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All this talk of Iran and North Korea is slightly nauseating. We should have made a principled stand on this issue, whilst keeping our military options more open than they are now; then we could comment. Had we stepped back, and put the cash into conventional defence measures, we would have a right to speak like this. As it is, we are an unqualified perpetrator of nuclear madness and other nations would be foolish not to follow our stupid ways.

Why not just ignore all this, as we are completely on the wrong foot in any analysis of new developments? Do we have faith in our nukes? Do we think we were right to keep and now renew them? Do we hell! And we have done more though New Labour's abandonment of the common thinking in the 80s to promote the activity of emerging powers in nuclear capability than anyone likes to admit. When a nation a pastiche of the Big Moral Stance gives out such signals, it can only make its members ashamed.

Yes, show shots of Aldermaston for us oldies, shocking in their way, but modify your commentary: recognise that it is not nuclear renewal that is at issue, but Britain's moral bankruptcy in the recent era in failing to take a stand - and what our leaders may have permitted the rest of the world to lay in store for our children and their's.

Personally, I think the days of CND have gone. We missed our chance. The world today lives in a garage we furnished with nuclear ambition. Shame on us! And shame on you at the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ for believing this viscious spiral is any sort of foundation for debate, without first establishing its basis - and our biggest danger: our own failure to demonstrate the will behind our beliefs. Once again, it is America...

Missed most of the programme (clashing with Question Time & Sopranos).

Q. does Newsnight ever rebroadcast its excellent programmes?

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vikingar

Dear Newsnight

Given that democracy in many senses doenst exist in the UK we will be committed to a new generation of nuclear weapons to face some hyphothetical enemy of the future whether we like it or not. There is a lot to this that doesnt add up, ie what really is behind the need for so much new research and development on nuclear weapons.

I'm not a unilateralist and we certainly needed nuclear weapons to face down the Russians, but why the need to plan for massive overkill for the future? and who would give the order for the mass murder of hundreds of millions of people anyway.

Tonight I have one overwhelming feeling about this and that is our beloved leader Tony Blair will do his masters bidding in the US and sign the contracts for these weapons, with a lot of work going to America, before he leaves office.

We must stop this

So much money found to pay for ways of murdering people (£76 billion is estimated) while sick people in this country have to publicly beg for the life saving treatment and drugs they need.

One things for sure I'd sleep better if we had something George Wigg, Harold Wilsons paymaster asked for but was refused.

best wishes
Bob Goodall

"Is Britain is in breach of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty?"

I am amazed that you have to ask this question. OF COURSE Britain (and the US) are both guilty of breaking the NPT, which makes our demands that other countries abandon their quests for Atomic Weapons, as TOTALLY RIDICULOUS !
Instead of demanding to the rest of the world "Do as I say", (and quite rightly just getting "two fingers" as a reply), we should at best, scrap our Nuclear Arsenal all together, or at worst "make do" with the incredibly destructive nukes that we currently have.
If we tried "leading by example" and started decommissioning our nukes, we could then ask the rest of the world to "Do as I do" instead, and I am certain we would get a much more positive response.

But alas, our spineless government seems to be incapable of taking any initiative, in just about anything, always preferring to copy what other countries do.

I'd like to amend Bob Goodall's message (#3) VERY SLIGHTLY, by removing just two letters !
He wrote .... "Given that democracy in many senses doesn't exist in the UK ...."
I'd delete the letters "m" and "s", and say .... Given that democracy in ANY SENSE doesn't exist in the UK !

Well over half of the population of the UK thinks our troops should leave Iraq IMMEDIATELY, but once again HMG is IGNORING the wishes of the people, while almost 90% of the population would prefer the 76 BILLION POUNDS that Trident's replacement is going to cost us, be spent on useful things like the NHS, The Pensions Crisis, Transport and Education.
At first Blair announced that Parliament WOULDN'T EVEN BE ALLOWED TO DISCUSS the replacing of Trident, but then be bowed to media pressure and agreed that a discussion could take place BUT NO VOTE WOULD BE ALLOWED !

The biggest demonstration this country has EVER seen, demanded that we DIDN'T invade Iraq, but once again Blair acted as a pure DICTATOR and IGNORED the wishes of the people, and only this week the LARGEST petition EVER handed in at No.10 asked for an end to Post Office Closures, but AGAIN the wishes of the people are being IGNORED !

In a democracy the government is supposed to SERVE THE PEOPLE. What we have is a DICTATORSHIP, because in the UK the people are forced to serve the government.

As long as we have Party Whips, running around INSTRUCTING MPs on HOW THEY MUST VOTE, and threatening them with all kinds of "punishments" if they don't comply, the shambles we have in London can NEVER be called a democracy.

RE Vikingar #2

The programme is available online:

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I'm pretty sure you need RealPlayer installed on your machine. It's free you can get it here:

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CF

There were two points on the piece about the end of political parties that could have been included.

1. With political parties, voters are more likely to know what they are voting for. Candidates for parties will either sign-up to a manifesto or state where they depart from it. For independents, it is less clear what the broad thrust is -if there is a broad thrust.

2. There is a potential for a lack of balance with single issue groups and parties. They focus on one area and do not have to devise positions for such a wide range of public policy. Parties are resposible for considering the knock-on effects of one policy on another.

I was a bit disappointed by your panel discussion with three LIKE-MINDED individuals about political parties.

I think it would have been interested to have an expert on representation present.

Someone like Dr Helena Catt, who was once my university lecturer, and now is the Head of the Electoral Commission. She is an expert on representation and perfectly placed (if not conflicted) to articulate a case for and against political parties vis-a-vis representation. Moreover he has exposure to the NZ system which moved away from the Westminster style electoral system to the German-inspired hybrid mixed member proportional system.

RE Party system

I find it rather strange that one should aspire to a political/democratic system without parties. A system based on independent MPs would end up like a mass coalition with no-one the wiser as to who is actually supporting the government of the day and what it's policies are. Systems where centre-left and centre-right coalitions consist of more than two parties are unstable enough (Italy, Israel, Poland) there really is no need to break it down any further. It would also weaken the opposition given that voting for independent 'opposition' MPs would not necessarily lead to a new and/or more stable government.

A hybrid system, such as Germany has, represents broader aspects of the electorate than the first past the post SO LONG AS the election has clear-cut outcome of either a centre-left or a centre-right coalition (eg. Schröder's early years). However, once the election result has no clear winner (current situation) this system obliges the two main parties to go into government together. For these situations I would much rather have a first past the post: a single governing party with a small majority and a strong opposition is strongly preferable to a grand coalition with no significant opposition.

While the FPP leads to the exclusion of some interest of the electorate due its propensity for large majorities, one fundamental flaw of any PR/hybrid system is that one ends up voting for one party with a certain manifesto but has, until the new government and its coalition programme is fixed, no real idea which one of the manifesto commitments can actually be enacted.

Please book better women for your panel discussions. Apart from the woman mentioned in a previous comment there are tens of thousands of women in Britain with solid experience of how political parties work and useful stuff to say, campaigners, MPs, councillors, academics. Instead you had a silly airhead of a dramatist who was a plain embarrassment. No wonder her drama is so awful too.

This is my take on the Trident replacement piece.

Pitting national prestige against pacifist champions may produce political fireworks, but seems unlikely to produce political solutions. The way forward would seem to me to be to use Rupert Smith’s utility approach (at least as I understand it, having only had time so far to read the intro to his book). This may all be a little naive, but here goes.

What is the politico-military use of nuclear weapons?
It is a last resort threat to cause huge damage to civilian urban infrastructure that rapidly undermines the viability of a state, particularly a state under stress from prosecuting a war, to the extent it is the ‘ultimate deterrent.’

Is there another way to achieve this?
Kosovo suggests that there is: a coordinated swarm of air and submarine launched cruse missiles targeted at critical city infrastructure: electric power, water and transport spring immediately to mind. This does require targeting information, but Google Earth, never mind military satellite networks, provides this (alongside, dare I suggest without provoking guffaws, intelligence).

Are there any other downsides to a nuclear attack?
It strikes me it will be increasingly difficult to pass off the primarily civilian effect of nuclear weapons as anything other than a war crime, particularly once a capability of equal military utility exists.

How could this trident replacement capability be achieved?
Governance is most straightforwardly envisaged as coordinated through the EU, albeit with individual member states providing the material resources, and for political reasons, without actually ceding ultimate control of nationally owned physical assets. And while first use would not be ruled out, use without a genuine commitment to diplomatic alternatives would not.

Welcome to the information age.

Mark looks incredibly at home with army units in dangerous places. Is he ex-army? He's a sight for sore eyes in desert gear anyway.

The derring-do footage of British Land Rovers patrolling the Iran-Iraq border raised two questions for me that went unasked in the report: how would the vehicles that many would apparently wish to replace the Land Rovers - armoured and much heavier - do that job, and why are such patrols, especially in the face of certain capture by Iranians if they stray over the border, still navigating by paper map, instead of by Global Positioning Satellite technology? Surely the army can afford to modernise the Land Rovers to that extent?

Dear Julie

My compliments to you too on your footage, which was very engaging generally. I do sympathise with your having so much good footage go unused, but at least what did get used has been aired extensively.

Thank you for your helpful answers. The head of the army, last week, seemed set on total replacement of the Land Rovers. GPS came to mind especially in the context of there having been so many fatal vehicle navigation errors in Iraq. When even taxis here have GPS navigation devices, I fell to wondering why, by now, the US and UK armies hadn't set those up for at least themselves out there. It sounds as if they use the GPS for location and still connect that to the map manually, which might not be too easy under pressure or whilst driving the terrain you filmed on the border.