IT pains me to see that the MP representing Penarth - Stephen Doughty - voted with his Conservative and UKIP friends in support of the renewal of Trident.

It's not as if this is a remotely popular proposal - I speak to plenty of people in the constituency and not one of them has come out in favour of the nuclear arsenal.

At an estimated cost of £100 billion, and with no conceivable case for ever being used, this is the most exorbitant and extravagant scheme ever to be devised by the Westminster elites.

The Welsh contribution to this monumental sum will be £5 billion. Let's have a look at what that might buy for Wales and see whether or not it seems like value for money.

£5 billion would pay for the entirety of Wales' railway to be electrified; it would pay to retrofit 250,000 houses in Wales to exceptional levels of energy efficiency, making fuel poverty a thing of the past; it would fully fund all the A&E services in Welsh hospitals for 40 years, or pay for 7,500 nurses for the next 30 years; it would even pay for every single primary school in Wales to be replaced with a brand new school. Or we could waste it all on a futile arms race, for nuclear missiles we'll never use.

We're constantly told by the Westminster elites that there's no money for libraries, for leisure centres or for the arts. Then people like Stephen tell us, with breathtaking chutzpah, that the nuclear deterrent is essential.

So when you come to cast your vote in May, have a think about the alternative ways we in Wales could spend £5 billion. Consider whose side Stephen Doughty is on. And then remind yourselves that political parties exist that are committed to ending the farce that sees the UK wasting billions of pounds on a cold war that ended decades ago.

Gareth Clubb

Penarth