terry (monty python) jones on cuts and weapons spending

All's fair in cuts and war

Thank goodness Osborne didn't cut 'defence' spending – where would we be without our fear of hidden enemies under the bed?

• • Terry Jones
  • guardian.co.uk,
    Saturday 26 June 2010 15.00 BST

The
chancellor, George Osborne, omitted to mention Trident or any cuts to
defence spending in his budget speech. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

Did you notice there was one department that didn't figure in the budget cuts?

Yes,
it was the Ministry of Defence. Which is pretty surprising, since the
UK spends more on its military than Russia. In fact, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute,
last year it was the world's third biggest spender on military matters.
We can be proud that our country, in 2009, a time of economic chaos,
managed to spend $69bn on warfare – I'm sorry: "defence".

Only China and the US spent more last year than us. Isn't that something?

Now
you may ask: "Who are our enemies, apart from those we've created by
invading Iraq and Afghanistan?" After all, fundamentalist Islam wasn't
a problem before we started attacking Islamic countries – even secular
Islamic countries like Saddam's Iraq. Well the answer is: "We don't
know."

But just because we don't know doesn't mean we
don't have enemies. They could be anywhere. Hiding under our beds.
Peering out of our wardrobes. The world is full of potential enemies
and the key thing is to get them before they get us, like the Americans
do.

George Osborne also didn't mention Trident. Some
people say: "What's the point of lugging nuclear bombs all over the
Atlantic that no one will never be able to use? Bombs that, if they
ever were used, would kill so many innocent civilians and pollute so
much of the planet, it would count as a war crime."

Well,
in the first place, they're not our bombs. We bought them off the
Americans, and despite what endless prime ministers say, we'd need to
ask the Americans' permission to use them. So it would be their fault.
In the second place, realistically the only way the UK government would
ever actually use Trident would be if the USA were, independently, to
mount a nuclear strike against some presumably remote and sandy region,
because then we would be expected to join in so that the Americans
could claim to be acting in the name of the civilised world.

Now
you may say that would make us more likely to be targets for nuclear
retaliation, and that the Ministry of Defence ought to be renamed the
Ministry of Turning Us Into Sitting Ducks. But you must take into
account the feelings of our ministers of state. How can we possibly
expect them to hold up their heads, when hob-nobbing with other global
military powers, if we don't allow them their weapons of mass
destruction? They're only human, after all, and giving up Trident would
be like getting knocked out of the World Cup in round two!

According to the British American Security Information Council
(or BASIC), the cost of running and maintaining Trident is roughly £5bn
a year. That's about the cost of 1,000 new secondary schools, 200 new
hospitals, 1.2p off income tax and £10 a week increase on state
pensions.

So giving up Trident isn't going to benefit
bankers or hedge-fund managers, is it? And what's even worse, it may
make the country safer instead of more vulnerable, which is bad news,
if you want to instil fear of terrorism into the population.

Now
the chancellor must have been sorely tempted to save £4.5bn a year by
pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan. But thank goodness he resisted,
knowing that our presence there helps to fan the flames of Islamic
fundamentalist resentment against the UK. In any case, how else could
we be able to kill lots of people attending weddings and going about
their own business, in a part of the world that has no impact on us,
apart from oil.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies says
that the impact of the budget will bear down five times harder on the
poorest 10th of the population than on the richest, by 2015. It is
truly inspiring to see how inclusive our society has become under this
government. And we can only applaud our poorest citizens, who are now
not only subsidising the bankers but subsidising the military and, in
consequence, the whole of the arms industry as well. Good for them!
Keep it up!