Atomic hypocrisy peaks in Vienna

All this week the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog body, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)  has held its annual  (62^nd) General Conference in Vienna.

On 17 September, the junior Foreign Office minister Sir Alan Duncan, told the conference “We live in an increasingly uncertain and dangerous world. We have seen the destabilising consequences when States pursue nuclear weapons. And we have worked together to prevent terrorists acquiring nuclear material”. (https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/18/09/gc62-uk-_statement.pdf

This statement makes a lot of sense, until it is put in the context of what his own British Government is doing in wasting £205,000 m (£205 billion) of tax payers’ money of replacing the Trident nuclear WMD system, which makes the faux concern over nuclear weapons pure, unadulterated hypocrisy

To put the scale of this gross hypocrisy in context, Duncan asserted in Vienna that he UK had “already contributed £4.1 million this year to the Nuclear Security Fund,” and  urged all to “support the Agency’s work to help Member States implement robust nuclear security regimes.”

This ‘do as we say, not as we do’ policy cuts zero ice with the vast majority of sensible Governments, who want genuine global  nuclear disarmament, not shameful  finger-wagging from countries bristling with deadly nuclear weapons like the UK.