Solar panels are pretty useless. A whole house would cost between £8K and £16K to do and only save you about £70-100 per year on your electricity bill.

Even if every single house in the UK was covered with them it'd achieve less than 20% of the energy required.

Optimistic as ever

Problem is that ultimately the UK will need to find an alternative to fossil fuels reliance at some point if only ecologically speaking. Gas, coal and oil come with a lot of political costs, environmental costs and long term sustainability costs, that will just increase over time.

Oil and coal essentially drove the growth of world populations in the 20th century (and before), but they are a finite resource and the future of the UK cannot be based on 'just more of the same'; problem is solar power isn't a solution and most green alternatives are costly, for low output.

For the UK (and the world) to become sustainable on solar energy, would require a very significant drop in the human population of the world (simply because the amount of space you'd need to dedicate to solar energy production).

Fortunately, my investment in future generations is zero.

"One Nation Under God, has turned into One Nation Under the Influence of One Drug"
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The US does use non-nuclear armed missile submarines. The Nuclear Astute class submarines, currently rolling out to replace the old diesel electric submarines, carry torpedoes and cruise missiles. This essentially renders a non-nuclear carrying Trident solution irrelevant (they also can carry twice the weapon load of the Trident submarines).

The only reason to renew Trident is as a nuclear weapons system.

"One Nation Under God, has turned into One Nation Under the Influence of One Drug"
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In principle, they'd work like most power stations to generate energy that is then distributed as needed through the network. I'd imagine you'd essentially store converted solar energy within the system, much like a battery. The problem would be the sheer numbers of solar panels you'd need in the country to be self sufficient would themselves be an environmental catastrophe.

"One Nation Under God, has turned into One Nation Under the Influence of One Drug"
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Its the only option available to the UK. The UK lacks long range missile and solid fuel technologies suitable for intercontinental ballistic missiles, and developing that capacity and deploying it, would probably take longer than the life span of Trident solution.

With only three Trident submarines proposed, coverage is always going to be the problem. They'd need to change entirely how the submarine system is deployed and used, which ultimately would raise the question of why not simply use Astute class submarines with nuclear armed cruise missiles? Especially given that we could have gone down this route when replacing the Hunter Killer submarines (although this maybe down to the US not wanting to sell the UK Nuclear capable Cruise missiles, preferring to tie them into the Polaris system).

"One Nation Under God, has turned into One Nation Under the Influence of One Drug"
[Link]

Trident ...
I'd say investment in the (currently be underinvested) armed forces would be better towards making us safer against threats to our security. Proliferation would surely mean other countries would want to follow suit.
The more states that have them, the more certain it is they will be used. Britain can set an example by unilateral nuclear disarmament.
It takes a disproportionate share of the nation's defence budget.
We are more likely to be engaged in low-level warfare in which nuclear weapons are irrelevant. To meet the challenge of asymmetric warfare, such as in Iraq and Afghanistan, we should spend more on conventional forces and properly equip them.
Possession of nuclear weapons is an outmoded virility symbol. Countries like Spain, Canada and Australia do without them and have as much global influence as Britain.

Edited by nickgusset (19 Jan 2016 5.45pm)