Trident nuclear missiles! (why we don’t need ‘em)
The UK is one of the thirteen countries currently in possession of nuclear weapons. These WMD’s are around 8 times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and each nuclear submarine carries 16 of these missiles. More alarmingly, the UK are thought to have an arsenal of around 225 missiles, therefore the ability to wipe out all life on earth many times over.
These missiles are in need of renewal according to the government. This is suggested to cost the taxpayer £100 billion. In times of savage austerity it seems like a slight waste of money on behalf of David Cameron and George Osborne. This money could alternatively be invested into much more useful areas, for example:
Fully funding all A&E services in hospitals for 40 years
Employing 150,000 new nurses
Building 1.5 million new homes
Tuition fees for 4 million students
Insulating 15 million homes
Support all homeless people
When the alternatives are listed, it truly is a no-brainer.
To address the argument that nuclear missiles should be kept and maintained (at a cost of £3 billion per year) as a deterrent to other nuclear powers, we look to “the letter of last resort”. This is a hand written letter by the Prime Minister to all four captains of the nuclear submarines, outlining the actions that should be taken if the PM has been incapacitated or killed by an enemy nuclear attack. Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, John Major and Jim Callahan all stated that in no circumstances must nuclear weapons against civilian targets be deployed “as to do so after an attack would be a futile act of vengeance that would wreck unacceptable levels of harm on a civilian population.
Overall, the nuclear missile argument isn’t really an argument at all. The money could be spent on helping people instead of creating weapons easily capable of genocide. All previous Prime Ministers have ordered that in no circumstances must they be used, meaning they are totally obsolete, costing us £3 billion a year and are to be renewed at a cost of £100 billion.
Sign the petition here: http://act.rethinktrident.org.uk/petition/1 for the UK government to rethink trident.
