Morning,
Sorry for the lack of posting in recent days, I have been having a shitty and rotten time of it, which was summed up last night by some cunt giving me a virus on my lappy which has caused me unwanted stress in having to do a system recovery on it. Not fun!
Hence why I am writing on my iPhone whilst on the way to the gym for what is seemingly another daily session, indeed the way that I can blog on events straight away without the need to rely on the laptop is making having one of these one of the best purchases that I have made!
So what is on my mind this morning? Well apart from the inevitable case of Swine Flu that is just a matter of when, not if with me - and how bad it is when I do have it, I cannot help but comment further on the situation in Afghanistan. This morning, the former minister John Hutton signalled that he felt that the Government had no option but to give the military what they needed to complete their mission in Helmand. This on the same weekend when the military began showing off one of six new warships, down at the Historic Dockyard down in Portsmouth, the total cost for these warships?
£6Billion!
It seems that although our beloved government have spent a lot of taxpayers money on the military, it is clear to me that it has not been spent as well as it should have been. The troops on the frontline have criticised that the equipment that has been given to them to fight the Taliban has been sub-standard - further proven to be the case with a report in the weekend's papers that a cut-and-paste Chinook has been on operations in Afghanistan, with half of it belonging to a Chinook which was shot down in the Falklands, 27 years ago. This is quite remarkable and disbelieving when you consider that there has been six brand new Chinook under mothballs since 2001.
Now with the top military brass, Sir Richard Dannet and Sir Jock Stirrup have both been widely quoted, and David Cameron and Nick Clegg having bee also piling the pressure on the government, there is one not-unrelated story this weekend which is in the media narrative. That being the delay to the decision about Trident until next year at the earliest.
For those of you who are not aware of the importance of Trident to the military and to the country as a whole, Trident is Britain's nuclear detterent against those groups who would want to do untold damage.
It seems to me that in the current economic circumstances that the country finds itself in, profligacy will not be tolerated by any government department, and the response of many in the country on hearing that ‘there is no such thing as enough helicopters’ will be split between those who would simply sign the cheque, and those who would prefer to withdraw altogether.
Where I think both those groups would be united, however, is that if significantly more money is to be spent on Defence then for as long as British troops are still in Afghanistan, that money should go on helicopters, armoured vehicles, body armour, and protection against IEDs.
I believe that whilst British troops are fighting and dying in the scorching heat of Helmand - no government worth it's salt can justify blowing £20bn on something which it is argued, particularly with both the Russians and the Americans agreeing to cuts in their nuclear arsenal, will not be needed never.
Hopefully, for once the government will heed away from sanctioning yet another White Elephant...
Rob
Whilst this letter has been released, details are emerging of a second letter written by the Foreign Office minister Ivan Lewis to MacAskill, confirming that there were no legal reasons not to let Megrahi go and concluding: "I hope on this basis you will now feel able to consider the Libyan application."