EXCLUSIVE: Military personnel living in squalor as private firms rake in millions in taxpayers’ cash

28 comments
  1. The MOD signs some absolutely terrible contracts and at a local level on many bases the contractors are rarely properly monitored or held to account. Been happening for decades.

  2. It’s about time we woke up to disaster that privatisation has been in every instance. Everything that has been sold off should be taken back into public ownership without compensation, these people have taken enough money from the British tax payer

  3. Hardly exclusive when Private Eye has been covering this scandal for several years. But worth greater circulation.

  4. I knew the fact that an accommodation block I stayed in having a VHS player with a selection off tapes was the tip of the iceberg.

  5. Nurses are striking- send in the army. Ambulance drivers are striking- send in the army. Border force are striking- send in the army. Last year we had transportation problems- send in the army. Whenever there are floods or storms- send in the army.

    So when the Tories say they support our armed forces they’re… lying?

  6. Ah, the Tories. The “party of the armed forces and military covenant.”

    They’re also the party of “fiscal competence” and “law and order.”

    Do you see a pattern forming, Tory voters? Yeah, that’s right – you’ve been had.

  7. The problem stems from how this is funded. Pinnacle have a repair contract, not a maintenance or improvement contract. So nothing is done until something actually breaks. This not only costs more, but the occupants have to put up with leaks and barely working heating.
    Offices are no better. I recently returned to one that I worked in in 2012 to find the same desk and chair, as well as a damaged wall still not repaired after 10 years (still not a priority apparently)

  8. Well, if the troops have a decent standard of living but private firms make half the millions, that’s a victory for Putin, right?

  9. I have worked in public sector for years. The monumental inefficiencies across the entire thing are staggering. The amount of money that could be saved by improving the way things are run could fund the pay rise demands of the unions several times over.

  10. Either unforgivable stupidity by Politicians and Civil servants or another deliberate attempt to transfer public property and money to cronies.

  11. This story has been in private eye for ages. It’s the best source of balanced news in the country.
    Absolutely disgusting Tory decision. Selling all the housing stock at a dip in the housing market, but they won’t shut up about Gordon brown selling gold.

  12. What sort of complete and utter moron would put military housing in the hands of the private market.

    I mean fuck efficiency, fuck the fact that the military have the ability to build stuff themselves (and should be capable of doing so to a good level).

    What about security? A private firm knowing where and how your personnel are housed in such a way is an obvious security risk.

  13. Impossible to be upset with Michael Portillo as he looks so lovely in tan suits and has a twinkle in his eye when doing train travelogues.

    These issues were warned against at the time. Consequences of voting tory yet again.

Leave a Reply