Making an astute decision: renewing the British deterrent

I read about the Populous survey of gender and voter attitudes to Britain's nuclear deterrent renewal in the December 13th editon of The Times newspaper.

The PM's statement seems to suggest it's a done deal, and offers the bone to parliament of arguing over buying three or four deterrent submarines to carry the future weapons.

However, from the point of view of deterrence theory and the industrial and obvious financial implications there must be a better way of tackling the challenge.

After all, for the UK the submarine deterrent is the closest national prestige engineering challenge to the space programme of the USA. The implications for the industrial supply chain of abandoning it woule be deleterious to our engineering skills base as a whole.

Returning to the key issues of purpose and capability a few observations:

Why not have nuclear armed cruise missiles which can be fired from any submarine. Although slower and shorter in range than missiles, most of the world's cities are close to water.

Industrial implication: The same class of submarine could be built in greater numbers - some carrying nuclear weapons and some not. This would keep prospective adversaries guessing (surely a good thing in deterrence thinking), and would enable a longer production run of submarines which could do other useful things most of the time.

A longer production run offers industrial certainty and permits investment to build skills and reduce product costs; Completing the virtuous circle for the military whole life costs fall as economies of scale increase.

Lastly, cold war thinking at its frostiness favoured a strategic 'triad' of different delivery systems for nuclear weapons, which would cause a potential rival to think carefully knowing it would be impossible to prevent nuclear retaliation. A British nuclear cruise missile could be carried by aircrcaft - perhaps a Nimrod MRA2, giving strategic flexibility should international relations take a turn for the worse at some unforseen point in time:

I suppose the difficulty for the Labour party is to drop Trident (a source of angst in the 1980s) in favour of Cruise (which was a source of angst in the 1980s).

Mobile post office services: a loss of nerve ?

Today's Daily Telegraph takes as it front page headline concern with the closure of village post offices and replacement with mobile services.

The article under the caption "Stop. Jim" goes on to say that the Secretary of State, Alistair Darling will likely water down proposals.

However, to think a little more carefully this does not make sense. Whilst there may be a minority of post offices which are [popular but economically unprofitable there is probably a tranche which are. Others will liekly to have been rendered ineffective due to changing demographics and consumer needs.

The idea of mobile post offices has massive merit akin to putting the village bobby in a car. I am currently engaged in a project located in West Cumbria. There is at least one village with no pub, corner shop or post office. In this situation and others I have seen first hand whilst acting as an adviser to the Welsh Development Agency some five years ago a mobile service would make a major difference.

Sadly the Government has panicked and we get a partial cut in service without the innovation which people in remote rural communities would value.

The 2006/07 pre-budget statement

Thursday December 7th, 2006

Reading the reports in today's edition of the Times dissecting the Chancellor, Gordon Brown's pre-budget statement to thé House. Two/three issues struck me - the first of which concerns the next round of 'Gershon' efficiency savings due to start in April 2007 "Whitehall targetted for £26 billion more cuts".

Whilst efficiency savings are most definitely desirable simply saving "I want 5% per year" is not entirely helpful, though undoubtedly a good start.

However, under Gershon numbers of civil sérvants have been relocated to areas, which in many cases are dependent on the bureaucracy for employment - take for example the Inland Revenue centre in Scotland. Without applying some 'joined-up' government the consequence is to allow Sir Humprhey to hold future generations of politicians to ransom knowing that the bureaucracy cannot be pruned as there is simply no economic alternative available.

Surely a better approach would have been to locate a series of civil service hubs in areas which could facilitate better access for civil servants made redundant as part of the pruning of government to have the opportunity to enter the labour market, pay taxes and contribute to the economy ?

The Chancellor's approach to tax relief for new zero-carbon homes is a good headline grabber ("stamp duty relief to underline need for zero-carbon houses" - but what of tax incentives for existing homeowners to become more efficient ? Given that every weekend newspaper property section is filled with details of house price rises by the month due to the lack of new housing stock this seems to have been a policy aimed for banner headlines and nice graphics a'la Times rather than a meaningful effort to engage with the issues - and let's not get started on the doubling of fuel duties on airline passengers. This could be construed as a tax on one of the pleasures accorded to hard working, tax payers in the UK. Seems an old fashioned for the Fabians to get their kicks at the expense of society.