Only two months after Bob Ainsworth’s embarrassing U-turn on TA training, the Times this morning reveals that the Ministry of Defence has cancelled dozens of training exercises in an attempt to cut costs and was obliged to withdraw from a major Nato exercise, Bold Avenger 09.
The reasonable – and remarkably restrained – comment by Liam Fox, the shadow Defence Secretary, that: “The Government must reassure the Armed Forces that these cuts will not have any impact on their readiness for current operations or to respond to the unexpected” has provoked an accusation of “scaremongering” from Bill Rammell, the Armed Forces Minister:
“Any suggestion that Service personnel are not ready to respond to the unexpected is nonsense, as was seen in the fast and effective response to the flooding in the North of England last month.”
Maybe I’m missing the point; or perhaps Mr Rammell is. The Army undoubtedly did a wonderful job in Cumbria, but, as I would have thought it unnecessary to observe, Workington is a bit different from Helmand.
