When David Cameron makes his speech at 1530 this afternoon I bet he will start with words along the lines of…”…due to the gross incompetence of the last Labour Government and the 3.3 billion black hole that they left in the Defence Budget, it’s all their fault that we have to make these deep and painful cuts to the Armed Forces…..”
And then he will go on to praise the role of the Armed Forces and the value of them, their commitment and dedication and bla, bla, bla.
And that it: that statement will allow him to get away with it!!!!!!!!
In my opinion at least the last Government was spending money on Defence to make up for the shortfalls created by themselves and cuts that took place well before the Labour Government was elected to power in 1997. The country has become broke, not because of a Labour Government Policy, but because of a meltdown in the free market Banking Sector. That is why every country in the western world is going through this pain. But at the end of the day, money was still being spent on the Armed Forces by the previous Government. I don’t think that can be said now.
Blaming the last Government is in the same principle as blaming Winston Churchill for the fact that the country was broke at the end of the Second World War!!!! (Slight exaggeration I know, but it is the same principle on a much smaller scale).
And let’s face it, if wasn’t for the support reported in the press and even comments made by Hilary Clinton (just how low have we become) the cuts would have been harder and deeper. In the words of Ricky Tomlinson “Personal Intervention by David Cameron, My Ar$$e” This Government finally backed down on deeper cuts because of immense pressure and the bad
PR that would have come following ruthless cuts and not because of any other reason.
To cut the Armed Forces to this extent, while we are fighting a war and with the world in such an un-stable situation because of so many political failures is not just bloody stupid it is criminally insane.
Forgets your aircraft, boats and tanks, your carriers, trident and all the other spectacular projects. The real people about to hurt with this Defence Review will be the boots on the ground – pilots, gunners, infantry, paras, engineers, cooks, plods, blunties and everybody else that do the real work, including a lot of civilians.
And the only way for the Armed Forces to ever recover from this will be to have a bloody big, and I mean big, war! Tell you what they would find the money then!
Sorry, I will get down now.