IN a rare visit to Scotland the Chancellor trotted out the Orwellian mantra of a “dangerous and uncertain world” (“Osborne condemned over £500m Faslane upgrade”, The Herald, August 31. Parts of the world are dangerous but most of it lives in peace. Scotland, indeed the UK, exist within one of the world’s relative geopolitical sleepy hollows.

No doubt George Osborne and others would argue this stability is underpinned by the prospect of nuclear Armageddon, but in reality it is underpinned by the network of international institutions, notably the United Nations, put in place in 1945.

This exercise in nuclear proliferation that the Chancellor has come all the way up to Scotland to announce will, along with much else of the ingredients of UK defence and foreign policy, continue to stoke the flames of the geopolitical hotspots that we have had a hand in creating.

Saddam Hussein and Colonel Gadaffi were murdering tyrants and, lest we forget, at times were “our” tyrants, as others remain so today. Whatever else, they brought a modicum of geopolitical stability to what is now a charnel house, as every Syrian refugee who is this very day tramping north across the Balkans will testify.

Bill Ramsay,

84 Albert Avenue, Glasgow.

GEORGE Osborne thinks that Jeremy Corbyn's intention not to renew Trident would "pose a threat to national security", that Trident is the "ultimate insurance policy that keeps us free and safe".

There are many ways In which we might be kept free and safe but I fail to see how Trident has anything to do with it.

The most likely threat to national security is a terrorist atrocity, not nuclear attack. On whom should we unleash the holocaust when terrorism knows no boundary?

A nuclear holocaust would be manna from heaven for a terrorist who embraces death as a blessing. And if the attack is launched by a deranged madman, why should he fear the consequences?

Politicians and commentators continue to trot out the usual mantra that we need weapons of mass destruction while utterly failing to provide any rational justification.

When we will we ever move on?

Trevor Rigg,

15 Greenbank Gardens, Edinburgh.

READING about the good news about the Faslane upgrade and about SNP MP Brendan O’Hara’s indignation about the £500million investment it occurred to me that if the SNP were serious about unilateral disarmament and scrapping Trident they would at least put forward honest reasons rather than pander to populism with inaccurate information and without considering the bigger picture.

For example the nationalists keep going on about the cost of the replacement of Trident and love to quote £100billion, rarely mentioning the figure covers at least 30 years or more. If you delve a little deeper the actual replacement cost is nearer £30billion, the additional costs are associated with the operational costs covering highly paid jobs which hugely benefits Scotland. But even if one takes the higher figure and equate it to Scotland's share it works out at around £275million per year - which is well under the £444million underspend by the Scottish Government in 2013-14.

The other factor to take into account that Trident's renewal cost will be taken as part of the defence budget. Which means that in the unlikely event that Trident was scrapped the money would have to be relocated elsewhere within the defence budget (no net savings) otherwise the UK would not meet the Nato commitment (two per cent of GDP) - which the SNP are signed up to.

So the next time Nicola Sturgeon talks about the cost of replacing Trident and in the same breath talk about food banks she should remember the old adage which Abraham Lincoln reportedly once said: " You can fool all the people some of the time , and some of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time".

Ian Lakin,

Pinelands, Murtle Den Road, Milltimber, Aberdeen.