The Prime Minister of the UK, David Cameron asked President Putin and other world leaders to speak out against Scottish independence
In 2014 Russia retained the role of the presidency of the influential G8 group of industrial nations placing President Putin in a position of increased influence over world affairs.
Tass, Kremlin’s mouthpiece reported that David Cameron had written and warned Putin and many other nations that Scottish independence would “send shockwaves across the whole of Europe”.
The news was released a few days after reports of the creation of an anti-separatist alliance between Cameron and the Spanish government.
The Westminster government’s anti-independence civil service team also bragged that they had employed underhand tactics and orchestrated the “Project Fear Campaign” globally.
Asked to comment Alex Salmond said,
“It is shameful that Cameron refuses to debate in front of the people of Scotland, but is perfectly willing to lobby against Scotland’s interests around the world adding credibility to reports that he lobbied the Spanish prime minister to speak out against Scottish independence and this after their foreign minister had already made perfectly clear that Scotland’s referendum was a matter for the people of Scotland.
This kind of behaviour shows exactly why Scotland should represent our own interests as an independent nation. Scotland will be a responsible global citizen and a good friend to our neighbours in the rest of the UK.” (The Herald)
2016: Defence Minister, Philip Hammond ‘tried to court-martial senior general
General Sir Richard Shirreff, who served as Nato’s deputy supreme allied commander for Europe until 2014, said before standing down from the post that the Government was taking “one hell of a risk” in cutting the regular army.
In his book ‘2017: The War with Russia’, Sir Richard claims he was summoned by the head of the Army who told him the Foreign Secretary wanted disciplinary action against him.
Formal action would have involved a court-martial and, fortunately for (Mr Hammond’s) political reputation — “it also seems he had not appreciated that I reported to Nato and not to him, wiser counsel prevailed. But the damage to our armed forces… had already been done. It’s the duty of senior soldiers engaged with politicians not to think like politicians, not to make life easier for politicians, but to be prepared to lay out the military consequences of political decisions, and I sense that is something that has got blurred in recent years.”
Sir Richard, who was the army’s third most senior officer, said the level of cutbacks to the British military means the armed forces might not be able to deploy an effective force for war. There has been a hollowing out, a cutting away at muscle and damn nearly every bone in UK defences.
I would question whether the UK could deploy a division for war — I think that’s highly unlikely. The notion of deploying a division for war as the UK did in Iraq in 2003 and Iraq in 1991 is frankly almost inconceivable.” (Politics Home)
2016: Scandalous splurge – Ministry of Defence doubles spending on on ‘experts’ and cuts fighting forces to the bone
Whitehall defence chiefs employ over 2,395 pen-pushers (many on salaries over £60K) in its Finance Department, at an annual cost in excess of £75million. It also employs 282 lawyers at a cost to the taxpayer of £26 million.
But last year it still spent another £17.8 million on legal consultants. And £57million on other experts in areas such as “change management.”
In recent years, the Army has axed 18,000 personnel, the RAF 6,000 and the Navy 3,000.
The MoD announced it was closing 10 sites across the UK reducing the size of its built estate by 30 per cent.
The chief of the UK National Defence Association said: “For the MOD to be lavishing so much public money on “consultancy” is scandalous and an insult to all the soldiers, sailors and airmen who have lost their jobs in the last few years in wave after wave of penny-pinching Defence cuts.” (the Sun)
2016: Gen Sir Richard Barrons, Senior General of the British Armed Forces accuses the government of leaving the UK vulnerable to a military attack
General Sir Richard Barrons served as Commander Joint Forces Command, one of the six ‘Chiefs of Staff” leading the UK Armed Forces until April 2016.
He was responsible for 23000 people worldwide and a budget of £4.3Bn, delivering intelligence, Special Forces, operational command and control, information systems and communications, logistics, medical support, and advanced education and training across the Armed Forces.
His military career includes leadership from Captain to General on military operations in Bosnia, Kosovo, Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan – often as part of US-led coalitions.
He continued: “Counter-terrorism is the limit of up-to-date plans and preparations to secure our airspace, waters and territory. Neither the UK homeland nor a deployed force could be protected from a concerted Russian air effort. The army has grown used to operating from safe bases in the middle of its operating area, against opponents who do not manoeuvre at scale.”
He further warned that crucial manpower in all three armed services is “dangerously squeezed and there is a sense that modern conflict is ordained to be only as small and as short term as the UK wishes and is able to afford which is absurd. The failure to come to terms with this will not matter at all if we are lucky in the way the world happens to turn out, but it could matter a very great deal if even a few of the risks now at large conspire against the UK.”
The memo was sent to the Defence Secretary, following the government’s decision to increase defence spending by nearly £5bn ($6.5bn) by 2020-21, reaching Nato’s target to spend 2% of GDP on defence until 2020.
But the vast bulk of the projected increase in defence spending includes the purchase of “big ticket” items, New type 26 destroyers, 2 aircraft carriers (without aircraft or crews), 48 x F35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft (not available from the USA for some years yet). Replacement of the Trident nuclear missile systems and accompanying nuclear submarines. Conventional forces are reduced to their lowest level ever, including reservists and recruitment is stagnant.
The US-built F35 joint strike aircraft is the most expensive combat aircraft ever. But payloads are restricted and with a complement of 48, the RAF will only be able to place 6 in the air in any combat situation. In any event, the aircraft will not be available much before 2023.
Plans are to deploy the new carriers equipped with complements of US aircraft and flyers but the logistics of joint deployment of forces has yet to be discussed and may never get off the ground in which case the carriers will be mothballed for a few years.
Britain has 6 x type 45 destroyers. 4 are tasked to protect the new carriers. The remaining 2 destroyers are needed for the defence of the UK mainland & islands. And the foregoing provides no time for maintenance.
The Type 45 destroyers are unable to operate in warm climates for any length of time due to design faults and this restricts their deployment to the North Atlantic. So the navy will need to confine deployment of the new carriers to the same area. Hardly inspiring.
The army has not deployed forces for training in tank warfare since 2003 and skills have been lost or waned. Plans are to upgrade the remaining ageing Challenger tanks but not until other higher priority items are completed.
Russia’s new “Armata” tanks outspeed and outgun the Challenger and are equipped with an active protection system that further reduces the efficacy of existing UK anti-tank weapons by over 50%.
The UK operates a fleet of 6 x AWACS planes, (providing long-range radar coverage and command hubs for deployed forces). They are hopelessly outdated and require ever-increasing downtime for maintenance. It is known that only 1 aircraft is guaranteed to be airworthy at any time.
1 Nov 2016: Army’s new £3.5bn mini-tanks are ‘DEATH traps’ that are only useful against ‘incompetent enemies’ who cannot hit them with heavy artillery
Hundreds of Ajax mini-tanks are due to be supplied to the Army next year with the full order of 600 delivered to the Ministry of Defence by 2024.
But sources have claimed the delivery could be delayed due to complications with a revolutionary weapons system fitted onboard each tank, although the MoD has insisted the project will be completed on time and will provide the ‘best’ tanks.
Critics claim the ‘lightly armoured’ tanks cannot stand up to heavy artillery and say the weaponry on board is not sufficient – with the gun having already ‘stopped working’ during foreign trials. Raising concerns about the new tanks, one former defence official told The Times: ‘It is fine if you are operating against incompetent enemies, but if you are up against a peer enemy this thing is useless, it’s a death trap.’
The Ajax armoured vehicles will travel at speeds of up to 40mph and have been touted as the first-ever fully digital armoured fighting vehicle in UK military history.
The 589 tanks are said to become the ‘eyes and ears’ of the British Army on the battlefields of the future. The new vehicle will allegedly give the army enhanced intelligence, surveillance, protection, target acquisition and reconnaissance capabilities, and it will be able to defend itself with a highly effective 40-millimetre cannon, which was developed jointly with France.
However, critics claim the cannon has already encountered problems during routine testing in overseas trials and say it is simply not up to the job of defending rival power from countries such as Russia. Referring to an alleged complication with the cannon’s turret – a section attached to the weapon to feed ammunition to the barrel – a source claimed: ‘As soon as the turret was subject to vibration and bumps the [feeding] mechanism failed. ‘My understanding is that there are quite a few reasons why the programme has been delayed’.
In addition, there are reported concerns that the barrel life of the weapon system is too short to function adequately – although the MoD says the new technology ‘can’t be compared to previous technology’. The turret and feeding mechanism on the cannon is being supplied and tested by defence firm Lockheed Martin, while the cannon and ammunition are being developed by BAE Systems and Nexter.
The Ajax tanks are being supplied to the MoD by US defence company General Dynamics, as part of a £3.5bn deal. A spokesman for Lockheed Martin admitted ‘issues did arise in recent trials’ on the weaponry but said ‘early indications point to a component failure and not a design flaw’.
The Times reported. BAE systems said the cannon had passed ‘stringent qualification trials’ and said there were no issues with its performance or when it will be delivered. ‘Deliveries to date to the UK Ministry of Defence are ahead of schedule,’ a spokesman said.
The MoD said the project is ‘running to time and cost expectations’ and insisted the tanks were ‘the best in class. delivering internationally best-in-class standards of scalable protection, reliability, mobility, lethality, and all-weather surveillance. Prototype vehicles are currently being put through the process of a rigorous trial, with successful live firings taking place in April and more to come. ‘As planned, the Army will take delivery of the first production vehicles in Spring 17.
July 2017: The Army is set to scrap the £5.5billion ‘light tank’ before it has entered service.
In tests, the Ajax armoured vehicle could not be fired on the move or go faster than 20mph. It also caused crews to suffer acute hearing loss, nausea and spinal injuries. The Ministry of Defence has already spent £4billion on Ajax but only 26 of the 589 ordered in 2014 have been delivered.
Malcolm Muggeridge the last honest political commentator
“In the eyes of posterity it will inevitably seem that, in safeguarding our freedom, we destroyed it. The vast clandestine apparatus we built up to prove our enemies’ resources and intentions only served in the end to confuse our own purposes; that practice of deceiving others for the good of the state-led infallibly to our deceiving ourselves; and that vast army of clandestine personnel built up to execute these purposes were soon caught up in the web of their own sick fantasies, with disastrous consequences for them and us.”
12 Aug 2015: The British Army is to train the Ukraine Defence Forces
The United Kingdom Secretary of State for Stoking up conflict said, during a visit to Kyiv that the British Army will be investing more UK taxpayers’ money into training the Ukrainian army by, increasing the number of soldiers in the programme from just over 1,000 to around 2,000 Yet another Battalion of the Highlanders Regiment is being deployed
But Article 10 of the Minsk II Accord states; “There will be a pull-out of all foreign armed formations, military equipment, and also mercenaries from the territory of Ukraine under OSCE supervision. Disarmament of all illegal groups.“
Judge for yourselves: Is this in compliance with Minsk II? Or is it a flagrant violation of it?
During his visit, he told the Ukrainian Prime Minister that the visit “reaffirmed the UK’s support”. and went on to say: “Seven thousand people have already died in Ukraine, right on the doorstep of Europe … This is not a frozen conflict, it’s still red hot. We are not going to turn our back on Ukraine.”
Of course, he conveniently forgot to mention that the majority of the 7,000 or so dead people were civilians in the South East of Ukraine (they are Ukrainians too), who died at the hands of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, or the so-called volunteer battalions such as the one led by arch Nazi Stepan Bandera.
Three questions the UK needs to answer
1. Is the UK Government going to sanction itself for violating the Minsk II Accords?
2. In reaffirming the UK Government’s support for “Ukraine”, do we include those “Ukrainians” who have been shelled relentlessly by the “Ukrainian” Government?
3. Are we going to be training any of those nice chaps with the SS runes?
Who forged papers falsely linking Saddam Hussein to yellow-cake uranium produced in “Nigeria” (in fact it is from Niger and the document was forged by guess who?)
Who provided “concrete intelligence” to the UK’s bed-master about Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (in fact a thesis copied and pasted from the Net and sexed up by Blair and his spin doctors)?
Who was it that invaded Iraq based on shamefaced lies?
Who supported terrorists inLibya that they had listed as proscribed?
Who lied about Syria, claiming that the elected government was using chemical weapons against their own soldiers?
Who supported terrorist groups in Syria who cut the heads off small boys?
Who Staged an illegal coup in Ukraine, backing a motley bunch of fascists, terrorists and murderers.
Who perpetrated massacres of Russian speaking Ukrainians and threatened to clear the Ukraine of Jews?
Who copied and posted photographs from the Net from two decades before and relating to another country claiming President Assad was murdering civilians (when the photography pertained to a NATO massacre in Iraq two decades before)?
Who conducts 24-hour-a-day cyber-terrorist attacks against western publications?
The international community is fast losing patience with the UK and its partner in crime across the Atlantic. It is a fact that the world does not need the UK or USA. They need the World.
caltonjock 