Fitaloon at MicroShaft

Gordon Brown’s statement that the Defence Budget has gone up every year is Fiction. That is the fact. Cathy Newman also describes Brown’s use of  “near cash” terms as “Fiscally Illiterate“.

So during PMQ’s Gordon Brown has uttered yet more Brownies and yet again he will get away with them unless both Cameron and Clegg hammer him again and again at PMQ’s about this.

It is time to get the gloves off and call a Liar a Liar, none of the pissing about, some direct straightforward words that any Tommy, Dick and Harry will understand, no more disingenuous, no more being  economical with the actualité, no more revelation of a totally fissured and dysfunctional government, no more Brownies, call them what they are in reality LIES.

Only then will the public begin to understand what this man has done to Britain, He has turned this one geat nation into Broken Britain, and he wants, by any means, to have Five more years to destroy it totally. He tried to tell us this morning that he wouldn’t let us down, sadly this is yet another of his reworked phrases, he told us this back in 2007 at his first Labour Conference as Prime Minister, and even more sadly he has not just let us down, he has totally bankrupted this Country, to try and say he won’t let us down down  is beyond belief.

This is no time for a Broken and Discredited Prime Minister and his Broken and Discredited Government.

Let’s just look at a it more of what Cathy Newman tell us about Gordon’s Lies:

The analysis
In real terms – i.e. taking account of inflation – Gordon Brown is wrong. Figures given to us by the Ministry of Defence (see table below) show the defence budget fell year-on-year in real terms on four occasions since 1997 when Labour came to power – in 1998, 1999, 2002 and 2007.

Worse, the defence budget also fell below 1997 levels (again in real terms) on four occasions – 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2002.

“Near cash”
The MoD says Gordon Brown wasn’t talking about real terms growth, but was instead referring to “near cash” rises in the defence budget. “Near cash” is the simplest form of the military budget, the most basic cash figure – without inflation or depreciation taken into account.

According to the Institute For Fiscal Studies, inflation has to be factored in to make spending comparisons meaningful. So Brown was at the very least playing fast and loose with the figures by ignoring inflation.

Wrong again?
However, Gordon Brown also stated today in the Commons that the “expenditure of the Ministry of Defence has been rising in real terms under this government”. Taking him absolutely literally, “this government” was elected in 2005. But here he is also wrong. As we’ve seen just now, spending fell in real terms in 2007.

FactCheck likes a belt and braces approach, so we called several experts – including Mark Stoker, a military economist at the International Institute For Strategic Studies.

He pointed out NATO also provide accounts on defence budgets, and he reckons these numbers are more accurate.

Still falling
Looking at the NATO figures, the defence budget fell from £34.4bn in 2007 to £32.8bn in 2008.

“If you look at Nato’s figures Gordon Brown’s statement is incorrect,” says Stoker. “Either way, both sets of data indicate that the budget has not risen every year.”

Cathy Newman’s verdict
Defence spending has gone up in “near cash” terms, but it’s fiscally illiterate to use this measure, and the former chancellor knows it. The government is on firmer ground when it points out that the departmental budget is 10 per cent higher this year than in 1997, but FactCheck has established that Gordon Brown’s central claim that the defence budget has gone up every year is fiction.

This is Cathy Newman checking the facts, what she doesn’t mention that these are using figures compared against standard inflation, Sadly Defence Industry Inflation is much higher (5-10%) than normal inflation.

Vote for Change.

via The FactCheck Blog – Brown gets defensive about budgets.

The Guardian has this on Gordon Brown’s fabled 100 million pounds for the replacement of Snatch Land Rovers.

The government is to urgently order new armoured vehicles to replace the army’s fleet of thinly protected Snatch Land Rovers, the defence secretary, Bob Ainsworth, will announce later this week.

Years after soldiers first complained about the lack of protection offered by the adapted soft-skinned vehiclesagainst increasingly sophisticated roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan, Ainsworth will tell MPs that the MoD has ordered some 200 “light-protected patrol vehicles” at an estimated cost of £100m, officials said.

Yet if we have a look at history we find this tender from 17th February 2009, more than a year ago. It talks about up to 400 LPPV’s

Title attributed to the contract by the contracting authority: Light Protected Patrol Vehicle (LPPV).

The Specialist and Utility Vehicles (SUV) IPT has a potential future requirement for the supply of up to 400 Light Protected Patrol Vehicles (LPPV) to be production ready in 2010 and delivery into service in 2011. SUV IPT would welcome information from Industry on current products available now or under development that could meet this demanding requirement.

The LPPV will be a wheeled vehicle with an estimated gross vehicle weight of around 6 to 7 tonnes, capable of carrying up to 6 crew (2+4), integrated with a range of communication and electronic equipment providing protected mobility. LPPV will replace in-service light legacy platforms based on the Land Rover based SNATCH vehicle. Additionally, the platform may be used as the basis for the replacement to Land Rover WMIK.

The vehicle must provide the optimum levels of protection against a number of known and emerging threats of a varied nature including Ballistic, Blast, Mine and Fragmentation. As a guide the requirements for protection should be a minimum of level 2 ballistic and level 2 blast as detailed in STANAG 4569.

LPPVs are principally required for a wide range of patrol tasks and are normally expected to operate on roads and rough tracks and trails in urban, semi-urban and rural environments; they need to be sufficiently agile to provide high cross country mobility. To achieve the desired levels of urban manoeuvrability the vehicle will ideally have a width less than 2m and a turning circle less than 12m.

A pre-qualification questionnaire including draft requirements document will be made available to Industry following an initial down selection activity, which will provide more details of the requirement. Certain details within the document will be protectively marked (e.g equipment to be integrated into the vehicle) and will therefore only be available to potential contractors or their sub-contractors who hold, or are prepared and able to obtain, appropriate UK or equivalent national security accreditation.

The LPPV programme is currently funded to identify and develop solutions that have a potential to meet an Urgent Operational Requirement in mid 2010.

Depending on the technical feasibility of responses to this advert a programme will be formalised under normal UOR procurement procedures.

This advert is a risk reduction measure to investigate the possible options available to replace in-service legacy vehicles.

Expressions of interest may be submitted in writing and should include comprehensive vehicle technical specifications.

So whilst the order may now be urgent,  they have taken over a year to finalise the tender and select a vehicle.

Government to place £100m order to replace maligned Snatch Land Rovers | UK news | guardian.co.uk.

The Telegraph tells us that:

In an excoriating report by MPs, the Defence Minister Quentin Davies was singled out for being “disingenuous” in giving evidence to the Commons Defence Committee. The Defence Equipment report also condemned the MoD for attempting to balance its annual budget by delaying projects and commissioning work it cannot afford.

In one example, the decision to make short term savings by delaying the introduction of the two aircraft carriers to 2015 has cost £674 million out of the £5.2 billion project.

The cost increases were “unsustainable in the context of a tightening budget situation and illustrate precisely the reasons why the equipment programme has become out of balance with the budget,” the report said.

Liam Fox the shadow defence secretary, said it was now clear that the MoD was

“operating in Wonderland”.

“It is nonsensical to deny the very existence of a deficit, refuse to share crucial information with the Defence Committee and consistently order equipment with no means of paying for it.”

Quentin Davies the Minister for Defence Equipment and Support, was singled out for giving misleading answers to the committee when he denied a huge funding gap for purchases existed claiming, without producing any evidence, that it was only £6 billion when it was in fact £21 billion and probably now stands at £36 billion.

So yet another department in the corrupt Government is fudging the figures and lying about it’s commitments.  You don’t need to worry though, 15 billion isn’t really a lot of money, when we are 180 billion in deficit just for this year alone.

Why any sane Political party would want to win the next  General Election is getting beyond me. When they have finally worked out that Gordon Brown has utterly wrecked our Economy, it will them who will be blamed  rather than Gordon Brown.

Vote for Change. It really is the only way of saving this once great Country

MoD ‘deliberately obstructive’ in covering up cost overruns – Telegraph.

British soldiers from C Company, The Rifles on reconnaissance in Afghanistan last week

The Independent reports on the state of the British Army and highlights the fact that over one in five are unfit to take their place on the front line.  According to the Independent

As UK forces prepare to begin yet another year embroiled in a gruelling struggle against the Taliban, defence chiefs have confirmed that more than 16,000 troops are not fit enough to fight.

As many as 22 per cent of the 73,000 Army personnel who should be available for combat operations are either classed as “non-deployable” or are only able to be sent to military bases with medical facilities to care for them.

This surely cannot have been  unexpected after the huge pressure that the Army has been put under with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

What it does highlight is the severe pressure the Army is under to keep front-line battalions up to strength and the knock-on affect this has on soldiers time spent in Afghanistan and in the middle of the fighting. This then feeds back into more issues with fitness both physical and mental .

It also highlights the fact that, with over 1000 personnel having been wounded in the wars  and another 2000 non-combat cases, that  many are long-term injuries, who are unlikely ever to be deployed on the front-line again. Many of these injured personnel  still want to contribute to the Army and also help their friends who are fighting. This has to be balanced against keeping up the active strength of the Army and means that much of the extra recruitment that has been made in the past few months has not filtered through to fill the gaps.

All this just goes to emphasise  the short-term outlook that this Government and the MOD has in respect of the Armed Services.  Having not performed a proper Defence Review in the past few years the Armed Services are just not prepared or budgeted for the current situations that we are in. Until this is done it is unlikely that the shortage of front-line soldiers will change.

One in five troops unfit to fight on the front line – Home News, UK – The Independent.

Statement available here shortly

BBC – Democracy Live – Nimrod statement.