Government does some good for the forces

[Punk_trooper]

Thousands of Service personnel and their families are to see their homes refurbished sooner than planned as details of how a £50m advance from the Treasury will be spent are announced today, Tuesday 23 June 2009.


http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/D...mmodationToBeRefurbishedSoonerThanPlanned.htm

Apologies if already been done but search returned nothing

 

[bullet_catcher]

Fair's fair, let's give them some praise for that. Shame it took a major crisis to get it, but money is money and investment in services married quarters is way too long overdue.

 

[Booty]

Don't hold your breath for a collective cheer. The usual suspects on here are far more comfortable accentuating the negative.

A lot of credit must go to Admiral Laurence, who seems to be a very able DE Director.

 

[Punk_trooper]

Agreed, still not going to sway my vote though

 

[harareboy99]

Should have been done earlier.

Im not congratulating a government that should have done it years ago.

 

[eodmatt]

Lets see what the improvements consist of first. I drove back from somewhere boring the other day through some army quarters that looked fairly newish, near Aldershit. Something wasnt quite right about them. I looked more closely and saw that the roofs of the houses were felted rather than tiled. I do hope that the estate I drove past was a facility for search training rather than a real quarters patch.

 

[StickyEnd]

Thousands of Service personnel and their families are to see their homes refurbished sooner than planned as details of how a £50m advance from the Treasury will be spent are announced today, Tuesday 23 June 2009.


http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/D...mmodationToBeRefurbishedSoonerThanPlanned.htm

Apologies if already been done but search returned nothing

I thought that the married quarters had been sold to a private company. Is that not true?

 

[Punk_trooper]

apparently so company called defence estates: http://www.defence-estates.mod.uk/sfa/aboutSFA.php

 

[StickyEnd]

apparently so company called defence estates: http://www.defence-estates.mod.uk/sfa/aboutSFA.php

Then why is public money being used to upgrade private property?


I am not saying Mil accom should not be improved BTW. I just don't understand why it is a public liability to improve private property.

 

[Punk_trooper]

Extremely good point in fact, surely soldiers pay rent to this company so why isnt this being spent on improvements to said properties??

Hold on a tick...CAPITALISM!!! why would they want to waste profit margins on improving properties when they could just claim the cash off the government?? unless were barking up the wrong tree here??

Anybody live in service family Accommodation who could shed some light on this

 

[Booty]

The Tories flogged off the family silver and we have got to make the best of what we've got.

 

[DeltaDog]

There are approximately 50,000 MoD homes in the country. This figure would provide about £1000 for each home.

Even on the assumption that the money is directed at the 19,000 "substandard" homes, it's still only a little over £2500 per home - which is a drop in the ocean given the way the Government spends money and the state of some of the homes.

We shouldn't give them credit for fulfilling a tiny part of their commitment after so many years in office.

 

[eodmatt]

The Tories flogged off the family silver and we have got to make the best of what we've got.

You havent taken your tablets today have you?

 

[Punk_trooper]

There are approximately 50,000 MoD homes in the country. This figure would provide about £1000 for each home.

Even on the assumption that the money is directed at the 19,000 "substandard" homes, it's still only a little over £2500 per home - which is a drop in the ocean given the way the Government spends money and the state of some of the homes.

We shouldn't give them credit for fulfilling a tiny part of their commitment after so many years in office.

Had no idea about the amount of housing actually involved in this so essentially the government are appearing to help the forces when in actual fact they're not providing that much at all.

 

[StickyEnd]

There are approximately 50,000 MoD homes in the country. This figure would provide about £1000 for each home.

Even on the assumption that the money is directed at the 19,000 "substandard" homes, it's still only a little over £2500 per home - which is a drop in the ocean given the way the Government spends money and the state of some of the homes.

We shouldn't give them credit for fulfilling a tiny part of their commitment after so many years in office.

Had no idea about the amount of housing actually involved in this so essentially the government are appearing to help the forces when in actual fact they're not providing that much at all.

Did you know that gov spends about 8x more on benefits than defence?

 

[Booty]

Okay, eodmatt, just for you, as you are probably too young or too thick to remember. The last Conservative government sold most of our service family accommodation to a Japanese company and we have to service and renovate it within the constraints of that private ownership.

 

[Punk_trooper]

Did you know that gov spends about 8x more on benefits than defence?

Bring back national service, then at least the chavs will be paid for something and the NCO's could have some fun

 

[Invicta]

Don't hold your breath for a collective cheer. The usual suspects on here are far more comfortable accentuating the negative.

A lot of credit must go to Admiral Laurence, who seems to be a very able DE Director.

Vice Admiral Laurence is Her Majesty's unofficial representative amongst the top brass, seeing as he's married to Princess Anne.

That must be how Ma'am keeps in touch with what the Generals, Admirals and Air Marshal's are really thinking......

 

[Ethel_the_Aardvark]

There are approximately 50,000 MoD homes in the country. This figure would provide about £1000 for each home.

Even on the assumption that the money is directed at the 19,000 "substandard" homes, it's still only a little over £2500 per home - which is a drop in the ocean given the way the Government spends money and the state of some of the homes.

We shouldn't give them credit for fulfilling a tiny part of their commitment after so many years in office.

Absolutely right, £1,000 per home is a drop in the ocean and smacks of tokenism. It certainly wont even begin to solve the problems caused by decades of under investment and neglect. Nobody shoud be taken in by this feeble and half-hearted gesture.

Still never mind, at least the government managed to find £37 billion of taxpayers money in Oct 08 to bail out the banks who got themselves in an almighty mess through a combination of incompetence and greed.

 

[mnairb]

'Okay, eodmatt, just for you, as you are probably too young or too thick to remember. The last Conservative government sold most of our service family accommodation to a Japanese company and we have to service and renovate it within the constraints of that private ownership.'

OK, Booty, I must be a bit thick as well - do you mean to tell me that the Japanese company pockets the rents (thanks very much) but has no liability to use that rent money to service and renovate the propery that it now owns? Who the fcuk wrote that contract out - no council or housing association would ever get away with an arrangement like that, in fact they would be castigated if they tried it on.