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September 08, 2004
Defence of the realm - Part 2
My thanks must go to Skipjack for a snippet from a newspaper in the US repeating an item originally from the Murdoch newspaper, "The Sun". Not being a Sun reader, I missed this one, but it reveals a lot about what our incompetent bunglers at the Ministry of Defence (perhaps it should be renamed, soon, as the Ministry of Indefensible Bungling, or the the Ministry of Defencelessness.) have done to our once proud armed forces!
It comes to something when newly promoted NCO's have to shop around for their rank markings. It doesn't hold out any hope at all of their being able to find essential spares for any of their equipment! After the debacle of ammunition shortages in Iraq, shortages of troops, lack of spares, lack of desert camouflage outfits, lack of flak jackets, and boots that melted in the desert, you'd think this shower of complete incompetence would have learned the lesson and got their act together. You'd be wrong.
The Civil Servants who run the Armed Services now (bet you thought it was the Admirals, Generals, and Air Marshalls - but no, they take their orders from Permanent Under Secretaries - abbreviation: PUSS! I say no more!) think it is far more important to spend the price of a Type 45 Destroyer on redecorating their offices' block and buying chairs for their useless and incompetent bean counters to sit in at £1,000 per chair! One chair would have paid for the rank markings they needed for every Sargeant in the RAF! Need a gun on the new Eurofighter - can't have one because we've spent the money redesigning the uniform! The fact that there is a gun fitted because the weight is needed to stabilise the aircraft is neither here nor there - taking it out would cost even more! The firing mechanism and controls aren't there though, because, according to the cretin bean counter who made this decision - "modern missles are much more effective!" Yeah, right! So what happens when you've used them all and there's still a bandit to deal with? You throw the Teddy Bear mascot at him?
This is the same arggument that says that one modern ship can do the same as two hundred old ones. Really? It can be in two hundred places simultaneously? That really is a neat trick; wonder where the technology is for that one, then? In someone's high tech chair in Whitehall, perhaps?
The real trouble with these morons is that they think that ships, planes, tanks, and the men who man them are simply symbols or items on pieces of paper. They don't really exist - do they? Perhaps the answer is to take them all out of those comfy offices and put them in the firing line until they admit to their complete incompetence and resign or get blown away.
Ce vis pacem, para bellum.
Posted by The Gray Monk at September 8, 2004 08:28 AM