Mayors for Peace: half the world's capital cities signed

Lots of new cities have signed up - including over half of world capital cities have now joined the campaign to eliminate nuclear arms by 2020 - 64 signed up in the UK including Stroud who signed in 2005. See here.

The scheme was started by Mayor Araki of Hiroshima (who met Stroud Mayor Kevin Cranston in 2006) and comprises of cities and towns that have expressed support to abolish all nuclear weapons. Of course the debate re Trident renewal has been partly shelved but is still costing an estimated £1bn per year in research. It is great Labour are reconsidering their support for it although both Brown and Milliband are still in favour of nukes - and I still worry about what those Lib Dems are up to?

CND have a petition running - see here. A newish report (mentioned on my blog here) shows that replacing the Trident nuclear weapons system will cause an overall reduction in defence employment. The report also shows that with relatively small investment the skills used at BAe Systems' shipyard in Barrow could be diversified into areas such as engineering for wave and tidal energy, growing markets that could provide greater job security than the shipyard's current reliance on Ministry of Defence contracts. You can read the report here and the four page summary here.

Anyhow re Mayors for Peace I have contacted Mayor Andy Reed at the Town Council as at the moment the Stroud link on the website takes it to the District Council website rather than the Town. It was 4 years ago that I was involved in a campaign that saw us write to all the Gloucestershire Mayors to see if they would sign. Some signed like Lydney, some ignored and we had a couple of rather strong anti-letters!