MoD Priorities

[Churchills Ghost]

MoD spends £325m sprucing up its offices: Huge sum spent while soldiers live in dilapidated homes | Mail Online (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2380592/MoD-spends-325m-sprucing-offices-Huge-sum-spent-soldiers-live-dilapidated-homes.html)

Par for the course. Sadly.

[Chris Kebab]

Agreed.

The degree of crass mis-reporting, again, by The Mail is pretty much par for the course.

[gr4techie]

How is it crass mis-reporting? From my experiences of military "mis spending " I can believe it.

[TomJoad]

How is it crass mis-reporting? From my experiences of military "mis spending " I can believe it.

You appear to be very selective in what you are ready to believe from the news papers gr4. Were you not lambasting the standards of journalistic competency in the Mail regarding its reporting of the air miss (GR4/glider). Perhaps you just want to see the negative - just saying:p

[dervish]

Utter crap. 30,000 civil servants in Main Building? As if there were no servicemen/women.

[Stuff]

There's simply not enough info in this article to know what the £285m spent in Main Building covered. The implication of the attention grabbing headline "sprucing up its offices" is that is all went on carpets, wallpaper and fancy screens but later on we find out this was running costs over 3 years. Does this cover security, DII, heating and lighting, depreciation, building maintenance and most importantly does it include staff costs? Without knowing the extent of the PFI mentioned in the reply the data is meaningless.

The source data seems to be from Hansard here House of Commons Hansard Written Answers for 24 Jun 2013 (pt 0002) (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmhansrd/cm130624/text/130624w0002.htm#1306253000537)

and John Mann MP certainly seems to like asking about building running costs, I wonder what his agenda is? Hansard - Commons | Houses of Parliament - Archives (19th July 2013): John Mann: Written material by subject (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmhansrd/cmallfiles/mps/commons_hansard_1674_ws.html)

[Whenurhappy]

For those who have not worked in MOD post 2004, it is like a modern office complex. Not particularly flash, and the Chief's offices - and those of the Minsiters - are not particularly grand. Most of these costs are associated with the punitive PFI signed back in c 2000.

nothing to see, move on...

[Not_a_boffin]

Indeed - and if you worked there prior to the refurb, it's surprising just how much of the "old" features remain. The stairwells are virtually unchanged as is the glazing into what was the internal courtyards.

The "plush" offices are utterly non-existent (at least on Floor 2!) and resemble your average large open-plan with folk crammed in to the limit of the floor space.

[Two's in]

It's not quite as attention grabbing if you report that these are 2 completely separate issues; 1. Someone's refurbishment budget seems to have got out of control, and, 2. The bulk of the MoD MQ Estate remains (after 30 years) in a disgraceful condition.

The only link between the 2 issues is in the minds of lazy reporters who love to fuel the manufactured outrage that is the Daily Mail. By all means report on how ridiculous the compartmentalized nature of MoD budgets is, but that might mean a bit of effort and some journalistic skill, don't try to join the dots where none exist.