The Very Few

First they came for the fleet. Now the planes.

But the RAF will bear the brunt of the planned cuts. The Air Force will lose 7,000 airmen – almost one sixth of its total staff – and 295 aircraft. The cuts will leave the Force with fewer than 200 fighter planes for the first time since 1914. In addition, the Navy will lose two submarines, three amphibious ships and more than 100 senior officers, along with 2,000 sailors and marines.

The Army faces a 40 per cent cut to its fleet of 9,700 armoured vehicles and the loss of a 5,000-strong brigade of troops.

The Telegraph has also learnt that the “black hole” in MoD finances, caused by orders which have been made but cannot be paid for, is approaching £72  billion over the next decade – double the amount previously suggested.

Plenty of money made available to bail out irresponsible bankers, the bloated mess of the NHS and countless dependency creating welfare schemes, but not enough to keep up a word class military. A nation voting itself into irrelevance. These stories make me sick, physically ill. I'm not exaggerating for effect. It is a moral crime to send men into battle without proper equipment and supply. It is as sinful as it is foolish to strip a nation of its defences.

In my bleaker moods I've thought of making it mandatory for all welfare recipients, who are physically fit and without dependants, to serve their nation in uniform. I hesitate solely because I would hate to inflict such malingerers on the forces. So much damn waste in modern Britain, and the focus is all on the only parts of the country that still work, and are still regarded as being globally first rate, the monarchy and the military.

Is there not an overweight PC, a safety inspector or diversity enforcer in the realm who cannot lose their stipend? Must the very best be punished for the sake of the very worst? What perversity and madness is this? Terrorists and religious fanatics caper freely, but fox hunting is banned! There is moral outrage at bull fighting, but one can obtain a lunchtime abortion!

Could those who are murdering Britain not have the decency, the plain decency, of at least waiting until all the veterans of the last great war die off? Must the few remaining soldiers, sailors and airmen of 1939-1945 live out their last years in this strange place? Where crowds of foreigners - who have inexplicably been granted residency and even citizenship - insult the honoured dead returning from Afghanistan. I have no problem with immigrants - my parents are immigrants - only with the ungrateful sods who have no intention of integrating. The strange death of Mother England.