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Our poor Ministry of Defence. Not only is it laying off troops left and right, but now it’s being accused on sitting on literally billions of pound’s worth of unused equipment by Parliamentary bean-counters.
The MoD’s got an inventory stockpile worth about £40 billion, of which some £3.4 billion are apparently ‘unnecessary’, and have been earmarked for ‘disposal’ by the public accounts committee. It reckons that the MoD is buying more ‘consumables’ — bullets, beans and boots — than it really needs, leading to this unnecessary equipment stockpile. In fact, the committee reckons that when troops return from Afghanistan and Germany (something that’s slated to happen over the next few years), the MoD won’t have enough storage space to leave all their goodies.
Of course, these are some pretty big numbers we’re talking about — the MoD’s budget is only £34 billion this year, so saving a tenth of that by flogging off unnecessary stuff would be handy, I suppose. But, we’re still in the middle of a war in Afghanistan, and I can’t help but think that some of that “unnecessary” stuff will be bullets and uniforms that might come in useful — in 2006, when things first kicked off in Afghanistan, there was a chronic shortage of bullets and body armour, something that’s only been corrected in the last few years.
It’s also worth considering that the MoD probably wouldn’t be able to get £3.4 billion for the kit it’s got lying around — if it really is things like uniforms and spare parts for vehicles, well, those aren’t exactly in high demand. (Side note: there’s a whole website dedicated to selling used MoD vehicles — totally worth checking out if you’ve ever had a fantasy of driving round in a tank.) I’m sure the MoD can save some money somewhere – I just don’t think that should be from selling off kit that the troops actually need. [Telegraph]
Image credit: Defence Image Database under Open Government License
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And of course £3.4 billion is probably hyper inflated procurement prices, you know, £2 for a tin of beans (40p Asda) type of thing….
“Stores are for storing”
Ask any Store man!
It’s true, the system would work perfectly if it wasn’t for those pesky squaddies actually, y’know, using the kit!
If it was meant to be issued, it’d be called issues.
Why are we paying so much money on this war that no one wanted om the UK? Come to think of it, we’ve had a PM no one wanted, followed by a coalition government no one wanted and it makes me wonder, are we a democracy any more?
People blame terrorists but ignore the actions of our government. Like if I was living in Afghan or Iraq, I’d probably be a “terrorist”. Some army moves into your country and tells you how to do things while killing many innocent people and taking your oil for next to nothing……..
We’ll be bombed again in the future and it’ll be blaming the terrorists and not our own actions.
We might as well be the Nazis at this point. Forced into a war most people don’t want, with a government no one wants, we have no say in the matter and we’re killing loads of innocent civilians too.
No the UK is not a democracy. In fact I don’t know of anywhere in the world that is an actual democracy.
The voting system is simply there to make people feel like they have an influence on how the country works. You do not have any influence.
The best thing you can do is stop voting otherwise you are giving your consent to a system that you disagree with.
“The best thing you can do is stop voting otherwise you are giving your consent to a system that you disagree with.”
Wrong. If you don’t vote you are letting them get away with it. You can vote against someone as opposed to voting for them.
This is only true if there was one party that represented everything that you stand for. This is practically impossible.
The current British political has 3 main parties that have the possibility of winning an election. Although, to be honest, I would say more accurately there is just two.
These three (two) parties are simply different faces of the same coin. It is irrelevant which party you vote for since they do not represent you. Both parties represent the same people and that those people are NOT ‘the people’.
All you are doing by voting is continuing a system that is completely and utterly broken.
Nobody from the UK? Bit of a sweeping statement, quite a lot of people have and do support the war in Afghanistan. It often gets painted with the same stick as Iraq but it is a totally different conflict with very different reasons. You should check your facts, we went in to protect the people of Afghanistan from what was already a largely foreign Army. The Taliban is native to Pakistan and at the time Afghanistan was controlled by proxy by Pakistani elements through the Taliban.
At the end of the day it was the right thing to do for a number of reasons. We can’t go around policing the world but when we can justify going in and helping people suffering oppression we should.
We went into Afghan not expecting any economic return, even now we are only seeing bits off development in the country and it isn’t heading back to us like it is in Iraq.
We also aren’t the ones using civilians as shields for criminal enterprise. Accidents in war happen but its not our choices that increase the risk of those accidents.
You trust major news outlet far too much. If you think the UK and US went into Iraq or Afghanistan to help their people then you extremely naive.
Don’t forget that every side in war think they are the ‘goodies’.
There were and are huge numbers of atrocities that go on around the globe and nothing is done about them. Nothing is done about them because there is no profit in it.
There was huge profits to be made in Iraq and Afghanistan.
There is certainly a lot of money in Iraq, BP is making it hand over fist. Afghan not so much.
I rarely rely on the major news outlets alone, and I have the occasional opportunity to get information from the MoD side so I know a bit more than the average person on the streets.
Afghanistan represented a DIRECT THREAT, to people and money, that is why we went in. Iraq was a US led operation that had a lot of socio-economic factors for them, we just piggybacked and its paying off better for us than it is for them.
I am not naive enough to think money isn’t a factor, resources of any kind are always a factor. But I also don’t let myself be blinded to the realities by my own prejudices. We have done a lot of good in Afghan despite any damage. While every side thinks they are the good guys anyone with a bit of perspective can generally tell right from wrong, and if you think that the people of Britain or the average person in Afghan think that the Taliban are the good guys in the fight you are delusional.
We might hurt people by accident, but we don’t go around murdering children and torturing people. There isn’t any shades of grey when it comes to the fundamentalists we are fighting over there.
The roughly 1,000,000 people killed in Iraq cannot be said to have been killed by “accident”. A large percentage of that number are children.
I didn’t say that British people or Afghani people think that the Taliban are good I said “every side in war think they are the ‘goodies’”. This means that the Taliban think themselves as doing good.
Right and wrong is completely subjective. The argument of the Taliban could easily be that ‘the west is the most wrong since they invade countries killing hundreds of thousands people. The west gobbles resources with and endless hunger. The west use financial terrorism to obtain the wealth of other nations.’
I do not in any way condone what the Taliban does. I equally do not condone what the UK or US does. The problem is that the west invaded for reasons other than the good of the people of those countries and are still there for that reason.
We invade Afghaistan mainly because it has a huge oil pipeline going through it. The Taliban stopped playing ball with the US (Yes the Taliban have worked with the US for a long time) and so the US set out to destroy them. It has nothing to do with helping people I can assure you. That does not mean to say that the people in the army don’t think they are helping people. They do think they are (well until they have done a couple of tours at least).
There were a lot of people killed during the invasion. That is a reality of war, but a lot of people died anyway. And not all of that was on the allied forces. However death was already a fact of life in Iraq, all we did was shift the casualties north.
Just because you think you are doing good doesn’t mean you are. You can be pedantic as you like as to personal motivations but there is a line between right and wrong. Islamic fundamentalists will target coalition forces but they target there own people just as often as they do ours if not more so. They only care about fighting infidels, they are mad dogs that will destroy anything that gets in their way.
The real world doesn’t cut itself neatly up into east and west, only people with political motives do that. Financial terrorism isn’t a thing, you just have business and you have people. They aren’t stuck in one area of the world lording themselves over the rest of it. It’s called business and it happens in the East, West, North and South. You can’t dole out human nature based on geography, people are generally the same no matter where they are and will use whatever resources they have available.
Your interpretation of the reasons is very narrow. There were lots of reasons for going into Afghan, potential pipelines weren’t a very big one. US and European interests in TAP were as big as anyone’s including the Taliban’s and it got canned well before the invasion. Conspiracy theories only work well in theory, not so much in the real world. We went into Afghan for a lot of reasons, most of them were to do with security, moving the violence from our home to that of our enemies certainly doesn’t hurt economics but its secondary.
“That is the reality of war” does not excuse war. There is no ultimate line between right and wrong. There is only own own perception of right and wrong. There is no reason why your right and wrong is more ‘right’ than the right and wrong of one of the Taliban.
No the real world does not “cut itself up neatly into east and west” but when I say “the west” you know what I mean. There is a generally accept agenda/point of view that the west takes on things and it is that which I am referring to.
And yes, there is such thing a financial terrorism. Just because you never hear of it in the mainstream media does not mean it does not exist. It is used heavily in Africa to allow corporations to steal it’s resources. It was used heavily on Iraq BEFORE they invaded. It is being used now on Iran. You are right thought that it is ‘business’. That is definitely how business works on a global scale.
Yes there were lots of reasons for going into Afghanistan but I think the pipeline was a bigger reason they would like to make out.
The phrase “conspiracy theory(ist)” is always used when someone wants an opponents argument to ridiculed without providing a good argument against the assertions. Please refrain from using the phrase. It is not a phrase that should be used by intelligent people and you seem reasonably intelligent.
Security was either not on the list of reasons to invade or the defense strategists are completely incompetent. One way of making sure you have a large and almost endless supply of terrorists is by;; invading multiple countries around the world, killing large numbers of their people, stealing their resources and then not leaving. There was almost no violence in our “home”. You were (and probably still are) more likely to die or be seriously injured from practically anything more than you are a terrorist attack. If you want people of a country to lie you; build hospitals, build schools, fund innovation and set an example. It pretty simple.
You can’t solve all problems with guns. Maybe one day when we can actually call ourselves a civilization (when we are civilized) we will find this out.
There isn’t excuses for war, its just the reality. As long as there are humans and a limit on the amount of available resources then there will be conflict.
If you think that the “agenda” of the west isn’t replicated in the rest of the world you aren’t paying attention to the other half of our planet. China does a lot of the same, so does Russia, the only difference is they are focused more on Africa than the “west”.
It doesn’t exist because its not a thing, one thing I hate is the misuse of the word “terrorism” it has a very specific meaning and its over used. Financial sanctions aren’t terrorism they are sanctions. And its the sovereign right of any nation not to trade with others. If I know a business is owned by a man that abuses his family I won’t give them my custom, nations are free to do the same.
I use the phrase conspiracy theory because the pipeline issue has been used in that context and debunked. It was dead two years before the war even before 9/11. And while there were US stakes in the pipeline it was a regional issue that had more to do with Pakistan and India. If it was such a big issue it would be built instead of still sitting on drawing boards and politicians desks. Given that even at the time it was never a good idea since it relied on shaky India-Pakistan relations that were as bad then as now and have killed it again. As a reason for the war it was minor and the argument for it just doesn’t hold water given the circumstances after the war started.
We were having massive problems on the small and large scale with extremism coordinated in Afghan. It was a huge criminal enterprise and was destabilising other nations especially in Africa. Major attacks were being planned against us and when they get to our shores they are more difficult to stop. We acted to prevent further attacks, with the Taliban in power we would have went from sporadic attacks with many failures to a level of violence that would have made the IRA years seem quiet.
I don’t know where you are getting your information on what we are doing on the ground. We have been building schools, hospitals and sponsoring local business since we got there. We have even sent over people from our geological survey to set up one in Afghan so they have more control over there own resources. We have worked hard to create safe havens centred on commerce zones so that local businesses and farmers could trade freely. We have built schools all over the place and had our own troops do it and even teach in them. The largest medical provider in the area are the coalition forces both in the large field hospitals and the local clinics set up by our forces and charities operating under their protection. We are the ones setting the example, and the majority of Afghans support our troops and the work they do.
You can’t solve everything with guns but the world doesn’t work like that. Until we have ample resources, less people and less religion then we aren’t going to be free from large scale violence.
“Like if you lived in Afghan or Iraq….”
Compared to Saddam’s regime, Assad and all the things happening in Syria is pre-school behaviour. If you lived in Iraq for example, and they were part of the Arab Spring that has left most of the Middle East in turmoil, Saddam would have used chemical weapons amongst other things by now. Iraqis for the first time in years voted, democratically, for who they want to run their country.
Afghan, yes its been an absolute nause, but in the long term it is for the better. 90% of the worlds opium comes from Afghanistan, control that or stop it then you have organised crime’s balls in the palm of your hand.
This then though makes the Afghani people’s main source of income useless. In Afghanistan the average weekly/daily wage was $9. Join the Taliban and that was bumped up to $18-25, this then posed a problem for western forces; do you strip a country’s main source of income and then expect them not to be attracted to a higher wage or do you try and help? You help of course and this then is why it has taken years to try and install some sort of infrastructure, making sure that working for the Taliban is not attractive – and of course corner a wild animal and they’ll get more dangerous and that has what has been happening over the past few years. It would be wrong just to leave and not give a flying fuck.
A second short point for liberating the people of Afghanistan from the Taliban is that they were a big fan of Sharia – that my friend, regardless of your religious disposition, is wrong on even level. A set of rules which make people second class because of they sex they were born – or beaten to death for wanting to learn.
At some point everyone, including governments, has to make a decision that was the lesser of two evils – we as a country should be proud of liberating two populations from the tyranny of their oppressive regimes.
Yes we forced the oh-so-lovely Capatalist regime onto them.
Stop watching the news.
Stop watching Zeitgeist then. The US and UK made a fortune did they? Both countries are completely broke.
Call me naive or idealist but it is the the Iraqi people and Iraqi Government that own the oil fields which means they are the true benefactors of drilling for oil and then selling it to who ever wants to buy it. If it is western companies drilling, then it doesn’t mean that their native companies getting all the profits.
No, corporations made a fortune. They are the ones who made all the contracts.
In Iraq after the west destroyed the Sadam regime they put in place politicians who were willing to make oil contract that were EXTREMELY generous to western corporations.
If western companies are drilling then yes, it does mean that their native companies get all the profits. In a globalist world money is extremely liquid, meaning it can move from place to place with relative ease and with little costs.
Wow, you and Pleasethink both to seriously need to stop spewing such rubbish and actually consider events using a ‘big picture’ view rather than your ‘Guardian’ sponsored ‘truths’.
Come up with a credible plan to ensure that everybody lives in peace, everybody is treated fairly and there is no injustice in the world and then you’ve got something which is more than hot air spouted safe in the knowledge that you can say anything you want (within reason) without fear in this country.
The Guardian is a Major news outlet just like the BBC and is just as culpable for their misinformation.
You simply believe what you are told because it is repeated over and over and over again in the news until people simply start considering it as the truth. This is how propaganda works and the government and the media have become true masters of it. People laugh at North Korean propaganda because it is so poorly executed while the irony is that the west is so effective in it’s propaganda that it’s people have no idea of it’s existence.
Everything I am saying is BECAUSE I want to ensure everybody lives in peace and is treated fairly. You cannot have this without knowing the truth of what goes on in the world.
The only reason the UK and other western countries allow us to say anything we want is because they no it makes no difference. Any time anyone does something that they think might make a difference (i.e. protest, rebel etc.) they shut it down as quick as possible.(Unless it helps your geopolitical aims of course i.e. Syria).
Like I have said before JulianT, please stop being a republican by nature. I promise you will make the world a better place by doing so.
And no I am not a lib dem or labour or any political party. No political party can ever hope to solve problems as, by definition, they are trapped by their dogmatic view on things.
I’m going to guess by the ‘republican’ crack and your poor use of apostrophes and using ‘no’ instead of ‘know’ in the fourth paragraph that you’re American (or a young person who has watched too much American TV).
You say that I’m a victim of effective propaganda; tell me, are you visiting these countries and talking to the people on the ground and forming your own opinions or are you simply listening to another source of news (propaganda)?
As you believe that political parties cannot solve problems what do you suggest; maybe a Theocracy, a Monarchy, a Dictatorship or shall we just go for anarchy?
You’re not offering any solutions, you’re just criticising the status quo which is hardly new, clever or productive.
A person who has watched too much American TV would certainly not have my opinions. I am sorry I made some spelling mistakes. I am not infallible.
If your truly interested in my opinion on what would be a successful political system it is as follows. I think a much more effective system would be to zero parties voted in/out but rather have all the people in the top positions specifically voted in/out. So have the head of education, the chancellor of the exchequer, the minister of defense etc. voted in/out based on their performance. All government statistics would be public and easy for anyone to view. Political debate would be a major part of the schooling system to make sure ALL people are interest in politics and understand the importance of it. Voting should be made much easier through digital mediums but also obviously must be made extremely secure to stopping hacking etc.
It would be highly encouraged that the people that receive these top positions are highly qualified in that field.
As many decisions as possible would be made based on scientific evidence and would not be allowed that the government can simply ignore the evidence. Education would be for free at all levels so as to increase innovation for the future of the country. A fairer out-of-work system would be put in place where you receive an amount of money based on how much you earnt in your previous job and would only be provided for a certain amount of time (e.g. 50% wage for 1 year or 100% wage for 6 months).
Much more money would be put into new and small business and very little to none would go to big businesses.
There is much more to my views on a functioning political system but I’m tired of writing. Another time maybe.
It sounds like your form of government would be based on continual voting (otherwise known as referendums) and whilst some aspects of that I’d agree with there is a fatal flaw; who provides the information about the people (or decisions) you’re being asked to vote on? I assume you’re not going to trust the newspapers, or a government body so would you set up some form of public body that would decide what is released into the public domain and what is not (that’s pretty much governance by committee) and the sad fact is that whenever you involve people you allow peoples weakness and greed into the equation.
Kind of. It would be voting every year or two for the specific heads of departments. There would be no campaigns or corporate money. This would be illegal. There would only be online statistics on how well that person has done before (if they are trying to keep their position) or how they are more qualified to do the job (if they are trying to take a position). But along side this there, as every decision these people need to make must be public, people would be able to vote on everything. This does not mean that the majority vote will always win since the average person is relatively uninformed and most often not qualified to make such decisions. But as all voting statistics will be publicly available, people will be able to see if a certain head of department has been ignoring the voice of the public and yet doesn’t have the results to justify it or, on the other end of things, people will be able to see if a head of department was in fact justified in their decisions.
In fact I think a system like this would end up forcing politicians to back up all their arguments and decisions with proper facts as everything they do would be under the microscope.
We now have the communications technology that’s capable of executing this relatively well.
So all information would be public information. As we move into a more digital society this will become increasingly easier as there will be digital copies of practically everything. Everything would be available, from government employees emails (only work emails obviously) to their notes. Everything they say in public would be transcribed and most likely recorded on video thanks to the huge number of smartphones being used. This would hold all politicians to account on what they say and do. They should be under MUCH higher scrutiny than everyone else and as someone who wants to change things for the better this is a sacrifice they should be willing to make. Again I would emphasize the need for an extremely robust software system for this.
I think the best way to decide what system should be put in place for this would be to work the same way the open-source community work. To have a system (software and real world) that is collaborated on by many people and is always being updated and improved upon. This could start from a public body that ‘gets the ball rolling’ as it were.
It is true that the system would not be perfect and that there would be weak links in it but the very idea of it is to allow fast and effective change. This would hopefully allows the holes in the system to be filled before they can be used.
To solve the issue of money and the economy. I would start by making it illegal for banks to lend money they do not have. The fractional reserve banking system only serves the banks and not the people. This would mean that to lend money you actually have to LEND money and not just give credit. This would in-tern mean banks would have to offer two types of bank account. One would be a savings account where the money is actually SAVED. So when you put your money in your bank account it is actually IN your bank account. Since banks would not be making any interest off the money they would have to charge a fee for this. This would make people more likely to spend money rather than hoard it and would be a huge help to the economy. The second type of bank account would be very similar to the type of bank account we all have now. This would be an investment bank account where you know that your money is being lent to other people. You would be able to decide on the amount of risk being taken on and would be given a return on your investment (interest) relative to the risk. You would also be given the option to decide in what area of finances you want to lend your money in (e.g. hospitals YES, weapons manufacturers NO) and you coul also be give the choice of where you want your money to be lent (e.g. anywhere in the world, the UK or in your local town etc.)
Disallowing digital money that is not backed up by physical money would cause 97% of all money in the UK to disappear leaving only physically printed money. On it’s own this would instantly stall the entire UK economy and cause chaos on an unimaginable scale. So to counteract this I would have the bank of England physically print the exact amount of missing digital money. This would not cause inflation since it is only replacing the missing digital money. As this would be extremely unfair that the banks were allowed to create money out of thin air and then receive it as real money from the Bank of England, they would be charged a small amount of interest that would go directly back to the government. Since this amount is roughly 97% of 2 trillion = 1.94 trillion pounds and I would charge 1% of that 1.94 trillion pounds that would give a return of roughly 20 billion pounds per year. This is a decent chunk of the deficit. Also since they are being charged for this money they are far more likely to lend it out so they can make a profit on it. This will help businesses and the economy and businesses no end.
To deal with more of the deficit I would get rid of all public debt by printing yet more money by the Bank of England to the tune of 1.3 trillion pounds. This would stop all interest payments of public debt which currently stands close to 50 billion pounds. This printing of money would cause inflation though since the actual money supply would increase by 1.3 trillion the pound would become watered down. The actual amount of inflation would be 65% meaning everyone’s pounds would devalue by 65% instantly. That’s shit. Really shit in fact but it essentially shows how much money has slowly been siphoned out from the government over time. Also it is only a one time thing. A ‘close your eyes while I rip off the band aid quickly’ type of thing. On the (extremely) positive side we would now have cut a total of 70 billion pounds of the government deficit leaving it at around 50 billion pounds.
From here there are a number of ways of getting rid of the rest of the deficit and the best way to do it is to be honest with people and give me plenty of options. For example everyone in the UK knows the benefit system is a disgrace but that does not means benefits are a bad idea. An excellent sign of a well run country is that it looks after the vulnerable but it also has to be fair.
Also, with the fact that hopefully the banking sector has been cleaned up and the economy doing well, more money will be coming in through taxes. This will cut another large chunk from the deficit.
I’ve been going on for ages now and your probably bored if you read it all but it’s just my 2 cents (or 200 cents ).
Well, you’ve obviously given this some thought and while some elements of your ideas ‘might’ work I’m afraid it reads a little like a summary of a Political Science essay by a student, theoretically interesting but when expanded upon completely unworkable (in my opinion).
Let’s take your heads of department elected on ‘statistics’…have you never heard the expression, “Lies, damned lies, and statistics” which basically means, “you can make statistics show anything you want” and as someone has to create the statistics in the first place you then have someone potentially influencing the decisions made.
Who decides which decisions need to be voted upon and which don’t? Does a certain percentage of the public need to vote for their opinion to be relevant? You say the average person is uninformed (and you would argue that most of them are informed wrongly by mainstream media) so elected department heads can ignore the public consensus and be judged later upon whether they were right or not (interesting fact, Margaret Thatcher was pilloried for the Poll Tax and yet within 6 years of The Council Tax being adopted instead most people admitted that the Poll Tax was a fairer system).
Your open-source idea makes my head spin as someone who uses a rooted Android phone and sees the ‘open-source’ at work with practically daily alterations to my preferred ROM. Stable governance of a country could not work like that I’m afraid (in my opinion).
Your money / economic policy would cause chaos and whilst the end result is potentially desirable the actions required to get there are so extreme that I don’t know if the country would survive without extreme martial law for a year or two! (Personally I’d rather be out of the country if that happened!).
Anyway, say what you like about the current system but the fact that we can both post away here without fear of a knock-on-the-door shows that we have it a lot better than a lot of countries.
Thanks for your input. Like I said, it’s not perfect but it is at least a system that has a goal continuing self improvement.
Statistics can be manipulated but I would hope that since politicians would be under much higher scrutiny than they are now and there would be significant legal consequences (jail time) for such actions, politicians would be dissuaded from such actions.
I think an open-source type of governance would be suited very well to younger generations. They have been brought up in fast paced ever changing world and seem to be particularly alienated by political system dominated by older men.
My economic policy would be painful. But in the long-term the benefits would be huge. The people who would do the worst out it is probably the people who had done the best from all past governments. Which in my opinion is relatively fair since they left the younger generation a world that is on the brink of a social-financial-environmental collapse (although revenge is not the aim of the ideas).
I believe the only reason we can post and speak so freely is because everything I have suggested will NEVER happen. I know this and the people in power know this. Even if I made a huge career change and decide to devote my life to politics, using all avenues possible to put myself into a position of being able to change something, if I ever brought these ideas up I would be laughed out of my job. It is so far beyond what would ever considered to be acceptable that the average person would never even hear about it. Unfortunately, huge problems need huge solutions, people just don’t see just how deep in shit we are already.
The MOD doesn’t operate a nick of time supply chain, they’re an army FFS they of all people need to be prepared for anything of course they need a stock pile. what if their was a zombie apocalypse tomorrow its not as if they could just pop down to Tesco’s
You can never have too much ammunition or spare parts. Never. If there’s an issue with storing all of these spares just build some extra storage on the many chunks of land the MoD own. I’m sure the RAF has a surplus of hangers laying around especially since the Harrier has been retired and the F35 is years away. In fact why not use HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales as floating storerooms rather than glorified helicopter carriers while they wait for their aircraft compliment to come into service.
The MOD is just a money transfer system from tax to private interests.
Thats why even though they have billions in redundant equipment they cant / could not get body armour to our soldiers.
Those that work in the MOD, not Armed Forces, should feel more than ashamed. they have been responsible for numerous deaths and injuries and through their incompetents and corruption the only people they look after are themselves and the companies that will one day employ them.
Stockpiles are a military necessity and they do tend to buy in bulk. It isn’t unusual for the MoD to buy 10 years of kit in a single year.
You don’t plan for current need, you plan for potential needs. If the supplies are non perishable then I don’t see a good reason why not to store them. Sure some civvi accountant might think its wasteful but they aren’t really qualified to talk about military logistics which is a field of study in its own right.
Sure there is always room for improvements but given almost all the government intervention in the MoD recently has ranged from total balls up to embarrassing blunder they should butt out. The governments quest for MoD cutbacks has led to more wasted funds and errors than it has saved. And it has reduced our effectiveness to defend our own country.
Heaven forbid in the last couple of years there weren’t any uniform stores at all or we would have had soldiers reporting for duty in civilian clothes after the bean counters messed up the orders for new uniforms. For a while it was impossible to get a new shirt or trousers let alone a pair of combat boots.
Wow. This item really did bring out the tin foil hat brigade.
Could they not just sell on some of it, I imagine things like boots/waterproofs/’survival’ gear could be sold to camping retailers/ milsurp outlets.
and he jumped up from behind the counter and shouted, “Supplies !”
I chortled +1 sir.
And funnily enough, this is the only comment on here I feel safe (and sane) replying to.
http://www.mod-sales.com/direct/vehicle/related/44669/Jaguar.htm
The first thing I saw on the website selling off MOD surplus is a brand new 220bhp Jaguar sports saloon car. In gleaming white.
So that was what they were buying instead of body armour!