France, Sweden, and the failings of egalitarianism
I got linked to this piece by the Equality Trust by someone today, their summary?
Lower crime, higher life expectancy, better mental and physical health, lower teenage pregnancies, higher levels of trust, less drug abuse, more social mobility.
But of course, we can find statistics to prove anything.
What the ‘Equality Trust’ fails to mention is that in many more “equal countries” there is a massive gap between younger people on poor short term contracts, many of whom, are unemployed for long periods of time, and older workers on secure fixed contracts who earn the equivalent of 40K for doing about 30 hours work a week so therefore skewing the figures. In the UK our so called ‘under class’ is 10% of the population in France maybe even 20-25%.
However, in France 70% of the population is incredibly equal, whilst 25% of the population has very little wealth and 5% form the top rungs of society (which due to their badly ran and inherently discriminatory education system is almost impossible to beak into).
There are other statistics to take into account, e.g. the suicide rate, how often old people get out (a particularly shocking statistic I remember from GCSE Geography is that only 11% of Danish over 85s see another person everyday, in the UK it was over 40%).
Likewise why is it that countries like Finland and Switzerland have similar (or indeed higher) rates of gun deaths as the USA? Could it be that the availability of guns as opposed to the availability of child benefit causes firearms murders? Indeed many western European countries are becoming increasingly like the USA in that race as opposed to class is the main social divide, the UK isn’t so bad, interestingly in the USA race is becoming less of an issue were as in Europe it is becoming more of one. In fifty years time will we be interpreting these statistics very differently.
A final thought. Why is it that in social-democratic Sweden 1.5% of senior managers are women, where as in the stato-libertarian United States of America 11% are?
Twomey without Jury, breach of Liberty?
The Guardian are reporting on the first trial without Jury taking place within England, and the debates going on here on whether it should take place.
I’ve got mixed feelings on juries, and whather they should be used that much in the modern era, especially now that there ‘right’ to trial by jury now, and habeas corpus is effectively useless in the modern world.
At a trial I’ve been to – a fairly simple aggravated assault case where the defendant was claiming self defence – and sat through the judge’s direction to the jury. It lasted over 20 minutes, was boring and complicated: even as someone that takes an interest, I had a hard time following it at times. I dread to think how little of it was taken in by the chavs, old ladies and the ill educated in the jury box.
There has been a long tradition of Liberty within UK law for centuries: the idea of fundamental liberties of the Kingdom, that have never been defined or enacted, but alluded to and considered fair justification for considering certain actions of the government illegitimate. Admittedly it’s going somewhat off the beaten constitutional track under this government, but these rights and liberties (however narrowly defined they may be) still do exist in my mind, and I don’t think – in practice – a court would uphold law abhorrent to them
The accused in this case have already had three inconclusive trials for the same offences (wasting more than £20m). Their third trial was stopped amid allegations of jury tampering – The legislation itself (Criminal Justice Act 2003.) makes it clear that it can only apply if a previous trial by jury has been abandoned because of jury tampering appearing to make it the ideal case in which to use this provison.
And of course for the penny pinchers there around six million pound saved from not having to allocate resources for the protection of the Jury, and we all want to pinch some pennies back these days…
Invading Iran?
Iran does have a lot of outdated technology, but they have a large and potentially strong IADS. Iran has four S-300P battalions. If they deploy them to defend their nuclear reactors, it would look something like this: link. The three red concentric circles represent 5V55K, 5V55R, and 5V55RUD missiles of the S-300PMU (SA-20 GARGOYLE) system. The purple is the S-200 (SA-5 GAMMON) and the dark red is the HQ-2, the orange being the HAWK. All these systems are capable of engaging America’s non-stealth conventional air forces. To beat Iran, the U.S.A. would have to beat Iran’s IADS (Integrated Air Defence System.) They’d have to do this from Iraq or Saudi or Afghanistan because putting an aircraft carrier into the Gulf would be suicide during a war with Iran. If US still has conventional warfare planes such as F-15 or F-16 in service by the time they fight Iran, the odds would be weighted more evenly, but F-22’s RCS would be virtually undectable to any Iranian RADAR system with perhaps the exception of the attached radars to the S-300PMUs they have. That’s not even certain either, as Iran does not have the Nebo-SVU solid-state AESA radar which is capable of combating the F-22/B-2. The only weapon they have to fight the F-22 is the S-300PMU and I personally do not think they have enough of them or the required electronic material to combat the F-22. Iraq’s IADS was decimated by the US. But Iran is not Iraq. Their IADS is more advanced and uses more up to date technology. An air battle would really depend on if the US fields the F-22 and if so, how many of them.
This is how Nebo-SVU acquisition radar attached to S-300P batteries can defeat F/A-22. Without Nebo-SVU, Iran cannot really fight the -22
Now a word on a possible land war. We should take Iraq into consideration, firstly. In 2003, Iraq had 12 infantry divisions, 5 mechanised divisions, and 6 armoured divisons, including the Republican Guard. Iran’s order of battle is as follows: 2 mechanised divisions, 3 armoured divisions, 5 infantry divisions, and a paratroop division. In terms of technology and morale, though, Iran is significantly better than Iraq was. Many Iraqi troops surrendered en-masse.
Nonetheless, if we assume for a minute that the US does not have any troops in Afghanistan, and that Britain joins in, Britain and America would, on open ground on the Iraqi-Iranian border, destroy the Iranian Army in the field. However, the assumption is pretty false; the US has 100,000 troops in Afghanistan and what, 70,000 in Iraq? It’s my opinion that with their current responsibilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US would be hard pressed to open another front in Iran. Occupation is a different matter and would be very tough. However, if the mission was simply to destroy Iran’s nuclear capability, I think the US would be able to do it. They might even be able to topple the regime, but who knows, and at what cost?
Written by Bagration, thought it would be interesting to put up for discussion.
Back up again
On Wordpress. (It’s fantastic).
I’m experimenting with themes for now ,then I just need to find some thing to talk about and I’m sure the political blogging awesome will soon be well be on it’s way again.