Gordon lies to troops

GORDON Brown reacted to the Army chief’s plea for a troops pay rise yesterday – but failed to promise cash.

The Prime Minister said soldiers’ efforts would be “recognised” and “rewarded”.

He was speaking after General Sir Richard Dannatt told The Sun troops were getting a poor deal on pay.

Gen Dannatt compared the pay of junior service personnel with traffic wardens and said he would like to see above-inflation rises.

Mr Brown said: “I recognise the huge contribution our Armed Forces make and we will continue to try to reward them for the dedication and commitment they show, often in very difficult theatres of war.

You will continue to try to reward them? You mean you have been trying? I would hate to see you not trying to reward them. I don’t think you have rewarded them once even though they are fighting two wars and have to make budget cuts at the same time.

If you are rewarding them why have you given them a part time cabinet minister who recently justified their low wages labelling them unemployable in real life. That’s hardly rewarding them. Infact it’s insulting them.

Traffic wardens earn more than soldiers

General Sir Richard Dannatt, the head of the Army, has called for a pay rise for soldiers after discovering traffic wardens get paid more than those on the frontline.

He said the question of pay was the most important issue facing the Armed Forces today.

More than 20,000 personnel left the Forces last year, many citing the poor salary as their reason. The lowest paid soldiers are on just £12,572 a year while traffic wardens receive a basic salary of £17,000. Servicemen and women were given a pay rise of just 2.6 this year.

How could our armed forces be paid so little for doing so much when traffic wardens get paid so much? The government has the money they just choose to spend it on frivolous projects like spending hundreds of millions of pounds on helicopters that can’t fly when it rains. How stupid are our leaders?

Military compensation

In this country hurt feelings and soar thumbs are much worse than losing your legs or that’s how it would seem when the soldier who has his legs blown off receives less money than if he had his feeling hurt or a soar thumb.

Ben Parkinson volunteered to serve his country on the Afghan front line - and paid a terrible price.

The young paratrooper suffered a total of 37 terrible injuries when he was blown up by a landmine.

He lost both his legs and sustained grievous damage to his spine, skull, pelvis, hands, spleen and ribcage, leaving him in a coma for months.

For his troubles he received £152,150 in compensation while a ministry of defence typist received £484,000 for a soar thumb. A transsexual paratrooper received £250,000 after some soldiers hurt its feelings after calling it names…

By the time you reach secondary school you should be able handle being called names. It’s about time these people grow up.

Soldiers having a holiday in Iraq?

While in Iraq our troops are living in tents on bases which are constantly bombarded. On the bright side these troops have better living conditions than they do at home.

The Commons defence committee says repairs take too long, standards of service are "unacceptably poor", and the situation is exacerbated by "an alarming lack of recognition at senior levels that these problems are more than minor difficulties". Unless significant improvements are made soon, service men and women will be forced to live in sub-standard accommodation "for many years to come", the cross-party committee says.

The government is doing everything it can to damage the armed forces. Is it any wonder that many leave the armed services because the government does not value them? The government should get their act together and give the military what it needs including decent living conditions for them and their families.

Spend the money on our soldiers

The Ministry of Defence seems to be wasting a lot of money which could have been spent on our troops giving them better equipment and safer places to sleep. The government does those things on the cheap though.

I have already blogged that the MoD has wasted £2.3 billion on consultants who consult them on many areas including public relations. Now I have read today that some of their defence projects are £2.6 billion over budget and are many years behind schedule. These two instances amount to almost £5 billion in waste.

This money could be spent giving our troops helicopters or giving them better accommodation rather than having them sleep in flimsy tents in a base which is constantly bombarded and which offers very little protection while the bureaucrats sleep in buildings which have very little chance of being destroyed.

Afghan troops face new enemy

Taliban fanatics have been making "hate calls" to the UK homes and relatives of soldiers serving in Afghanistan.

Senior commanders believe they get the numbers either by monitoring troops' mobile phone calls or from staff at Afghan phone companies.

The wife of one RAF officer was told: "You'll never see your husband alive - we have just killed him."

It was some hours before officials could confirm that her husband was still safe and well. All troops serving in southern Afghanistan have now been banned from carrying mobile phones.

Soldiers in Iraq can keep their phones but have been warned to keep their use to a minimum.

This is bad and it is about to get a lot worse for our soldiers in Afghanistan because the Taliban are teaching children as young as 6 to kill our soldiers. I don’t know about our soldiers but I wouldn’t relish the thought of killing someone so young and brainwashed.

Soldiers will get free post

Soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq seem to be having a bit of good news for a change lately. On Saturday the government announced that they are going to conduct an Afghan medal review to see if they should give a special medal to those serving in Iraq.

Today, there is more good news with the news that soldiers and their families and friends will get free post which is bound to boost morale.

Afghan envoys get pool while our troops go thirsty

With all the stories in the papers about the military lately you would be forgiven for thinking that our soldiers are neglected by our government but apparently they are not. Our armed forces minister thinks the government is doing their best for the armed forces.

If the government are doing their best it is strange to find out that the Foreign Office spent tens of thousands of pounds on an 18 metre pool and gym for their bureaucrats in their embassy in Afghanistan. It takes an estimated 50,000gallons of water to fill - enough to supply soldiers fighting the Taliban in the southern Helmand Province with 750,000 250ml bottles of water.

MoD to conduct Afghan medal review

A senior officer is to head a committee to review whether a special honour should be given to soldiers fighting ferocious battles in Afghanistan, defence sources said yesterday.

While the MoD initially refused to consider the idea, Army sources said the ministry was now "taking this matter seriously".

A committee, chaired by a three-star ranked officer, a lieutenant general or equivalent rank, "has been formed to look at the issue".

This is atleast a step in the right direction from a government who normally can’t do anything right but then again they were bound to get something right eventually. I can’t see a senior army officer refusing to give his men a medal.

Gurkha given £100 and told to piss off

It has only been a few days since I last blogged about our military but they are still being treated with utter contempt, not that I thought anything would change in just a few days.

While they seem to do everything they can to destroy the British military they seem to have a special hate for the Gurkhas. After 18 years of service you would think that our government would be grateful to this Gurkha. No such luck I’m afraid. He was given a payoff of a measly £100 and a pension of around £130 per month. This is despite being badly injured and living in this country. He was also evicted and made homeless after the Ministry of Defence told him "We need your room back." Such callous disregard for those who have served this country for us is disgusting and we should be ashamed.

The ministry of defence decided to close the military hospitals and then some bright spark came up with the idea that it would be a good idea to give them their very own ward in a hospital. Sadly it’s only one ward in the entire country which is now official overcrowded, but it would be if there are only 14 beds in the entire country and there have been 145 servicemen flown back from Afghanistan and Iraq. There are bound to be more wanting one of those 14 beds in the future especially as ministers have been accused of covering up the real casualty figures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If I was thinking about joining the military I would think again. The government have shown that they couldn’t give a shit about military personnel. They have also shown that they are idiots as they have sold their hospitals while there are wars going on.

Government reject new medal for Afghanistan vets

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have shown the heroism of our armed forces and the length that our soldiers will go to so that they can help out their comrades. Army captain David Hicks continued fighting a Taliban attack despite suffering agonising injuries that would later kill him. He showed true heroism, refusing to abandon his men and doing his best to keep them alive.

There have been calls for a new medal to recognise the heroism of British troops in the Afghan warzone. The government have rejected this which is probably a kick in the teeth to many who are fighting for their lives in Afghanistan. This can’t be good for morale which is already low. The government won’t even do the little things that might improve morale. Some think that families of soldiers shouldn’t have to pay to send food parcels to troops and I think they are right. This might improve their morale but they would have to stop losing the food parcels first.

War on terror not going too well

The war on terror isn’t going too well for us. It’s particularly bad in Afghanistan as our troops are being killed at such a rate that, were it to continue, one in 36 would not survive a six-month tour of the country. These troops also face the possibility that while they are on tour their pay will be docked which is an efficient way of destroying morale amongst troops especially when some weren’t paid for weeks.

The war on terror is being further hampered by an exodus of officers from the Intelligence Corps, with 20 per cent departing in the past three years. Is it any wonder they are leaving in droves when we treat our troops worse than something we find on the bottom of our shoe? The exodus of experienced officers has meant that inexperienced officers are handling things they should not be handling which is damaging the fight against terror.

The government is of course the one to blame as they are treating our soldiers badly. The only way to keep the experienced officers is to pay them a decent wage and handle things the way that they think they should be handled as they have the experience so they know how it should be handled.

Labour silencing opposition

Now that the postal workers have been silenced the government is now focusing on silencing the military. The government have banned service personnel from speaking publicly about their service. Soldiers, sailors and airforce personnel will not be able to blog, take part in surveys, speak in public, post on bulletin boards, play in multi-player computer games or send text messages or photographs without the permission of a superior if the information they use concerns matters of defence.

No doubt this is to stop people finding out how bad this government treats people in the army. In the future we may not be able to find out such things like the fact that one in five soldiers are mentally distressed or that we could be in Afghanistan for another 38 years.

Whatever it is the government don’t want you to know about in. Gordon Brown hates any opposition and will do anything to keep any criticism silent. If he was actually doing his job right he wouldn’t need to make this order.

Afghan victory 'could take 38 years'

British troops could remain in Afghanistan for more than the 38 years it took them to pull out of Northern Ireland. That is the bleak assessment by Army commanders on the ground in Helmand province.

In an interview with The Observer at HQ in the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, Brigadier John Lorimer, commander of UK forces in Helmand, said: 'If you look at the insurgency then it could take maybe 10 years. Counter-narcotics, it's 30 years. If you're looking at governance and so on, it looks a little longer. If you look at other counter-insurgency operations over the last 100 years then it has taken time.'

Why can’t we just leave now? Afghanistan has nothing to do with us and is taking its toll on soldiers and the country as a whole. 1 in 5 soldiers are already under stress. This is only going to increase with staying there longer which will completely destroy our fighting capabilities. We are also paying £31 a second for the Iraq war yet none are showing us any benefits. Isn’t it about time we left rather than spending billions more and destroying our army?

Mental problems double among Iraq troops

The number of troops suffering psychiatric disorders including post-traumatic stress, mood swings, and drink and drug problems appears to have doubled in the past year.

The scale of mental health problems suffered by troops in Iraq and Afghanistan is revealed in an official study by the Defence Analytical Services Agency.

It says that every month more than 150 members of the Armed Forces who have served in Iraq are being diagnosed with mental health problems.

They don’t actually say the number of suffering from mental problems but in March I blogged that there were more than 2000 troops with mental problems and we only have 13 psychiatrists for the whole of our armed services. No doubt the numbers are much higher than 2000 now.

3 gurkhas per week refused entry into UK

Remember Tul Bahadur Pun the Gurkha who was eventually allowed into Britain? After reading that I was curious about the treatment of Gurkhas so I sent off a request to the foreign office to ask about how many Gurkhas applied to come to Britain. Their response was that I didn’t specify the country so it would be too expensive to find the information but they would try to be helpful and get the info from Kathmandu where the bulk of the Gurkhas are from.

As people who request information from the government will know the government is never helpful when you get things wrong and they do their best to not give you any information so I was surprised that they gave me the information. Maybe the civil servants want it to be publicised? Or maybe it’s just the way the foreign office does it?

To cut a long story short since 1988 there have been 1984 applications from Gurkhas that have been turned down for them and their dependents. There are many more than that though. The Gurkhas can also apply under Armed Forces Concession. Under Armed Forces Concession there have been 2840 applications and 1196 of them have been refused. That is not the final say though. They also have an appeal. 414 Gurkhas are still in the appeals process and there have been 48 applications for appeal that have been withdrawn by the Gurkha himself, the reason wasn’t made clear

This means that in the last 19 years there has been 3180 Gurkhas that have been refused entry to the UK. This means that around 167 Gurkhas are refused entry into the UK every year or making it simpler it is around 3 per week.