Britain set to slash its armed forces

[TarJak]

http://www.smh.com.au/world/britain-...n::damn::damn:

Great idea, save money by putting all that hard earned investment in training onto the dole. Which genius thought this crock up?

[Lord_magerius]

This would be the Tories and their zombie like single mindedness and asshattery in trying to reduce our nations deficit. God bless em, what do I need my money for anyways...

[papa_smurf]

Bah! They hand out the contracts for the new aricraft carriers, start to build the first one, only to discover the whole project could be scrapped!
Yes carriers are expensive, and some say not necessary, but with our current ones getting on, and not to mention the amount of skilled labour it will create (which we need), I say build them - we need a bit of national pride right now.

[Oberon]

In an effort to slash costs, HMS Queen Elizabeth will be powered by the rapid rotational power of Nelsons corpse.

[bradclark1]

Are they going to enlarge their Reserves or is it a permanent chop?

[krashkart]

The important question is... who will keep us Americans in line now?

Oh wait...

[Oberon]

I believe the actual spending review comes out sometime within the next month.

At a guess I'd say we'll see the navy take the brunt of it because they're the ones with the most expensive projects on the go right now. The Darings will probably get chopped from six to four, the Astute will go from seven to five, we'll probably lose a Vanguard, either to scrap or conversion to an SSGN and we might lose a QE carrier, probably the Prince of Wales.
The RAF will get a reduction in the Attack squadrons no doubt, but there's not a lot of fat there left to trim so it'll probably be merging of squadrons, or alternately a merger with the Army...that's been talked about I know.
The Army will fare better than most because a) they've already suffered a large share of cuts, and b) they're the most in use force at this time in Afghanistan, so the government can't actually cut back to any major extent on the Army without endangering the Afghanistan mission.

Of course, I could be wrong...in many areas I hope I am wrong, but the writing seems pretty clear on the wall. All part of the governments grand scheme to reduce unemployment and encourage people to get back to work by cutting jobs or forcing companies to cut jobs.

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by Oberon

In an effort to slash costs, HMS Queen Elizabeth will be powered by the rapid rotational power of Nelsons corpse.

[Herr-Berbunch]

If only we'd spent the last 30 years investing in 'local' manufaturing and continuing our once great naval and aviation industries providing jobs all round rather than spending lots of the budgets on CONsultants telling us we need to cut funding on all areas except CONsultants.

It's not tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum's fault - there is a huge hole in the bank account and something's gotta go, but labour pushed through lots of things in their last six months that they knew we couldn't afford - purely to get it cut by the next government which wasn't going to be them, to make them out to be evil-cost-cutting-bastards. Guess what - it worked. The media fell for it, the unions fell for it, and now - it appears - some of the most highly intelligent people on subsim have fallen too

[bookworm_020]

I feel sorry to see the erosion of the Royal Navy, it has contributed much to shaping the navies of other nations for many years with much foresight and advancement in technology. The RN has suffered much due to the public perception that it was good for defending the British Empire, but with the Empire gone, and Europe being mostly stable (at least to history), it has had a hard time trying to justify it's existence.

In some sense Australia is lucky, due to the vast amount of coastline and a history of unstable neighbours, the defence forces are seen as important part of Australia. The fact that we are doing well economically at the moment means that we can afford to upgrade and expand our navy, army and airforce.
The hardest thing about doing this is finding enough people to man the new ships, subs, planes, tanks and trucks, let alone manning the existing harware!

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Herr-Berbunch

If only we'd spent the last 30 years investing in 'local' manufaturing and continuing our once great naval and aviation industries providing jobs all round rather than spending lots of the budgets on CONsultants telling us we need to cut funding on all areas except CONsultants.

It's not tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum's fault - there is a huge hole in the bank account and something's gotta go, but labour pushed through lots of things in their last six months that they knew we couldn't afford - purely to get it cut by the next government which wasn't going to be them, to make them out to be evil-cost-cutting-bastards. Guess what - it worked. The media fell for it, the unions fell for it, and now - it appears - some of the most highly intelligent people on subsim have fallen too

What precisely did Labour push through in the last six months of their tenure that is now planned to be cut?

Surely not the public services in every town and city in the country, state benefits to the most needy in society, the Police, NHS etc. that are about to be decimated....some of those have been around for the best part of a century now (even longer in the case of the Police).

When the full extent of the cuts become public knowledge, April of next year should see unemployment becoming the only growth industry in the UK.

Keep a watchful eye on Clegg during the next Lib-Dem conference when his grass roots mebers see the national outcry against the envisaged cuts and ask why so many of the parties fundamental principles and promises to the electorate were cast aside so he could become Deputy PM.....and after possibly the worst election outcome ever seen by the Lib-Dems (55 seats IIRC)....a pathetic turnout in anyones language.

I accept Labour failed to get things right after 14 years in power but that was because of the in-house fighting for power between the people that made the decisions on the way forward and not enough scrutiny on the policy front.

The aftermath has a potential negative consequence on most of the people in our communities but the bitterist pill to swallow is the realisation that most of the burdon will be born by those least able to afford it.

Rant over