Originally Posted by nigegilb
But there was nothing the great man could do because he didn’t even have control of his own budget. “I did not hold the budget for the Army, believe it or not,” he intones.
Thanks for reminding us of that and at the time I wasn't clear about what he meant. He was the TLB holder for his FLC and I assumed he meant his Logs "tail". That, of course, was in the hands of CDL (with his own TLB) who held equal rank to him and with equal authority on the Defence Council. Somehow I'd missed the point of
We have over-centralised in my view, and this has diminished the Chiefs of Staff's ability to take personal charge of the running of their Services. Their ability to determine, for example, personnel matters - pay, terms of service, accommodation; medical .........
That said, CDL did have the facility to move funds into the Land Environment by siphoning them away from Sea and Air; which he did. Needless to say, that still wasn't enough and papered over the basic weakness of Blare taking on wars that the Chancellor of the Exchequer wasn't prepared to adequately finance.