The Trident Hour as a unit of UK Government expenditure

Trident in action

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The Trident hour is a unit of UK Government expenditure. Originating in my book Bills of Health, (buy it here) it used to be £200,000, but to my surprise it has grown to £476,250 since 1996.

Here's how we derive a Trident hour (or Trident Replacement Hour as it is properly called).

Trident life = 25 years
Overall cost of Trident £100 billion.
Cost per year = 4,000,000,000
50 weeks in a year (even WMDs need to take a break occasionally), so
Trident Week = £80,000,000
Trident Day = £11,430,000
Trident Hour = £476,250

So when Dave tells us "My Government has given £100 million to deal with flooding, that amounts to 9 whole Trident Days of money.

When he speaks of "An additional £750million for primary school sport between now & 2020 Olympics, helping secure the legacy of London 2012." - he is talking about a vast amount of money - 9 weeks 2 days of Trident expenditure.

So, why not enjoy yourself converting Government expenditure to Trident Hours?

You can tweet the results to David Cameron himself directly. Or Ed Miliband, he's just as bad.

Some cynics may complain that we are wasting money on something that will never be used. 

To these cynics we can say - you may well be wrong.