25 May 2010

Stop Trident renewal

CND are running a campaign to try and get the new government to relook at Trident and stop them wasting money on a replacement - see here - sadly the new Conservative Defence Secretary Liam Fox has made clear he will continue with the previous government's plans.

Photo: from CND website

As promised, the government is going to begin a new Strategic Security and Defence Review, which both Labour and Tories made clear Trident would be excluded from. The Lib Dems election commitments on Trident are not in the coalition agreement. We cannot let the government's commitment to Trident replacement go unchallenged - it will cost billions of pounds and last into the 2050s. Join me in taking email action here.

3 comments:

patrick said...

As it turns out Vince Cable's dismissal of Caroline Lucas' claim that savings could have been made in this weeks budget by scrapping Trident turn out to be false.

Even though the bulk of the costs havent hit, we're still spending quite a bit just preparing to renew it.

For more details see this piece http://www.fullfact.org/articles/?catid=&id=98&sel=articlelist

Philip said...

Thanks for link - as Caroline and others have said, hundreds of millions of pounds have been spent already on designs for new Trident submarines and billions are being spent on preparing for a new or modified nuclear warhead - stopping this expenditure can only help.

Indeed as your link says "Both Greenpeace and CND argue that the investment on the Atomic Weapons Establishment sites at Aldermaston and Burghfield should also be included in current spending, with the a CND spokesperson estimating a figure of around £1 billion a year being spent."

I do find it worrying that the Lib Dems appear to be defending Trident.

Trident said...

Good that they are running a campaign to try and get the new government to relook at Trident and stop them wasting money on a replacement.