Hi Shotone,
My reaction is more in response to the way that the politicians get everyone's backs up, or indeed the press, over such matters. I don't think, however, that a doubling of the defence budget is as straight forward as you suggest. With the 4th largest defence budget on the planet, I'm not entirely sure it needs increasing in real terms but it would be interesting to know what it all goes on. I understand that while all these hefty cuts to the R.A.F's frontline aircraft have gone on, certainly over the last 15 years or so, the defence budget hasn't actually budged, not one way or the other. There was some argument made by George Osborne at one stage around the SDSR that the Nuclear deterrent should be paid for out of the peace time defence budget also other areas of agreed direct capital expenditure such as the military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and wherever else, I suspect have been funded either directly from the defence budget... or the Defence Budget Peter has been plundered to pay the Treasury Paul in order to make good the cost of war going operations around the Globe. Well middle east anyway.
FB
