The MOD announces another contract. These are for missiles which will fly from planes to the ground to kill people. Killing people is wrong, but not when you describe it in these terms. “A £550-million contract for new surface-attack missiles will secure hundreds of UK jobs and provide unrivalled lethality for the UK’s F-35B Lightning jets, Defence Minister Jeremy Quin announced today. ” Lethality is not so bad. It involves killing, but people are not involved in a personal way and it is done at surface level.

Notice the amount. That is enough for a new quality hospital which will save lives and help people recover. Do we remember the election promise of twenty new hospitals? They are already too late, and this new costly lethality, together with the big public sector debt will probably do for the hospitals, but we must put lethality first.

Notice too that this contract will secure hundreds of jobs in the lethality industry or arms trade as it used to be known. These jobs will kill people, because these weapons need to be used somewhere along the line, or otherwise they and the F35B Lightning Jets bought from the States at even more exorbitant costs, will be useless, but they will secure jobs.

Lethality is important. It shows you have power, and it makes other states fear and distrust you, so that they need weapons as well, and that secures more jobs in the weapons industry, and as Marie Antoinette said, “If the workers have no bread, let them eat guns with a high level of lethality”