'The best armed forces in the world'?

I have often pointed out that the NHS is not 'the envy of the world' despite what our politicians say. So let's nail another lie, the British armed forces are not the best in the world and haven't been for quite a while. They do their best with the limited resources they are given, a situation that worsened horribly under the parsimonious (when it came to defence) Gordon Brown. So I am not surprised to read at The Register that

'Pakistani pilots flying modernised versions of the 1970s-vintage F-16 Falcon fighter have beaten the RAF's brand-new Eurofighter Typhoon superfighters during air combat exercises in Turkey, according to a Pakistani officer.'

The article in The Register quotes an interview with an unnamed but evidently experienced Pakistani Air Force (PAF) F-16 pilot on exchange with the Turkish air force, posted on the official site of the PAF display team, which includes the following intriguing and rather damning passage. (Hat tip to the excellent DEW Line blog for flagging this up.)

Q: Any memorable experiences that you would like to share? A: On one occasion – in one of the international Anatolian Eagles - PAF pilots were pitted against RAF Typhoons, a formidable aircraft. There were three set-ups and in all three, we shot down the Typhoons. The RAF pilots were shocked.
Q: Any particular reason for your success?
A: NATO pilots are not that proficient in close-in air-to-air combat. They are trained for BVR [Beyond Visual Range] engagements and their tactics are based on BVR engagements. These were close-in air combat exercises and we had the upper hand because close-in air combat is drilled into every PAF pilot and this is something we are very good at.

 An underfunded army with inadequate equipment, a massively underfunded navy short of ships and submarines & having to contemplate sharing an aircraft carrier with France and an air force so starved of modern equipment that relevant skills may have been lost. It's almost as though the last Labour government was deliberately trying to destroy the UK's ability to defend itself and operate an independent armed force; now why would that have been the case?

"Blair and Brown got into a competitive expenditure race. Expenditure went out of control after about 2000.... Brown wanted to stay popular"

"sadly for all of us, Blair and Brown got into a competitive expenditure race. Expenditure went out of control after about 2000. That was largely because Brown wanted to stay popular, ahead of Blair, so that Blair could never dare sack him. It's an extraordinary period. Let's hope we never have that again. It ought not to be possible. That is one of the other things we need to look at - what are the constitutional checks on personal power and two people in this case, not one, carving out the structures of government in a totally damaging manner?"

Again David Owen form his Total Politics interview.

If it is true, and I believe it is, that between them Tony Blair and Gordon Brown trashed the UK economy for selfish reasons then should not there be legal sanctions applied to them? Treason?

Labour disloyalty shhhh

There were 4 minutes right at the end of Today programme on something I covered a while back in some detail: the links between Labour & Union leaders and the USSR in the 1970s & 1980s. I suppose the BBC think that by having a 4 minute quirky piece they have covered this issue properly. I disagree, the actions of some people linked to the murderous Soviet regime could be considered as treason.

It's the reduction of the punishment that most annoys me about this story

The Times report on the true scale of the damage wreaked on the UK and Nato by the notorious cold war traitor Geoffrey Prime, who was a former GCHQ spy who went on to sell secrets to the KGB revealing that Britain and America had cracked high-grade Soviet military codes. The crimes were huge and in my book amounted to treason but in any case in the early 1980s he was sentenced to 35 years in jail for spying with an additional three years for indecent assaults on young girls.

Of course in New Labour Britain such a sentence means nothing and so Geoffrey Prime was released early in 2001 and of course in upside down Britain was given a new identity to keep him safe from reprisal attacks. The sheer stupidity of our Labour rulers and the probation system never cease to amaze me.

The Conservatives are considering creating a "Labour Domesday Book" if they win the general election

For quite some time I have been advocating that an incoming Conservative government conduct a full root and branch review of what Labour have spent and wasted during the current administration. Only by identifying the waste and laying the blame for mismanagement firmly on the laps of Gordon Brown et al will the Conservative government be able to prune away the fat without the cry of "Tory cuts" carrying as much weight as the Labour/BBC alliance will try to make adhere.

Today I read at Conservative Home that:

"ConservativeHome understands that Tory strategists are considering a bold attempt to find a 21st Century equivalent that would define the Labour Party for another generation.

Under consideration is the compilation of a Domesday Book analysis of Labour's legacy. It would be one of the first acts of an incoming Conservative government. New Cabinet ministers would be ordered to prepare an audit of their portfolios. Four to six weeks later a Domesday statement of the extent of public borrowing, the weakness of the nation's energy infrastructure, the weakness of family structure and so on would be published. As well as serving as a statement of challenges it would then be hung around the neck of the Labour Party."

Expect Labour claims of party political investigations but since this Labour government have blurred the line between party and state more than any other that I can think off then that line can be pushed aside. This Labour government is the one that claimed to be the "political wing of the British people".

This Labour government and especially its leaders must be held to account for the damage they have wrought on this Country; I would be all for putting Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, Jack Straw and others on trial for treason.

The return of tax them until the pips squeak policy?

The BBC "report" that:

"Chancellor Alistair Darling is due to announce in his pre-Budget report he intends to raise the top rate of income tax in the future, the BBC learns.

BBC political editor Nick Robinson said the move would break a Labour pledge held ever since Tony Blair came to power in the 1997 election.

He said sources suggested that after the next election a new 45% rate could apply to incomes above £150,000 a year. "

The rumoured increase is thought to be planned not to start until 2010, after a general election and the BBC helpfully point out that Nick Robinson said:

"This would allow Labour, if it wins the election, to claim it has not broken its 2005 promise and it had a new electoral mandate"

Of course this is all spin, increasing the top rate of tax from 40% to 45% for people earning over £150,000 will hardly dent the government's tax shortfall but it does throw a scrap of raw meat to the left-wing of the party at a time when many may be moving to the BNP; the Labour policy "wolf-whistle" is being played.

There has of course been no mention of National Insurance contributions, this government still sticking to the lie that National Insurance is in some way different from Income Tax but as there is no National Insurance pot the only difference is that there is an upper limit for Employee National Insurance contributions (currently a 1% rate is paid for earnings over around £35,000). I would expect the announcement of "an evening out" of this inequity and the upper rate being increased from 1% to 5%.

So "tax them until the pips squeak", probably not; but until the juice flows freely, yes.


Of course this could be the usual Labour spin put out by the faithful BBC and their increasingly tame Labour government pet, Nick Robinson. If this is the case, then the tax increase will be less than the 12.5% suggested, for a rise from 40% to 45% is not a 5% increase but a 12.5% increase, so as to make the high earners think that they have got of lightly. It all depends upon how brave Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling are feeling and how bad the economic situation really is.

Another way of look at this "tax cut" is that it is a way of making the Conservative party even more unpopular amongst the Labour party's client state. If the Conservatives oppose the cut in VAT they are seen once more as the "nasty party" and if they have to increase the rate once elected back to 17.5% or even increase it to 22% so as to pay back the massive levels of debt that they will inherit then you can expect the full fury of the Labour/BBC party to be unleashed. Once again is Gordon Brown about to change tax policy in attempt to subvert democracy?

I have previously referred to the possibility that Gordon Brown is deliberately pursuing a "scorched earth" policy of wrecking the economy and massively increasing debt so as to force an incoming Conservative government to take massively unpopular decisions? If this is found to be the case, could there be a case for charging Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling and others with treason?