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Page 2 of the Sunday Telegraph, Is a list of the purposed cuts for the forces. The Services will lose up to 7,000 personnel about 14% of it's strength.The Royal Navy will some 3,000 men and six surface ships, the army is to shed four battalions, 50 Challenger tanks, 50 Warrior APC,
the Army Air Corps could lose it's entire fleet of 118 Gazelle helicopters.
The RAF will lose the last two squadrons of of Jaguars and 39 Puma helicopters plus 79 GR7 Harriers, five air bases and the entire RAF Regiment. The GOOD news is there is not expected to be any cuts in the 120,000 civil servants running the MOD.

Tab

Give it a few more years and our forces will be reduced to one Multirole Warship, One Multirole Army unit and one Multirole Aircraft Sqn. And 250.000 civil servants!

It beggars belief this stupid Government. The forces have never been so stretched as they are at this time. If some foriegn power captured the Isle of Wight we would have to let them have it!

Artist

There is an article in The Sunday Times today (pg2) saying that they are going to axe 1000's of civil service jobs (manly MoD) in order to protect the military. Suposidly the threat to the military was a bluff to get more money out of the treasury.

Tab wrote: The GOOD news is there is not expected to be any cuts in the 120,000 civil servants running the MOD.

That just about sums it up in one!

There are going to be 40,000 cuts in MoD civie staff.

Josh wrote:There are going to be 40,000 cuts in MoD civie staff.

Is this fact or opinion Josh?

What do these cuts mean for those applying to join the armed forces?

Stupid question: Do the personnel being "Let go" receive redundancy payments or an early pension or some other type of financial incentive to get them to quit? Or are they just gonna tell them to pack up and move out of the billets?

day tripper wrote:What do these cuts mean for those applying to join the armed forces?

I'd really like to know the answer to this myself. I'm at the stage where I've just passed my BARB

I was watching Sky News this morning and they were reviewing articles in todays papers. Now I'm not sure what paper it was, but there was a article about the MoD staff getting new £1000 chairs. They are ment to be the most comfortable chairs around, and at that price you would hope so.

So why our forces are losing 50 Challenger tanks, 50 Warrior APC, 18 Gazelle helicopters etc. The MoD staff are getting comfortable new chairs, money will spent....

Keep your eyes skinned today as this is when the spending review is being made.........

Now call me Mr Cynical but the fact that these stories have been appearing for the past few days does make me wonder.

It's called perception and expectations; imagine you have a tenner, you lose a fiver so you are a bit pissed off because now you only have a fiver. Then you find that your other fiver has slipped into the lining of your pocket so you have a tenner again. Result, you are happy because you have not lost anything.

I think that this is the real story here. Brown knows he cannot afford to pump any more money into the armed forces so the Labour party spin machine puts out a story suggesting big cuts. When Brown gets up on his hind legs today for his mini-budget and does not announce any cuts, everyone breathes easier and Brown has essentially given a percieved increase without actually doing anything.

what really grips me is the "spin" ie release some news on the qt
ie "fly a kite" to gauge reaction

the £1000 chairs is just typical

they have got the forces by the bollocks
what senior officer is going to disagree

At the rate they're going I really can't see myself doing more than 6 - 8 years.

Are there any other poltical parties whose policy is not to cut defence spending?