WHAT fantastic news that Russia and the US have agreed a deal to cut their nuclear weapon arsenals by 30 per cent.

It shows what can be achieved by leaders with vision and a preparedness to look forwards and not back.

How ironic but unsurprising that our Government continues to plod along with its ambition to spend more resources preparing for a Cold War the two key protagonists have abandoned.

While the Russia and the US commit to eliminating nuclear weapons, Gordon Brown is committed to wasting almost £100 billion on replacing the Trident missile system.

The Liberal Democrats are committed to abandoning Trident. As Nick Clegg has said, believing that Trident has a part to play in defending us in the modern world is “a complete fiction”.

We need a Government that addresses the challenges of the 21st century, and not one stuck in the 20th century.

Christian Vassie, Prospective Liberal Democrat MP for York Central, Blake Court, Wheldrake, York.

• IT HAS been announced that the United States and Russia are to cut their nuclear arsenals. This is very welcome, although they both still have enough nuclear weapons to blow the planet back to the Stone Age.

Albert Einstein said: “I don’t know what kind of weapons will be used in the third world war, assuming there will be a third world war. But I can tell you what the fourth world war will be fought with – stone clubs.”

So the two most powerful countries in the world are going ahead with their reductions, not just because they want to reduce the threat to the world, but because it makes economic sense.

Here in the UK after the election there is going to be a review of the Trident weapon system. Whichever party wins the election, the possibility exists to upgrade Trident capability, at a cost to the British taxpayer of £97 billion – yes, £97 billion.

The Chancellor in his Budget speech alluded to the possible saving of £11 billion, and hailed this as an achievement. Why then would any politician of any party not see the sense in purely financial terms of saving £97 billion?

For £2 billion, we could reduce class sizes in UK schools to an average of 20 by 2020. I ask each and every candidate in York to say whether they would support such expenditure on Trident.

Gordon Campbell-Thomas, Kolkata, India (but soon to return to York).