View Full Version : New Cabinet - Defence lower on the agenda!
scientia in alto
28th Jun 2007, 17:21
Gordon Brown's new cabinet had one real shock for me. Why on a day when 3 more British solider are killed does the Defence Secretary also take on Scotland? Even with the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns is Defence not enough to keep one cabinet member busy enough? I feel that Defence has been devalued again, by a government who does not value its Armed Forces.
An upset employee!
Duplicate thread: Fat Gordons Message on Defence (http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?t=281924)
Seeing as the other thread on this subject has been closed, I guess I'd better use this one!
I notice that the press have also recognised the clear message that the Fat Controller has given us.
How can Des Browne still be in office? (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;jsessionid=UGW5K54ONKXRHQFIQMGSFFOAVCBQWIV0?xml=/opinion/2007/06/29/do2901.xml)
The greatest clue that "change" is rhetorical rather than real is given by the one man in the Cabinet who has more or less kept his job: Des Browne, the Defence Secretary.
Few things matter more to people in this country than the war in Iraq, whose growing and increasingly agonising toll was exemplified by the deaths of three more soldiers yesterday. Yet the already ineffectual minister in charge of our Armed Forces is left in place. Worse, his job is considered to be so trifling now that he has the responsibilities of what remains of the Scottish Office bolted on to it for good measure.
This is not only absurd; it is deeply insulting to all those under arms and whose families live in dread of bad news about them. Afghanistan is, and will remain, a situation far more dangerous and intractable even than Iraq, and requires the Defence Secretary's full attention. Mr Browne is said to have kept his job because he is a friend of the Prime Minister: he certainly didn't get it on merit.