Sacred Cows Make the Best Beefburgers

12Comments
Posted by Think Defence in Politics on April 21, 2010

Reported in the Telegraph is an excerpt from the Royal Marines magazine, the Globe and Laurel, in which the Commandant General of the Royal Marines (Major Gen Buster Howes)  is quoted as saying;

Our current defence aspirations are unaffordable, so very hard choices will have to be made

Those familiar hard choices we have been discussing for so long.

He also suggested that major projects could be scrapped and came out with the classic quote;

Sacred cows make the best beefburgers

The black hole in the defence budget is widely accepted to be beyond a bit of ‘cutting back on expenses and travel’ and the Major General is the first currently serving officer to voice these concerns so openly, says the Telegraph. I am always wary of quoting third hand so as pithy as they sound, they come with a health warning.
Read more…

If You Had to Cut the MoD Budget by 25%

13Comments
Posted by Think Defence in Business on December 12, 2009

We all want the Future Defence Review to be commitments led rather than resource led and we all know deep down, it won’t be.

Given the rapidly deteriorating state of the nations finances, regardless of right or wrong, regardless of it being more worthy of cash than the welfare or the overseas aid budget and regardless of any other considerations it looks like the MoD is going to be invited to take a substantial cut in its budget.

We already know that it has a £6 billion hole to fill and the next few years are going to be even more difficult.

Pensions, wages, welfare, equipment, units, ceremonial duties; there is nothing sacred. The scope for salami slicing, a little bit here and a little bit there have long since departed, big cuts are needed.

Open question…

If it was your job of achieving a 25% saving off the budget for the next 3 or 4 years where would you start looking?

Defence Spending

3Comments
Posted by Think Defence in Business on July 17, 2009

Whilst there is a great deal of controversy raging at the moment about resources for operations in Afghanistan we thought we would have a look at the comparative percentage of GDP Defence spending has represented over the last forty odd years.

The data is from the official Treasury figures and obtained from ukpublicspending.co.uk

HT to http://burningourmoney.blogspot.com/ for highlighting this excellent source of information

Read more…

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Think Defence is the collected ramblings of a few people that wish defence to go much higher up the UK national agenda, recognising that the answer is not always more money but better spending. Although focused on UK issues, anything we find interesting will find its way in. We operate a fairly open door policy and encourage guest contributors, if you want to say something just contact us or leave a comment. This will result in blog entries that disagree with each other but that it fine, debate is good. Where we are incorrect (and it will happen, probably a lot) just let us know, review and correction strengthen the quality of posts. Finally, it's just a blog, so don't take it too seriously!

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