Civil Servants Complain about Tributes
Any thoughts on this Times report from the weekend? Made my blood boil.
Civil servants at the Ministry of Defence have complained about the “prevalence” of tributes to dead soldiers on the ministry’s internal internet.
Their comments have led to reports of soldiers’ deaths, and eulogies to them, being dropped from the top of the news pages within a few hours.
Liam Fox, the defence secretary, was furious about the complaints after being told of them by The Sunday Times.
He said: “We should never forget those who have made the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of our nation’s security. The least we can do is honour the fallen in a proper and dignified manner.”
Last week a report on the MoD intranet about the death of a Gurkha was swiftly replaced by news of a visit by General David Petraeus, the US commander in Afghanistan, to Gurkhas in central Helmand. Other reports of soldiers’ deaths have been replaced by news of civil servants being shortlisted for awards.
In a letter to this month’s Soldier magazine, an army major working at the MoD questioned why the news of soldiers’ deaths was being dropped from the top of the news service so quickly.
Major J Barry pointed out that he and other servicemen and women criticised the national media for paying more attention to the sex lives of pop stars than the deaths of British soldiers serving in Afghanistan. “So why do we allow a similar practice on our own web pages?” Barry asked.
“There needs to be a better way of conducting business . . one that pays a bit more respect than currently shown.”
The MoD told Soldier that civil servants had complained in a survey about the time such reports stayed at the top of the news pages. Research had shown that visitors to the site “would prefer different news”.
Fox joined relatives of those killed in denouncing the civil servants’ views. He said he was ordering the MoD to change the rules so that reports of deaths and eulogies remained at the top of the news pages for at least 24 hours.
Graham Knight, whose son Ben was one of 14 servicemen killed when an RAF Nimrod spy plane exploded over Afghanistan in September 2006, said the ministry was over-eager to present “positive” news. Even a recent internal history of his son’s death had dismissed the crash in just a few lines, as though it had been a minor event, he said.