Shock horrors

Talking about nothing much this morning, we got onto how it would be if we were all the same and I had a sudden wave of horror at the idea of the world being full of people just like me.

But then I thought that even if the world was full of clones of me, we would not all be exactly the same. All those subtle differences in development and environment would add up to subtly different people. Perhaps we would all become expert in detecting the small differences, rather in the way that identical twins expect those near them to become expert at telling them apart. And life would go on, more or less as normal - provided, of course, that we had remembered to tweak the story a bit so that we got both boys and girls.

Perhaps we would also arrange careful segregation of young people into different development environments so that these small differences were amplified a bit, to make things a bit easier for ourselves.

The second shock horror was the idea that this very important country might manage without the so-called independent nuclear deterrent, at least in its rather expensive submarine borne variant.

Given that the unions involved are rather drearily concerned with the future of jobs at Barrow, Corby made the widely ridiculed suggestion that we build the new submarines anyway - but don't bother with stuffing any missiles up the tubes - with the missiles being made in the USA and the unions there not getting to vote on Corby.

But thinking about his idea some more, maybe it is not so dumb. What we should do is convert the whole operation into a cold war theme park and cruise ship operation. Faslane would remain the land-side part of the operation, dressed up with some better cafeterias, bars and hotels, the submarines would remain the sea-side part. Two of the submarines would retain the look and feel of nuclear missile submarines and all the boys could play at navy and missile launch enactment. The other two would be more extensively made over into underwater cruise ships which could take the girls on tours under the North Pole, around coral reefs or interesting wrecks. For the really intrepid, deep sea walks could be laid on, rather in the way of space walks.

Clearly a win-win scenario. Even the Scots would be pleased.