I have to say that I'm impressed by the Con-Dems. I didn't honestly think that any government would make me think fondly of Gordon Brown. And yet...
Outrage du jour is the delivery of redundancy notices to troops in a combat theatre. This is not a good idea. There is a phenomenon where soccer players talk about "confidence" and "form", and "being unsettled", especially when transfer rumours are floating around. When such words are wielded, they usually refer to crass errors on the football pitches. Often, games are lost because of them.
Is it really so hard to imagine that adding worries about redundancy in a terrible economy to the stress of combat will lead to mistakes, misjudgements, mishaps, and possibly missing limbs? And that is aside from the horrible challenge it creates for young officers in the field trying to maintain morale. And unlike football, truly this is a "matter of life and death".
I can only speculate that someone in the MOD thought it wise to use a Fabian strategy in the face of cuts, rather like ACPO are when faced with police budget cuts. The idea that any minister had hand or influence in serving these notices doesn't really bear thinking about. I feel like a TV character, always railing against the world.
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