Will somebody cleverer than me please tell me where irreducible minimum is and just when this constant insanity is likely to stop? At this rate, we'll all be on zero-hours contracts as part of a subcontract deal to G4S and on a pay-to-fly deal with Easy Jet.
I know we can't afford morale, ethos, history or tradition, and that fighting spirit is only just about kept up with the usual Thursday night punch up by the kebab van but I really just don't see where else we can go other than throwing in the towel and saying we're like Iceland.
I'm a conservative by instinct, but the quest for small state cuts has become a dangerous, dogmatic drive to get everything they possibly can off the Govt books by contracting out or selling everything off. It's gone past financial responsibility and is well in to the realms of abrogating state responsibility for state functions.
And yes, the article is just that -an article - and it most likely represents the worst case scenario and is therefore designed to soften us up so that whatever does occur will be seen in a positive light (hey I only had to give up one kidney to pay for my plane ticket to deploy to Syria, it could have been so much worse -I hear the Bn earmarked for the Ukraine had to stump up a lung too!). But the fact that they are even thinking it is worrying - especially as RUSI is part funded by MOD, so I question how independent this is and whether or not the authors have an 'inside track'. Through their systematic dismantling of the military, Cameron, Osborne, Hammond and Fallon are doing what Hitler tried but failed to do. The UK's capability may have taken a kicking at Dunkirk, but we had that very morale and fighting spirit that meant we could recover. Not now. And if defence isn't viewed as important to the average man in the street, it bloody well will be when they find they're sharing their Tunisian hotels and beaches with ISIL!
Last edited by Melchett01; 9th Mar 2015 at 19:40.