... bang for the buck...
You know, its struck me as interesting that no one has made the obvious point in all this.
The government of every single country in the world is paying through the nose for something that is entirely and utterly useless.
Before you howl, I'll explain. Imagine you are back in 1880 and you are a UK government minister. Someone comes up to you and says this is a contract to build a battleship - please sign it. You sign it. You just spent god knows how much money on something that was never ever used. Not once. Never. Ever.
All of this is specious garbage. It doesnt matter what we buy because whatever we buy its worthless unless there is a war which no one wants anyway, and the way things we are we'll be dead anyway... and dont quote me the 'mutually assured destruction' or 'deterrant' crap because to quote blackadder "there was a slight problem with the plan.." "what was that?" "It was bollocks!"
ironically Lewis Page himself is just as specious, not meaning to be nasty. Since all I ever see his name on is articles whinging about the armed farces he's a part, admittedly a fairly remote part, but a part of the whole idiotic system.
The best part of all is that if we didnt spend all this money on weapons because of retard politicians and ass-protecting self interested executives... we'd be spending money on decent schools, decent healthcare and generally a better standard of life - and there would be less idiotic tossers getting into politics and arms procurement than there are now (because most of the non-rich intelligent people in our current education get sick and tired of it aged about 8 and sod off to trade cocaine futures down the park - and that was me, hold the potential goldman sachs employee part) and there would be less chance of the probable/possible/imaginary wars we are stocking up for now... All the people, all the time - everyone would be able to fulfil their potential instead of the world relying for government on the sort of chinless wazzocks who act as if they have the gene pool of an inbred dalmatian.
case in point is Labour right now - im waiting with baited breath for the first "better Ed, than Red" headline...