Once tha pain is subdued to a dull ache, there is nothing much you can do but relatively simple distraction. In the absence of biscuits, I made some shortbread following an easy Paul Holloway recipe. Jane had stewed some plums and, as the fridge harboured only eggs, we decided to have pancakes for tea. As I was mixing the batter, I thought, 'I can't face another hour making a stack of pancakes',and used the batter to make the mist successful Yorkshire puddings yet. They went together well with the plums.
Its a weapons and restraint sort of day in the news. President Trump arrived to a big welcome in Saudi Arabia, one dynastic family meeting another, and successfully garnered a $55 billion trade deal. This was surpassed by the $110 billion defence deal, arranged with the help of the President's son-in-law, Jared Kushner. It included in tanks, fighter jets, combat ships and the THAAD missile defense system. President Obama had been a less enthusiastic supporter, withholding some more advanced military items from Saudi Arabia. Will this help or hinder resolution of the war in Yemen, in which Saudi Arabia is taking an active role.
Whist Saudi Arabia sees itself under threat from increasing regional involvement by Iran, elections in the latter country resulted in a surprise re-election of the modernising President Hassan Rouhani, who said it was a vote against extemism. For the time, the US has maintained the nuclear deal, which President Trump had previously called very bad.
Talking about nuclear, questions about Labour's support for Trident arose again, due to a slip by one of the Shadow Cabinet (not the Shadow Defence Secretary). However expensive maintenance of nuclear defence is for the UK, it is unlikely to give it up in the near future. Whilst touted as a key defence against nuclear attack, the main reason is probably that voiced by The Chiefs of Staff Committee and the Churchill ministry:
"If we did not develop megaton weapons we would sacrifice immediately and in perpetuity our position as a first-class power. We would have to rely on the whim of the United States for the effectiveness of the whole basis of our strategy."
Ever since the UK was the third country to test an independently developed nuclear weapon, It has been one of the five nuclear-weapon states under the NPT and a permanent member of the UN Security Council.
Even with a 100 atomic bomb war, say between Pakistan and India, the consequences would be sever global cooling and approximately two billion people dying of starvation. For a nuclear war with the UK as a target, see the likely targets and effective wiping Britain off the face of the earth here http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/02/08/nukemap-at-one-year-and-10-million-blasts/. Quite frankly, I find Jeremy Corbyn's moral personal stand against the use of nuclear weapons prefereable.
The current global stocks of atomic weapons stands at 17,000.
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