Now is the time to cut Trident

Well done to the tens of thousands people have marched in protest at government cuts in London, Glasgow and Belfast on Saturday.

The situation was summed up well by TUC general secretary Brendan Barber. He said: “The evidence is mounting that austerity is failing. More than 2.5 million people are out of work, a further three million are not working enough hours to make ends meet, and wages have been falling every month for the last three years … the huge squeeze on wages and living standards has led to a massive hit on confidence and on demand in the economy.”

It is well-known that I am also opposed to the scale and depth of the Coalition’s cuts to the public sector, but there is one area of government spending that should be cut and that is nuclear weapons.

As a longstanding member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, I was one of hundreds of members who supported a full-page advert in yesterday’s Guardian newspaper (above) entcalling for an end to the Trident nuclear missile programme.