by the MoD would kill up to 11,000 people in Plymouth and would not meet the official criteria for what is acceptable, according to a new report.

We need a hashtag - #scotslivesmatter

http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/sunday-herald-view/why-this-whistleblowers-warnings-should-spell-the-death-knell-for-trident.126268713


Trident nuclear missiles were designed in the 1980s to kill 10 million Russians.

These days, loaded onto submarines, they sail endlessly around under the world's seas, threatening nobody in particular.

With their fearsome capacity for mass destruction and death, nuclear weapons have always been immoral. Now, in the age of the suicide bomber, they have become supremely pointless.

But nuclear warheads can also be dangerous to those whose job it is to look after them. The Sunday Herald has often reported on the accidents, leaks and blunders that have plagued nuclear submarines, and their bases at Faslane and Coulport on the Clyde.

Today we reveal the dramatic fears of a young submariner so shocked by what he saw and heard at Faslane and on a Trident submarine that he felt he had to risk imprisonment to warn the public. Able seaman William McNeilly, now on the run, has written a genuinely frightening report.

The picture he paints is like a kind of bad disaster movie, where almost everything that could go wrong does. There are fires, leaks, floods, failed tests, false alarms, broken equipment and security breaches. The toilets don't work, a missile compartment is used as an exercise gym, and there are doubts about whether missiles could actually be successfully launched.

McNeilly may not have fully understood all he witnessed, and may sometimes be overly flowery with his language. But his report must be heeded. His suggestion that security is so poor that infiltrators could easily access the world's most lethal weapons is very disturbing.

Too many of the problems he highlights ring true, and have been suspected or hinted at before. We know from previous reports that the Royal Navy has long been struggling to recruit enough skilled nuclear engineers.

That's why the Navy's decision to launch an investigation into his report is welcome. But it must be independent and transparent - and fully answer all the allegations made.

McNeilly is a whistleblower and must not be treated harshly - even if he has broke the rules. He seems to have had good motives, and it would be wrong to punish him for acting in the public interest.

Crucially, his revelations should reinforce Scotland's determination to get rid of Trident - and hasten the day when its sinister dark shapes stop sneaking in and out of the Clyde.


Quite. If Westminster wishes to continue pretending that Brittania rules the waves, they are free to dredge the Thames and moor the things outside the House of Commons, so Londoners can share the joy.

I confess, I was utterly horrified to hear some LibDem announcing during the election campaign that we should keep them because we might need to use them against ISIS...

Hello?

And no, we do NOT have 'thousands' of jobs attached to Trident; there are roughly 500 only, most of which are attached to the Navy and go with the boat.

A future fully independent Scotland would create far more than that, as what we DO need are frigates, etc - Cameron has virtually stripped the Scottish coastline of conventional defences, even coastguards.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/trident-whistleblower-says-nuclear-submarimes-are-insecure-unsafe-and-a-disaster-wait.1431860917

A lot of submarines have been lost due to simple accidents. If one simple mistake is made it can be all over. You can find some of the information online but most of it is covered up. It's only a matter of time before one of the Trident submarines is lost.

Everyone who serves on the Trident submarines knows that it was HMS Vanguard that crashed into the French submarine [in the Atlantic in February 2009]. I was talking to a chief who was on the submarine at the time. He said: "We thought, this is it, we're all going to die." He went on to explain what happened. There was a massive cover up of the incident.

There was a fire in the missile compartment, in harbour. The chief said if it had been at sea there would've been about 50 dead bodies on three deck because of the amount of people struggling to find an emergency breathing system.

The fire was caused by the ship's toilet rolls being stacked from deck to deckhead the whole way along four deck (right beside the missiles and firing units). They reckon it was the heat from the cables that caused the fire.



Yes, it has happened before - this is one of the worst:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Scorpion_%28SSN-589%29

The US Navy has never entirely come clean about that, but it certainly had nothing to do with Evil Russkis, and was almost certainly caused by skimpy maintenance.

I don't know how they can sleep at night to be honest.  

None of this has anything to do with the men and women serving in the Armed Forces, I must stress - they are the most vulnerable to this endless incompetence and grandstanding.

This is NOT about them, or caused by them, it is caused by politicians who like to preen themselves that 'Britain' - whatever that is these days - is still a wave-ruling superpower.

Meanwhile, in the real world - they have slashed conventional defences to the bone, so that the first thing the MoD ever knows about Russian ships passing into the Atlantic north of Scotland is when a local fishing boat lets them know they've been waving at each other.

Which they've been doing since the Cold War anyway, which may be why Scots don't generally suffer from this bizarre paranoia involving Evil Russkis (doubtless with snow on their boots) just itching to invade John O Groats.

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That's a photo of Loch Broom, taken in 1981. And all those boats are fishing vessels from BEHIND the Iron Curtain - the Klondykers, they were called.

Their crews used to come ashore and mix with the locals; there was a nice bit of Free Enterprise trading back and forth going on.

I meant the careless politicos responsible.

Yes, I knew what you meant, Lily, no-one blames the poor bl**dy infantry for any of this.

I know you did, Bonny.  Sorry I was also cooking brunch.  

Well, I suppose axing 100,000 Civil Service jobs is cutting bureaucracy....



Only ten days since the election, and already this government is making it clear it doesn't care who it hurts.

Wolves in sheep's clothing.....

It's a perfect example of the trickle-up misery of 'austerity', IMO. All those Mail readers that voted Tory took it for granted that only the people they look down on would be badly affected.

No, it's heading for them, too - you don't get much more middle class than a British Civil Servant.

That is also 100,000 people fewer earning a decent wage, paying taxes, and contributing to the economy with personal spending. But, that's what they voted for.

They didn't even miss a beat.

It just gets better and better...thankfully, our Health Service is devolved to Edinburgh, so should be safe. If this keeps up, we are going to end up taking in refugees. From England.

They seem to be nothing more than a bunch of idiots.  Can't they get anything right?

They aren't even capable of leaving things alone to more or less function in the usual muddle, Lily, they are actually creating chaos.

I have NO idea why they are doing it, or what they hope to achieve. There's something else - there are round about 50 million adults in the UK. The Tories got 11,300,000 votes. They won, obviously, with first past the post, getting about 35% of the total votes because not everyone voted - but that is a helluva lot of people who did NOT vote for any of this.

You are right, Bonny.  That's an awful lot of people who didn't vote which is awful.

http://news.sky.com/story/1486787/fugitive-submariner-held-by-navy-police

Fugitive Submariner Held By Navy Police
Able Seaman William McNeilly is detained at Edinburgh airport days after making claims about the safety of Trident nuclear subs.

I am glad to see this story has made headlines all over the world. I will leave others to judge if it would ever have seen the light of day if it hadn't been for the pro-Independence Sunday Herald.

This is the first time EVER that there have been papers in the Scottish MSM which do not toe the Westminster line - the Herald on Sunday, and the National daily.

And it's already amazing just what is being dragged out from under carpets, where they've been hidden for decades.

What a courageous man he is.

I read the whole thing on Wikileaks earlier, Lily. While some of his language is undeniably OTT, his description of fun and frolics on nuclear submarines will ring bells with anyone that knows anything about the armed forces...

Also, Trident has been around for so long, it's inevitable that people will start cutting corners, and working on the assumption that because nothing has gone wrong on the last 99 occasions when they've done something stupid and dangerous, it won't go wrong on the 100th.

And this should be remembered:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-14971198

A Royal Navy serviceman who shot dead a senior officer on board a nuclear submarine has been jailed for life.
Able Seaman Ryan Samuel Donovan, admitted murdering Lt Cdr Ian Molyneux, 36, of Wigan, Greater Manchester, on board the nuclear submarine HMS Astute.
He also injured a second crewman, Lt Cdr Christopher Hodge, while the sub was docked in Southampton on 8 April.
Donovan, 22, of Dartford, Kent, was told he must serve at least 25 years by the judge at Winchester Crown Court.

Donovan, of Hillside Road, also admitted the attempted murders of Lt Cdr Hodge, 45, Petty Officer Christopher Brown, 36, and Chief Petty Officer David McCoy, 37.
Donovan fired six shots from an SA80 rifle in the control room as local dignitaries, including Southampton City Council's mayor, chief executive and leader, were being given a tour of HMS Astute, the court heard.

The explanation?

Donovan had been resentful after being told he would not be attached to the Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship Cardigan Bay because he had disobeyed orders to clean part of the submarine, the court heard.
But the previous year Donovan had told a colleague he was trying to "create a massacre in the control", the court heard.
He told another crewmate: "I am going to kill somebody", when he returned to the sub after two days of drinking in Southampton, the court was told.
At 03:00 BST on 8 April, Donovan passed a sobriety test, which involved an officer smelling his breath, when he woke up for his guard duty, despite having been drinking before his shift.
He was then assigned a gun.