We all have nuclear buttons. We have one at home, just next to the freezer. If I go for ice for my (6th) whiskey and miss, Leningrad gets fucking nuked.

And that’s the problem. Or one of them. There are two thousand six hundred and ninety-four problems that I’ve counted so far in the whole ‘nuclear thing’. And that’s just the purely practical, once we get onto moral issues… oyyyyy!!! The first problem being that once my missile has left my garden silo en route for Putinland, his satellites will pick it up within seconds. “Comrrrrade; ve haf ballistic launch in North-vest London; heading east. Vot do I do?” The answer would come within 3 seconds. “Send vun back. The button over there, big red one with NUCLEAR ARMAGEDDON!!!!!! written on it… no, that’s the microvave, the one next to it”.

So nuclear weapons are always used ‘defensively’ in a reactionary way. You fire, I fire. Two cities to be laid waste for the next 2000 years, millions dead, any survivors and all those within a thousand mile radius later giving birth to monsters forevermore. Not just Dynamo Kiev fans, but proper monsters.

The first missile, ice machines aside, is only likely to be fired in pre-emptive defense. I thought they were going to fire, so I got in first. But basically they are not ‘defensive’ in that they protect you, they are just for revenge. We’re all gonna die; let’s kill them too. Missiles can be blown up in the sky… but you can’t guarantee that. So if they’ve fired first, I’m gonna get even. Then they get even even, and we get threeven (??) Its the way it would work. Hypothetical because thank the Lord, its never been done. America nuked Hiroshima but it was like ‘the original sin’ and Japan had no reply. Except tears. For the next several generations. There’s never been an ‘exchange’.

Which is why its all a bit of a farce. Because no-one ever wants to deploy nuclear weaponry. Ever, ever. Not even the Putins, the Kim Jong-Uns, the Ayatollas. Because to use them means you’ll get one back. And hitting the button is condemning millions of your own people to die. If I was going to nuke Moscow, Washington, Pakistan, I might as well just instead bomb London. Because the effect would be the same.

The threat is everything. I won’t nuke those places because of the inevitable repercussion. Which is death to most people I know and the City I love. But I keep my hand by that button as a warning. Which says, loud and clear, that ‘if you bomb me I WILL FUCKING BOMB YOU BACK’. Even if I don’t mean it.

So you can know that you would never push that button. But you should never, ever let people know.

And this is what Jeremy Corbyn, for all his pacifism and moralistic bollox, fails to see. No-one will ever fire a nuclear weapon. Because the threat of getting one back is unthinkable. Unless, you can fire at some country where the leader has stated he would NEVER push the button. Then the bluff is off. It actually makes us a target.

Even if you’re a smug, obnoxious tosser.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx