Trust in Trident

In response to Andrew Collins (Letters, 30 August) let me say that Scotland’s share of Trident costs is £170 million per annum.

In return we get 6700 direct jobs and of course many more in support/service.

At a modest wage cost of, say, £25,000 per head per annum 
for the direct jobs we can see that more than £170 million 
is returned to the Scottish 
economy.

Alex Salmond’s promise of replacing these posts with “conventional” military ones would entail a capital outlay of about £1 billion in addition to the total annual running costs which again would be in the region of £1bn per annum.

There may be an ideological case for dispensing with Trident. There certainly is no honest financial one, which is why the SNP always refers to some nebulous “countless billions”.

The project is certainly not a “vanity one” – mutual East-West fear of nuclear conflict most likely prevented the escalation of the 20th century Cold War into a Third World War.

We may note that the present Eastern Europe situation is scarily reminiscent of that of the 1930s.

(Dr) A McCormick

Kirkland Road

Terregles

Dumfries