Sunday 14 February 2016

Nuclear red Herring

Perfect timing that just as the Government are trying to tell us how important it is that we maintain our nuclear weapons, Russia is the new big bad.
Britain needs a wolf at the door to keep at bay to justify its expenditure on weapons and last time they were up for renewal in the 80's it was Russia and the Warsaw Block we were deterring until the USSR ceased to be and we lost our reason for spending massive money on a weapon we won't ever use.
We have wheeled through China, Iran, Saddam's Iraq and now it's back to Russia again as the reason we have to spend £133 billion on a nuclear deterrent, to keep us safe.
What David Cameron fails to explain is exactly who are our nuclear submarines keeping us safe from and why is a weapons system more important to the country than spending the money on more hospitals, prisons or schools?
If we have £133 billion knocking around to spend on nuclear missiles, especially against a background of austerity cuts and a record number of food banks dishing out vital supplies, then why are we wasting it on a way of killing millions of people?
To almost quote Dwight Eisenhower, every rocket is a theft from those who hunger and are not fed and those who are cold and homeless.
The cost of the nuclear submarines are 2,660 schools (£50 million each), two electric power plants (£550 million each),  two fully equipped hospitals (£500 million each), 53,200,000,000 miles of road (£2.5m per mile) or 601,809 3 bedroom houses with garage (£221,000 each).
The justification that we need a nuclear deterrent is a red herring, we don't need one but we do need plenty of other things as we did in the 80s when we were last told we needed to spend billions on something we may possibly need in the future to ensure our survival.  
Meanwhile, other countries without nuclear weapons spent their money on improving the lives of their citizens, and all of the Western countries there in the 80s are still there and none have been vapourised through a lack of a nuclear device.

6 comments:

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...
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Falling on a bruise said...

Spoken like a true paranoid right winger. Is Germany or Canada any less safer for not having the massive expense of nukes?

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...
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Falling on a bruise said...

Paranoid or fearmongering, you pick. Do you seriously believe that if we didn't have nuclear weapons the Russian s, Chinese or North Koreans would sweep in and take over the UK?

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...
This comment has been removed by the author.