Time is ripe to dispense with Trident

Published on 30/10/2012 00:00

Defence Secretary Philip Hammond’s brief visit to the northern reaches of the British Empire appears to have been a bit of an own-goal for Team Bitter Together (your report, 29 October).

With threats of EU sanctions, mass unemployment and rogue terrorist attacks should we refuse to house his weapons of mass annihilation, I’m curious to know how 188 out of the 196 countries in the world manage to get by without them.

We’d heard rumours the Rule Britannia advocates were to try and move way from negative smears and fears but, alas, it seems good old-fashioned London-led scare tactics are to be the order of the day for the Cameron-led unionist crusade.

As Westminster debt creeps towards the £2 trillion mark, I’m also curious to know who is paying for these abhorrent, redundant, vanity weapons of indiscriminate murder.

With many UK pensioners about to freeze to death in their unheated homes over the coming winter months, is it not be about time that the likes of Johann Lamont and Willie Rennie joined the SNP in campaigning against this enormous waste of public cash?

David Flett

Cooperage Quay

Stirling

I DON’T believe any of the statements put out by politicians about Trident and Faslane. We have a Tory minister concerned about Clydeside employment, with figures ranging from 526 to 8,000, a Cabinet committee saying a new base would take 20 years when Devonport already has most of the facilities, and SNP and Labour MSPs saying that employment would not be a concern as the base would be a centre for the entire Scottish conventional navy and jobs could be saved.

Faslane is 80 miles from the open sea, suitable for a sub sneaking out every few months but useless for surface ships always coming and going. A Scottish navy would need two small bases, on the west coast at Stranraer or Oban, and on the east coast at Rosyth, which would also be its maintenance centre.

Faslane, like its Trident fleet, is a white elephant which only benefits the big defence contractors. A time of political change is an opportunity to reconsider how we deliver the nuclear deterrent if we decide to continue with one, and I am alarmed at how the government is rushing to commit to an outdated system.

William Aitken

Easter Warriston

Edinburgh