The Independent's John Rentoul writes:
"This is a bizarre feature of this election campaign (one of many): that the central economic argument is over a net £6bn tightening. What the ghost of John Maynard Keynes would have made of £6bn in an economy of £1,700bn is unclear. It is the sort of sum that gets lost down the back of the Office for National Statistics sofa without anyone noticing; and it is twice what Brown "cut out of the economy" in January this year when he put VAT back up from 15 to 17.5 per cent."
4 comments:
Well, I still like the idea of not replacing Trident. If the $100 billion, (that's $100,000,000,000) figure is correct, then that would be a substantial contribution to deficit reduction.
The argument always put forward in some petulant manner by Gordy and Dave is that this would instantly leave us open to a missile lob from 'rogue states'.
Now, many 'western' nations don't have nuclear weapons. I don't see the Swedes hiding permanently in nuclear bunkers because they haven't 'got with it' and armed themselves with a few kilotons of warhead power. Nobody, in fact, seems to want to lob anything at most non-nuclear nations (Israel apart, but that's a special kind of non-nuclear nation - one with nuclear weapons, all US-supplied, of course, just like our own 'independent' nukes).
Greenpeace, calculates the total cost of a replacement to Trident as £97 billion over 30 years, although this is disputed. The Liberal Democrats unlike the other two parties wants to cancel the Trident replacement and have a different system, yet to be identified.
The BBC have a good Q&A page on Trident see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/4805768.stm
See also http://johnrentoul.independentminds.livejournal.com/356935.html
However, in the short term there will be no savings as the need to replace Trident is still a few years away. As to the question of whether we need an independent nuclear deterrent, I’m not sure – is it truly independent and is it a deterrent, especially as terrorist do not operate within borders, have no single identifiable group; but are a loose coalition, who share a similar ideology.
"Is it truly independent?"
No!
George Monbiot tells the story in his typical and respected fashion:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/mar/22/trident-nuclear-deterrence-uk-us
Well done all you other Anons - these seem to be the financial arguments that the Druid seems to be very reluctant to answer as he is too busy trying to convince everyone how reasonable Peter Rogers is! All the other main parties and the independent Peter Rogers (how independent is that silly exocet of a man should be the main question in this election?) support the waste of billions of pounds on weapons of mass destruction that no one - they argue - will ever use anyway (no, I've never understood that argument either). Of course these are exactly the same people who then draw attention to relatively piffling amounts that are wasted on things that don't maim or kill anyone. Yes Peter and the Druid, give me bilingualism anytime over Multilateralism/unilateralism! Get it - you should have by now.
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