Soldiers training to fight in Afghanistan have been sacked in an apparent breach of rules laid down by the Ministry of Defence, it can be disclosed.
An officer speaking on behalf of the sacked men said: "With the pensions issue and now this you can imagine their thoughts after 15 years loyal service where they've regularly risked their lives."
Two highly experienced company commanders from the 2nd Bn The Yorkshire Regiment have been made compulsorily redundant despite their battalion being at 48 hours readiness to deploy to Afghanistan.
The officers will be sent to the front line in the knowledge that they "will not know where next month's income is coming from," colleagues have said.
The men are part of the Theatre Reserve Battalion based in Cyprus that is trained to fight in Afghanistan at a moment's notice. Every battalion that has been the TRB has deployed elements on every tour since the Helmand campaign began in 2006.
But their compulsory redundancy appears to flout the pledge made by defence chiefs and politicians that "no one who is currently preparing to join operations, already deployed on operations or in recovery from operations will be made redundant".
The officers have also suffered the financial blow, first disclosed by The Daily Telegraph earlier this week that means they will lose out on a pension worth up £300,000 by being sacked just months short of their 16 year qualifying period.
Soldiers also now face having to wait an extra five years to get a pension with plans to move the immediate pensionable age to 45.
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#2
Treat them like mercenaries long enough and they'll act like mercenaries. Instead of fighting when the time comes, they can be bought as well. Northumberland could sit and watch as much as fight.
#3
A suggestion for the British government: it should explicitly announce that it is no longer a world power and cannot be responsible for affairs that occur outside of its immediate geographical location.
After all, that's what they're doing with all these moves to cut their Defence spending, cut personnel, and so on. And what they are doing to these offices now is downright dishonorable.
It's all brought about by the simple fact that the British government (and by extension the people) no longer can bear the burden of involvement in world affairs as a world power.
So stop. Step away from the world leadership role. Announce an intention to be a regional power only with a regional military. Confine one's diplomacy outside Europe to purely consultative and observational statements.
Become New Zealand. Or Ireland. Become a prosperous, middle-weight nation that tends to mind its own affairs. Contribute to UN peacekeeping forces. And otherwise stay quiet.
That's the path you're on anyway, Britain. Why not make it explicit?
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/23/2012 10:11 Comments ||
Top||
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
