Smiter,
You might 'stand by the quotes' but if you can't attribute them, then they are useless. And if you google "Every Defence Pound is a wasted pound" you get nothing but PPRuNe posts by you quoting it, or me asking where it's from!
You can't simply make up a phrase and then claim that someone said it because it sounds 'about right'.
And Proone is absolutely right - in peacetime all parties will spend as little on defence as they can get away with, and the Tory record on spending and cuts is actually worse than Labour's - largely because they were in power when the greatest damage could be done.
They've always claimed to be strong on defence, but Options for Change, Frontline First, and indeed every Tory review going back to the Sandys White Paper and beyond shows the truth. And I say that as a disillusioned Tory voter (because I've had local Tory MPs who I could stomach, even when I couldn't stomach the party as a whole, I've voted Tory every time since '79 - though not in local government elections).
And we don't have to have seen the Liberals in power to know that they'd have been even worse. Their late defence spokesman (good chap, I know) cravenly toed his party's deranged line on Typhoon, on spending, etc rather than pushing his party towards rather greater sense.