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| Britain |
| Crisis as SAS men quit for lucrative Iraq jobs |
| 2005-02-14 |
| The number of SAS troopers leaving for lucrative jobs in the security industry has prompted the regiment to write to all soldiers urging them to stay. A letter from the regiment's headquarters has told all the SAS's 300 front-line soldiers that "it would be in everyone's best interests" if they remained in service. An estimated 120 former Special Air Service and Special Boat Service troops have left, swapping a junior NCO's wage of about £2,000 a month for as much as £14,000 a month working as security co-ordinators in Iraq or Afghanistan. The letter is said to have told soldiers to consider their loyalty to the regiment and the kudos of being in the SAS. "This has always been an issue," an SAS soldier said yesterday. "It is not the young ones that they are worried about but the senior NCOs who are so important. If they lose middle management they lose all that experience for the future and they are desperate to keep that experience there." One former 22 SAS soldier now working in security estimated that 120 former Special Forces men are working for security firms in Iraq. Some are earning £450 a day, or £14,000 a month, working for firms such as Kroll, Controlled Risks and Armour Security. The former soldier, who had just one week off in his last two years in the SAS, said: "They cannot stop people from leaving. The SAS lifestyle is extremely demanding and not really conducive to family life or long-term relationships. On the security circuit you have the potential to earn very high wages combined with an attractive working rotation, invariably one month on, one month off." While wages, pensions and life insurance have been addressed in recent years, the SAS still has substantial commitments around the world. Workload cannot be addressed, said the former soldier, "because the men are deployed all over the place". The two SAS Territorial Army regiments are also experiencing manning problems and weekend training has been threatened due to lack of numbers. Some TA have been granted permission for up to a year's leave of absence but others have left for the private sector. The United States Defence Department has offered its most experienced special forces a bonus of $150,000 (£80,000) to sign on for six years to stem an exodus to security jobs, it was announced last week. The British Government spent the equivalent of the annual salaries of 130 SAS junior NCOs on new comfortable chairs for MoD desk jockeys last year. And the MoD, ordered to save money by the Government (to fund more important projects such as its £9.6bn dismal failure anti-obesity campaign), managed to save a mighty £2.5m of an initially projected £90m from the multi-billion pound Eurofighter project by installing a gun which won't fire. Did they think the boots on the ground wouldn't notice? |
| Posted by:Bulldog |
| #19 someone - UKIP are a single-issue party. I'm not sure they even have an Iraq policy (though I'd like to imagine one). The Steyn link doesn't work for non-subscribers (and I receive the dead tree version - but I don't get access to online articles). |
| Posted by: Bulldog 2005-02-14 7:21:06 PM |
| #18 [Moderator hat: ON] I've noticed that you need to put in the complete URL (with http:// included.) If you just put in www., Fred's routine sticks on the rantburg stuff. [Moderator hat: OFF] I really want to like Tony (I could listen to his speeches all day), but his policies make it very very hard. |
| Posted by: Seafarious 2005-02-14 4:46:40 PM |
| #17 The Tories are hardly a choice; as Steyn notes, they've been positively Kerryesque in their If I were British I'd vote UKIP... |
| Posted by: someone 2005-02-14 1:31:32 PM |
| #16 I thought Howard - slimeball who sent people to work for Kerry's campaign -- would pull Britain out. Nope. The Tories and the Lib Dems (the latter surprisingly, and IIRC) consistently argue in favour of more British troops in Iraq. Partly just to be contrary, I'm sure. |
| Posted by: Bulldog 2005-02-14 11:58:49 AM |
| #15 Tony loses, what happens to Britain's Iraq commitments? I thought Howard - slimeball who sent people to work for Kerry's campaign -- would pull Britain out. |
| Posted by: anonymous2u 2005-02-14 11:22:18 AM |
| #14 Maybe that should be: 'There's no-one worth voting for anymore. I want to cry.' |
| Posted by: Howard UK 2005-02-14 9:43:07 AM |
| #13 UKIP? |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2005-02-14 9:36:05 AM |
| #12 There's no-one to vote for anymore. I want to cry. |
| Posted by: Howard UK 2005-02-14 9:34:02 AM |
| #11 Molson Ale - If you look at the opinion polls, the British public are becoming more eurosceptic, not less. Public opposition to the proposed EU Constitution in the UK runs at about 60%. |
| Posted by: Bulldog 2005-02-14 8:56:58 AM |
| #10 There is no question that Blair's greatest strength is the weakness of his Tory opposition, and thats's beign genreous. It is also not clear that all the things Tony is being derided for here are exactly the things the British people want him to do. You can only swim against the tide so long. No personal offence, BD, but I think the Brit general populace has gone Euro. |
| Posted by: Molson Ale 2005-02-14 8:11:13 AM |
| #9 Hmmmm, maybe we can get the New York Times to appeal to some swing voter segment to keep Tony - and create a Tory-favoring backlash, lol! Sounds like a plan, .com! But I think getting Le Monde readers to do the same in the name of EU solidarity would be even more effective. Blair's attempt to jump off the Iraq bandwagon, now that it's effectively arrived at its destination and no more unpopular ME demands are likely to trouble him before the election is politically less necessary that six months ago, say - I think the elections there have done a lot to neutralise objections from the less idiotic members of the bone-headed Stopper community. Labour are still projected to win, in spite of their many failures. You've got to hand it to them that Brown's management of the economy has been competent, especially compared to our EU neighbours (though who knows what could have been without such lead weights as EU red tape, raised taxes, our £0.5m per hour net tribute to Brussels, the dismantling of the British fishing industry to allow other nations to fish in our waters, etc.). But also the Left in the UK have successfully managed to demonise the Tories, through Pavlovian techniques (you've seen them at work against Bush in the US - unrelenting attack - and Blair himself has initiated very personal attacks on his Tory opponent already (some of which have been accused of being anti-Semitic)) effected by Left wing politicians and their media allies, and without crediting them, under Thatcher, for rescuing the UK from decades of economic failure. Tory policies regarding immigration, the military, foreign relations (particularly the EU) all beat Labour's (and the Lib Dems') into a hat when put to the test of public opinion. And perenially popular Labour causes such as the NHS are demonstrably inferior for anyone who cares to see how things are done better elsewhere... Where was I? Apologies for the rambling ranting. |
| Posted by: Bulldog 2005-02-14 6:29:51 AM |
| #8 Lol, phil - I was joking, but you've got me intrigued, now, lol! Any ideas how we could do it? BD could identify the swing segment, some truly whacked-out moonbat Tranzis, I guess, and the portrayal could be that they're the "mainstream" - which should piss off a LOT of people, lol! Anyone got good MSM contacts? Karl, you listening, lol! Hey, I was just kidding about that other thing, Big Guy, don't have me whacked! |
| Posted by: .com 2005-02-14 6:08:15 AM |
| #7 maybe we can get the New York Times to appeal to some swing voter segment to keep Tony - and create a Tory-favoring backlash, This is an excellent idea. It just has to appaer to come from the Dems. From your keyboard to Rove's ear. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2005-02-14 6:01:52 AM |
| #6 Lol, BD. Seems McCain jumps onto the sinking E3 Iranian debacle just as Tony jumps off, lol! We have our morons, too, lol! This statement made me do a double-take: "So all 232 of the RAF's Eurofighter/Typhoon aircraft will be fitted with the gun at a cost of £90 million - but in order to save what is now a mere £2.5 million they will have no rounds to fire." Sheesh! "Penny wise, but pound foolish." is, after all, an English maxim, lol! May this sort of management be banished to the back bench! It's hard to be sure what the UK Moonbat quotient is, since your elections don't seem to settle anything in an up or down fashion (lol!), ours is nothing to be happy about (51.x-48.x), but I hope you prevail so your domestic policies will make as much sense as some of the foreign policies (No to EU, Yes to WoT, etc), heh. Hmmmm, maybe we can get the New York Times to appeal to some swing voter segment to keep Tony - and create a Tory-favoring backlash, lol! |
| Posted by: .com 2005-02-14 5:51:15 AM |
| #5 Well if I was an SAS NCO I would look at things as a realist. I can stay in and get nothing for my risk except pissed on and help keep a bunch of Transnational Socialist in power who will tax the hell out of the pittance I make. These same Transnational Socialists have no loyalty to me. The former SAS NCO can go to work at a multinational and bank most of their money tax free in a swiss account. Loyalty has nothing to do with it the MOD will phase any regiment out they can get away with. Labor will never properly fund the military. Many Labor supporters hate the military and are not afraid to say so. Bail while the bailing is good. |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet of Doom 2005-02-14 5:38:48 AM |
| #4 Fred might want to have a look at the posting script... seems to have the RB URL insterted in front of the desired URL. This has happened before. Did you have to perform a restore from backup, Fred? I just extracted the URL and stripped off the RB linkage, BD. No big deal, bro, heh. |
| Posted by: .com 2005-02-14 5:36:08 AM |
| #3 .com - I've totally lost patience with Blair's Labour government in just about every respect now. As you say, there's so much ammunition the Tories could and should be using in the upcoming election campaign but don't seem to be exploiting yet. It doesn't help that Blair's going to withold officially announcing the date the of election unil one month beforehand (it's going to be May 5th - but they won't let on), whilst shamelessly campaigning himself already. Blair's strategy seems to be an extraordinarily cynical 'I've been arrogant - now please forgive me'. WTF?!!! Safe to assume he's talking about Iraq - and this just as his single most admirable policy is being vindicated before the eyes of the idiotarian world with the elections, diminishing insurgency etc. Various "pledges" regarding how Labour will improve things and steal new Tory policies... Anything, in other words, to remain in power. |
| Posted by: Bulldog 2005-02-14 5:33:10 AM |
| #2 Hmm. Not sure what happened to the links there. Comfortable chairs: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/12/nmod12.xml Anti-obesity campaign: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/10/09/nfat09.xml Eurofighter fiasco: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/08/13/nplane13.xml |
| Posted by: Bulldog 2005-02-14 5:24:11 AM |
| #1 You've nailed it BD. The problem is that the UK Govt biggies wank for themselves, but expect the little people to do their bit For God and Queen on a pittance. And make do with shoddy kit, in a war zone, no less. Think the libs will get tossed out in the next cycle? I hope The Telegraph shouts this sort of idiocy from the rooftops until that day comes. Thx, BD! |
| Posted by: .com 2005-02-14 5:24:04 AM |
