Buckets Of Instant Sunshine
...otherwise known as nuclear weapons. I mean, wtf?

I can't be the only person here to think that if a right wing goverment (sorry, even more right wing) got into power in Israel and decided to nuke Iran that the west would make nothing more than tutting noises.

By putting off the decision on renewal of Trident, David Cameron has shown the sum total of his moral backbone to be - as many will have suspected - zero. If he wanted to be a "world statesman" he'd have taken the initiative and told Obama, Medvedev and even the poison dwarf (Sarkozy) that UK was being a world leader and going for a phased withdrawl of all nuclear weapons and missile boats (the SSBNs that carry them). Instead, by putting the decision off, he makes himself a laughing stock.

As for the countries most likely to fling nukes at each other (most likely in this context being Pakistan, India and China alongside the aforementioned Israel): there's a good economic as well as geopolitical case for their not doing so.

India and Pakistan come to blows regularly over Jammu and Kashmir and thus far - with years of conventional weapons - no-one's been dumb enough to escalate because, as with the point of deterrence, mutually assured destruction is in place.

China, the busy beast to the north, might yet decide to break down and nuke someone, but who? Nuking the Americans is a ridiculous concept - the majority of Chinese gilts are held in the US. Nuking India? Why would they?

To bring this home to us - the replacements for Trident are (allegedly) going to cost £20billion. There's a lot more things that the UK needs that the £20billion could be spent on.
(Wibblist Last said "Wibble" on, Thu 4 Nov 2010, 13:23, 4 replies)

But spending £20 billion on Trident ensures that nobody accidentally spends it on helping British society.
That would be tragic.
( Dr Preference AjcuiVd289, Thu 4 Nov 2010, 13:25, closed)

China
doesn't need nukes to assimilate the west. They're doing that by sending us shiploads of unnecessary plastic trinkets.

And we let them
(Sir Tainley Barking Ezekiel 23:20, Thu 4 Nov 2010, 19:18, closed)

Counterpoint
Nukes are awesome.

I'm just sad that despite our immense uranium reserves, none of the Australian governments have got around to building our own nuclear arsenal. What are we supposed to use when Indonesia invades, a pointed stick?
(oball needs Satan more than he needs me, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 0:15, closed)

So no one's been dumb enough to use them because of Mutually Assured Destruction
but the UK should just up and throw all theirs in the bin?

Genius.
(Richy_T hundreds if not thousands of dollars, Sat 6 Nov 2010, 6:42, closed)