Germany goes to the polls this weekend

[Workingman]

He's on mine.

[Suff]

Is that Olaf Shultz, then? He has already made two public snidey cracks about Britain and Brexit, so he's not on my Christmas Card list.

It is.

Why wouldn't he make these cracks? It plays well in the home market. Well until we stop buying their cars. Of course they screwed up their supply of microprocessors made with 40 year old lithography technology and now they can't make as many for us to buy...

Well that's politics for you.

[Kaz]

He's on mine.

And mine

[TheOstrich]

Well, now here's a thought.

If Mr Sholtz is going to be snidey - he's obviously not friendly-disposed to us (unlike Merkel who was a pragmatist) - let's scrub NATO.

It's a busted flush, the Germans have never pulled their weight financially (nor any of the other EU countries in it), the Americans don't like it (Trump certainly didn't), so let's bring the boys back home, Afghan-style.
We can forget all this global projection and cut our defence budgets a bit ourselves.
NATO has been going for what, 70 years now, and was fine back in the day, but is it really necessary now?
The Germans and the EU have got into bed with Putin over gas supplies, so they don't regard Russia as a threat - why should we continue to pretend to defend them.

Serious suggestion - in fact I'd like to see a UK opinion poll on it.

[Workingman]

The world has certainly changed since NATO was formed and Europe, since the end of the Cold War is no longer a US priority - Asia-Pacific and China are. I would argue that is all the more reason for NATO to stay strong.

When it come to dealing with Russia, that's a bit different. All countries throughout history have had to be pragmatic when dealing and trading with potential enemies. Today is no different.

During the cold War I bought the best radio I have ever had. It was a Soviet all-band job. It had full FM and AM bands - long, medium and short. The short wave was full spectrum with upper and lower side band and AM gain control. We might have been at loggerheads but we still traded.

[Suff]

Serious suggestion - in fact I'd like to see a UK opinion poll on it.

Before you did that you'd have to explain to the people of the UK that the UK is the THIRD most powerful nuclear force in the world. In short nobody is a threat to the UK because attacking the UK is suicide. MAD works for everyone and the UK has the power to decimate any country up to and including the US should we chop the command and control of our missiles locally. Although I would not rule out a master override on our missiles if we attacked the US.

Once we understand that and ONLY when we all understand that, can we vote on an opinion poll. The governments would need to be up front and honest about it.

At that point we might actually exit NATO, because WE are protecting the others, not the other way around. It is not even defense in numbers for us, we could simply stand alone.

About time we actually started talking about it.