South Bound,
Your argument is sound, to a point. You may extend it to all other cold war hardware too. Lets go for austerity, bin everything to do with the past where we could spend our money on ourselves.
The mark of a developed country is the ability to pay for things that do not contribute to the economic prosperity of the country - English Nature, English Heritage, the Sports Council, the Arts Council, Muesums in general, air shows, regattas, Cowes, and so on and so on.
Let us go for a reduced carbon footprint, remove all these spurious attractions and the incentive for people to travel and create carbon emissions.
The whole raison d'etre of the V-Force was as a force in being and that applied to all the naval hardware too. What good did the Sea Vixen, Scimitar, Buccanneer etc do? The whol epoint of military hardware is not to use it. Once you start a war the costs escalate exponentially as the kit has then to be made to work - Shrike on Vulcans, AAR on Nimrod and C130 etc.