Fitaloon at MicroShaft

Bruce Anderson takes Brown to pieces for his utter contempt for the Army.

His final paragraph is on the money sadly

As a result of Mr Brown’s malfeasance – abetted by Mr Blair’s cowardice – men have died who should have lived: men have been crippled who could have escaped with minor injuries. All war leads to a butcher’s bill. Even with the best equipment, there comes the moment when discipline, training, group-bonding, patriotism and courage must inspire flesh and blood to stand up to lead and high explosive. Flesh and blood do not always win. The gods of battles choose the best and the bravest to dine with them in Valhalla. War means heart-rending sacrifices. It is the duty of prime ministers to minimise those sacrifices: few duties more solemn. This one has treated that duty with contempt. “You’ve ruined my life” he once yelled at Tony Blair. What nonsense, what pathetic nonsense. But lives have been lost, because Mr Brown would not do his duty and Tony Blair would not make him.

There is an error in the column when he says 1000 personnel were to be returned from Afghanistan, It should be Iraq, hopefully it will be corrected, but it takes no sting out of his correct and damning indictment of Gordon Brown.

We need to see more like this on other subjects in all the Nationals. Exposing the Brown Lies or Brownies between now and the General Election is essential in ensuring this man cane never again come anywhere near to power.

Vote for Change.

Bruce Anderson: Nothing incriminates Mr Brown like his contempt for the Army – Bruce Anderson, Commentators – The Independent.

Despite pocketing over 1.8 billion pounds on the sale of MOD house back in 1996, the government has paid out only minimal amounts to maintain the houses, leaving them in poor conditions despite the fact they were sold-off to finance the refurbishment programme.

According to the Times:

Despite the payment of £1.67 billion to HM Treasury for the homes and a profit share of £156m on the sale of surplus properties, many are dilapidated and unfit to live in. New figures show that the MoD has been spending as little as £4.4m a year on maintenance and refurbishment.

Julie McCarthy, chief executive of the Army Families Federation, said her organisation received thousands of complaints every year about the poor conditions of these properties.

“There have been problems with damp, leaks, broken boilers and the general condition of the homes,” she said.

“The sale was supposed to provide the funds to address these problems, but there has been little evidence of that.”

Details of how little the government has spent on the properties emerged last week after The Sunday Times reported that General Sir David Richards, the head of the army, was concerned that many troops felt undervalued because of cuts to housing and shortages in other areas.

Amazing to hear that the Government are yet again screwing our Armed Forces. With Brown at the helm or as Chancellor , they are lucky they saw a penny.

Ministers ‘let army homes fall into ruin’ – Times Online.

An RAF Chinook helicopter in Afghanistan. Recent conflicts have left the armed forces unable to take on new tasks, say MPs.

According to the Defence Commitee:

Army at full stretch, navy over-committed and RAF pilots short of planes for training

That just about covers the full gamut. The Guardian goes onto report:

Britain’s forces need a period of “effective recuperation” after operating at a rate well above official planning assumptions, a report by the Commons defence committee says today. “The MoD was unable to tell us how long it would take before the armed forces return to satisfactory levels of readiness”, it says.

It describes how RAF pilots are unable to train because aircraft are tied up on operations, the navy has too many commitments and major exercises are having to be cancelled.

The report quotes Lieutenant General Sir Graeme Lamb, a senior commander, as saying that his fellow senior officers believed the army needed to expand from about 102,000 troops to 112,000 to meet demand.

This is the state our dithering and delaying Prime Minister has brought  our Armed Forces to by his years of mis-management, first as Chancellor and lately as the Prime Minister.

The shadow defence secretary, Liam Fox, said the report

“exposes the damage that has been done across the armed forces by Labour’s refusal to hold a proper review for over a decade.

It is clear that radical reform is needed to ensure that our armed forces are best configured to defend British interests and that our procurement programme gets our troops what they need, when they need it,”

This is something I have been saying for a while, and despite this Ainsworth wants to ring fence spending on items such as Trident and the new Aircraft Carriers BEFORE the SDR is carried out. This is political posturing rather than strategy as they attempt to bribe voters in marginal constituencies.

General Sir Richard Dannatt, the former head of the army, said war in Iraq and Afghanistan had taken its toll on troops and echoed Lamb’s call for a boost to land forces.

“There is quite a strong argument to say that our land forces are not large enough, particularly units that may have done two or three tours in Iraq and are now on a second or third tour in Afghanistan,” he told GMTV. “Inevitably and sadly we have taken a number of casualties and people are tired. So those units need to be stronger. If they were 10% or 15% stronger they would be more resilient to casualties and if people become ill or injured.”

It is time to get the SDR done and sort out proper long term funding for our forces. How we sort out the shorter term problem of  knackered soldiers and equipment is much harder without a substantial withdrawal from Afghanistan. It is time to get our supposed allies to help us in Afghanistan.

Iraq and Afghanistan wearing down the military, MPs warn | UK news | guardian.co.uk.

Prof Chalmers foresees cuts no matter which party is in power

According to the BBC:

The British armed forces could be forced to shrink by up to a fifth because of a lack of money, a military think tank has predicted.

The Royal United Services Institute said the number of trained military personnel could fall from 175,000 to little more than 140,000 by 2016.

Its report said the cost of troops and equipment was rising, and major cuts were “inevitable”.

Surely there is no big issue here as with a fifth of the Army not fit for Active Service we can just get rid of them and hey presto all the savings have been achieved.

BBC News – Defence cuts ‘will shrink UK armed forces’.

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.