Ground Zero, Faslane

Now you know how it feels to live in uncertain times. The nervousness created by a shift in the established order. The worry of a new warlord in our nearest neighbour due west of Glasgow. The fear of the imposed, extreme, policies - the anti-gay, anti-minority, anti-migration policies of Donald Trump.

Donald Trump in the White House, with his finger on the nuclear button. The nuclear button that would fire Trident warheads from submarines based in Faslane - be clear, it is the US that controls 'our' bomb. Meaning that Faslane, and thus Scotland, would be obliterated in the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) retaliation.

We in Europe are not used to these levels of unease, of nerves.  We have allowed ourselves to get richer at the expense of the world's poor - both at home and abroad. We have felt comfortable with that wealth when, in fact, it was riches built on a false premise. Abandoning the masses whilst the few enrich themselves is fun (for the rich) for a while, but as Brexit and Trump have shown us,  eventually 20, 30 or 40 years later the poor get back their voice and either by vote, by revolt or by war overturn the established order.

Feel glad that in the UK and USA this revolt has come by vote; in too many other places - the Levant, north Africa - it has come with a bullet or a bomb.

Until now we have been the ones exporting the uncertainty, supplying arms to regimes around the world that use them to supress, to kill and to ensure fearful, compliant populations. 

Arms trade, Scotland, source https://www.caat.org.uk/resources/mapping

 

Now we're getting a spoonful (no more than a spoonful - our lives are still going to be comparatively comfortable) of that medicine back.

What can Scotland do? We're a wee country with no power, little influence and a lightweight (in comparison to the USA) economy.

There is much we can do.  Scotland can be a model for tolerance, decency, peace and the environment. We're already showing ourselves to be more international, and much more tolerant, than the voters of England. Scotland is building a sustainable, green future for itself, despite the hollowing out of the sustainable energy business by Westminster.

Now we need to take the next step. We must become a country of peace. A country that converts its arms manufactures - which still employ more than 12,000 people in Scotland - into factories for products that conserve energy, feed people or improve science.  We must, absolutely must, get rid of the weapons of mass destruction on the Clyde, handing them back to England so that she may store them in a more appropriate location, such as the Thames.

We can only reach that state of peace if we rid ourselves of Westminster. An independent Scotland can be a wee beacon for good, in a world that is Trumped.

Dropping Billions on the Bomb

The Westminster parliament will vote today to renew the Trident missile system. We know it will vote that way because the Tories and most of the Labour Party support the renewal. In 2007, MPs backed "Tony Blair's bid to spend between £15bn and £20bn" on new submarines to carry the Trident Missiles.

As always happens with major defence projects, Tony Blair's £20 billion turns out to have been an under-estimate. CND's latest estimate is, er, more than ten times that amount at £205 billion.

These estimates are how it looks today. We can be sure that if we renew Trident, and then look back 40 years from now, the spend will be substantially more.

In 40 years, assuming an accident does not happen.

Westminster's atomic bombs are housed west of Glasgow. Upwind of Glasgow. So when there is an accident, a leakage, a wee dropped component or weakened gasket that releases nuclear material into the atmosphere,  it will endanger the entire Central Belt - most of the population of Scotland.

And an accident will happen. As submariner William McNeilly pointed out two years ago, the human errors in safety systems meant that Trident is a "disaster waiting to happen."


And the cost! George Kerevan writes an excellent piece in today's National describing the hidden costs of the atomic bomb. Even if the cost were not to rise - even if CND's maths is wrong and we were just spending the £23 billion that the MoD claims - those are billions that are not being spent on hospitals, on schools or on people living in poverty. Each of these alternatives would produce more prosperity than dropping billions on the bomb.


For Scotland, Trident is worse than useless. As a piece of defensive equipment you'd do better to toss your Sgian Dubhs into the Clyde.

The military threats to Scotland are not going to be answered with an atomic bomb.

Because the bomb is a moral outrage, a weapon that would kill millions of civilians and destroy millions of hectares of land. For what? So that the other side could lob a bomb at us, at Faslane, in turn destroying most of Scotland's people and land.

Despite the cost, despite the uselessness, despite the potential for killing the people of Scotland, Westminster's English MPs will vote today to impose Trident on Scotland. Scotland is abused and degraded by this decision.