There was a time, when the Cold War ended, that it seemed the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was redundant. The two nations who had been the focus of fears of a nuclear conflagration had made it up. We could all relax in the post-nuclear world.

A myth of course. China had got the bomb. India had got the bomb. Pakistan had got the bomb. Much more significantly, the technology to make a bomb had become so commonplace that virtually any nation that wanted to build a bomb could do so.

And so, more than half century after Hiroshima, the hiatus with Saddam Hussein ushers in what is virtually a new era. For while Saddam might be the first rogue leader to possess, or be poised to possess (we must await Tony Blair's "dossier of evidence") weapons of mass destruction, he will not be the last. The genies of chemical, nuclear and biological weapons are out of the bottle and will not be put back.

So while it might be tempting to believe that a "pre-emptive'' strike on Saddam Hussein would remove the threat of mass destruction, the truth is it would do so only for the time being. One day soon, terrorists will gain the capacity to kill millions. And the complete failure of the US-Britain-led alliance to fulfill its aim of eliminating Osama bin Laden's al Qaida network, which Home Secretary David Blunkett warns will almost certainly carry out an attack in Britain, shows how difficult it will be to deal with them.

Unlikely to emerge in any case, a stronger UN could never be effective against terrorists. Though critical of Tony Blair in many areas, I feel huge sympathy for him in having this daunting problem and responsibility, dwarfing all else, on his shoulders. What I request from him is everything he knows - the full facts as told, one supposes, to the Queen. Only if we share his knowledge can we share responsibility for the consequences of striking the first blow in a war - or waiting until it is too late.

A MUCH more agreeable topic. It was nice to see Look North kick off its new regional series with a piece on the Runswick Bay lifeboat hero Robert Patton. In Yorkshire's lifeboat annals, the dramatic rescue in which Patton sacrificed his life in 1934 has always been overshadowed by the stories of the First World War hospital ship Rohilla, the 1861 Lifeboat Disaster, and the 1881 overland launch at Robin Hood's Bay.

In Patton's honour the Runswick lifeboat, then named The Always Ready, was renamed Robert Patton - The Always Ready. It has always struck me as a shame that subsequent Runswick lifeboats didn't retain this inspiring name - and I commend the idea to the operators of the present independently-run boat.

WHICH American, reflecting on his own nation to mark today's anniversary of September 11, wrote this?: "We could do with being a little less besotted with money, money, money, win, win, win...To my mind, it's time Americans started being more like the English - or at least learned how to lose gracefully.'' It was John McEnroe. He couldn't be serious, could he?