Hooray For The Territorials!

.
On Sunday, Rifleman Andrew Fentiman was shot dead in Helmand Province just two weeks after arriving in Afghanistan.

One’s heart goes out to the family of Rifleman Fentiman and also to the families of the other soldiers killed or maimed in recent conflicts.

Mr Fentiman’s death carries a special significance. For he was in the Territorial Army whose members agree to serve their country by committing at least 27 training days a year, including a fortnight of continuous training or attachment to a regular serving unit.

The Territorial Army, it must be borne in mind, is the same band of young men whose funding Gordon Brown announced last month would be cut by £20 millions with all future training suspended. Until, of course, another of his spectacular U-turns!

While politicians play politics and tinker with budgets, men are being killed. Including men of the Territorial Army whose worth to this country should not be undervalued.
.

Who Turns U-Turns?

.
Yesterday the government announced that public funds will not now be used to further shore up MPs pension funds. Given the public’s anger over MPs expenses, that news didn’t come as much of a surprise!

This morning, they announced that they were dropping some of their education policies. That reminded me that the government has done a considerable number of u-turns. Think of their changed positions on Gurkha soldiers, the Inquiry into the Iraq war, the 10% tax rate, free postage of parcels to soldiers serving abroad, the scaling back of plans to build new warships ...

The list culled from memory seemed endless as, indeed, this turned out to be when out of interest I Googled ‘government u-turns’ on my computer. I was confronted with a choice of 871,000 pages (yes, that's 871,000 pages!) of information about issues on which this government has changed its mind and performed a u-turn.

The number of pages to be found on the subject of government u-turns speaks for itself. Boy, do we need an election!

.