Thank God they’re not running a war

Geoffrey

Normally August is the silly season, but August 2009 is turning out to be a vintage year as it contains a veritable roll-call of tripe barrelling the Labour Party into oblivion.

Red Rag

"Battlin’ Bob et al can’t even pull-off a straightforward political smear." Not anywhere like the Tories who use the puppets and prostitutes in the UK media to do their groundwork for them.

Andy Leeds

They are a pair of idiots. Just shows what the moral standards are like in the Labour Party when these two morons get up to this sort of thing. I hope we have a General Election in the next 2 months and can send this scum packing.

Moraymint

As usual with our disgraceful Labour Government, this matter absolutely stinks.

As a retired commissioned officer myself, I'm familiar with senior officers' entertainment activities and budgets. In my 20 years experience, there was no question that such 'entertainment' was without exception wholly and exclusively in pursuit of senior officers' duties. Few of today's politicians have the faintest idea of how the armed forces work in practice and the culture of honour, loyalty and trust that pervades the 3 service organisations. A culture quite alien to our political class.

Politicians, on the other hand, would appear to think nothing of thieving taxpayers' money to fund their grotesque lifestyles.

The British people are surely now absolutely sick to death of the Labour Party in Government?

My concern is that the other Parties instil little confidence in those of us looking for sunlit uplands beyond the gangsters and shysters currently clinging to office.

Fred

Kevan Jones and Comrade Ainsworth are not fit to smell the steam off General Dannattâ™s piss.

strapworld

Incompetence is a word which is insufficient to describe both these individuals.

Both promoted well above their capabilities, (which goes for every member of the Brown Cabinet)!

When we learn that a report, which condemns the MOD for the manner in which money for equipment for the armed services is wasted, was hidden from the people. That shows that these people are beneath contempt.

But when lives are shattered, bodies blown apart by bombs, limbs, eyes, brains, lost. Families shattered. Wives widowed, children orphaned in this mess called Afghanistan. It is more than incompetence it is criminal.

I believe what they tried to do to General Dannant is akin to treason.

I have no time for Cameron. But I do hope he follows public opinion and promises to bring our troops home and to have a full Royal Commission into both the Iraq War and Afghanistan. And to identify those that should face criminal charges.

That can be the only way to ensure that these malcontents never hold a public position ever again.

Don

".....Never in the field of human conflict has so much been run so badly, by so few....."
If only t'were true. But sadly the MOD has more staff than the Army. It takes a certain sort of genius to be as bad as these clowns are.

Barman at The Red Lion, Whitehall.

@ Red Rag

"Not anywhere like the Tories who use the puppets and prostitutes in the UK media to do their groundwork for them."

Sorry chum, I think you will find that is actually the domain of Labour's finest such as Campbell, Mandelson, Draper etc. - with, of course, undying support from the BBC (or 'Pravda', as it is now better known in the UK)...

Moraymint

Fred - a very eloquent comment, sir.

James J

Imagine a government made up of former Student Union Activists with virtually no experience outside politics...

Olaf Rye

It is amazing that the politicians feel that the public would side with them, rather than a senior office commanding troops in a war. Their conceit and vanity are matched only by their ignorance and venality. It is nonetheless nice to see that the monstrosity of this sordid affair does not register with the good old Labour apparatchniks and apologists like Red Rag.

Austin Barry

Hey, Red Rag, bull.

Nicholas

Re Gray MoD report (the one New Labour held back until the recess): "However, ministers have now said that it will "feed in" to the forthcoming defence green paper, to be published early next year, which will pave the way for a full-scale strategic defence review once the general election is out of the way."

Curious wording that - "once the general election is out of the way".

I concur with Moraymint and continue to be amazed that these malevolent charlatans cling on and deny the country what it so desperately wants - a general election and a change of government.

Agent Digby

Labour (and Brown in particular) have no affinity with the military - it comes from their formative love affairs with communism and international socialism - creeds that detest the decent military traditions of the west.

Tankus

Procurement seems to be a disaster zone. £35bn in the RED.
This is a hell of a lot more serious than smearing .
Worse than the bankers its killing people , so how is this going to be dealt with ?

Who gets jailed ?

Easy to see why the date of publishing the report has been delayed.

Verity

Well, Nicholas, if you want a change of government, don't vote for the Tories.

kein

taliban jones they all him because he gives aid and succour to our enemies.

pat mcgroin

did anyoen read http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2009/08/23/army-head-sir-richard-dannatt-claimed-20-000-in-entertainment-expenses-115875-21616827/ ? what a laod of crap. the 'mirror' certainly isn't the paper of the forces.

Judy

If it wasn't so serious, I'd suggest you picked on people your own size. Hilariously written. But if you've read Tom Bowers' revealing and convincing biography of Gordon Brown, you'll know that you are describing the antics of the monkeys, whilst neglecting to mention the organ grinder (normally resident at 10 Downing Street but currently said to be on vacation).

It is inconceivable that this particular smear campaign could have been conducted without his total involvement, and he has a track record of ensuring that a previous top armed forces brass whose insistence on adequate pay and resources for his men he took umbrage promptly had his career progress ended.

I don't think Tony Blair, John Reid or certain others in the Labour Party would have wanted to be other than totally supportive (praciically as well as morally) of our forces.) I seem to remember that Blair in particular acted with the utmost concern and sincerity in writing personally and promptly to the families of those killed in service.

Unfortunately, the Tories as well as Labour have had some very mixed track records when in office on Defence matters. Many forces equipment disasters (as well as some real triumphs) happened on both watches.

Gordon Brown, though, is in a class of his own.

DX

Tory lackies bashing Labour and Labour lackies bashing Tories. When are we going to figure out they are just as bad as each other - and equally bad for the nation. A pox on both their houses.

And the more fool we for voting in either of them.

Stephen

Let's hope the Tories put Kevan Jones seat on their Hit list it only became a Labour one in the 1997 Blair landslide! What an odious little creep Jones seems and if anyone is living high off the hog it seems him not the Good General!

Victor Southern

It is staggering to see that this government has sunk so far as to actually have Bobsworth, Jones and Quisling Davies running Defence.

How totally absurd. What criminal incompetence and neglect. What vile and malign people they are.

Marcus Cotswell

David: I'm genuinely interested to know how you can justify the use of the word 'epistemological' in that last paragraph. I'm all in favour of it as a word; but like many words, it has a rather specific meaning and even in a humorous context I'm not sure how you are intending it to be taken there.

James Clarke

I'm afraid events have now moved irrevocably beyond farce. In my time as an officer there was simply no 'claim entitlement' culture. In Northern Ireland we didn't even make personal phone calls from phones with an outside line, nor did we get reimbursed for expenditure on personal equipment (so, no change there).In fact the only time I remember officially entertaining dignitaries (councillors, mayors, police chiefs etc)in the Mess I remember being told that the army didn't entertain enough. We were too polite to point out to this ex coal miner who was now mayor of a Cinque Port Limb that the cost of the event was added straight onto our personal Mess Bills.

Oscar

Verity - in the early weeks of the Brown leadership there was a concerted effort to establish a personality cult around Gordon Brown, consisting of telling us he wasn't flash, just an intellectual colossus who was the soul of moral rectitude. By Christmas, of course, he was Mr Bean. Now Labour is trying to hide him to help the poll ratings. Could there be a more damning verdict on any leader? The personality cult was launched but nosedived as Brown failed to live up to his inflated billing at any level.

George Laird

Dear All

The defence sec, Bungling Bob has said in effect he isn't bright and people don't like his moustache.

Not the greatest of revelations but it shows that like the Prince of Darkness, Mandelson; he wants to be loved.

I have a suggestion, resign as defence sec that way less people will get killed.

Let someone brainy have a go and see if they can do better.

It is not disgrace to ask for a transfer to the Ministry of Paperclips or soap dodging.

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

Daniel Antelo

this is my comment test

Ed Palmer

These incompetent politicians are an insult to our brave, under-equipped and endangered soldiers.
Bob and KevAn should fall on their swords immediately (if that's not too good for them).

David Blackburn

Marcus Cotswell,

Slightly spurious I agree, but I meant in it terms of a theory of knowledge validation, which arrests, finally, that realisation which appears as a self-evident justified belief to everyone else - ie, that it's perfectly possible to get more helicopters to Afghanistan because...

It would have been clearer had I written 'by finally realising' as opposed to the use of the colon. Equally, I accept that 'epistemically' may have avoided confusion.

Chuck Unsworth

@ Daniel Antelo

Yes, yes, yes. I agree entirely. You really don't have to go on and on about it.

David Ossitt

Red Rag.

Do you have much knowledge of prostitutes then?