Blue Streak (1960)

From the May 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

So the Government has decided to write off its new missile Blue Streak! It was so new that it was out of date before the project got under way. They never even had the chance to fire one.

Of course, it was said to be accurate and reliable. The only thing was, it was so heavy and cumbersome that the Russians could have dropped one of their missiles on every one before we could have counted down to forty minutes, let alone four.

When it first appeared in the Government Estimates they provided £6 million for it. By the time they came to scrap it the cost had risen to £120 million. And hardly anybody said a word. £120 million just like that—on nothing.

Yet only a few short days before we had seen the spectacle of a Chancellor of the Exchequer going into tortuous details to explain why he had been forced to put an extra 2d. tax on cigarettes to prevent the economy of the country going haywire.

Socialists talk about the absurdities of capitalism so much that the new ones, and they come along every day, fail to register. The mind ceases to take them in any more. But we have a suggestion to help you remember at least one. Every time you take a puff at that fag, swearing to give them up because you’re only paying for smoke, think of all the smoke that never came out of Blue Streak!

Come to that, looking at it another way, perhaps its just as well.

Stan Hampson