Ditch Trident and buy every Brit an ostrich
There will be so much to pay for when this pandemic ends, so it’s wonderful that we’re not only going to renew our Trident nuclear missiles, we could be buying even more than before.
Instead of struggling with only 180, we could have 260.
Because if we went to war with Spain, we could only obliterate their 180 biggest towns, but if we couldn’t destroy another 80 on top of that, they would hardly notice. It would be the same if someone wiped out our 195 biggest towns. We’d laugh, saying “never mind, we’ve still got Ludlow and Bridlington”.
It’s claimed replacing Trident will cost £205billion, such a vast sum that we could have spent that money on six years of useless track and trace systems.
Or the Government could be imaginative and make a charming public information film, in which a man with slightly bent glasses said “Good evening. Recently the Government decided not to renew the Trident missile system and, instead, to waste the money in a different way. So this week, each and every person in the United Kingdom will receive their own personal ostrich.”
Or a village could put its share together and buy a Premier League footballer to play for their local side, so one week the results in the Ted’s Hardware Store Ribble Valley and District League would go Chipping 1, Ribchester 97 (Mo Salah 97 goals).
For a fraction of the cost of one warhead, the meals on wheels service could provide hampers from Fortnum & Mason to the elderly, personally delivered by Nigella Lawson. She could turn up at every old person’s doorstep, purring “Hmmm, I love the touch of fresh smoked
salmon, don’t you Mr Armthorpe? So much smoother than a spiky old nuclear missile, don’t you think?”
For £205billion, there are many countries we could beat in a war by buying them. If Guatemala threatened us, we could buy their navy off them and still have change to buy Ecuador’s library service.
LUCKY
The argument for increasing our nuclear weapons must be that up until now, we’ve all been unsafe.
This is a fair point, because every night I have this uneasy sensation that anyone could come in and take over, knowing we can only obliterate 195 regions of their country.
We’ve been very lucky that China hasn’t taken us over, while we’ve been 80 weapons short. Each one of these weapons is seven times as powerful as the one that destroyed Hiroshima, which is just as well, because the first phrase that springs to mind when anyone thinks of Hiroshima is “what a shame the bomb that landed there wasn’t seven times more powerful”.
Another reason often suggested for retaining these weapons is they create jobs. But for that cost, we could probably pay everyone who works there £100,000 a year, to retrain as a pole dancer. Not only would the world be safer, but shipyards such as Barrow and Faslane would take over from Ibiza as Europe’s most exciting destinations for nightclubs.