Dear Bob,
As you are now one of the more experienced and longer serving Members of Parliament I would like to think that you should have some influence with the current administration. Richard Littlejohn below speaks for I would suggest 80% of those who used to vote Conservative. This on top of all the other dangerous follies instigated by Mr Cameron and his advisors, aided and abetted by Nick Clegg, will prove the last straw. One can truthfully say that over the last two years the ConDems have governed even worse than Gordon Brown, which is saying something.
In sadness, Bill
Troops betrayed by the real enemy within
Why has there been so little outrage over the Government’s defence cuts? If ministers were slashing staff numbers by 20 per cent in any other area of the public services, the BBC and the Labour Party would be incandescent.
Just imagine the furious reaction if they proposed sacking a fifth of all those working in the National Health Service. The bleeding hearts would have a field day. Hand-wringing reporters would be interviewing men and women sobbing into their P45s and railing against the ‘savage’ cutbacks.
There would be Panorama specials on families forced out of their homes and ‘plunged into poverty’ by the heartless Conservative-led Coalition.
Cuts: Some 2,900 soldiers received their notice last week. A total of 170 sailors and 730 RAF personnel were also made redundant
Labour MPs would be asking angry questions in the House and leading protest marches through Whitehall.
Yet because these redundancies affect soldiers, not civil servants, there’s barely a whisper. Shadow chancellor Ed Balls, always eager to express his outrage at any reduction in public spending, is conspicuous by his silence on the subject of defence cuts.
In opposition, the Tories spoke about restoring the military covenant which had been so shamefully neglected by Labour, despite Tony Blair’s enthusiasm for sending our Armed Forces to war.
The covenant is designed to acknowledge the great debt the nation owes to those we ask to put their lives on the line on our behalf. But faced with the need to tackle the huge deficit bequeathed by Gordon Brown, this Government has reneged on its side of the bargain.
The defence budget is being scythed back, with the Army bearing the lion’s share of the burden. Personnel numbers are being cut by 19,000 to just 82,000, the smallest ever in peacetime.
No one would deny that there is plenty of scope for trimming the desk jockeys at the Ministry of Defence and the land-locked admirals of the Royal Navy, who outnumber the ships available, but the axe is falling heaviest on experienced officers, NCOs and other ranks.
Outrage: Because the redundancies affect soldiers, not civil servants, criticism has been thin on the ground
It was bad enough when redundancy notices were being sent to soldiers on the front-line in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now it has been revealed that servicemen are being sacked just days before they are due to qualify for their full pension.
One 40-year-old sergeant in the Royal and Mechanical Engineers was only three days away from completing 22 years service and receiving an immediate pension pot worth £108,000 when his P45 landed on the doormat.
He has been told he will now have to wait until he is 65 to pick up his pension.
A major with 16 years service in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo and Northern Ireland was sacked 86 days short of his full entitlement.
Another officer, Major Rupert Whitham, a 38-year-old veteran with four tours of duty in Afghanistan, was made redundant 12 months short of an immediate pension. He has also lost the boarding school allowance paid to his two sons while he was serving his country abroad.
Worry: The Army is facing another wave of severe cuts as early as next year to bring numbers down from their current level of 97,000 to 82,000
Serving officers are forbidden from complaining in public. But Henry Whitham, Major Whitham’s father, has spoken out.
He said that 38 out of 50 of his son’s Sandhurst 1999 intake have been sacked before they could qualify for their full pension. Mr Whitham believes this is no coincidence. ‘Enthusiasm and loyalty to the Army have been rewarded by the sack. The decision is not being made on the grounds of ability, experience or commitment, purely on cost. It would appear that capable, experienced and dedicated officers are being sacrificed.’
Three thousand soldiers are being dismissed immediately. The rest will be phased out by the end of the year.
Successive governments have treated the Armed Forces shamefully, while simultaneously and cynically basking in the reflected glory of their excellence and courage under fire. Budgets will inevitably come under pressure at times of economic uncertainty, but the callous and cruel treatment meted out to serving soldiers and their families is matched only by the criminal incompetence of those charged with running the Armed Forces.
Billions of pounds have been wasted on abortive hardware projects and procurement cock-ups. The Government recently cancelled an order for a new generation of planes, but not before £200 million had been poured down the drain.
Two aircraft carriers were ordered at vast expense by Gordon Brown to provide jobs for Labour voters in Scotland. But they will effectively be useless for a number of years because of a lack of aircraft to fly from them.
Meanwhile, thousands of servicemen and women are being thrown on the scrapheap and historic regiments, such as the Duke of Wellington’s, are being eradicated.
None of this prevents ministers from indulging in sabre-rattling on the international stage while refusing to acknowledge that Britain is no longer a major maritime or military power.
Disgusting: Servicemen are being sacked just days before they are due to qualify for their full pension
Slashing the defence budget is always an easy option. Soldiers can’t take industrial action and you won’t find squaddies considered surplus to requirements chaining themselves to railings or squealing on radio phone-ins about the ‘savage cuts’. The Armed Forces have few champions among the pampered political class.
On Thursday, there will be blanket coverage in the media, much of it sympathetic, as thousands of doctors with jobs for life go on strike in protest at modest changes to their pension arrangements, which will still leave them with ‘only’ £49,000 a year if they retire at 60 or £68,000 a year if they work to 68.
I doubt many of them will spare a thought for the thousands of servicemen unceremoniously sacked in their prime this week and who will have to wait at least another 25 years before they receive a penny in pension.
That’s the real outrage.
Posts
