GET RID OF TRIDENT

Tomorrow there is a vote in the London House of Commons on the renewal of the Trident Weapons System.

The Greens, Plaid and the SNP will vote against, but it is expected that the *three London parties will largely vote for spending more than £100 billion on a weapons system that is very little use for today's wars or today's enemies.

I know we live in a dangerous world. But most of today's danger seems to me to come from terrorism. You can't fight terrorism with nuclear weapons. Even if a terror organisation got hold of a nuclear bomb and threatened to use it... 

what could the West do with a nuclear deterrent? Where would we target it? 

In any case the United States of America has more than enough weapons to deal with the "mutually assured destruction" question, and for those who feel it is wrong to let the American's take  the financial strain, there is no reason why a financial contribution to their costs couldn't be made by other Nato countries.

No western country (that means France or the UK) would dare use a nuclear weapon without permission from America. But at least France does have the dignity of that option. The UK does not. While the French President does have a red button, the British government does not. The weapons system is part of America's defence capability, and the launch codes are held by the USA.

Retired senior military have said that they would prefer that the money be spent on something that they can actually use.

Some say that America, too, would rather than Britain spent some more money on conventional forces which could be used by them in the various wars in the Middle East that we get involved in. On the other hand, some say that America would prefer us to maintain the nuclear capability because it guarantees us a seat on the Security Council where, in anything important, we take America's side.. or you might say, 'vote the way America tells us to'.

Tony Blair apparently said in his autobiography that the weapons system was of no strategic value and maintained only for prestige. It is the membership fee for the big boys' table, at which, along with France, the UK really should have no place.

I discovered from Neil Findlay, during his unsuccessful leadership campaign, that the Labour Party's Scottish conference voted to scrap Trident, but was overruled by the party leadership. 

When there are hungry kids (look at the figures for food banks), freezing pensioners, folk living on the street adn sleeping rough in sub zero temperatures and so many privations for so many people, why are we paying over £100,000,000,000,000 (that we don't have) for weapons that we won't use?

I'm sure that every Tory will vote for the system, but some decent Labour and Liberal MPs will vote against. You can urge them to do so here.

Correction: * I've just read on Twitter that the Labour Party intends to ignore the debate, classing it as a meaningless stunt.

If the SNP, Plaid, Greens, Labour and some Liberals and maybe a few of the Northern politicians voted together, then we could rid the country of these abominations.

And we'd have £100,000,000,000 to spend on improving the lives of the wretched. And Labour thinks it's a stunt because the SNP is involved in organising it?????

And Jim Murphy says that they care about Scotland and its poor.

Oh well...