Defence secretary Philip Hammond has admitted that the governments rather unpopular cuts have badly damaged the morale of our armed forces.
Mr Hammond said that our forces feel like they’ve been getting it from all sides, the risk of redundancy, the restructuring of the army, as pay freeze and their pensions and when you read that back he’s got it spot on.
So his solution to the problem will be to introduce a new package aimed at winning back forces confidence, measures include: a rise in the annual service premium paid to forces schoolchildren from £250 to £300, and this measure will also be extended to kids whose parents have died in the line of duty or have left the forces for up to six years, making it eligible to 6,000 extra children.
A system of Forces Privilege Cards that will allow service personnel, their families and all veterans in some cases receive as much as 33% off at major high street stores, and a scheme designed to get forces leavers on the housing ladder for the first time by letting them borrow against their pensions.
While I agree with what Mr Hammond is doing, I don’t think these proposals go far enough to counter balance the hammering our armed forces have taken since the coalition came to power.
The axing of 30,000 troops, the scraping of key equipment like aircraft carriers and an army shake-up that saw several historical regiment names discarded, and on top of all this a report by the Army Families Federation showed that the number of forces households with debt problems has almost doubled in the last year to 80 per cent.
Everybody understood that when this government came to power that cuts needed to be made and things would be tough, but it seems the armed forces have copped it more than most, instead of offering this olive branch to them why not reward them properly for the job that they do and give them a pay rise, I mean you would have to be a real cold-hearted bastard to disagree with that.
No comments:
Post a Comment