AT 8.15am on August 6, 1945, the United States dropped the first nuclear bomb on a city.

It fell on Hiroshima in Japan and killed 140,000 men, women and children; the equivalent of the total population of Oxford.

Today Britain has its own nuclear weapons of mass destruction. Each warhead in those four Trident submarines has a force eight-times as destructive as the nuclear bomb that obliterated Hiroshima and, three days later, the city of Nagasaki.

The coalition Government, like Labour before it, wants to renew Britain’s nuclear deterrent.

At a time when the Tories and Lib Dems are cutting spending on schools, benefits, roads and even the armed forces, the Government plans to spend £25 billion on a new nuclear weapons system.

Britain’s nuclear weapons are immoral, useless and costly. We should be negotiating with other countries to scrap all nuclear weapons in line with the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

In a dangerous world, nuclear weapons only make it more dangerous.

Nuclear weapons are no use in defending this country against bomb attacks by Al Qaida.

Germany, Japan, Brazil, South Africa and most other nations manage perfectly well without nuclear bombs.

It is time to scrap Trident, not renew it. The coalition has to choose. Is it nurses, teachers and new green jobs or bigger nuclear bombs?

JOHN TANNER, city and county councillor, Sunningwell Road, Oxford