The most depressing news story yesterday slipped under the radar in a torrent of feel-bad stories. That was the massive show of support in Parliament for the government’s plans to spend at least £31 billion and as much as £180 billion over the next 40 years on four giant, underwater doomsday machines. That’s four Vanguard submarines capable of firing 160 nuclear warheads between them (each around eight times more destructive than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima in 1945) which got the thumbs up from 330 MPs – with just 64 voting against. The Trident upgrade as this doomsday device is referred to will carry enough nuclear missiles to exterminate the bulk of humanity. Billions of pounds of taxpayer’s (i.e. your) money would be directed to ensuring that these weapons of mass destruction could be fired in an apocalyptic firework display by giant submarines more than twice the length of a 747 roaming the seas, waiting for the order to incinerate millions of human beings at a moment’s notice.

Yet even Jeremy Corbyn, Vice-President of CND, while understandably worried about ever having to give such an order couldn’t bring himself to vote against Trident yesterday. The motion proposed by the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Green Party was simple enough – ‘That this House believes that Trident should not be renewed.’ Unfortunately, this proposition was rejected as ‘a stunt’ by a Labour Party who have turned their back on disarmament for the last thirty years whilst cheerleading catastrophic wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere.   Only 64 MPs (and just 6 Labour MPs) voted against spending billions on this idiocy at a time when Britain apparently cannot afford a functioning NHS or bare bones welfare for the poorest.

Meanwhile, a NATO country had shot down a Russian jet over war-torn Syria in what looks like a rerun of one of the opening scene from Threads. Don’t be surprised if you’ve never seen it – it was shown once by the BBC (who made it) in 1984 and never shown again. Probably because it frightened the shit out of everyone that saw it and contributed to the huge CND protests of that time.

But if by chance you didn’t catch it on the BBC back in 1984 have a look at what your 180 billion can buy. You may want to skip the first 45 minutes to where the attack begins to see what we are letting ourselves in for: https://vimeo.com/18781528

David McQueen

(David is a long-term member of CND and the Green Party)

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