TRIDENT BILLIONS

[dodger]

Regardless of whether you think the COVID virus was deliberately manufactured or an accident, how useful do you think the £50 Billion Trident programme has been in preventing a modern"invasion"??
With the long period of austerity and the current restrictions I find myself totally peed off with the runaway MOD spending. Not only do they overspend their budget by billions every year, but they have poured more billions into the white elephant aircraft carriers and are spending vast amounts (Maybe even more than £50 Billion) just to keep 1 attack submarine at sea at any one time.
Think what that money could do for our emergency services, especially the NHS. We might even be able to afford adequate personal protection for NHS staff.
Our modern threats are increasingly diverse and different from the past. Think about cyber warfare, individual radicalised terrorists and germ/chemical warfare. How does Trident protect us against these?
This isn't meant to be a rant, more an expression of anger at the mis-allocation of all the taxes we pay and, I guess, frustration at the present mess.
Thank God for wine.

[Cunobelin]

... or the alleged £130 Bn - £200 Bn wasted on Brexit
... or the expected £106 Bn wasted on HS2

[Ben@Forest]

Regardless of whether you think the COVID virus was deliberately manufactured or an accident, how useful do you think the £50 Billion Trident programme has been in preventing a modern"invasion"....

You just don't know. Having a nuclear deterrent may or may not have prevented Soviet expansionism. Having that defence wasn't just for us, the nuclear umbrella provided by the USA, UK and France was one all NATO countries and frankly most Western countries and other democracies and indeed dictatorships were happy to sit under.

Let's face it the Soviet Union was happy to interfere in other countries' politics throughout the Cold War (of course the USA and to a lesser extent Britain, France and China did too) so what makes it impossible they would have interfered militarily in a western Europe with no nuclear weapons?

And do you trust Russia now? Since 1991 it has been involved in various wars with its neighbours, is supporting wars in Ukraine and Syria and, most worryingly, Putin has stated he will support Russian speaking peoples anywhere; all of the Baltic states have Russian speaking minorities, which is why Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are strong supporters of NATO.

If you're happy to say you implicitly trust Russia now and in the future, then l concede you can confidently argue your opinion about Trident. If not...

[100%JR]

Think what that money could do for our emergency services, especially the NHS. We might even be able to afford adequate personal protection for NHS staff.

Unfortunately it would be extremely naive to believe the money would be spent on the NHS

[Cunobelin]

Think what that money could do for our emergency services, especially the NHS. We might even be able to afford adequate personal protection for NHS staff.

Unfortunately it would be extremely naive to believe the money would be spent on the NHS

I don't know... if the PM promised the money, then surely he would fulfil that promise?

[Tangled Metal]

What else do governments spend billions on that you don't see the point of? I'm sure everyone has a view on that question. It's part of politics. If your politics don't support Trident there's enough people who do or who don't give it a thought because there's no party currently willing to get rid of it despite certain prominent politicians supporting CND for decades.

As to what the benefit is well it's hard to say what benefits a weapon system has that every side doesn't want to use. Perhaps the fact no power has used nuclear weapons is a sign of it's success.

[ANTONISH]

Even those opposed to it must admit you get a lot of bang for your buck

[pliptrot]

There are fairly compelling arguments that Soviet expansion was provoked by American imperialism and aggression. Whatever led us to 2020, the politics and thrust of Russia now were formed by their desire to protect themselves from an America running rampant around the world. Sadly it has allowed their domestic narrative to be formed by the current leadership. Trident is a white elephant by any measure, and it is eye-wateringly expensive by any measure. We are a nation lost in nostalgia for empire and past glory, so we still consider ourselves a major world power despite the geographic and economic imperatives to think otherwise. Our war-like approach to the world has led to a collection of armed forces which has sucked money out of the nation throughout our modern history (The Royal Navy has often come close to bankrupting the country) and a culture that sees the armed forces front and centre. Thus we neglect our own population and have contempt for commerce and industry. We have a ruling class who go through a system which doesn't educate them, it conditions them for running the empire, which is unfortunate as that is now a figment of their distorted imaginations. On a more prosaic note, if you have ever been to Barrow in Furness you will see a town which has been victim of the system in every way (sad, depressed, forlorn) living cheek-by-jowl with the recipient of -most likely- hundreds of billions of pounds. A colossal waste of money and a very dispiriting thing thing to see. It is an unpleasant thing to contemplate, but had the UK lost the Falklands war, there would have been a reckoning, some collective soul-searching, and I think that would have made Britain a far better nation. It would have removed Thatcher, for one thing, and so the ideology of capitalism as we know it would not have taken root so strongly. If you now look at the the enormous magic money tree which the Government has discovered to deal with the current crisis, you will see how the hardships visited on so many of us by capitalism and it's servant austerity were utterly unnecessary.

[fullupandslowingdown]

anyone remember the remedy the US army/CDC utilised to deal with the c̶o̶r̶o̶n̶a̶v̶i̶r̶u̶s̶ zombie plague in Return of the Living Dead .....

copyright: Slavoj Žižek

[Cyril Haearn]

Here is one for you pliptrot, look at the words of the song 'Meinst du, die Russen wollen Krieg?'

[Cugel]

Even those opposed to it must admit you get a lot of bang for your buck

One hears rumour and scutlebutt that there is in fact no bang as those missiles are defective and go phut at launch. It wouldn't be surprising, since they seem to be sold by the yanks as MSOs (missile-shaped objects) to obtain the bucks, rather than a real defensive system.

If so (and it is an "if" as we will never get to know the truth of the matter) the policy of MAD, so successful at preventing WWIII, may be no more than a posture who's bluff might be called by the likes of that Putin. Let's hope we never find out then.

Cugel

[rmurphy195]

Regardless of whether you think the COVID virus was deliberately manufactured or an accident, how useful do you think the £50 Billion Trident programme has been in preventing a modern"invasion"....

You just don't know. Having a nuclear deterrent may or may not have prevented Soviet expansionism. Having that defence wasn't just for us, the nuclear umbrella provided by the USA, UK and France was one all NATO countries and frankly most Western countries and other democracies and indeed dictatorships were happy to sit under.

Let's face it the Soviet Union was happy to interfere in other countries' politics throughout the Cold War (of course the USA and to a lesser extent Britain, France and China did too) so what makes it impossible they would have interfered militarily in a western Europe with no nuclear weapons?

And do you trust Russia now? Since 1991 it has been involved in various wars with its neighbours, is supporting wars in Ukraine and Syria and, most worryingly, Putin has stated he will support Russian speaking peoples anywhere; all of the Baltic states have Russian speaking minorities, which is why Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are strong supporters of NATO.

If you're happy to say you implicitly trust Russia now and in the future, then l concede you can confidently argue your opinion about Trident. If not...

+1 - that's the thing about deterrents. Would Hitler have invaded his neighbours if he didn't think he could get away with it?

[Mike Sales]

I wonder if the possession by India and Pakistan of nuclear arms has prevented worse conflicts between them than have actually occurred.
If Iran succeeds in making their own bomb, will that make a safer balance of MAD between them and Israel?
North Korea will feel safer from Trump's nuclear threats when they can retaliate?
Which states can be trusted to use nuclear weapons as a threat, but never actually use them?
Would Isis refrain from using the bomb if they managed to overrun one of the armed Islamic countries?

Nuclear proliferation is a terrible threat to the planet.

South Africa gave up their nuclear bomb. Good on 'em.

Edited because I remembered Libya's attempts to build a bomb under Gadaffi.
Under US pressure he signed the Non Proliferation Treaty. I wonder what would have happened in the present chaos there, if he had achieved his aim.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disarmament_of_Libya

[Oldjohnw]

WMD in the hands of religious fundamentalists is the greatest threat: if the are fooled into thinking that God is telling them something then reason and reluctance is lost.

This includes the nutcases in the US.

[fullupandslowingdown]

you only have to remember the thousands of lives that have been lost over the years when various cults have decided that the time for ascension has arrived and the followers blindly commit mass suicide and murder. ISIS et al getting even one viable nuke would be devasting.