Gordon Brown and the Gold sell off Myth

There have been many myths going around for some time about Gordon Browns great Gold sell-off back in 1999 so here are some facts as I've found them.

1. He didn't give it away he sold it and he only sold half of it, yes HALF of it, to diversify the risks and buy like for like into other financial instruments, as Gold was deemed too volatile at the time.
2. One of the big myths is that the gold was sold and poured into some big black hole created by the nasty Labour party, NOT TRUE. The money is/was still there, just reinvested in other, what was deemed to be, less volatile ways. 
3. The big mistake he made which I agree was ridiculous was announcing the sale before it happened which led to a crash of the Gold price with nice people shorting it down. 
4. Mr George Osborne recently said: "It's the right thing to do for British businesses and British taxpayers. Yes, we may get a lower price than that was paid for it - but we will get the best price possible. For the longer we wait, the higher the price the whole economy will pay." that was said about RBS shares that he sold off at an all-time low losing more than Brown did selling off Half the gold. 
5. The other comment made by Mr Osbourne  "there is never a good time to buy or sell."
6. The Sale of half the Gold reserves was made after a treasury report showed that a reduction in risk of 30% could be achieved and was backed by the Tories in Parliament at the time. 
7. Little known fact ... Between 1970-71 the Bank of England sold nearly half of our gold reserves. Just like the Brown sell-off, it was sold at a historic low of about $42.5/oz in October 1971. Only a year later it was worth $65/oz. This was done under the Tories and Edward Heath and had to be a much larger sale and loss as by the time Brown got to it half had already been sold so in effect Brown only sold a quarter of what was originally held in reserve with the Conservative Heath government selling off half.
8. As noted by the Financial Times "Britain was right to sell off its pile of gold" 
9. The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Gordon Brown): Continuing the policy of the previous Government, this Government have accepted the principle of gold sales.

In my opinion, the name-calling politics and continual use of downright lies, misinformation and spin, which we see at PMQs is a massive distraction from the real problem with our system of government. 



LINKS

FT: Britain was right to sell off its pile of gold

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sale_of_UK_gold_reserves,_1999 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Wednesday

Telegraph: Gold: Does Gordon Brown's regret selling half of Britains' gold reserves 10 years ago?

BBC: RBS government stake to be sold, chancellor announces

thisismoney: The Great Big Government Sell-Off: Osborne to sell RBS stake at a loss to taxpayer as Treasury halves Royal Mail holding and offloads more of Lloyds

mirror: The final word on Gordon Brown’s gold sell-off

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_1970

parliament: House of Commons Thursday 22 July 1999

We have 5 years

People voted for the Tories because they believed the lies and spin that they came out with. Labour spectacularly failed the public by being totally impotent in combatting those lies and spin. Unfortunately some people still believe the Tories lie that Labour was responsible for the economic crisis.

To win an election we need to expose the Tory lies wherever they are spouted.

Its detrimental to attack those that voted tory just because they (foolishly) believed what Cameron was spouting at the time. If you continue to attack those that voted Tory rather than trying to explain to them what the lies were, then you are not helping the Labour party in fact you are hurting the Labour party. 

We have 5 years to expose their lies, 5 years to get Corbyn in front of the public and combat the media lies about him, 5 years to turn non voters into voters, 5 years to convince those that normally vote Labour but voted Tory to come back to Labour. 5 years to convince people that socialism is not a joke, 5 years to convince people that Labour is not a joke, 5 years to convince people that we do have a workable economic strategy and that its backed by credible economists, unlike George Osbourns policies.

Now is not the time to be alienating anyone by lacking empathy. That one person could become someone who converts thousands. 

We have 5 years use them wisely.

The Biggest Scam In The History Of Mankind (Documentary) - Hidden Secrets of Money 4 | Mike Maloney

By this means government may secretly and unobserved, confiscate the wealth of the people, and not one man in a million will detect the theft ~ John Maynard Keynes

Did Ian Duncan Smith say "Work Makes You Free"? a phrase found on the gates of German concentration camps.

The question is Did Ian Duncan Smith say "Work Makes You Free" a slogan that was in place above the entrances to the NAZI concentration camps.  If he did its a, shall we say unfortunate, use of phrase. The actual phrase used at the concentration camps was in fact "Arbeit Macht Frei" or Work Makes Free.

So lets have a look, in this video he says "Work actually helps free people".

Here's the moment repeated for clarity.

Iain Duncan Smith to press ahead with plans to cut support for disabled and chronically ill

"And this notion of the power of work to reclaim ‘degenerates’ was what the most powerful commandant of Dachau, Theodore Eicke, saw as the purpose of concentration camps before the war." 

More Here: http://ww2history.com/blog/ww2-relevance/arbeit-macht-frei/

Entrance to Auschwitz

"Entrance Auschwitz I" by Pimke - Own work. Licensed under CC BY 2.5 pl via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Entrance_Auschwitz_I.jpg#/media/File:Entrance_Auschwitz_I.jpg

Arbeit Macht Frei inscribed on the main gate of Dachau concentration camp 

"Mead's solutions are controversial – being simultaneously draconian and costly. More than 2.5 million people in Britain on disability benefits, he says, is "way too high" and claimants must be forced into an activity"

"There's little doubt that Mead's thinking is becoming increasingly influential in the UK. Here, the coalition government's agreement talks of replacing welfare with workfare, where benefits will be "conditional" on a "willingness to work" – a direct lift from Mead's own work. On this visit to Britain the New York university academic was having dinner with the Conservative party's big thinker on policy, David Willetts(see below) , followed by breakfast with Cameron's poverty tsar and Labour MP Frank Field. He had also seen Steve Hilton, the prime minister's director of strategy."

"Such sentiments have a whiff of 1930s Germany, something the Twittersphere buzzed with when welfare secretary Iain Duncan Smith said: "Work makes you free" – the same words hung over the entrance to the Auschwitz concentration camp. "I have faced this accusation," says Mead. "Hitler was non-democratic, whereas work requirements claim a popular mandate. There is something wrong when because of fascism we have to solve every problem with freedom and benefits."
More here: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/jun/16/lawrence-mead-tough-us-welfare-unemployed


"When Iain Duncan Smith, secretary of state for work and pensions, stated in a recent interview that disabled people would be made free by working, it was presumably said without any sense of irony or history"
More Here:  http://socialistreview.org.uk/350/work-makes-you-free


David Willetts  (nothing related to this topic but gives a flavour of David Willetts)
"Willetts attributed this partly to the entry of women into the workplace and universities for the lack of progress for men. "Feminism trumped egalitarianism", he said, adding that women who would otherwise have been housewives had taken university places and well-paid jobs that could have gone to ambitious working-class men. He went on to say that "One of the things that happened over that period was that the entirely admirable transformation of opportunities for women meant that with a lot of the expansion of education in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, the first beneficiaries were the daughters of middle-class families who had previously been excluded from educational opportunities", he said. He said that "And if you put that with what is called 'assortative mating' — that well-educated women marry well-educated men – this transformation of opportunities for women ended up magnifying social divides. It is delicate territory because it is not a bad thing that women had these opportunities, but it widened the gap in household incomes because you suddenly had two-earner couples, both of whom were well-educated, compared with often workless households where nobody was educated".
 

Freedom of Speech

You can comment on whatever you want in this country, we have freedom of speech and expression. 

Free speech has long been recognised as a common law right in Britain, it also has a statutory basis in Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (the “Convention”), which has been incorporated into UK law by the Human Rights Act 1998. In fact, Article 10 of the Convention goes beyond free “speech” and guarantees freedom of “expression,” which includes not only the spoken word, but written material, images and other published or broadcast material. The law does not guarantee the right to publish defamatory statements that injure others’ reputations. 

Currently the conservatives are trying to get us out of the Human Rights act. Therefore our right to free speech may be changed if they succeed. Personally I will say what I feel I want to say, but I wont deliberately go out of my way to offend. That said people take offence to me challenging whether there is a GOD or that Jesus existed, but that is my right under freedom of speech but Im always open to be swayed with facts.

As an addition in case anyone gets confused, freedom of speech does not include comments designed to stir up Racial and religious hatred ..... "threatening words or behaviour, or displays of any written material which is threatening" would contravene the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006. Which is fine.

However with that in mind, my question is.... is "'Death to blasphemers" in contravention of the act?



LINKS
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/1/schedule

http://www.fahrenheit211.net/2015/01/04/question-when-is-a-discredited-organisation-given-credence-by-a-newspaper-answer-when-that-discredited-organisation-is-called-tell-mama/  

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/twitter-and-facebookallowing-islamophobia-to-flourish-as-antimuslim-comments-proliferate-9954940.html
https://ukconstitutionallaw.org/2011/08/04/dorota-leczykiewicz-the-eu-charter-of-fundamental-rights-and-its-effects

Lets see if the Telegraph changes the question again to mislead the public

In an article with very little basis in truth, in fact the only thing you could probably say wasnt misinformation and spin, is they got David Camerons name right, the have asked their readers for another vote.

"In a straight head-to-head, who would you vote for?

Captured on 08/10/15 11:00am

Ooops dont think that was the answer they were looking for.  So lets leave it a while and see if they change the question to fit the vote again like last time.

The poll is on the article below, please click the link and vote for who you would vote for.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/11917236/David-Cameron-is-the-new-leader-of-the-British-Left.html

Captured on 08/10/15 10:20pm

Captured on 10/10/15 12:20pm

Tories are manipulating a massive fail of the NHS?

Tories ‘are hiding figures that show NHS is heading to £2bn deficit’
The NHS cash crisis is so bad that the government is burying the figures until after the Tory party conference, top health officials have claimed.

We are being leaned on to delay them and I have a suspicion that the sensitivity would be less after the Tory party conference,’ one Monitor official said.

Read more: http://metro.co.uk/2015/10/04/tories-are-hiding-figures-that-show-nhs-is-heading-to-2bn-deficit-5420875/#ixzz3nmETsNNM

Ed Miliband: Conservatives have secret plan to reorganise NHS after election 

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/04/ed-miliband-conservatives-have-secret-plan-to-reorganise-nhs-after-election

Leading health thinktank condemns ‘damaging’ Tory NHS reforms

 The coalition’s shake-up of the NHS was misguided, deepened the growing problems facing A&E units and left it weaker, structurally “incomprehensible” and less able to improve care for patients, according to a leading health thinktank.

In an assessment of the government’s NHS record, the King’s Fund said that the reorganisation forced through by then health secretary Andrew Lansley in the early period of the coalition was “damaging and distracting” for a health service that should have been preparing for the serious challenges it is now confronting.

Prof Chris Ham, the King’s Fund’s chief executive, said: “Historians will not be kind in their assessment of the coalition government’s record on NHS reform. The first three years were wasted on major organisational changes when the NHS should have been concentrating on growing financial and services pressures. This was a strategic error.”

Left the structure of the NHS so “complex, confusing and bureaucratic” that the organisation of the service “is not fit for purpose”.

Wasted the time of NHS bosses, who were “distracted as they were required to rearrange the deckchairs rather than navigate safely past the iceberg” of growing demand for care and the service’s tightest-ever financial squeeze.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/feb/06/nhs-reforms-tories-damaging-thinktank-kings-fund

David Cameron's Lies Exposed!

April 2010 - When in oppositionand shortly before the 2010 general election Cameron promised:

"No more top down reorganisation of the NHS"

TRUTH- This was a straight and blatant lie! The Tories' attempt to dismantle the NHS has been a long time in the planning.

Back in 2005 Andrew Lansley made a speech to the NHS Confederation spelling out Conservative priorities for the NHS. These included privatisation, a pro-competition regulator and the delegation of NHS budgets to GPs. The building blocks of the Health and Social Care Bill were there from the very first days of Cameron's leadership of the Tory party. He knew this, both he and Andrew Lansley had been planning the biggest reforms in the NHS in its 63 year old history.
What we now have is a health service which is a shambolic and incomprehensible mess, with the confusion heightened by the plethora of amendments which were  thrown into the Health & Social Care Bill (now an Act)  in a desperate attempt by the Tories to keep the Lib Dems on board. In fact Cameron and Lansley need not have worried, the Liberal Democrats voted with the government for the destruction and privatisation of the NHS. Now in late 2012 and before the Health & Social Care Act is fully implemented  the NHS is showing serious fault lines of collapse.

Read more: http://cameron-cloggysmoralcompass.blogspot.co.uk/p/coalition-christmas.html

The Privatisation of the NHS

With the failure of the last challenge to Andrew Lansley’s wretched NHS reform bill in the House of Commons, where Labour’s emergency debate was defeated by 328 votes to 246, I have to ask: how is it possible, in a so-called democracy, for a government without a mandate to ignore the complaints of healthcare professionals, at every level, and push ahead with a bill that will do more damage to the NHS than anything in the health service’s 64-year history?
Criticism of Andfew Lansley’s bill, throughout the NHS, has been intense from the moment it was first unveiled last January, as I reported last February, in an article entitled, Battle for Britain: Resisting the Privatization of the NHS and the Loss of 100,000 Jobs, and in March the BMA (the British Medical Association), which represents 140,000 doctors and medical students, voted to “call a halt to the proposed top down reorganisation of the NHS” and to “withdraw the Health and Social Care Bill.”
- See more at: http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2012/03/20/the-privatisation-of-the-nhs-why-it-will-be-the-death-knell-for-the-tory-led-coalition-government/#sthash.7hXmjEI4.dpuf

With the failure of the last challenge to Andrew Lansley’s wretched NHS reform bill in the House of Commons, where Labour’s emergency debate was defeated by 328 votes to 246, I have to ask: how is it possible, in a so-called democracy, for a government without a mandate to ignore the complaints of healthcare professionals, at every level, and push ahead with a bill that will do more damage to the NHS than anything in the health service’s 64-year history? - See more at: http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2012/03/20/the-privatisation-of-the-nhs-why-it-will-be-the-death-knell-for-the-tory-led-coalition-government/#sthash.7hXmjEI4.dpuf

The Privatisation of the NHS: Why It Will Be the Death Knell for the Tory-Led Coalition Government - See more at: http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2012/03/20/the-privatisation-of-the-nhs-why-it-will-be-the-death-knell-for-the-tory-led-coalition-government/#sthash.7hXmjEI4.dpuf

Read more: http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2012/03/20/the-privatisation-of-the-nhs-why-it-will-be-the-death-knell-for-the-tory-led-coalition-government/

NHS is in crisis - Addenbrooke is the 24th in special measures
Oliver Letwin's rule number one when wanting to privatise public services is to run them down, and so the government's NHS policy is to starve hospitals (and GPs) of funds, and then its inspectors can report hospital care is inadequate. Adenbrooke hospital is one of England's most prestigious but the Care Quality Commission has put it into special measures. As with so many, the hospital has found it difficult to recruit and, owing to rising demand and reduced government funding it now has a £1.2 million weekly overspend.

Read More: http://www.nhscampaign.org/news-and-views.html

The Privatisation of the NHS: Why It Will Be the Death Knell for the Tory-Led Coalition Government - See more at: http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2012/03/20/the-privatisation-of-the-nhs-why-it-will-be-the-death-knell-for-the-tory-led-coalition-government/#sthash.7hXmjEI4.dpuf

Jeremy Corbyn declares "We will win this!" at Manchester Cathedral rally

Jeremy Corbyn addressed a crowd of hundreds at a protest event in Manchester during the Conservative Party conference.

Leaders of the main parties traditionally stay away from rivals' conferences, but Mr Corbyn appeared at a public meeting organised by the Communication Workers' Union.

The Labour leader's visit to Manchester comes after tens of thousands of activists marched through the city centre to protest about Government policies on the conference's opening day.

Although the march, involving an estimated 60,000 people, was largely peaceful, there were some ugly scenes and four arrests.

Mr Corbyn had appealed for activists to "focus on policy and take no part in personal attacks".
                                                                                            
                                                                                   ~ "Courtesy of Greater Manchester News"

Conservative delegate gets egged by protester: In the video you can see the Tory minder pulling him away ... job done. Nice setup boys.

Tory big wigs: Yes just go and stand  in the middle of the protesters with a Thatcher photo

Conservative delegate: Er wont that be a bit Dangerous.

Tory big wigs: Oh rubbish what could possibly happen we have snipers on the rooftops.

Conservative delegate: Snipers?? really? What if they hit me?

Tory big wigs: Yes Yes ... dont worry about that. Just get out there and provoke a few. Its all for the good of the party.  You never know it could go really well if you provoke a riot.

Conservative delegate: Riot?  .... isnt there a chance that people could get hurt.

Tory big wigs: Ooooh yes that would be rather good, just think of the pictures on the evening news and maybe if you could somehow get hurt?


Conservative delegate: Hurt!?

Tory big wigs:Yes, yes, nothing extreme you know just a little bit of blood would look rather good. Maybe egg them on a bit.....

Tory big wigs: Oh and make sure the press get pictures and film it, off you go now, its all for the good of the party and you'll be remembered.

In the video you can see the Tory minder pulling him away ... job done. Nice setup boys.

One day Thomas edison came home and gave a paper to his mother.

Whilst the above is a nice story I can find no evidence that its true. 

The truth appears to be that his school teacher thought him addled and when his mother found out she pulled him out of school and taught him at home.

Similar but not quite the same.


http://www.thomasedison.com/biography.html
Contrary to popular belief, Thomas Edison was not born into poverty in a backwater mid-western town. Actually, he was born -on Feb. 11, 1847 - to middle-class parents in the bustling port of Milan, Ohio, a community that - next to Odessa, Russia - was the largest wheat shipping center in the world. In 1854, his family moved to the vibrant city of Port Huron, Michigan, which ultimately surpassed the commercial preeminence of both Milan and Odessa....

At age seven - after spending 12 weeks in a noisy one-room schoolhouse with 38 other students of ll ages - Tom's overworked and short tempered teacher finally lost his patience with the child's persistent questioning and seemingly self centered behavior.  Noting that Tom's forehead was unusually broad and his head was considerably larger than average, he made no secret of his belief that the hyperactive youngster's brains were "addled" or scrambled.

If modern psychology had existed back then, Tom would have probably been deemed a victim of ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and proscribed a hefty dose of the "miracle drug" Ritalin. Instead, when his beloved mother - whom he recalled "was the making of me...  [because] she was always so true and so sure of me...  And always made me feel I had someone to live for and must not disappoint." - became aware of the situation, she promptly withdrew him from school and began to "home-teach" him.  Not surprisingly, she was convinced her son's slightly unusual demeanor and physical appearance were merely outward signs of his remarkable intelligence. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison

In school, the young Edison's mind often wandered, and his teacher, the Reverend Engle, was overheard calling him "addled"^{[citation needed]}. This ended Edison's three months of official schooling. Edison recalled later, "My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me; and I felt I had something to live for, someone I must not disappoint."^{[citation needed]} His mother taught him at home.^[9] Much of his education came from reading R.G. Parker's School of Natural Philosophy and The Cooper Union.^[10]

Taxpayers' Alliance: Cut pensioner benefits 'immediately'

Alex Wild

Ministers should waste no time to make unpopular cuts to pensioner benefits, a think tank director has said. 

Many of those hit by a cut to the winter fuel allowance might "not be around" at the next election, said Alex Wild of the Taxpayers' Alliance. 

And others would forget which party had done it, he added.

He added: "If you did it now, chances are that in 2020 someone who has had their winter fuel cut might be thinking, 'Oh I can't remember, was it this government or was it the last one? I'm not quite sure.'

Liam Fox

 Mr Fox told the meeting that the government had to act now to make further cuts to pensioner benefits and welfare.

"This is the time to fix the roof" he said.

"We have a broken opposition. We have just won a general election and we need now to take the tough decisions we believe are right."

Now that Labour was not such a "great threat", this was a "great opportunity for us to do some of the more difficult things, however unpalatable they will be in the short term are what we need to do for the country", said the backbencher, a leading voice on the right of the party.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34439965?SThisFB&post_id=10153850933242538_10154237680862538#_=_


So basically make cuts to pensioners benefits now as by the time the next election comes around they will either be dead or so senile they wont remember who made the cuts.

NICE!

So who are the tax payers alliance their website potrays them as knights of the general public taking Government to task on tax reduction. The truth turns out to be entirely different.
 
"A Guardian investigation has established that a large part of its funds come from wealthy donors, many of whom are prominent supporters of the Conservative party."

"This is an arms-length Tory front operation run by big powerful business interests who want to remove themselves from paying tax by poisoning the well of public debate around the issue," said Labour MP Jon Cruddas.
 
"They are hugely influential," added a senior Labour figure"

 http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/oct/09/taxpayers-alliance-conservative-pressure-group

UK had the lowest debt.

After Conservative MPs and BBC Continually Stated From 2008 The UK Had The Biggest Debt In The World; George Osborne Is Cornered To Admit The UK Had The Lowest Debt.

Watch the video.

UK debt is now expected to fall from 80.4pc of GDP this year to 80.2pc in 2015-16 and to 71.6pc in 2019-20. However, in nominal terms, debt will rise from £1.48 trillion this year to £1.6 trillion by the end of the decade, while Britain's debt interest bill is expected to rise to £1bn a week by 2018. ~ Mar 18, 2015

 

Current UK National Debt Numbers

	Gross National Debt
FY 2015*	£1.36 trillion
FY 2014	£1.26 trillion
FY 2013	£1.19 trillion
FY 2012	£1.10 trillion
FY 2011	£0.91 trillion
FY 2010	£0.76 trillion
FY 2009	£0.62 trillion
FY 2008	£0.53 trillion

 

 

"Britain's debt interest bill is expected to rise to £1bn a week by 2018"

 

The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferation_of_Nuclear_Weapons
The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, commonly known as the Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT, is an international treaty whose objective is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology, to promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, and to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament and general and complete disarmament.[1]

Opened for signature in 1968, the Treaty entered into force in 1970. On 11 May 1995, the Treaty was extended indefinitely. More countries have adhered to the NPT than any other arms limitation and disarmament agreement, a testament to the Treaty's significance.[1] A total of 191 states have joined the Treaty, though North Korea, which acceded to the NPT in 1985 but never came into compliance, announced its withdrawal in 2003.[2] Four UN member states have never joined the NPT: India, Israel, Pakistan and South Sudan.

The treaty recognizes five states as nuclear-weapon states: the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China (also the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council). Four other states are known or believed to possess nuclear weapons: India, Pakistan and North Korea have openly tested and declared that they possess nuclear weapons, while Israel has had a policy of opacity regarding its nuclear weapons program.

The NPT consists of a preamble and eleven articles. Although the concept of "pillars" is not expressed anywhere in the NPT, the treaty is nevertheless sometimes interpreted as a three-pillar system, with an implicit balance among them:

non-proliferation,
disarmament, and
the right to peacefully use nuclear technology.[3]

"and to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament and general and complete disarmament." is the important bit. At some stage someone has to move on achieving that. Name me one situation where sending a Nuke or rather nukes off would actually achieve anything. The ones we have are controlled by USA anyway so we need authorisation from them to fire one. Lets just suppose a terrorist Org actually managed to Nuke us. Who would we fire back at? If the backpackers in 7/11 were carrying nukes who would we fire back at? If the 9/11 planes had been loaded with nukes who would the US have fired back at?......No One because you would kill millions of inocent civillions trying to kill a handfull of terrorists. Nukes are unusable, fine they were OK to face off Russia in the cold war but that was then and this is now. Russia and the US still have enough Nukes to kill the world 3 times over. If they ever kick off were all dead anyway. In fact our only slim chance of survival in that senario is not to have Nukes. Russia would bother nuking us and US and Russia can reduce the worlds population amoungst themselves. We need to put our money into conventional forces that can actually combat terrorists if needed. So far our conventional forces interventions in Iraq, Have produced nothing but dead people and millions fleeing the fighting as ISIS pushes north into Syria in search of their fabled last battle against the infidel and that was all for oil, not removing Saddam Hussain. You cant beat religious radicals ie ISIS by bombing them, its impossible. The only people that end up getting hurt are civillians. Thousands more will join them because they are all under the misguided thinking that there is a god and they will be going upstairs to meet him. Sorry guys hate to break this to you but your wrong.

http://www.un.org/disarmament/WMD/Nuclear/NPT.shtml

As an addition there are hundreds of countries that dont have Nuclear Weapons including Australia. They are not being invaded or bombed by those that do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-weapon-free_zone

http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nuclearweaponswhohaswhat
Nuclear-Weapon States:
The nuclear-weapon states (NWS) are the five states—China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, and the United States—officially recognized as possessing nuclear weapons by the NPT. Although the treaty legitimizes these states’ nuclear arsenals, it also establishes that they are not supposed to build and maintain such weapons in perpetuity. Article VI of the treaty holds that each state-party is to “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament.” In 2000, the five NWS committed themselves to an “unequivocal undertaking…to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals.” But for now, the five continue to retain the bulk of their nuclear forces. Because of the secretive nature with which most governments treat information about their nuclear arsenals, most of the figures below are best estimates of each nuclear-weapon state’s nuclear holdings, including both strategic warheads and lower-yield devices referred to as tactical weapons. Russia and the United States also retain thousands of retired warheads planned for dismantlement, not included here.

If these weapons were used even in a “limited” way, the result would be catastrophic nuclear devastation.

And as they say many a true word spoken in jest 

Yes, Prime Minister - Nuclear deterrent

   

Yes Prime Minister, Discussing Trident

Yes Prime Minister - Bernard Woolley on defence capabilities