Osborne in Jobs Bribe for Scotland to accept Trident.

Only two of Scottish MPs approve of renewing Trident and the SNP which came close to a clean sweep in Mays election  made it a part of their  election campaign

So the news that Chancellor George Osborne will today unveil £500 million of investment in the Faslane submarine base on the Clyde in a move which confirms Tory ministers will press ahead with the replacement of the UK’s Trident nuclear deterrent. It looks like a deliberate snub to the views of the people of Scotland.

Of course  £500 million is an attractive bribe in moving opinion

The money, announced during a visit to the base by the Chancellor, will be spent on ship lifts, sea walls, jetties and other major projects. The government says it will secure 6,700 jobs and create thousands more.

We can only from this Welsh village on how many alternative and permanent jobs could be create with this amount of money

The announcement  according to Westminster  will ensure Faslane continues as “a world leading naval base” until at least 2067 as home to the new Astute class attack submarines and the successors to the Vanguard submarines which carry the nuclear deterrent. 


Even though Westminster  has not yet agreed on a replacement.

The  SNP's defence spokesman Brendan O’Hara condemned the announcement.
Mr O’Hara said: “

With the UK government facing a United Nations probe over its cuts to support for disabled people, George Osborne has his priorities all wrong.
“He should be defending the disabled, not his government’s indefensible decision to spend £100bn on a new generation of nuclear weapons – and this so-called investment in Faslane will directly support the deployment of Trident submarines.”

 There is something fundamentally wrong with Westminster’s values and priorities if the Chancellor thinks wasting billions on nuclear weapons is something to boast about when people are dying within our benefits system.”

He added: 

“In defence terms too, at a time when Scotland’s conventional defence footprint has never been smaller with major capability gaps, base closures and personnel numbers at an all-time low, it seems the Treasury apparently has a limitless pot to keep an unwanted and obscene arsenal of nuclear weapons afloat.
“Investment in Faslane is welcome – but it must be as a conventional base and not more money spent on weapons of mass destruction.

He also pointed out that with  pre-empting” the vote by MPs on renewing Trident with Labour set to elect Jeremy Corbyn as leader with an anti-nuclear weapons policy. 



It is very disturbing that  the Tories think that the only form of Investment in Job creation is in building weapons of Mass destruction and the means of delivering them, and of course to justify this it also becomes necessary to have an enemy. 

There never seems to be a "Peace Dividend" and even after the Cold war ended the spes in which we found new enemies was staggering 

An Orwellian world where we are constantly at war and the enemy changes to suit the ruling powers.

This is being heavily covered by the BBC Breakfast programme who a doing their best to be little more that a Government mouth piece twisting the argument to show the Chancellors announcement in the best possible light whilst pretending to be impartial.