Which makes me incandescent with mild annoyance about Gordon Brown's ringing endorsement of the proposal to find a replacement for Britain's Trident system.

Why do we need newer, better, faster nukes?

Did I miss a nuclear war, or an admission that, actually, the half-life of plutonium is 5 years not 5000? Nuclear weapons do not go off (in the gone bad sense, obviously) and don't seem to be all that needed these days:

If you have one nuke and everyone knows you have a nuke, why do you need to go and build lots of new ones (not to mention the missiles, subs and equipment for them)? If you can irradiate the capital city of a country in a "1970's and not the most fashionable colour" way, isn't that enough? Or do we really need nice new flashy deterrents?

Frankly, Brown talking up something that'll keep his constituents in gainful employment for a few more years than they would be otherwise is not the best motive for spending £20 billion on something we don't actually need. Here's a half-baked theory - the Cold War wasn't so much a Cold War, but an attempt for by the US and Russia to prop up their economies by building shitloads of really expensive crap.

Which may explain Bush's new role as Nuclear Man*.

Dave xx

*I presume that that's a young Dick Cheney in the centre there?

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