Japan is close to choosing the winner of it’s F-X competition and F35 has been tipped as the winner. http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story.jsp?id=news/awx/2011/12/12/awx_12_12_2011_p0-404760.xml&headline=Japan%20Poised%20For%20F-X%20Announcement&channel=defense

While it will be no suprise that Japan will almost certainly choose a US type, the Typhoon deal must have worried the US somewhat for them to have offered such terms on the F35 deal.

j_jza80

Sorry but that really is rubbish.

Without the “unoffical” assistance from the States we would have lost.

The U-boats would have won the battle of the Atlantic. No fuel for us and game over.

We had no troops ourselves after Dunkirk nor any supplies.

We only managed to stay in war production thanks to materials that came over the Atlantc from North America.

If there was no US aid, there wouldn’t have been a battle of the atlantic!

I would probably say that currently, the Conservatives have the edge (just) if it came to an election. The LibDems voters won’t soon forget all the broken promises, and Miliband comes across as very weak (and I’m sure most will remember what the last Labor government did to us – ie going to war on a lie amongst others)

I don’t think the Lib Dems will get enough votes to make up a coalition.

Unfortunately, I don’t think Cameron is really the strong and competent leader we need right now, but with the complete lack of any alternative I think he’ll have to do 🙂

The USA was supplying us with crucial war material Long before they joined the war,IMO if the US had not entered the war then the outcome would have been very different…remember they were supplying the soviets as well 😉

rgds baz

Had the US not come to our aid, we would have potentially been able to provide troops and supplies to the Soviets from India.

Sorry, I was more specifically referring to pre ’41, German shortages due to huge production increases and stretched supply lines on the mainland.

Surely handing over fiscal controls over to Europe will prevent us from ever being competitive again? France and Germany seem to have free reign to do whatever they wish. If we bend or break EU regulations we get fined heavily.

What I see as inevitable at this point is that our country will become poorer. As you say, we no longer have the material wealth that we once had. Our currency will devalue and we will become competitive once again. This is very basic economics, and something the Eurozone countries have got very wrong. This is a huge contributor to the problems with the Euro, as the single currency simply isn’t flexible enough to cope withe the vast differences in its member states. This is why it will always be doomed to failure.

My comment about law firms relates to the fact that many of the worlds top law firms are based in Britain (London more specifically) our business practices (especially our accounting standards) are THE world standard (though the US is stubborn to accept this). We have a great deal of intellectual assets we can exploit.

So long as we keep our own currency, we will always be Europes whipping boy. They will never allow us to state terms when it comes to their economies, but will gladly impose restrictions on us whenever they see fit, thanks to their new majority voting system. The reach and grasp of these new empowerments will spread, you mark my words.

There is nothing democratic In what they are proposing, so how can that be a good thing? Bit ironic that the Lib Dems and Labor are in such favour of it 🙂

As I have stated before, a referendum will come and I’m very confident that the result will distance us from Europe even more. You may think that’s a bad thing, but you might as well get used to the idea.

The population of the Axis countries would have been circa 600 million, while allied countries without the US would be 2-3 times that amount (at least) so man power easily goes to the Allies.

By 1941, Germany had used much of its valuable/necessary raw materials. Even without US assistance, we had access to a huge wealth of precious materials (India being a huge resource)

Japan would have struggled to fully exploit china, given the size of China and it’s population and how small the Japanese population was.

I’m not saying that we would definately have been successful, but I have no doubt that eventually we would have been able to launch full scale invasions in Europe and the far east.

I definately welcome US assistance though. They fought very tough fronts in much of the world, and made huge sacrifices in doing so. Their dominance ushered in the end of our Empire (which was inevitable anyway, as with all empires) I dare say that their involvement reduced the potential
Ength of the war significantly.

Tell me, what other countries could we trade with and what would we actually trade ????

Even if we completely left the EU, that doesn’t mean we couldn’t trade with EU countries. Look how much trade Asia and North Africa does with Europe! We would do well to tighten our relations with India and Africa currently rather than our immediate neighbours.

As for what we can sell, unfortunately much of it services (to be fair if you’re 40+ I’m sure you know much more of the nature of the decline of our manufacturing industries and the increase of service based business than I do) But financial services are obviously a huge part of our economy. Our law and business practices are probably peerless world wide.

However, we still have large gas and oil reserves we can exploit, pharmaceuticals are a huge industry world wide and one that we are successful with. Engineering in this country is also arguably second to none and that is something we ought to exploit more than we do.

I would be keen for us to trade on our abilities rather than who we are pals with.