Skip to main content

We cannot afford another overseas adventure.



 http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/feb/24/britain-to-send-military-advisers-to-ukraine-cameron#comment-48036283


Britain to send military advisers to Ukraine

 



David Cameron



This is a very bad idea. Not from any pacifist or pro Putin/Russia ideal, but from the viewpoint of practicalities. "Advisers" are invariably shortly followed by "support units" who are again invariably followed by "aircraft in a supporting role" and so on until, low and behold, someone suddenly realises that we have a full blown military presence in region. As was the case in Viet Nam through to Afghanistan and Iraq, history has always shown us that "mission creep" is not a question of numbers, it is a question of timescale.
There are those in this country, as many of the comments in this section demonstrate, who are clearly of a gung ho mentality and still believe that we should bomb and smash the Russians as that great political thinker Kenny Everett once said. However, we live today in a society where austerity is the over ridding economic philosophy and the compulsion to drive down public expenditure has been the mainstay of Cameron and his ConDem coalition for the last five years. The "success" of this policy is debatable, but the reality of its effects are plainly evident. We have the shame of over one million people reliant on foodbanks to feed their families. Nurses, ancillary workers and other public sector employees having their wages and salaries effectively frozen for almost five years. Services ranging from the NHS to social services from government through to street cleaning from local councils, have be reduced or even cut completely in the name of saving money.



 



In the case of defence expenditure, rather than save £Billions by cutting Trident and its replacement, this disastrous government is saving money by making thousands of military personnel redundant, providing second rate equipment and supplies to those who remain, building aircraft carriers without installing aircraft on them (because we cant afford them!) mothballing new ships to save money and placing all emphasis on reserve soldiers who in the majority of cases have not even been recruited yet.
Against this woeful background of ineptitude the government now propose to involve this country yet another intervention, albeit on a limited scale for now at least, in an overseas country which at this time is not even a member of NATO (which is what the American fervently desire and what this current crisis is really all about ).

Thousands made redundant


I repeat what I said at the beginning of this piece. UK military "trainers" be deployed to help Ukraine forces is a very bad idea and should be shelved immediately or on the morning of May 8th next.




Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Northern Ireland and Brexit. The return of "The Troubles"

Northern Ireland: police attacked in another night of disturbances | Northern Ireland | The Guardian When the "Brexit" debate was still filling our newspapers and our television screens, readers may remember why I had changed my mind since voting to leave at the referendum vote. Apart from the economic arguments, which had become crystal clear after peeling away all the lies and misrepresentations trotted out by Bozo Boris and his "Get Brexit Done" conspirators, there was always the problem of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Would it be possible to have a border between the European Union and the United Kingdom where people, goods and services could pass freely between the two nations without customs restrictions, tariffs, duties and all the other formalities? Would it be possible to have one part of the United Kingdom treated differently from other parts of the United Kingdom, particularly when Scotland for example had voted overwhe...
Post a Comment
Read more

Enough of this hysterical nonsense

  http://style.uk.msn.com/royal-baby/how-will-the-royal-baby-look-as-he-grows-up Media generated hysteria.                           This is too much. For the last 36 hours (thought it seems more like 36 days) there has been wall to wall news coverage, media and television comment and reporting, with Sky News taking first prize for frenzied minute by minute reporting from the Palace, the hospital, from a village somewhere in England, from the studio and anywhere else that Burley, Botting and company could stick a microphone into some obscure "celebrity's" face and ask for yet another banal quote. All this galvanising the mass hysteria of some elements of the public, (who the media would have you believe is the reaction of "the whole world",) with their flag waving, dancing, singing and cheering over what is after all, no more than a woman having a bab...
Post a Comment
Read more

A perverse and rather sinister media obsession to discredit, smear and undermine Jeremy Corbyn

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/venezuela-jeremy-corbyn-blasted-for-not-condemning-president-maduro-a3606156.html#commentsDiv Venezuela: Jeremy Corbyn blasted for not condemning socialist President Nicolas Maduro as violent conflict escalates There is a perverse and rather sinister obsesseion with the media and particularly television "interveiwers", in seeking to secure from Jeremy Corbyn a "condemnation" of some person or organisation or event. This time it is connected with events in Venezuela and the actions of President Nicolas Maduro and the bloody crackdown on protests against the result of last weeks poll which inaugurated a constituent assembly . The media "stories" and the interrogation by the television interviewers, are as subtle as a sledgehammer being nothing more than a variation on the "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" question, which so many repoters use in order for them to make themselves appear very ...
Post a Comment
Read more