'The cost of ensuring an up to date nuclear deterrent might be indecently high, but the cost of NOT having one WILL one day be fatally imeasurable and unthinkable.'

Well yes 40 billion is the estimated figure, as heard on question time. It was intimated that in order to provide it services may suffer, that was the whole crux of my question.

It's not idiotic to attempt to predict who is for a total replacement of a nuclear deterrent and who isn't due to the affectation of public services, due to the impact of such measures.
There is a live chat about it at 12 today if anyone is interested.

http://www.theguardian.com/society-p...vices-livechat

And so it has NOT occurred to you that this TORY Cabinet Minister might have been pre-emptingly 'planting' a 'seed' on a NATIONAL television program watched by only the 'poiltically' interested - a 'seed' which will subconsciously grow in the viewer's minds that IF we are to HAVE a 'viable' and 'vital' nuclear deterrent, then we must EXPECT further cuts in some of our services?

This Tory Cabinet Minister must either be a complete idiot, or he had ulterior motives for stating what he has - motives which could include the very clever 'softening up' of an increasingly anxious, terrorist aware public - acclimatising them to, and making them more receptive to, the idea that future cuts to some services are 'unavoidable'.

Well yes... That's exactly what I think he was saying.

'in the case of the Cold War, through deterrence may have helped promote stability, it did not create genuine peace. The last forty years in Europe have seen merely the absence of war, which has not been real peace but a facsimile founded dear. At best, building arms to maintain peace serves only as a temporary measure. As long as adversaries do not trust each other, any number of factors can upset the balance of power. Lasting peace can assure secured only on the basis of genuine trust.'

http://www.dalailama.com/messages/wo...reality-of-war

Lasting peace is just unrealistic though without a deterrent and belongs in the fairytale Corbynite dream land.We have been on the brink of WW3 a number of times during the Cold War.The only thing that stopped it happening was the fact that nuclear weapons exist.Nobody wanted to be responsible for armageddon.Like it or not,Nuclear weapons are the main reason we have peace between the super power nations.Europe would have been a bloody battle ground again without them.It's a lovely idea that all nations can get along in a big fluffy fairytale but it is not in human nature.Trident is at work every day keeping us safer.The fact that we don't have to use it is exactly its purpose.

That's a very nihilistic view.

The Corbynite view is in line with a spiritual leader, you say that like it's a bad thing. Whose are Camerons fire and brimstone views more closely related to, if you want comparisons?

Cameron's views are pragmatic and realistic, not idealistic and fanciful

Realistic? He has had weeks to convince the commons that this is the right thing to do... and he still can't.

Read my mind

:laugh: AND mine.

I love short stories me....