The date matters. The rhetoric matters. And a pro-Palestine march planned for 7 October should not go unchallenged.
Read the full piece 👉 https://t.co/NRwT1TA3v6
You can see the fatal effect of senseless Defence cuts in this report.
I have been banging the drum about the obscene lack of flying hours for Fleet Air Arm aircrew. Here it contributed to the killing of a good officer.
It has got worse under @UKLabour
"The three crew were fully qualified to fly, but neither pilot was current for deck landings. Although this was not a factor in the accident, it was the purpose of the sortie, and the aircraft commander was not current for night vision device landings.
More significantly, the aircraft commander had missed the 15 hours per month competency target in four of the preceding six months and had flown once in the previous 40 days, a picture available on the squadron training records system but never interrogated during authorisation.
Supplementary guidance for Maritime Air Group (MAG) crews permitted a lower deck landing currency standard than the RN’s general requirement, something the panel judged had been written for a more experienced cohort than now exists.
The resulting collective skill fade very likely undermined the crew’s ability to handle a complex emergency at low level over the sea in darkness."
I used to worry if I got less than 25 hours a month (including 8 at night) when I was flying.
This failure to protect our fighting personnel disgusts me and should disgust all honest British people.
Perhaps the ministers who are so upset about "thugs" and "intimidation" could have a word with the seven MPs who joined this "intifada!" and "death to the IDF!" hatred rally at the Ministry of Justice last December. There were several arrests. No?
Baroness Foster of Oxton has torn into the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband.
This is not a slip. The Foreign Secretary is circulating falsehoods about Israel and about a war Hamas started and still refuses to end. The officials advising him are not bystanders. They are party to it.
The Foreign Office is not paid to take sides for a terror organisation. British civil servants exist to serve the United Kingdom, not to feed ministers a Hamas narrative and stamp it as policy.
The department has wrecked its own standing. Not by accident. By choice.
A disgraceful day for British diplomacy.
Who Dares Wins!
All governments who expect to be taken seriously by their citizens must not allow “the rule of law to morph into the rule of lawyers.”
@edwardstrngr65@Policy_Exchange great work.
To protect the future, we need men willing to protect the present.
@edwardstrngr65 and @Policy_Exchange have done really important work. Supported by @AlistairCarns.
Afterword to this paper by Lord Glasman, Labour Peer and author of Blue Labour: The Politics of the Common Good, 2022:
The Special Air Service is the jewel in the crown of our Armed Forces.
Professional, effective and feared.
‘The Regiment’ provides a unique advantage to Britain in any violent
conflict. Explicitly elite, and built on the virtues of courage, honour and
skill it was founded to win wars through special operations. Speed, skill
and intelligence are their modus operandi.
Their reputation is international.
When I was at Trump’s inauguration I heard many criticisms of our Armed Forces but it was always accompanied by praise for the SAS. It was the one branch of our Armed Forces that received unanimous respect.
This report is an excellent analysis of the role of the SAS in Northern Ireland from 1976 to 2007. They were sent to confront a well-funded, armed and organised terrorist organisation. They played a decisive role in convincing the Provisional IRA that the ‘armed struggle’ could not win.
Without the SAS there would have been no Good Friday Agreement.
It is also excellent in that it describes the pernicious effects of enforcing
an extreme interpretation of human rights law as the ultimate legal
framework, and how that degrades effective political sovereignty and
action.
Special Forces were deployed in Northern Ireland under the ordinary
law of the land. It was only when the Good Friday agreement was signed
that the retrospective legal actions against veterans began. While the
soldiers of the Provisional IRA were sent letters of pardon and forgiveness.
This is what happens when the rule of law morphs into the rule of lawyers, enforced and created by judges who have no experience of war and are hostile to any reality that does not conform to individual rights.
We owe a debt of great gratitude to the veterans of the SAS who served
in the long deployment in Northern Ireland. They served with great
courage and honour in extremely dangerous and violent conditions. It
is a breach of our military covenant that veterans are investigated and
prosecuted in their old age because of an understanding of the law that
did not exist when they were active. This is demoralising ‘The Regiment’ and leading to severe problems in recruitment.
A great injustice is being done by the pursuit of these prosecutions by
the British State. Reciprocity requires a mutual amnesty and the conditions.
It might sound surprising coming from me, but in the context of the new ‘Troubles’ legislation, my advice to youngsters is not to join the Armed Forces.
If the government actively denies you protection for doing your duty to defeat domestic insurgency (in the case of NI), it’s not worth your while, or your life.
Let the terrorists win, because this is effectively what is being proposed.
https://t.co/Kjr0W1GDi0
Yeah, totes sorry about wages, housing, garrisofication of towns long way from home, shitty kit, trawls, no dentists or medical cover for your families etc etc.
But can you do us a solid & help the underfunded Fire service to put fires out?
Us: of course