Ahh. Good to see prOOne back with his leftist claptrap. I had almost missed the ramblings and rantings; so much that I was beginning to believe that his disappearance coincided a bit to neatly with the announcement of our new Minister of Defence. Now that would explain a few things!!
I won’t even grant your racist ravings the decency of a reply
Nice to see the usual retort of the bankrupt left/centre political (un)intelligentsia!! Can't argue against it so resport to calling people racist and their (heartfelt?) comments as ravings. Well I believe that the chattering classes are politically and, perhaps more importantly, morally bankrupt and the root cause of the 3 pregnant not quite teenagers?
Now back to the thread. Of course prOOne is right (in one respect) the Defence budget is always in a predicament. The biggest problem here has been caused by decades of under investment, probably going back to the 60s when Old Liarbour axed so many replacement programmes. The Armed Forces have been forced to make do and make good and all the time the dreaded 'bow wave' in the equipment programme has been building. There are only two real ways to solve the problem - we need money to pay for the new equipment and lots of it. Perhaps Health and Education and Social Security (which is paying £600 per week to a bunch of irresponsible silly little girls and their mother (just why should I/we/you pay them a penny? Self inflicted injuries?!?!)) might start finding a few savings to go towards the Defence Budget!
Or we need to scrap a couple of expensive programmes - I would suggest the carriers (sorry RN I actually support the need for them). This is the only way that the savings can realistically be made. If Noo Liarbour is to be forced into acting we need to hit back at the centrepiece of expeditionary warfare and say "Sorry something has to go, we do not have the budget to build them". (I think that there would be many in government that would actually breathe a sigh of relief). And before I provoke a retort of single service protectionism please know the facts on cancelling TypHoon - it would cost us as much to buy 100, or 150 or the 232 on order so ther ARE NO savings there. (For once the contract was written almost too well - between the partner nations anyway).
You got an additional £4.4bn from the reserves to fund the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan ops in FULL, with a commitment to an additional £300m against unforeseen operations costs.
We did not get anywhere near the Full funding! Much of the money that was spent was then counted by HMT as part of the EP. Many of the UOR equipment programmes that were bought to do the Government's bidding were then deemed to have been an aspiration on the EP so HMT refused to fund them. This further adds to the EP bow wave as money had to be taken from future programmes to pay for UOR programmes that the Treasury refused to pay for! If, and I stress IF, Gulf Ops have been funded in full, then that is only right and proper. If they hadn't been then we would have to say good bye to the carriers, T45, FRES, and a few others beside. And we have debated the smoke and mirrors 'increase' in the budget and the cash part of the Defence Budget still remains at about £23 - 24 B so where is the increase?