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Telegraph Article on Hammond, the Gulf and the insult that never was...

jim30

LE
Picked up in todays DT was an article claiming SofS is snubbing our allies in the region because he didnt go to the Manama dialogue this weekend. Philip Hammond dismays Britain's Gulf allies by 11th hour pull-out to deal with crisis-hit defence procurement sell-off - Telegraph

Fascinating to wonder who is selectively leaking to the DT, particularly as they forgot to mention that Hammond has been in region several times in the last couple of months, that the Foreign Secretary and CDS were reportedly present, and that the UK still had by far the largest and most high profile delegation of any foreign nation. The Gulf will not revisit its relationships on this one issue, although it is depressing to see that a genuine good news story (huge UK presence showing how much we have re-engaged in the region since 2010) has been spun into the latest round of Army / Daily Telegraph Vs Hammond the fusilier butcher...

A shame to see one of the best SofS MOD has ever had be subjected to such relentless attacks for no good reason.
 
But there is a good reason, Jim - the Telegraph wishes it were still 1955, and sees any attempt at/perceived need to undertake rebalancing the defence budget by cutting back on regiments as a Very Bad Thing, only less of a Very Bad Thing than cutting the RN and RAF is. Instead, we spend all our cash on: benefits, international aid, allowing those homo blighters to live together and stick their, well, you know, their, their, er.... old fella into each other's bottoms, on things that help dusky-hued persons who seem to forget they were only allowed here to drive buses and empty bins to go to University [the wider public tends to call these things 'state schools'], etc, etc (repeat until compelled to have a pink gin/stroke or write splenetic letter to Torygraph)...

The problem for them, of course, is by having a 1-dimensional debate, the influence they like to think they have over defence erodes and they're taken far less seriously than they think they should be. And they can't understand why this is so, and have concluded that what we need is a government which regards the Monday Club as being a bit wishy-washy and liberal led by the risen Enoch Powell.
 
Jim;
Someone seems to be using the looming failure of the procurement reforms to blame the Minister. The DT article seems to be implying that that 'failure' caused the SoS to not appear at a conference he wasn't going to speak at anyway.
It's being leaked to Reuters as well.

Britain to scrap plans to outsource military buying - source | Reuters

Where in the past a £2bn underspend would have been critical, the more relaxed attitude prevailing nowadays would seem to suggest that someone is trying to draw a weak connection between that, the various bidders for the service, and Hammond's personal involvement.
In short, the procurement issue is being used as a stick to hit the SoS with.
 
Hammond must be doing the right thing, considering that people are trying to smear him, with rubbish like this.

The decades of poor programme management, bad procurement, and the blatant refusal to face up to reality by the Service chiefs aren't going to be fixed overnight. Hammond inherited a complete mess and has done a sterling job at trying to get the Service Chiefs and the MoD to live within its means.

The Telegraph has long since departed from serious reporting and is little more than the Mail in Broadsheet format these days.
 
Hammond must be doing the right thing, considering that people are trying to smear him, with rubbish like this.

The decades of poor programme management, bad procurement, and the blatant refusal to face up to reality by the Service chiefs aren't going to be fixed overnight. Hammond inherited a complete mess and has done a sterling job at trying to get the Service Chiefs and the MoD to live within its means.

You have to admit that 13 years of gross financial mismanagement by the Government of the day didn't exactly help, chopping a large chunk of JHF's budget, changing the rules of Operational and UOR funding and an almost constant stream of niggling at pennies and a constant refusal to make decisions on big budget items made long term planning almost impossible........
 

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