Politics is hotting up

A damp end to the week as we make our way out of this month and next weeks "Polish and Grime Commissioners" elections here and across neighbouring Cheshire so needless to say there's a lot of "letters to the editor" signed the candidate or his supporters to talk with at least going beyond remit in pushing for change of the law when the role really about policing and priorities in any one area.

If you have good nose you no doubt have smelt a General Election in the offing and so nationally there's much setting out of policies and jostling for position on various things such as defence.

Few of us can argue against the proposition that from an international standpoint the world is a more dangerous place than 2013 with events in Crimea a year later being in many respects the precursor to those in Ukraine in 2022.

Equally China has put itself in an economically dominant position - how much of your everyday life uses things from there? -  and is using that as a lever to minimize opposition to ill treatment of minorities in political China, frequent attempts to threaten to invade Taiwan against the wishes of that countries people and own the lions share of world in demand minerals. 

Then there are the conflicts in the middle east, Israel vs its Arab neighbours, plus the Palestinians, the jostling for position in the islamic world between Saudi Arabia and Iran and so on.

And all three are becoming intermeshed, China supplies drones to Iran and Russia, Both support North Korea.

When as we all did, we rejoiced when the Berlin Wall came down the stock response of UK Governments of both main parties to reduce the numbers in the Armed Services, the numbers of aircraft, vessels and tanks and so on impacting noticeably on our ability to protect our interests.

These measures need to be reversed over time which means spending rather more than we have and putting more when it comes to direct involvement in NATO to protect the flank from attempts to invade or destablize eastern Europe and work in concert with Australia, Canada and the United States to keep China in check 

These issues are what in the next nine or so months we'll hear more that