Any ideas what we should spend over £70bn on?
Now I don't usually hassle people to act on my views about the state of the world, but Britain replacing our Trident nuclear weapons system at a cost of over £70bn has to be just the most transparently dumb thing I've seen.
Sure you can have arguments about whether Trident is actually a good thing - the rights and wrongs of 'deterrence', the wisdom of spending great time and effort on building something you hope never to use, the fact that our current nukes aren't even obsolete yet, the fact that it breaches the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty we signed and so encourages other nations to do so, or that we have far bigger problems than anything Trident could conceivably help with... and on and on.. In my opinion, just in terms of the intellectual debate the arguments for at least delaying the decision in order to allow a debate clearly come out on top.
But then you remember that the other side also has to justify that having Trident nuclear weapons is at least £70billion pounds better than not having Trident.
Now I know we all suffer from big number fatigue, so here's a little perspective. That's 70 thousand million pounds, or £70,000,000,000 (yep, that's 10 zeroes). This is just SO much money.
Here are some estimates (annual I believe) on how much it would cost to:
• Eliminate starvation and malnutrition globally: $19 billion
• Provides education for every kid on earth: $12 billion
• Provides access to water and sanitation: $15 billion
• Reverses the spread of AIDS and Malaria: $23 billion
I mean, hell, I know you can't really solve these problems with just money, and that these estimates are really vague, but are we really saying we'd rather build nukes than have a real shot at feeding and educating everyone on Earth for two years??
Or take a look at the figures on how much funding the NHS would need to be everything it could dream of being. It's way less than £70billion. Or addressing climate change? Well in 2005 our government spent 2000 times less on renewable energy research than they want to spend on Trident..
Even Major General Patrick Cordingley, who commanded the Desert Rats in the first Gulf war, said the money which would be "wasted" on Trident would be better spent on conventional equipment for the Armed Forces as well as on peacekeeping efforts.
Damn, £70bn is even twice as much as ExxonMobil make in a year (you know, that company who are bigger than many smaller national economies..)
The point is, whatever you care about and they say there isn't enough money for, the reason is because they have set aside at least £70bn for this. Besides the moral arguments, if ever you were going to get fed up at a senseless waste of our money, this is the time.
And of course our Government know full well that if people understood all this they'd be up in arms, which is why despite promising a full national debate on the subject, they suddenly announced last week that they would debate it for an afternoon and then vote on it this Wednesday. Two members of the Government have already resigned over this.
So, if you can think of anything (or any 6000 things) that you'd rather see OUR government spend £70bn of OUR money on, or even think that maybe this is at least worth discussing before we commit to spending it on Trident, come along to this rally outside Parliament tomorrow, happening as the backdrop against which MPs will vote (and I know many are planning rebellion) from 6-8pm.
Cheers.
Sure you can have arguments about whether Trident is actually a good thing - the rights and wrongs of 'deterrence', the wisdom of spending great time and effort on building something you hope never to use, the fact that our current nukes aren't even obsolete yet, the fact that it breaches the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty we signed and so encourages other nations to do so, or that we have far bigger problems than anything Trident could conceivably help with... and on and on.. In my opinion, just in terms of the intellectual debate the arguments for at least delaying the decision in order to allow a debate clearly come out on top.
But then you remember that the other side also has to justify that having Trident nuclear weapons is at least £70billion pounds better than not having Trident.
Now I know we all suffer from big number fatigue, so here's a little perspective. That's 70 thousand million pounds, or £70,000,000,000 (yep, that's 10 zeroes). This is just SO much money.
Here are some estimates (annual I believe) on how much it would cost to:
• Eliminate starvation and malnutrition globally: $19 billion
• Provides education for every kid on earth: $12 billion
• Provides access to water and sanitation: $15 billion
• Reverses the spread of AIDS and Malaria: $23 billion
I mean, hell, I know you can't really solve these problems with just money, and that these estimates are really vague, but are we really saying we'd rather build nukes than have a real shot at feeding and educating everyone on Earth for two years??
Or take a look at the figures on how much funding the NHS would need to be everything it could dream of being. It's way less than £70billion. Or addressing climate change? Well in 2005 our government spent 2000 times less on renewable energy research than they want to spend on Trident..
Even Major General Patrick Cordingley, who commanded the Desert Rats in the first Gulf war, said the money which would be "wasted" on Trident would be better spent on conventional equipment for the Armed Forces as well as on peacekeeping efforts.
Damn, £70bn is even twice as much as ExxonMobil make in a year (you know, that company who are bigger than many smaller national economies..)
The point is, whatever you care about and they say there isn't enough money for, the reason is because they have set aside at least £70bn for this. Besides the moral arguments, if ever you were going to get fed up at a senseless waste of our money, this is the time.
And of course our Government know full well that if people understood all this they'd be up in arms, which is why despite promising a full national debate on the subject, they suddenly announced last week that they would debate it for an afternoon and then vote on it this Wednesday. Two members of the Government have already resigned over this.
So, if you can think of anything (or any 6000 things) that you'd rather see OUR government spend £70bn of OUR money on, or even think that maybe this is at least worth discussing before we commit to spending it on Trident, come along to this rally outside Parliament tomorrow, happening as the backdrop against which MPs will vote (and I know many are planning rebellion) from 6-8pm.
Cheers.