‘British’ Trident

Andrew Gray (Letters, 25 November) claims I’m being disingenuous by stating my opinion that there should be no place in a civilised world for weapons of mass destruction like Trident.

However, we should not forget that he described the UK’s defence policy in this regard, in these columns, as “Attack us and you fry”. Now, ludicrously, he compares the retaining and renewing at a cost of £100 billion of a weapon we can never use to house insurance.

He also claims that I avoided mentioning Iran, as that would destroy my case. Clearly Mr Gray has not been following the negotiations with Iran in Vienna. Whether Iran actually wants nuclear weapons or would ever be allowed to have them is a moot point. However, to say that they want them for self-protection with Israel sitting next door is counter-intuitive, to put it kindly, and we all know what would happen if the negotiations fail and Iran attempts to construct viable weapons.

Mr Gray appears to have also missed the statements issued by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In the run-up to the referendum, Mr Gray made much of the core values of Britishness. Now we can only hope that he and others like him are in a decreasing group of British people who would countenance a pointless retaliatory strike which would mean the annihilation of other societies.

Or does he think that as we “fry” we will be consoled by the thought that innocent civilians in other lands are “frying” with us?

Douglas Turner

Derby Street

Edinburgh