“The Unkindest Cut of All”

By William Spearshake. “This was the most unkindest cut of all”–William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. When is a government cut not a government cut? When it is a piece of political face-saving black propaganda, which in everyday life is generally called “a barefaced lie.”

And, lo and behold, this multi-discredited poor apology for a British government has tried yet again to fool all of the people all of the time with their latest barefaced lie – and as usual, has failed miserably!

Having already decided to increase the waste of bankrupt Britain’s finances by flushing ever more taxpayer’s money down the sewer of foreign aid, the coalition politicians have agreed to balance this by savagely cutting the budget of what, to them, is a pointless and unnecessary relic of the country’s outdated and politically-incorrect past – our armed services.

The news of this stupendous act of national betrayal was presented to the public this week in two versions, which it seems has now become the normal procedure for anything handled by Messrs. Cameron and Clegg. The first version was arranged by their highly paid publicists, the second version which somehow also inadvertently slipped out was the actual truth.

According to the politicians, the British military is to be enhanced by a spend of £1.5 billion spread over the next ten years. It seems, even in the face of scrapping our Harrier fighter squadrons and the Ark Royal carrier a few months ago in order to save money, they expected the general public to actually believe this news and accept it at face value.

However, due doubtless to some freak ministerial oversight, the truth also emerged at about the same time. What is actually going to happen is that the regular armed services will be cut by some 19,000 personnel, and the £1.5 billion is earmarked for spending on increased training for the volunteer reservists of the Territorial Army, to prepare them to replace regular front-line troops who are being axed.

The Territorials are a fine force, make no mistake, and I have immense respect for them. I myself used to be a lieutenant in the Territorials way back in the 70s. However, from their founding in 1908 by the secretary of State for War following the Territorial and Reserve Forces Act of the previous year, their main value and purpose was to supplement the regular forces during periods of conflict.

Now, it seems, the government has decided to use them instead as financial pawns in order to camouflage the shameful radical pruning of our regular armed forces personnel.

Defence secretary Dr. Liam Fox admitted to the House of Commons that by 2012 the volunteer Territorials would actually comprise at least 30% of Britain’s army.

This will result in the cutting of around a fifth of Britain’s entire full-time army and will cut the army by a bigger number of professional soldiers larger than the entire current deployment of all UK forces in Afghanistan.

As Sky News has reported, with a fine eye for historical fact, this plan of Cameron’s and Clegg’s poor excuse for a government means that the British Army will shrink to its smallest size since the Boer War some 110 years ago, with a total strength of just 82,000.

The money saved overall, even accounting for the extra £1.5 billion over 10 years required to train the Territorials for the extra duty, means that the Treasury can now agree to allow the Ministry of Defence to increase its equipment budget by 1% per year over the same period.

This includes the purchase of 14 more Chinook helicopters, which is slightly confusing because we have been reliably informed by the same Government that British forces now at last have no shortage of helicopters, as they did earlier in the Afghan war.

 The Ministry of Defence has anxiously been looking for a good way to fiddle their books since the highly critical defence review of last October.

Now it seems they have found a way to do it, and just in the nick of time, because Liam Fox also had to inform the Commons that apart from the unaccountable vanishing of £38 billion in a “black hole” which was already discovered in the MOD accounts during that review, a further amount of £5 billion has now also been discovered to add to it.

According to Sky News, a “senior defence source” has stated: “We’re pleased to have come to an agreement with Number 10 to fill the gap. Following protracted, lengthy discussions with the Treasury, we will see the departmental black hole wiped out by 2012. This is the first time in the modern age the books will have been balanced.”

 Well, that’s all right then. Cameron’s government has obviously got its priorities in order. As long as the Ministry of Defence can cover up its fiddling and finally balance its books, who cares if the British army is reduced to its smallest number since the reign of Queen Victoria?

The only people who do care are the rest of the population of Britain, and we obviously don’t count as far as Cameron and Clegg are concerned!