8-15 and others
On the extract you produce from SJ, seems to me he is deploring the waste of taxpayers money by the.....public sector.
Kinda treads on your point rather than supporting it.
On a wider note, people such as myself (who worked for a long time in the Armed Forces AKA public sector) get bent out of shape, not so much by the harping on about the paucity of the armed forces lot, but as by the constant comparison with other sectors. Operational under resourcing is out of order...full stop. But like it or not, the pay, conditions and pension arrangements for the armed forces, and almost all the rest of the public sector, are vastly better than the rest (majority) of the working people of the UK.
Read Doctor Cruces post re civil servants and council workers...real people doing real jobs and often worse off overall then many in the Armed Forces (I know "should have done better in school" yawn).
When you collectively slag off "the private sector" you encompass half the working population of the UK who work in small business (and that now includes me). Pay rates are half the UK average in this sector; holidays are the UK minmum (24 days per year) and pensions are frankly unknown.
So if you must blow off about the lack of money, resources whatever, it would nice if you could do so without throwing a collective onslaught at millions of people, most of whom support you fully and all of whom you are paid to serve.