eurealist.co.uk

In march An Englishman’s Castle noted that only one in Four new recruits to the Parachute Regiment are being trained to jump because of a shortage of planes. Today Documents leaked to The Sunday Telegraph reveal that no new recruits or even serving members of the Parachute Regiment or airborne forces will be trained in military parachuting from next year until 2011. The cost-cutting programme is being launched after defence chiefs warned that spiralling costs of complex equipment and the demands of military operations would create a financial “black hole” in the MoD of £868 million by the end of the next year.

Eureferendum has been saying for ages that something like this would happen because we are spending so much money on the big stuff we do not have enough left to finance the army for relatively low level operations. If I understand it correctly the big expensive complex equipment is not really going to be much use except in pitched battle situations even if it eventually works, and when it does become operational it will only be of use in operations with other EU states because the computer systems will not be able to talk to USA Forces.

The Telegraph says that Ian Andrews, the 2nd permanent undersecretary of state proposes measures including a “moratorium on recruitment” of civilian manpower and that all “existing contracts for agency or casual staff be terminated”.

Instead of flying to meetings around the world, senior officers should “encourage staff to consider video conferencing, e-mail or the telephone”.

Perhaps Tony and his clique could take the same advice and remain on British soil, at least then they might begin to appreciate that they were elected by the British people to run the British government. But then unlike the Paras and the SAS pigs might fly.