Going Under

The National Audit Office has reported that the Ministry for War and the Colonies has left "major areas of uncertainty in the budget" for the replacement of our glorious independent nuclear deterrent. No one who has followed those interminable comedy series, National Identity Database and Olympics 2012, will be surprised that there is "insufficient oversight" of the budget. Nor will those familiar with New New Labour's idea of efficiency through competition in the free market find it strange that the makers of the defensive submarines and their nuclear reactors are "monopoly suppliers". Indeed, the manufacturer of the submarines is BAE Systems, a company well known for its integrity, humanity and commitment to British-Saudi values.

Naturally, given that we are in the process of losing two wars, both of them taking place on land, there is a shortage of sailors with sufficient qualifications to run nuclear reactors or monitor nuclear missiles. Given New New Labour's planning abilities and the respect with which it treats the armed forces, the shortage is likely to get worse, particularly if nuclear experts are poached by civil participants in the Glorious Successor's plan to built a nuclear power station on every hectare of the country that isn't part of Heathrow Airport. The aforementioned planning abilities are gloriously showcased by the fact that the gloriously-named Astute-class submarine project is overdue by forty-one months and overspent by a thousand million pounds.

More British yet is the fact that our independent nuclear deterrent is built and maintained by the United States, which intends to make the missiles obsolete eighteen years after we buy them. British independence being what it is, the submarines will then have to be adapted to the new system or else, perhaps more likely, scrapped and replaced with something else. Perhaps by 2042 they'll have finished the Astute. Then again, perhaps not.