In defence of the Republicans. Well, up to a point.

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I know where they’re coming from. Small government is good; big government is bad. I’m totally signed-up to that, and compared with most of the free world, America has one of the smallest governments in terms of how much of the nation’s wealth they tax and spend. At around 27% it compares very well with ours at around 41% in the UK and especially well with an eye-watering 55% in Sweden. At American levels, we in the UK would not have to pay any income tax, and no fuel duty, and no tax on beer, wine and spirits. Joy!

But this isn’t the complete picture. The problem is masked by the size of the American workforce and how productive they are. Here are some figures assembled from different sources, CIA World Fact Book [cols 1,2 & 4 below], Wikipedia Tax Freedom Day data [col 3 below], Adam Smith Institute [tax levels, above].

America has a workforce of almost 155 million people, generating a national income of $15 trillion. The US government spends 27% of it, which works out to be a little under $13,000 per man woman and child of 313 million in the country. I’ve counted the whole population because expenditure covers their needs such as health and education etc whereas the income is generated only by the workforce.

For reference, here’s what the table looks like:

workforce

>

GDP

x

gov’t share

/

population

=

government expenditure per person
USA

154.9m

T$14.66

27%

313.2m

$12,590 pp
UK

31.4m

T$2.17

41%

62.7m

$14,175 pp
Sweden

4.9m

T$0.35

55%

9.1m

$21,155 pp

The comparable story for the UK would be that our workforce, which is about one fifth of America’s in size, generates only about 70% as much national income per worker as their American counterparts. Our government spends a much higher proportion of this smaller amount and this works out to be a little over $14,000 per head of population.

The difference between how much the American government spends and how much the UK government spends is almost $1,600 per head of population. This doesn’t seem to square with the dramatic difference between government expenditure as a proportion of national income and the respective dates for Tax Freedom Day. The reason is as I have already stated, that the American worker is far more productive. His or her productivity makes the American government look practically parsimonious, whereas in reality it’s very nearly as profligate as ours.

So I believe the Republicans have a point when they complain about the level of US government expenditure. It is unacceptably high. High productivity shouldn’t be an excuse for the government to spend more. It is money they haven’t earned.

Where I disagree with the Republican leadership is their approach to dealing with the problem. They want more of the burden to fall on low-income families; they want to protect some tax concessions for the super-rich; and they want to maintain taxes on jobs. And they are using the debt-ceiling crisis as a lever to further their agenda, at whatever cost to the country. Maybe it’s all a big bluff, we will know in a few days time. In the meantime, President Obama has offered some huge concessions on his side that have alarmed and dismayed many of his own supporters, going further in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid than even some Republicans feel comfortable with.

The fact there is a debt ceiling at all and the fact America is in this crisis is a self inflicted injury. But it seems that having shot America in the foot, the Republican leadership want to finish the job and kill the patient.

Their conduct is indefensible.

Defence Select Committee report on operations in Afghanistan

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We’ve read over the last few years some pretty alarming reports in the press about the state of operations in Afghanistan, now we can read an authoritative report from Parliament which has had access to all the relevant papers and interviewed people involved at the highest level. It is a horrifying report.

The Select Committee writes:

“It is unacceptable that UK Forces were deployed in Helmand for three years from 2006 without the necessary personnel, equipment or intelligence to succeed in their mission, says the Defence Committee in its report on Operations in Afghanistan.”

“The Committee is disturbed by the fact that in 2006 the Secretary of State was being told that commanders on the ground were content with the support they were being given in Helmand when clearly they were not.”

Summary of the report

Index to the full report

Here are some further points about what the report says, distilled from an article in the Telegraph:

  • The key failing was to send too small a force into Helmand.
  • The report also criticises senior commanders for sending the task force into Helmand without a strategic reserve force – a move widely regarded as a fundamental and potentially catastrophic military mistake.
  • Troop numbers were capped at 3,150. Of those, around 650 combat troops were deployed into an area half the size of the UK; by contrast, in 2001 NATO had 30,000 personnel in Helmand.
  • The task force deployed with just five Chinooks (heavy-lift helicopters) and just over half the number of vehicles required. Defence chiefs told ministers they had enough helicopters in Helmand even though field commanders complained of shortages. It was deployed without a single vehicle capable of surviving a strike from a Russian anti-tank mine or larger IEDs.
  • The lack of armoured vehicles meant convoys could not safely travel the vast distances over which troops were spread without sustaining heavy casualties, and within weeks of their arrival, British troops were trapped in isolated locations and engaged in daily battles.
  • The 75-page report does not name officers but those in positions of authority at the time included Gen Sir Mike Walker, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, Gen Sir Mike Jackson and Gen Sir Richard Dannatt.

The full article in the Telegraph

My own view is that none of this comes as a surprise. We read all about this as it was happening, but it still comes as a shock to see our worst suspicions confirmed and to see how little the reality on the ground affected those at the Ministry of Defence whose incompetence created the shambles in the first place, and whose only response seems to have been to tell lies and cover it all up. As the Telegraph observes, the report names no names, but the four four-star officers named above presided over a monumental military cock-up that has cost 370 lives and counting, and more than 2000 wounded.

Surely there has to be some accounting for their conduct? Just how incompetent do you have to be to lose out on another promotion? Just how negligent do you have to be to lose out on another appearance in the Honours List?  Just how many servicemen do you have to kill before you lose your job?

Dishonouring the Dead

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Air Marshal Sir John Day and Air Chief Marshall Sir William Wratten should hang their heads in shame.

The respect in which our Service men and women are held by the public at large is quite remarkable. Royal Wootten Bassett earned the gratitude of the nation and its “Royal” title because of the touching acts of respect residents showed to the fallen returning from Afghanistan, whose hearses by chance used to pass through their quiet town. The contempt in which the Ministry of Defence is held is equally remarkable. The MOD is an institution which has under-performed in spectacular style and has displayed gross incompetence, deceitfulness, and petty bickering on a staggering scale. It deals in denial, cover-up and blame shifting.

In 1994, an RAF Chinook helicopter crashed on the Mull of Kintyre, killing the crew of four and all twenty five passengers. It was described as “the largest peace time tragedy that the Royal Air Force had suffered”. The cause of the crash could not be determined by the Air Accident Investigation Branch, nor by an RAF Board of Inquiry who did not find the pilots, Flight Lieutenants Jonathan Tapper and Richard Cook, negligent. Nor was negligence found by the civilian Fatal Accident Enquiry. This was because there was no evidence that they were.

The RAF Manual of Flight Safety AP 3207 published by the Inspectorate of Flight Safety and in force at the time of the accident provided in paragraph 9 of Annex G to Chapter 8 that “only in cases in which there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever should deceased air crew be found negligent”.

This strict rule did not trouble the AOC 1 Group and the C-in-C Strike Command, both of whom were required to give a final review of the Board of Inquiry into the crash. Despite there being no facts to support him, AVM Day concluded that both pilots were negligent to a gross degree and ACM William Wratten agreed with him.

What is known is that the Chinook was a deeply troubled aircraft with a history of mysterious faults that would show up during flight but be untraceable on later inspection. A report two years previous to the crash had cast doubt on the airworthiness of the Chinook fleet. And a House of Lords Select Committee which also investigated the crash in 2002 covered all this in great depth and included this telling account in their report:

Witness A, who was a member of the Special Forces Flight with considerable experience of flying Chinooks operationally, had, at the time of the accident, experienced intermittent engine fail captions on a reasonably regular basis. He had subsequently experienced torque mismatches on an intermittent basis. Pilots were instructed that if the failed captions remained on for more than 12 seconds they were to be treated as though something was wrong with the engine but if they stayed on for less than that time they could be ignored. When a caption came on in flight one of the crew was directed to check engine instrumentation and the engine itself.

Witness A also had personal experience of UFCMs in Chinook Mk1s. In one case over a period of days an aircraft bounced vertically every time it was turned right. Repeated unsuccessful attempts were made to find the cause and the problem eventually disappeared of its own accord. In another case in daylight the lights came on to maximum intensity, dimmed to minimum and the hydraulic gauges cycled between zero and maximum. The pilot reported that the aircraft was becoming difficult to control and Witness A ordered him to land at the first available opportunity. The subsequent engineering investigation found no fault.

In answer to a question as to how much the unforeseen malfunctions occurring in the Chinook Mk2 since its introduction were a matter of discussion among helicopter pilots, he answered,

“They occupied our minds to a great degree, crew room talk was of little else at the time. The crews felt extremely uneasy about the way the aircraft had been introduced into service. This perception was reinforced by the lack of information contained in the aircrew manual, the poor state of repair of the flight reference cards and such like as well”

The full report can be read here.

In all these years the MOD have maintained the line that the crash was caused by the gross negligence of the pilots when there is no evidence whatsoever to support that line, and plenty of evidence to suggest a failure on the aircraft may have been the cause.

The MOD in this matter have displayed every aberrant behaviour that has earned it the contempt of the public, but Day and Wratten plumbed new depths in blaming two hapless pilots in order to deflect criticism from the MOD.

Do the Greeks know something about democracy we don’t know?

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They gave us democracy, it says so in the history books, but look what we’ve done with it since. We’ve created bloated governments that tax the life out of us, wrap us up in red tape and all too often run rough shod over our civil liberties. Part of the “problem” in Greece is that everyone hates the government; people don’t pay taxes and they ignore pesky laws and regulations when it suits them – which is almost always. That extends to those in government too, it seems.

Maybe they’re reminding us how democracy works?

Maybe if we believe in small government and low taxes we should live the dream too?

Maybe the “problem” is really the “solution”?

However I don’t believe that rioting in the streets is the way to go. It’s self-defeating. You can get yourself beaten over the head with police batons and choke on tear gas ’til the cows come home, but will those who run the EU be in the slightest bit inconvenienced? Not a bit of it. The EU is institutionally immune to criticism. It has a president nobody votes for and a cabinet full of wastrels splashing tax-payers’ money around with abandon. There is no accounting either literally or morally, and certainly not electorally. The EU is a travesty of a democracy and Manuel Barroso has as much democratic legitimacy as Vlad the Impaler.

The reality is, there is no democratic redress available to us.

We are all Greeks in this Tragedy.

BLT: Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato? No, Botulism, Listeria and Toxoplasma

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Frankenstein’s food laboratories have excelled again: they’ve created a sandwich that stays fresh for fourteen days. Of course, that’s stretching the meaning of the word “fresh” somewhat but it brings a renewed challenge to Gerald Ratner who once said that his shops sold earrings that were cheaper than an M&S prawn sandwich “but probably wouldn’t last as long”. Now the food technologists have raised the bar and Ratner must up his game.

I don’t doubt that the new, if that’s the right word, sandwiches taste “fresh”, my concern is what has been done to the components to make them last that long. Natural foods go off for a reason. It’s nature’s way of saying “Don’t eat me” because what made it wholesome in the first place has now gone and the bad stuff has taken over. We know and understand how we can slow that process down naturally, by freezing it for instance, but even so we can still lose some of the goodness. Other ways are less benign. Adding chemicals to preserve food is adding potentially harmful substances and we won’t know for sure whether or not they’re harmful until we’ve been consuming them for a decade or two.

I would also like to understand whether the new process merely masks the tell-tale evidence of rotted food, fooling our senses into thinking that it is still “fresh”. Just because they’ve stopped a sandwich from curling doesn’t mean it’s safe to eat. Frankly, I’d rather trust my senses than the food technologists because they have an abysmal track record in food safety and food preservation.

This story reminds me of another great innovation, the tin can. Nobody thought that was a problem until explorers and sailors started dying from lead poisoning caused by the solder leaching lead into the can’s contents. We’ve made the very same mistake again in modern times. We used to think wrapping food in clingfilm was safe enough, but we now know that plasticisers aren’t good to eat and the early products were banned because they can cause cancer. Millions of people used to wrap food in clingfilm and cook it in a microwave, that’s how ignorant we were.

Or more to the point, that’s how ignorant the food technologists were.

The US Supreme Court rules that ignorance of the law is an excuse

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Nearly fifty years ago the US Supreme Court ruled in Brady v Maryland that prosecutors were required to turn over to the defense any evidence favourable to the accused and material to his guilt or punishment. The so-called Brady requirements. The Court has now undermined those requirements in Connick v Thompson by finding that a District Attorney’s office was not liable for failing to train its lawyers about this duty. In other words, inexperienced lawyers recruited into the DA’s office straight from law school were able to suppress evidence that would have proved the innocence of an accused man and the DA, who himself didn’t understand what Brady required, and others on his staff who didn’t know or didn’t care about it either, have been exonerated by the Supreme Court.

It means that an important protection against injustice has been removed because while the law stipulates the Brady requirements, it doesn’t seem to matter if lawyers don’t know about them or their scope and nobody makes any effort to train them about what they need to know.

It’s not a purely academic matter as the astonishing details of the case reveal.

Thompson was arrested for a murder he did not commit, despite bearing no resemblance to the eyewitness description of the killer. When his photo appeared in the newspapers after the arrest, the father of three siblings who had been the victims of an armed robbery showed the photo to his children who identified him as their attacker. They then went to the police station where the children picked out an identical photo of Thompson in a “photographic lineup”.

In the scuffle that took place during the robbery, some blood from the attacker stained the trouser leg of one of the victims. This stain was found to be blood type “B”. Thompson was type “O”.

The date for Thompson’s murder trial had already been set, but the DA’s office switched the order because they had a plan. He was to be tried for the robbery first with the deliberate intention that his conviction would prevent him from taking the stand in his own defence at the murder trial. Furthermore, a lengthy prison sentence for a robbery conviction would be used as grounds to demand the death penalty for the murder. This strategy worked. And as Justice Ginsburg wrote in dissenting:

During jury deliberations in the armed robbery case, Williams, the only Orleans Parish trial attorney common to the two prosecutions, told Thompson of his objective in no uncertain terms: “I’m going to fry you. You will die in the electric chair.”

Thompson spent 18 years in prison, 14 of them in an isolation cell on death row, and came within a month of his execution before a private detective found the first piece of missing evidence, the results of the blood test. Not only had the DA’s attorneys failed to notify the defense of the blood test, but they removed the sample and later destroyed it. That would have cleared him of the robbery charge.

In the murder trial that followed, they withheld the eyewitness statement which described a different man as well as tape recordings of another witness negotiating with the family of the murder victim who had offered a reward, and evidence that the other key prosecution witness (who was most likely the real killer) had given contradictory statements to the police. Thompson was never able to challenge any of that because he didn’t know about it despite the Brady rules requiring that his defense attorney must be told. He was stitched up.

He was sentenced to 49.5 years without parole for the robbery, and as a result the DA was able to urge that with a near-life sentence already, the only way to punish him for the murder was with the death penalty. The DA and his trial attorneys had every reason to believe that Thompson was innocent on both counts.

Despite a catalogue of Brady violations over a twenty year period, the Supreme Court has ruled that this was a one-off, not a routine practise. The vote was 5-4 that the DA was not liable for failing to train his lawyers.

The DA’s ignorance of the law apparently excuses his attorneys’ ignorance of the law. The Supreme Court says so.

The Majority finding can be read here.

The Dissent opinion can be read here.

Defence Reform: A welcome report from Lord Levene

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I have to say I am very impressed with the Defence Reform report produced by Lord Levene and his team. It can be downloaded and read in full here. It is a report that examines the way the MOD is managed, rather than the usual report that looks only at how many ships, tanks and planes we think we need. They have consulted with a commendably wide range of informed sources both within the MOD of course, but externally as well including with foreign defence departments, academics, think tanks, even trade unions, and also including some of the MOD’s staunchest critics.

However I have a few bones of contention with the report.

My first concern is the time scale over which they envisage reforms taking place. It is far too long. They recommend that a Defence Reform Steering Group should reconvene on an annual basis for the next three years. The urgency of the situation surely dictates that they should reconvene quarterly for the next twelve months. Potentially disastrous decisions are already being taken and more will be taken before the reforms are in place. The harm that is being done must be minimised so we need to end the old way of doing business and have the new model established as a matter of urgency. The most ambitious time scale must be adopted.

That leads me to my second concern.

There is deep and widespread criticism of the SDSR. This is a plan that has been put together by what most commentators agree is a dysfunctional organisation that has made catastrophically bad decisions all of which this report acknowledges. Why on earth is the discredited SDSR still being implemented? It is the product of bitter inter-Service rivalry and a lack of strategic thought. It must be halted immediately, and any decisions that irrevocably removes military capabilities must be reversed. Nothing should happen until the newly reformed MOD is up and running and can make its own decisions based on a rational appraisal of balanced military need. A new SDSR should be drawn up within a year of the reforms being completed.

My third concern is about money.

The drive for reform is made critical because of the calamitous mismanagement of the economy by Labour during their thirteen years in power. The country is broke, and Defence is broker if I can put it that way. The discovery of a ten billion pound black hole in the Defence budget merely adds to the sense of disgust. But it is not feasible for an organisation to build a new structure while burdened with the costs of the old. If the new structure is to be trimmed to suit what little is left in the budget, it is doomed to start off in a state of crisis from which it may never recover. This point was not addressed in the report, despite many recommendations that have cost implications. If the coalition government is serious about Defence, it needs to ensure it is viable. Colossal sums of money were made available at the drop of a hat to bail out the financial sector, something of far less importance. Defence only needs a fraction of that amount to help it get through this crisis and it should be given that bail-out.

Which leads to my fourth concern.

Punish the guilty. No one can read the litany of incompetence and downright deceitfulness that has characterised the Labour government in general and the management of the Ministry of Defence in particular and not be angry. Yet all those involved have gone on to receive honours and accolades when, with the example of the House of Commons expenses scandal fresh in our minds, some of them should be going to jail. I would like to see another team formed to investigate every decision and assess the culpability of all those involved. It is clear, even at a cursory examination, that the best interests of the country were not being served by those appointed to positions of trust. Subverting the Defence of the Realm must still be an offence whatever the motives and the guilty should be identified and prosecuted. At the very least, contracts must be cancelled where there has been improper conduct or they have been unlawfully signed.

Dare I say the US Supreme Court is bad for America?

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I must confess to having some trouble understanding “free speech” as it applies in America. I know most Americans see it as a fundamental right, it’s in the Constitution after all, albeit as an afterthought. It’s as zealously defended by its supporters as those who zealously defend the right to bear arms. It’s an absolute with no exceptions. So it’s deemed an infringement on free speech to stop protesters picketing at funerals for military personnel and causing deep upset to those mourning their loss. It’s also an infringement on free speech to stop drug manufacturers buying patient records to use in sales and marketing campaigns without the consent of the patients. And it’s an infringement on free speech to prevent a corporation spending as much money as it likes to influence the outcome of an election.

The US Supreme Court has in the past year ruled all of those things and more besides. It has seized the free speech agenda with a vengeance and ridden rough-shod over any other right whenever they come in conflict. I think these rulings are ill-founded and are doing great harm to America. I know from my experience debating on forums that free speech does not extend to criticising free speech. If I imply that free speech should be used responsibly in the same way that guns or alcohol should be used responsibly, my right to free speech is curtailed. It seems that urging responsibility is irresponsible. I don’t believe there is a right to incite racial hatred, or for paedophiles to groom children, or to tell barefaced lies. But to say so seems to be denying the right of free speech to others.

The problem, it seems to me, is that while the US Constitution created three distinct branches of government – the legislature, executive, and judiciary – the judiciary has strayed too far into creating law instead of interpreting and applying it. Thus the Supreme Court makes rulings that are apparently contrary to what the people wish for, it grants rights where the Constitution never intended a right to be granted, and it removes rights which the Constitution intended should be protected. The most abstruse definitions of “free speech” are employed to trump all other rights and privileges. Take for example, the decision to invalidate a California law intended to regulate the sale of violent video games to children. Where does protecting children come in the Constitution? Nowhere, according to the Supreme Court, and doing so infringes on children’s right to free speech.

I’m not making it up, that’s the reason they gave.

Does it matter whether Aung San Suu Kyi likes us or not?

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When John Simpson interviewed Burma’s pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi last November, the most striking thing about her was her English accent. It was very old-school received pronunciation, exactly what one used to hear on the BBC World Service years ago, all prim and proper. She explained to him at the time that she listened to the BBC a lot while she was under house arrest, and she elaborated on the topic in the Telegraph yesterday. According to Aung San Suu Kyi: my love for the Hairy Cornflake, she particularly enjoyed listening to music which, she laments, is not often heard on the service any more.

The reason for that, I suspect, and for the timing of the interview, becomes clearer with today’s story: BBC World Service receives £2.2m funding boost. The World Service has been subjected to a massive 16% budget cut, on top of many cutbacks in services over the years. One such cut, I would guess, is to play less music and pay less in royalties which would be why Ms Suu Kyi can’t hear any any more. As well as cutting expenditure, the World Service is also cutting its workforce by a whopping 25% and dropping still more language services. All of this is deeply depressing. But it must be good news that William Hague has found £2.2 million to give a boost to the World Service, surely? Not really. A 16% cut on a budget of £270 million is £43.2 million. Giving the corporation £2.2 million back still leaves it £41 million down. That £2.2 million is much less than 1%. It’s chicken feed.

When I lived in Germany, I used to listen to the World Service regularly, it was my strongest link back to England. Ex-pats are inordinately attached to the traditions of their native land and I can still hear Lillibullero, that jaunty, bouncing melody that introduced the news at One o-clock each day with more than a twinge of nostalgia. Not parochial news from and about England, but truly world news, events that were shaping the world we lived in that most of my compatriots back home would be blissfully ignorant of. You can hear the tune here.

What the World Service does for us and our standing in the world is enormous, but the benefits are all intangibles. And that’s a problem in this balance-sheet driven world; the World Service doesn’t make a profit for us. Last year there were 188 million listeners and audiences in Persian, Urdu and Arabic are increasing. What built it’s reputation is that from the start the news was written and presented by serious journalists, the best in the business for objectivity, it wasn’t “British propaganda”, it was honest and unbiased news reportage. Listeners across the world, particularly in oppressed states, could tune in to hear the news in their own language about what was going on in their own country. They did not have to believe what their rulers were telling them.

In an age when Facebook and Twitter can be used to stir revolution, the BBC World Service is still a significant force for good. So does it matter that Aung San Suu Kyi likes us? With respect, no. It’s good that she shares values with us, but what matters more is that dictators the world over don’t like us because we are able to talk directly to their people and tell them the truth.

Isn’t truth supposed to be mightier than the sword?

£25 Billion Bail-out for Britain’s Military

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The government announced a £500 billion bail-out for Britain’s banking system in October 2008, extended with a further £50 billion in January 2009.

We need to do something equally urgent and equally dramatic about our defence forces because they are in serious peril. We need a bail-out to give immediate relief from the demands for cutbacks, to cover the added expenditure of unplanned operations called for by the government, to halt the scrapping of vitally needed weapons systems, and especially, to stop the redundancies.

I know there isn’t an area of government where deep cuts are massively unpopular and often demonstrably harmful. I know that. Yet because of the disaster that was thirteen years of New Labour profligacy, coupled with crass incompetence, those deep cuts must be made and if anything, made deeper.

But defence is a special case because we’re at war right now and calling on the army, navy and air force to deliver above and beyond the call of duty on two fronts. They are already suffering the ill-effects of previous cutbacks and the catastrophic mismanagement at the Ministry of Defence over the last couple of decades. They can’t take it any more.

We were the nation that could launch an armada at 48 hours notice to sail eight thousand miles to the south Atlantic and liberate the Falkland Islands, and do that against an enemy operating close to their homeland, equipped with modern weapons and with ample time to prepare their defences. We were the nation that was second only to the military might of the USA when liberating Kuwait from Sadaam Hussein as a key player in a multi-national alliance. We are not that nation any more.

The shambles of procurement means that new weapon systems are delivered late and massively over budget. Some are only run to completion because the cost of cancellation was prohibitively high thanks to penalty clauses. Who was in charge when such contracts were signed? How was this allowed to happen? Other contacts, presumably without penalties to protect them, are cancelled leaving us without vital operational capability.

I applaud those senior officers who are now speaking out about the strain the operations over Libya in particular are causing, on top of the climate of cutbacks and uncertainties in general.

Here is a very depressing speech given by Vice Admiral Sir Jeremy Blackham (retired). It’s depressing because it confirms from first-hand knowledge what we have suspected all along. Here’s one point he makes: “We are used to the comforting and rather romantic thought that our forces are world class, and that we are military leaders in Europe. I believe this is no longer the case. As just one piece of evidence the French, now indubitably the leading European military power, have flown three times as many sorties in Libya as the RAF.” And even that level is unsustainable.

There may be hope on the horizon if Liam Fox, the Defence Secretary can bring about the degree of organisational restructuring that is needed, here’s his business plan.

We must also hope that The Defence Reform Unit under Lord Levene will also propose meaningful reforms. Unfortunately, it’s not clear who they are taking their advice from and there is very little to be discovered in the public domain, here’s an introduction on the MoD web site.

Clearly they must have a period of open consultation where experienced and reform-minded individuals can tell them in no uncertain terms what is needed, otherwise they’ll only get their input from the vested interests who are already in the MoD. I can’t see anywhere that says they will do this, and they are due to report by the end of July – in a few weeks time – so someone needs to rattle their cage. Here’s my shortlist of who they ought to invite to talk to them: Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Graydon, Lieutenant General Sir Henry Beverley, Vice Admiral Sir Jeremy Blackham, Major General Sir Patrick Cordingley, Major General Julian Thompson, Air Commodore Andrew Lambert, Colonel Tim Collins, Commander John Muxworthy, Antony Hitchens, Allen Sykes, Andy Smith.

We must have serious reforms in place to justify the bail-out. We must have that bail-out.