Military housing fiasco
 

There was a lot wrong with it but article in today's Guardian has me seething again. Successive governments selling off the family silver without a second thought about the service families who depend on them. I cannot formulate a sentence I'm so angry.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/201...e_iOSApp_Other

And there was me thinking that the Future Accommodation Model was about giving the best options for Forces families! What it is totally about is trying to get MOD out of a self imposed financial hole by any means possible. I have no confidence that the bean counters will listen to any reason when making the decisions and that any surveys or engagement on the model is purely smoke and mirrors. I can't wait to be sold down the river by our senior leadership on this one as they acquiesce to MOD mandarins and slip away quietly to their directorship at Annington Homes! This whole debacle is a national disgrace.

What a mess.

Once again the private sector is prepared to dig in and go the long haul to make a profit, and thereby trumps the public sector, which cannot see any further than the end of the current financial year. If it wasn't so totally disastrous for all concerned it would be laughable, particularly as every government is so damn quick to proclaim its value-for-money credentials.

Was Michael Portillo the Minister of/for Defence when the original decisions were made?

This is the capitalist side of the economy working as advertised, they do what they do best. This is also the lamentable side of state control working extremely badly. The civil servants who dreamt this up and subsequently badly implemented it should be dealt with harshly. I have no sympathy at all for them.

This is the United Kingdom. This will never happen.

Missing from the article is the fact that the MoD were bribed by the Tory Govt into letting this go ahead - we will give you back lots of money from the sale to spend on modernising all the quarters. Unfortunately T Bliar won a landslide and then reneged on the deal, preferring to spend the money on almost anything else other than Defence. Remember "a poond spent on Defence is a poond wasted" (with apologies to my Scottish friends).

Doesn't really stand much scutiny as a claim. Here's a chart of UK defence spending from 1980. Tories in power from 79-97, Blair from 97-07, Brown from 07-10, Camoron from 2010, then May. Note where the dips are...

PDR

Would the rise in defence spending under Labour have anything to do with going to war perchance?

Anything after 2010 was trying to recover the disaster that Labour had inflicted on the economy.

However, Thatcher and the Tories were certainly to blame for the initial sale - complete fixation with the population being house owners to the detriment of common sense and understanding the military way of life.

Ill advised 'foreign excursions' might have eaten up a lot of the increase, and more, in budget during some of the 'Blair/Brown' time. If one goes to war at least be prepared to pay for it.

Was the Tory PFI policy brought "off the books" in some way? Not having the initial outlay would cause a dip.

Desert Storm, Iraq no-fly and the various excursions around the former Yugoslavia were all started under the Thatcher/Major administrations. Gulf war II and AFganistan were started under Blair, as was Sierra Leine.

Oh hang on - we're not allowed to talk about Sierra Leone because it was a successful one that achieved its objectives. Forget I mentioned it.

Libya and the war against the EU came under Camoron, of course.

I'm neither attacking nor defending either group of administrations, I'm merely pointing out that defence spending (especially on equipment) was not markedly lower under Blair than under the administrations which preceeded and succeeded him. The data show the opposite, in fact.

PDR

As others have mentioned, that might have been down to a couple of wars and I was referring to the money from the sale of MQs coming back to Defence - it didn't.

Crab, cant blame Maggie for the sale of MQs, it was done under the Major/Portaloo era.

I'm speculating to a degree here, but I suspect it's a tad more complex than that. One has to remember that back in the day, Ivan had gone away and a peace dividend was going to pay for all manner of wonderful social schemes.


In 1990 we were spending north of 4% GDP on defence. Just five years later that was below 3%GDP. What that means is a shed-load of force-structure reductions, redundancies and equipment deferrals/cancellations. When that starts to happen, people (pollies, mil and CS) start to look for ways of preserving "teeth" - and hence to a degree, prestige - at the expense of tail (logistic support, estate etc).


It's not beyond the realms of possibility that faced with a choice of get some money now to keep force structure, or cut more teeth, gave the mil and CS involved some very difficult choices and they jumped one way. Hindsight is never a forgiving beast.


That no-one has provided for/anticipated the supposed rent-rise inbound in four years is symptomatic of the same process.

What, you mean strip them of the civil honours they doubtless received for saving the department so much money it a time of financial need!

What costs money is the land, the actual build costs are relatively low.

We (MoD) owned the land. What was really needed was a rolling programme of demolition of old MQ's and a rebuild programme on the existing sites. The services (utilities) were already there - and the roads, so really we are talking bricks and mortar. The reduced maintenance and energy savings would have paid for most of the work. And a rolling programme of say 30 - 50 houses per year per site would be manageable and sustainable.

What we got was a disgrace of mass sell off and no return on investment. In addition the housing stock now is poorly maintained or only adequate at best. Already the forecasts for costs and rents are going to rise exponentially (maybe even super-exponentially) and punish reducing budgets.

As previously mentioned, we are selling the family silver with an inability to look ahead any further than the end of our noses................

Shambles doesn't begin to describe it. Criminal however, does.............

Arc

If you will permit me. I was reading Travel orders today and stumbled across a passage that went something along the lines of

'personnel must (not my emphasis) use the cheapest possible method travel ... Personnel are not entitled to travel by first class, even where a first class ticket is cheaper than the equivalent standard class fare'.

And if were to ask the ordinary tax payer in the street whether they would prefer service personnel to go via a more expensive standard class or a cheaper first class ticket, 95% of tax payers would look at the cheaper option.

But with this sort of utterly myopic thinking, combined with frequently amateurish execution in all things financial it's hardly surprising that business manages to rake the money in when dealing with the MOD. To anyone half competent it probably isn't even sport these days. As outrageous as the MQs fiasco is, we really shouldn't be surprised when we put spin and image above substance.

May I have the temerity to point out that 'Civil Servants' are no different from 'Military Servants' in that they are paid to do as they are told by their superiors or face the consequences?

But in the eyes of some, all CS are inherently useless/incompetent/malevolent while all Mil are blameless/put upon and have no ability to shape or influence policy.

So how much did the companys who benefitted from MQ sell off donate to Political Partys and how many Politicians got nice roles on their Boards as Non Execs after leaving power.