The Harriers played key roles in both Gulf wars, as well as flying combat missions in Bosnia, Kosovo and Sierra Leone, and their ability to provide close air support to ground troops has proved invaluable in Afghanistan. For those of us who identify Britain’s defence capability with its historic greatness – and great-heartedness – this vandalism is just too awful. In the Telegraph, Con Coughlin mourned the Harriers' passing: 'They've taken leave of their senses,' was one young rating's verdict of the Government's decision to scrap the Harriers and HMS Ark Royal. 'You can't get a better fighting combination than this, and yet they are sending us all to the scrapyard. They can find £7 billion to bail out Ireland, but they can't find a few measly million to keep us going.' As if to prove a point, the aircraft, which has rarely been far from the thick of the action since it became the Navy's main strike fighter in 1980, provided a faultless display of its power and aeronautical dynamism... Even the ship's 43-year-old captain, Jerry Kyd, admitted there was a tear in his eye as the last Harrier GR9 made its dramatic exit from the nation's military landscape. 'For a ship like this, it is like taking the teeth from a tiger,' he commented ruefully. But don’t worry, folks: Prime Minister David Cameron is going to replace HMS Ark Royal by General Wellbeing. Yes, the British government may now be abandoning the defence of the realm but instead it is introducing a new policy to make everyone happy. Er, that's the policy. To make everyone happy. It’s going to direct government statisticians to measure people’s happiness and ‘life goals’ in order to introduce people to 'the good life'. Measuring happiness, eh? Even defining the thing has taxed philosophers and other thinkers since time immemorial. As I suggested here, never since the attempt to extract sunbeams from cucumbers on Swift’s Island of Laputa has there been such a preposterous conceit. (Of course, when the government adviser Lord Young recently observed that many in Britain had 'never had it so good', his personal happiness index promptly took a steep dive as he was given the boot for not upholding the party line that everyone was actually intensely miserable. But I digress). It is presumably beyond futile to point out that historically rulers who set out to create Utopia invariably developed into murderous tyrants. So it is that as HMS Ark Royal gives way to General Wellbeing, Prime Minister Pangloss may be not merely destroying his country’s ability to resist tyranny but actually himself substituting a soft despotism in its place. Happiness? It’s enough to make you weep.Goodbye Ark Royal, hello General Wellbeing
Yet another milestone has been reached by the country of Drake, Nelson and Churchill on the way to the abandonment of its own national self-defence and its historic commitment to preserve life and liberty. Today’s papers carried melancholy reports of the final outing for Britain’s formidable Harrier fighter jets, which unbelievably the government is getting rid of along with the iconic aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal which bore them – and all to save money.
Friday, 26 November 2010
MELANIEPHILLIPS
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