Trident and the Tories - Scotland Says No Thanks

The British Prime Minister has said the UK would be "foolish" to abandon Trident in the face of the potential threat of nuclear attack from North Korea and Iran. David Cameron said the country still needed the "ultimate weapon of defence".

Mr Cameron is committed to maintaining a round-the-clock submarine-based nuclear missile system of the kind Britain has had since the late 1960s and also stressed his commitment to Trident, which is based on the Clyde, during a visit to the west of Scotland.

"The world we live in is very uncertain, very dangerous: there are nuclear states and one cannot be sure of how they will develop," he told workers at a defence contractor in Glasgow.

"We cannot be sure on issues of nuclear proliferation, and to me having that nuclear deterrent is quite simply the best insurance policy that you can have, that you will never be subject to nuclear blackmail."

From the BBC News website.

Nuclear weapons have no legitimate purpose. Civilian casualties would be unavoidable. They are genocidal and completely immoral. When confronted with any of today's real security threats nuclear weapons are irrelevant: they cannot address the actual threats the government has identified – terrorism, cyber warfare and climate change.

Not only do nuclear weapons kill indiscriminately but the radioactive fallout from their detonation means that their effects know no geographical boundaries. Immediate survivors in the vicinity of any nuclear exchange face devastating long-term ill effects or death. Recent research shows that even a so-called ‘small exchange’ of 50 nuclear weapons could cause the largest climate change in recorded human history and potentially could kill more people than were killed in the whole of the Second World War.

The annual cost of Trident is estimated at over £1 billion per year to the British taxpayer. In a country that lurches ever more towards poverty and social depravation, how many new schools and hospitals could that money build? The British Government - led by the Tories and LibDems - are more intent on cutting benefits to those living on the poverty line than saving real money by banishing these weapons of mass destruction.

David Cameron says Trident is a deterrent to any country wishing to launch a nuclear attack on Britain. This hasn't stopped North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un threatening to strike the west coast of America - and the USA has more of a 'nuclear deterrent' than anyone. Cameron says having Trident at Faslane in the west of Scotland makes Scotland a safer place. Oh aye, so it does. North Korea or Iran will look at the UK and think 'well, we won't bother striking Scotland - there's no point in targeting where they keep their nuclear arsenal...'

In my view, having nuclear weapons is just wrong. It didn't act as much of a deterrent to Al Qaeda when they bombed the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in 2001. If, as Cameron says, it's vital to have Trident missiles why doesn't he move them south of the border - to England? The answer that screams back at me is, as with the hated Poll Tax more than two decades ago and the destroying of the coal, shipbuilding and steel industries in Scotland by the despised Tory PM of the time, Margaret Thatcher, Scotland does not matter to the Conservatives. Very few people in Scotland vote for them - there are more pandas at Edinburgh Zoo than Tory MPs north of the border.

September 2014 will soon be with us. It will soon be time to banish the Tories from Scotland for good. Foolish to abandon Trident? The Tories abandoned Scotland years ago.