His offer to double op allowance comes on the back of the fact we wont be getting any pay rises during the next parliamentary term. "We support our forces with a doubling of op allowance", forgetting to mention that poor old squaddy will be having his pay eroded by inflation and National Insurance increases for the next 5 years.
And if you think Cameron is the saviour of the public sector, than think again. I think it more likely we get pulled out of Afghanistan vis a vis the canadians in 2011 than us see the interests of Defence preserved.
He has already made too many ringfence promises that due to Tory history he cannot renage; The NHS being my biggest bugbear. We are not going to see cuts to the NHS, spending is going to become increasingly tight, to the extent Job losses across the public sector will be neccessary, indeed, much of the real "Pain" (other than the significant overstrech and defence spending as a % of DGP falling) of the recession has been bourne only up to this stage by the private sector. We as public sector servants cannot escape the fact that up to now have escaped the "pain", but be assured, its coming by the fistful once the election is over. You only have to see musings of a single point tory lead causing a run on the pound; we are not going to escape further economic devistation without significant cutbacks to the public sector, that, by and large, has been well taken care of for the past 10 years. The fact that defence has been fistf*cked for the past 10 years will not feature into calculations by the next government. In some ways, I wonder if CAS going early with the cuts was a faux pas; our current reduction in capability will be a mere distant memory by the time the next round hits.