Commons votes for Trident renewal by majority of 355 | UK news | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... -deterrent

I would have loved to see a public vote on that... certainly rather than May getting little scrutiny and Labour ripping itself apart in front of the press.

It a tough one. It should act as a deterrent to nutters like Kim Jong Un, and Iran (though the Iran threat is diminishing), you have to ask, can we afford it?
Given the current state of the country's finances, I'm not sure we can. Especially since other areas of the navy that are used on a daily basis are being cut back.
Hopefully this will be the last generation of nuclear weapons we need.

With all those spare billions lying around we might as well spend it on something

Just scrap HS2 and we can replace Trident and probably save a few billion to boot.

Sadly not. Estimated total cost of HS2 is roughly £80bn and people will pay to ride on it, estimated total cost over it's lifespan of new Trident is £120bn and it makes no money back at all. HS2 will probably never break even (see The Mersey tunnels for an example of same) but it will never, ever be as big a bill as new Trident.

It's ludicrous. It has absolutely no actual strategic value, as admitted by the armed forces. We're spending £100bn to buy season ticket to the UN security council, a body which has never had less influence than it currently does.

But what is HS2 over it's life cycle when you include government subsidies in it's annual running costs?
You've just compared build costs to build costs + running costs.

It's almost impossible to predict the TCO of a railway line. We don't know yet what subsidies there might be, for example. Nor can we accurately say how much money it will earn over it's probably 100 year lifespan. Upkeep costs can be estimated, roughly.

However, given the projected cost of new trident is double what HS2 is projected to be (without considering any decommissioning cost when it's done with) and we know for a fact Trident will earn not one single penny of revenue in its lifespan, I think it's a fair to make an estimate that HS2 will not cost as much as Trident overall.

To be honest I think both Trident and HS2 are unaffordable.

Oh, undoubtedly true.