SDSR Revisited ?
 

Todays Financial Time reporting that SDSR may be revisited. Apparently mistakes have been made. No **** sherlock!

Defence review may be reopened in funding crisis - report | Reuters

This has already started, I think they're looking for another £1bn due to an 'error' in the initial calculations. Looking to lop another 10,000 off the Army as a starter. :ugh:

But not in a good way. More like "now you've got used to the planned cuts, we can squeeze in a few more".

Bets on what extra is going to go please!

Sqn of GRs?
The C130K?
Puma upgrade?
A400M?

Fun fun fun......

Doesnt reflect well on the lords and masters both in and out of uniform, does it? :sad:

I think the phrase used by one of the senior CS's went along the lines of "its going to make them look like complete idiots"...

There will be at least one positive coming out of it though... the chances of us getting involved in any meaningful way in any Blair style intervention in the immediate future are going to be very severely diminished.

Kind of goes some way towards tempering the biggest negative of barely having enough resource to properly look after your own back yard before you get forced to press the Trident button, but still... every cloud and all that. :E

It will only be bad news I,m afraid, I see in todays press that LOA and "other" expenses have now been hammered for the troops, bet the civvies dont get touched though

"
It will only be bad news I,m afraid, I see in todays press that LOA and "other" expenses have now been hammered for the troops, bet the civvies dont get touched though"

Going to bite here - CS allowances are being reviewed, and will be cut in time. They are totally different to forces allowances though so I'd expect to see changes made in line with the rest of the wider civil service and not the forces.
EDIT - release is now out of AFF website.

http://www.aff.org.uk/linkedfiles/af...allowances.pdf

The FT article:

FT.com / UK / Politics & policy - UK military faces further £1bn in cuts

The final paragraph says this:

Umm.... Yes! :hmm:

S41

JIMLad

My point is that the Troops will be affected and be impacted almost immediately because they have very limited protection from these sort of events, the CS on the other hand will only eventually be impacted after no doubt several rounds of "consultations" with their Union.

Its the fairness of it all that stinks to me, every Government in history (well as long as I can remember) have said they will sort out the Civil service, and never have, in the end they pick on the easy targets, in this case the Lads, its just another kick in b&ll$cks for the military and it will be the Privates, Seamen and Airmen who get the worst of it , not those sitting in RAF Buckinghamshire

BT, it is a case of poacher/game keeper and the birds.

Wasn't the problem due to the new CDS getting the PM to agree to an Army of 95000 without checking whether there was money for this strength - guess what, there isn't!!!

Not even close. As StopStart alludes to below, having got away with the premise of major cuts without sparking armed insurrection or an overthrow of the elected Government, they now are simply moving in to fine tune those areas where they think they will get away with it again - and they will.

SDSR Revisited
 

I hate to say it but i think its bye bye reds. :sad::sad:

And bye to Leuchars, the Puma update, the refit for HMS Ocean and then to Devonport:hmm:

Hmmm, another £1billion in cuts eh?! Well, if this pathetic excuse for a Government told Brussels to go whistle for the £1billion 'fine' levied on the UK due to the Labour/DEFRA monumental c*ck-up with the Single Payment Scheme, no SDSR revisit would be needed. Simples! :{

PS a certain newspaper website is reporting:-

I've got the answer, seeing as the overseas aid bill got a boost of £4,000,000,000 they could take the £1,000,000,000 out of that. Any further cuts to the defence budget would be utterly indifferent, reckless and Treasonous!:mad:

FB:)

It will only be bad news I,m afraid, I see in todays press that LOA and "other" expenses have now been hammered for the troops, bet the civvies dont get touched though"


I'll bite as well, civil servants have already lost Incidental expenses allowance as well as the same reduction in motor mileage allowance as service personnel. They have also slashed the terms for voluntary and compulsory redundancy.

Management are also removing the move on PPI terms if you change jobs and the new job is further than daily travelling distance, unless the business are are willing to fund this. Guess how many will actually do this in future?. That will mean civil servants will have to move home entirely at their own expense.

When all the jobs go to Abbeyood which is fast becoming the centre of the universe most people won't be able to afford to move even if they wanted to. So when your job is cut and they tell you to go to the other end of the country you have to bear the cost or leave.

Thats before they get round to reducing the terms of such expenses.

I was talking to someone from private industry who has just got a temporary census job for the Dept for National Statistics. they were horrified to find that the CS only pays 25p per mile. So much for civil servant fatcats.

We are all going to be shafted so why knock the CS?

EGGP

Although the Reds total cost to the MOD balance sheet is very small indeed - they may be disbanded, but an awful lot else will have to go as well to achieve the new saving target.

To my mind, the main problem caused by the Reds continuing to exist is not that they cost a lot of money which could be put to better use elsewhere, but that the existence of a full-time display team who put up a large formation of brightly-painted jets suggests to the public that the RAF/MOD can't really be that short of money or else we wouldn't have this 'extravagance'. The revenue which the Reds bring in, directly and indirectly, is largely overlooked.

Christmas all year for civil serpents
 

It's small beer in military terms I know having been involved, but how many people know about this, and what do people think the reaction to this generally may be;

There is a EU Directive that UK must have conservation measures in place, with categorisation of areas concerned, and what 'appriate steps' are taken to protect these areas, all around the UK coast...

When faced with this, it seems the civil service thought to themselves - "conservation, who deals with that ? I know, get the conservation lobby to sort it, they're always moaning, they can make the recommendations"...

So 4 groups were set up to divide up the coast, and a multitude of steering committees and conservation charites involved who think it's all their Christmases come at once - end result, they are trying to virtually ban anchoring by small craft at the majority of anchorages which have been in use for centuries.

What will be of interest here, apart from any boat owners reading, is that these areas designated 'no anchoring' or even 'no go at all ' are to be strictly policed with both ( presumably RIB ) patrol craft and on shore !

I happen to be one of a small group of yachties who have ganged together to fight this, and there is hope we may influence the dafter decisions and deflect - but no way stop - this all happening; whole new rows of shiny seats for conservation servants, and some whole new force presumably to police / patrol by land and sea.

The first question we are asked every time is " How is this possible at a time when we're crucifying schools, NHS, Care Homes, Defence, everything ? "

( apologies but perhaps understandably that's Joe Public's thoughts of cuts )

As I say the process is unstoppable, the theory is that it's cheaper for the 'Government' ( any flavour ) to set up this nonsense than the humungous fines from Brussels if they don't.

Personally I'd like to see some figures on that, but in the meantime we're extremely busy fighting our cause - if 'they' - the conservationists seeking to influnce the decisions - get their way, there will be no safe anchorage from the Solent to Portland, which is pretty important in a small boat with a family aboard in a gale...
And that's just the test case at Studland, the same is due around all our coast.

I've brought this up as my blood began to boil - again- reading this thread; you may be heartened to hear the sailing magazine where all this came to light, and our organisation to deflect it was formed, was white-hot after the last cuts a few months ago - and I, my father and two uncles had a total of 139 years working at Hawkers / BAe Dunsfold...

In case anyone is interested in our little war - any boat users who haven't heard about this won't believe it but sadly it's true -

Boat Owners Response Group

Yes, the BORG ! - actually suggested by our retired co-founder, stays in the mind...

Good luck to all of you, maybe there will be transfers to this new force ?!

The Red's problem is the aircraft. I believe they have sufficient airframes at the moment but probably no money for 128s.

Presumably it's thought the export prospects for more 100-series ( or any other ) Hawks is already fully explored, so no point equipping our 'best salesmen' with current / slightly future standard kit ?