Wait ’til you learn about the hundreds of horses in ‘reserve’ just in case Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan form a strategic alliance
Army is a mess.
On the one hand tax payers money is spent on ammunition that is simply wasted. They’ll put an order in for how much they want to use on exercise, barely use any, and simply dump the rest down a field because “we have to use it”. Money down the drain on things like Ajax.
And on the other hand, they’re driving old land rovers that break down on virtually every trip they go on, have bases with gaping holes in their fences, and rusted weapons in the armoury.
Security is pathetic in one such base. Armoury is in one building – barracks in the next. It was realised that all it would take to wipe it out was a single section equipped with a machine gun.
You think Russia’s situation is embarrassing? A lot of it happens here too.
Very curious about what the expenses were pre-Covid in all fairness.
Edit: £1.76m on taxi/chauffeurs in 2019.
£967,327 was the amount spent in the same period this past year.
John Healey is being incredibly disingenuous here.
Savings have been made for years on how much the MoD specs on private hire/taxis and chauffeurs. The first point of call is always using unit held vehicles and drivers.
The reason for the spending on hire cars is a non availability of sufficient white fleet(civilian leased) vehicles for certain tasks. This could be getting a soldier somewhere for a course-hire cars are often cheaper than rail due to the contractual agreement, and present a lower security risk-or it could be as exercise/task support vehicles. Consider most of the army exercises at the same time and it’s easy to see why you end up spending alot on hire.
Broadly the same for taxis, short/medium distance travel to collect someone from an airport when it is highly inconvenient to get a soldier to pick them up for a number of reasons.
Same for chauffeurs, whilst some are used to transport big wigs for meetings, plenty are used to transport soldiers from Brize back to their home base after a long flight, because MoD standards say you can’t drive after a long flight.
If you’re unit has insufficient manpower free to send a driver down *or* the journey there and back would exceed driving hours, a chauffeur is your only real option.
In John Healey wants to complain, it should be on the shrinking budget, poor housing and poor morale, not a minor expenditure for a necessary thing.
MoD also blowing money on too many officers in our military. All our military combined we have more officers than the US Marine Corp, whilst having less manpower than them. We are top heavy paying millions out to them, plus their expensive pensions.
Labour can’t complain. They gutted the British military under Tony Blair.
With the amount of lease vehicles the mod has and their inability to keep track of them and their basic maintenance, they’ve got a huge money pit right there and then they use taxis?
Driver: Where to guv?
MoD: Could you get me to the nearest Taliban machine gun post please?
Driver: Closest one’s on the Kabul-Jalalabad Road, or avoiding traffic I can get you to one on the Kandahar Highway mate?.
MoD: Kabul-Jalalabad please, and step on it
Driver: Right you are sir. Funny weather we’ve been’avin’ this time of year..
I worked in main land Europe for years with the Army and have on many occasions offered to drive my own car back on a course or exercise(And just claim fuel) so I have flexibility during down time and 95% of the time was told no as it didn’t fit policy, instead they pay hundreds of pounds for flights and hire cars everytime.
The MT department at my old base in Germany was run by civilian contractors who didn’t work weekends, Bank Holidays or out of normal working hours they were absolutely useless. Good job whoever gave them that contract.
Unpopular authoritarian governments usually invest heavily in their military, if nothing else. Bold move from the Tories to cut it while trying to criminalise strikes and peaceful protests.
I guess we’re not getting a working grease gun any time soon then
Wait until you find out that since 2010 the MoD has had a fifteen year contract with Serco to produce an online recruitment website and data handling suite which has been so utterly and farcically bungled that the military is currently using literal pen and paper documents for recruitment.
Oh, and the MoD just extended Serco’s contract beyond 2025. So far Serco has been paid over £220million and actually made things worse than if they’d done literally nothing.
This is simply the most cost effective way of moving people to where they need to be in the 21st century. Using taxis and private hire to get service people to airports, bases, and train stations is often much cheaper than units maintaining their own fleet of cars driven by service members.
“Chauffeur driven” courts the image of a luxury car driven by a bloke in a cap. In my experience, it was usually a private hire Vauxhall Vectra.
“Shadow defence secretary John Healey said: “The defence department has blown millions more pounds on taxis this year as it cuts the size of the Army.”
Hopefully he stays shadow secretary. He doesn’t seem to know the correct name for the government department he aspires to run.
14 comments
Wait ’til you learn about the hundreds of horses in ‘reserve’ just in case Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan form a strategic alliance
Army is a mess.
On the one hand tax payers money is spent on ammunition that is simply wasted. They’ll put an order in for how much they want to use on exercise, barely use any, and simply dump the rest down a field because “we have to use it”. Money down the drain on things like Ajax.
And on the other hand, they’re driving old land rovers that break down on virtually every trip they go on, have bases with gaping holes in their fences, and rusted weapons in the armoury.
Security is pathetic in one such base. Armoury is in one building – barracks in the next. It was realised that all it would take to wipe it out was a single section equipped with a machine gun.
You think Russia’s situation is embarrassing? A lot of it happens here too.
Very curious about what the expenses were pre-Covid in all fairness.
Edit: £1.76m on taxi/chauffeurs in 2019.
£967,327 was the amount spent in the same period this past year.
John Healey is being incredibly disingenuous here.
Savings have been made for years on how much the MoD specs on private hire/taxis and chauffeurs. The first point of call is always using unit held vehicles and drivers.
The reason for the spending on hire cars is a non availability of sufficient white fleet(civilian leased) vehicles for certain tasks. This could be getting a soldier somewhere for a course-hire cars are often cheaper than rail due to the contractual agreement, and present a lower security risk-or it could be as exercise/task support vehicles. Consider most of the army exercises at the same time and it’s easy to see why you end up spending alot on hire.
Broadly the same for taxis, short/medium distance travel to collect someone from an airport when it is highly inconvenient to get a soldier to pick them up for a number of reasons.
Same for chauffeurs, whilst some are used to transport big wigs for meetings, plenty are used to transport soldiers from Brize back to their home base after a long flight, because MoD standards say you can’t drive after a long flight.
If you’re unit has insufficient manpower free to send a driver down *or* the journey there and back would exceed driving hours, a chauffeur is your only real option.
In John Healey wants to complain, it should be on the shrinking budget, poor housing and poor morale, not a minor expenditure for a necessary thing.
MoD also blowing money on too many officers in our military. All our military combined we have more officers than the US Marine Corp, whilst having less manpower than them. We are top heavy paying millions out to them, plus their expensive pensions.
Labour can’t complain. They gutted the British military under Tony Blair.
With the amount of lease vehicles the mod has and their inability to keep track of them and their basic maintenance, they’ve got a huge money pit right there and then they use taxis?
Driver: Where to guv?
MoD: Could you get me to the nearest Taliban machine gun post please?
Driver: Closest one’s on the Kabul-Jalalabad Road, or avoiding traffic I can get you to one on the Kandahar Highway mate?.
MoD: Kabul-Jalalabad please, and step on it
Driver: Right you are sir. Funny weather we’ve been’avin’ this time of year..
I worked in main land Europe for years with the Army and have on many occasions offered to drive my own car back on a course or exercise(And just claim fuel) so I have flexibility during down time and 95% of the time was told no as it didn’t fit policy, instead they pay hundreds of pounds for flights and hire cars everytime.
The MT department at my old base in Germany was run by civilian contractors who didn’t work weekends, Bank Holidays or out of normal working hours they were absolutely useless. Good job whoever gave them that contract.
Unpopular authoritarian governments usually invest heavily in their military, if nothing else. Bold move from the Tories to cut it while trying to criminalise strikes and peaceful protests.
I guess we’re not getting a working grease gun any time soon then
Wait until you find out that since 2010 the MoD has had a fifteen year contract with Serco to produce an online recruitment website and data handling suite which has been so utterly and farcically bungled that the military is currently using literal pen and paper documents for recruitment.
Oh, and the MoD just extended Serco’s contract beyond 2025. So far Serco has been paid over £220million and actually made things worse than if they’d done literally nothing.
This is simply the most cost effective way of moving people to where they need to be in the 21st century. Using taxis and private hire to get service people to airports, bases, and train stations is often much cheaper than units maintaining their own fleet of cars driven by service members.
“Chauffeur driven” courts the image of a luxury car driven by a bloke in a cap. In my experience, it was usually a private hire Vauxhall Vectra.
“Shadow defence secretary John Healey said: “The defence department has blown millions more pounds on taxis this year as it cuts the size of the Army.”
Hopefully he stays shadow secretary. He doesn’t seem to know the correct name for the government department he aspires to run.