"Of course the last Government was idiotic. It demanded that the British fought two complex counter-insurgency wars in two countries while simultaneously cutting the defence budget. Yet much of the blame for the MoD's grotesque overspend lies with senior officers and civil servants ... ".
Sam Kiley on the programme he's made for Dispatches tonight at 8pm, headed "How The MoD Wastes Our Billions". God knows how many times, and for how long I been saying this, but my constant theme has always been that there is no shortage of money in the MoD.
But the flavour of the time was "underspend" and "overstretch" - a politically-driven agenda that deliberately missed the point. Never mind, as Kiley says, that: "We spend more on defence than everyone except China and America. So why can out top brass barely support one brigade in Helmand?" If there was any justice, there would be a lot of people hanging their heads in shame ... but that ain't going to happen.
And by the way, have a look at this by Devil's Kitchen - a bloody good piece, and more so because he absolutely gets the point about the Battle of Britain. If you haven't looked at the blog, now's your chance. The distillation of the wisdom of a lot of our readers and much else, it's beginning to shape up into something special.
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