Who Trusts the Conservatives.

There was an interesting bit of news yesterday whose significance seemed to get missed with just the bare facts being read out on the BBC five live in the evening news. The reason for this was it was basically announced early in the day to be buried under more appealing political news.

It would seem that the Ministry of Defence has awarded £350m contracts for the next generation of nuclear-armed submarines to replace the current Trident system that is coming to the end of its life. These contracts total three hundred and fifty million pounds and they are part of three billion pounds set aside for the project by the Government already.The Conservative Defence Secretary Philip Hammond sees this spending as "an important step" towards renewing the nuclear deterrent in the United Kingdom.

Leaving aside the issue of does the United Kingdom need a nuclear deterrent aside there is another issue that shows how the Conservatives work. When the Conservative Party formed a coalition Goverment with the LibDem Party they had an agreement that they only look at alternatives and delayed a final decision on replacing Trident until 2016, which is after the next general election. However they seem to be pressing ahead with replacing Trident despite their commitment not to.

It would seem the that three hundred and twenty five million pound is being spent on the overall submarine design, another fifteen million pound on designing parts of the in-service support and a further four million pounds for the integration of the reactor design. It goes without saying that you wouldn't spend such vast amounts of money when you are cutting everything else if you hadn't already made a decision to go ahead with the project despite the promises you made.

The Ministry of Defence claim that that although a decision on the final design and build would not be made until 2016, detailed work had to take place now to ensure that the Successor submarines would be the most technologically advanced. The truth it is only going to be official decision as the real one has already been taken by the Conservative Party to push ahead with the project. That is not kust my opinion, Eric Grove, director of the University of Salford's Centre for International Security and War studies said: "It's without commitment in theory but of course it is with commitment in practice. We wouldn't be spending this kind of money on design if it didn't look as if it was going to go forward."

The bottom line is that the LibDems have been lied to by their partners, the Conservative's, whom they formed a coalition Government with. This sort underhand trick the Conservative party have pulled, wrapped up as a Ministry of Defence decision and buried under other news is typical of the way the party works. They aren't a party to trust and as sooner the LibDems realise that the better. It not only in national politics that they work this way it goes all the way through the party to a local level.

What I want to know is how long is it going to take the public to see through them. The fact is the underhand ways they work makes you wonder if they can ever be trusted again.