SHA Small Heath Alliance

newblue

bluearmyfaction

Social media, which any sensible person avoids, and schools. So they’ve skewed the research to the fluffy bunny electorate. Brilliant.

You seem affronted you didn’t get a personal email from Andrew Bailey

When the Mint was doing the whole thing about revamping coins the thing was everywhere - contests and all. I’m hugely suspicious this was done on the snide.

bluearmyfaction

newblue

bluearmyfaction

Social media, which any sensible person avoids, and schools. So they’ve skewed the research to the fluffy bunny electorate. Brilliant.

You seem affronted you didn’t get a personal email from Andrew Bailey

When the Mint was doing the whole thing about revamping coins the thing was everywhere - contests and all. I’m hugely suspicious this was done on the snide.

Your concerns over this are quite preposterous.

It’s up there with your claim that Germany caused the Middle East conflict by invading Belgium in 1914.

Well, i’m an holistic philosopher. After all there are supposedly credible historians who think Britain causes World War 1 by having a navy.

It's GCSE level stuff to understand that a contributing factor to WWI was the rivalries between imperial powers, including a naval arms race between Britain and Germany. I can remember being taught this at the age of about 14 by a teacher called Phil McCracken.

I don't really know what the serious academic landscape looks like on the causes of WWI, as it's really boring and I don't know why anyone would want to study it once they're not being forced to by the national curriculum, but I imagine the consensus is that the alliance systems had unintended consequences. I think you're probably being facetious in suggesting that anyone is saying it came down to Britain having too big a navy.

a teacher called Phil McCracken.

I had a flashback the other day where I remembered that you, me and at least 1 other person went around his house on day. Can’t remember why though… which doesn’t bode well 😂

I have no memory of this, but probably just classic teenage 'we know where a teacher lives so we'll walk past their house'.

bluearmyfaction

Well, i’m an holistic philosopher. After all there are supposedly credible historians who think Britain causes World War 1 by having a navy.

Naval forces were the ‘arms race’ of the day. Japan joined in earlier in the sentry having bought battleships and the like from Armstrong up here and becoming the first Asian power to beat an Imperial power at Tsushima Strait. Britain’s naval dominance was very much part of wider imperial power.

Which has led of course to Israel and the US attacking Iran.

I have no memory of this, but probably just classic teenage 'we know where a teacher lives so we'll walk past their house'.

I remember knocking the door and him answering and us standing awkwardly in his front room.

It’s a bit of an oversimplification but there was genuine tension between Britain and Germany over naval power. The Germans aimed to build a big enough fleet to deter the British from 1898 onwards (Tirpitz plan), the British responded with the Dreadnought plan in 1906. There was mutual suspicion between both sides which drew Britain closer to Russia and France.

If anything you’d probably have a better argument that it was German naval build up that was the destabilising move since the Royal Navy wasn’t in and of itself a provocation, it was a necessity for a seafaring empire

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Yeah, it's a massive over-simplification, it's just one small tension amongst a whole spider's web of tensions. Christopher Clark wrote a lengthy but surprisingly readable book called The Sleepwalkers that goes through the build-up in detail - in essence, there's a whole bunch of European national leaders going "we're not gonna do this, this can't happen, it's not going to happen, we can sort this out- holy shit, it's going to happen, isn't it?". From memory, the build-up of the Russian Black Sea fleet was more of a factor than the British/German naval arms race, I think he said. Although there was definitely a strong, broader thread of Wilhelm fearing that the arms build-ups of France and Russia over time would definitely disadvantage Germany the longer time went on.

Tandy

I have no memory of this, but probably just classic teenage 'we know where a teacher lives so we'll walk past their house'.

I remember knocking the door and him answering and us standing awkwardly in his front room.

I don't remember that at all. Maybe you were with someone else.

Sheev Palpatine

If anything you’d probably have a better argument that it was German naval build up that was the destabilising move since the Royal Navy wasn’t in and of itself a provocation, it was a necessity for a seafaring empire

That's a very British perspective. Imperial Germany reckoned they had just as much right to be a naval and imperial power as any of their neighbours.

It is but the initial move that destabilised the existing order was made by Germany.

From a perspective of the British status quo. From the German perspective, Britain's self-appointed imperial dominance was a threat to the global order by denying them what they saw as their rightful place in it.