Rochdale
and Littleborough Peace Group responded quickly to George Osborne's
announcement last week that the government will soon be spending another
£500,000,000 on preparing the Faslane naval base for new nuclear-armed Trident submarines, despite
the fact that Parliament has yet to even make a decision on whether the
existing Trident nuclear weapons system will actually be replaced. On Saturday morning (5 September 2015),
members of the peace group asked people in Littleborough to sign the
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament's petition calling for the existing
Trident system to be scrapped and not to be replaced. 
On behalf of the Peace Group, Philip Gilligan said:
"Nuclear weapons will not keep our country safe and secure.
George Osborne has his priorities all wrong. He should be funding the
public services we need, not squandering £100 billion on a new
generation of
nuclear weapons. The Chancellor should not be wasting money on Trident
when people are dying within
our benefits system. Osborne is cutting essential
services and benefits for the vulnerable, while effectively making them
pay for weapons of mass destruction. His government is giving obscene amounts to the nuclear
weapons industry for
outdated weapons of mass destruction at the same time he is hitting ordinary people with
welfare sanctions and forcing them to exist on stagnant wages."
