As a citizen, I wonder how the current slimmed down (???) military is supposed to ensure the security of the nation. Unfortunately, as an ex-serviceman, I suppose I understand the issue better than most of today's electorate, so politics will solve nothing. The Empire has gone. The Commonwealth is meaningless to almost everyone except The Queen. The Europeans, quite sensibly, don't give a stuff about anything outside Europe. Nor should we. TB and New Labour (what's new about them???) use the armed forces as a means of sitting at the top table with the USA. TB and his cronies never see how ridiculous they look to the rest of the world and even ordinary folk only get the authorised message threough the carefully manipulated news media. They never get to see it the way those of us who live and work on the outside can view the farce.
We have most of our people committed to fighting in a place where we have no strategic interests whatsoever. What did we ever get from Afghanistan? Iraq? Trouble from the natives has always cost us much more than we ever gained from dominating them. Iraq has to sell its oil on the open market at the market price, regardless of who's in control. As for Afghanistan, apart from half the drug dealers in Europe, hardly anyone would notice if an asteroid plunged into the place and vapourised it.
Our armed forces in the field don't, according to reliable reports, have adequate equipment, ammunition or air support. There also seems to be a problem with getting supplies and materials flown into the operational areas. I'd be perfectly happy to see 150,000 civil servants fired and sent out to look for proper, wealth creating jobs. Their salaries could be spent on recruiting and equipping say another 75,000 soldiers sailors and airmen to defend our shores. That would still leave us short handed and exposed, but much better off than we are now. Especially if they were all in UK where they're supposed to be if they're defending us.
Defend our shores? Where's the threat?
History tells us that threats appear from unexpected places whenever there's a weakness. Should we wait and see? We need a large, strong navy equipped to fight submarines to protect our supply lines, not with a couple of carrier groups to deploy British "Peacekeepers" in support of US operations. We need an air force that can repel air attack and control our own skies. We need a few soldiers to fight anyone who tries to set foot on our soil. Even tiny Singapore does a better job at protecting itself than Britain.
Its not only the RAF that's being undermined, for just like the hospitals, schools and universities, the state of all our armed forces is a damned disgrace.
Last edited by Blacksheep; 28th Dec 2006 at 04:44.