djchameleon

You are mixing up two different things though. Sure, people may die through human error as far as like friendly fire and things of that nature but dying over shitty equipment is the fucking worse. Just because you signed your life away doesn't mean that you should be given shit gear and thrown to the wolves. I'm not saying it has to be top of the line gear because the government is cheap and likes to cut costs but certain things shouldn't be better than the bare minimum if it can protect a life. They end up just paying out more money anyways with life insurance to the family members.

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Unknown Soldier

As much as I disagree with the soldiers being there in the first place, I do think that once they're there the government should be responsible for their well-being as much as possible and if that involves having their equipment maintained to the highest standards then so be it. I think that what The Batlord is saying and I also agree with, is that it's actually nigh on impossible at times though to monitor these things in a warzone and even harder to maintain certain standards in a warzone as well. Therefore whilst I agree with the principal of soldier protection, the reality of the warzone actually makes it much harder to control.

To a degree when you sign up to the army you are signing your life away, as the government has carte blanche to send to you anywhere they see fit, after all the soldier has signed up for it willingly and knows what he's going to face.

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The Batlord

Who says we're talking about faulty equipment? We're talking about equipment that was designed to do a specific thing. We're not talking about tanks (except for one case of a Challenger tank), we're talking about the Snatch Land Rover...




It doesn't need to be negligence for that thing to be destroyed by an IUD. It's a glorified Jeep. It's not meant to stand up to an atom bomb. It looks like it's meant to transport people and be fast. That's it.

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djchameleon

The faulty equipment that I was talking about is in regards to a different story that could possibly be considered within the guidelines of this same ruling.

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Fame, fortune, power, titties. People say these are the most crucial things in life, but you can have a pocket full o' gold and it doesn't mean sh*t if you don't have someone to share that gold with. Seems simple. Yet it's an important lesson to learn. Even lone wolves run in packs sometimes.

The Batlord

Well, I guess that would depend. It's sort of unreasonable to expect that every piece of equipment in the military is gonna be up to spec. If there's evidence that the military was actively cutting corners and putting soldier's lives in danger though, then yeah, they should be liable for that.

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hip hop bunny hop

This isn't about the equipment the soldiers were using; it's about the British public being indecisive. You can't constantly support cutting military spending for decades on end and then act surprised when it turns out the equipment isn't state of the art - at least with any measure of credibility.

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Urban Hat€monger ?

Well of course it's been cut, Britain isn't a superpower anymore.
They had an empire to look after back then, now they don't.

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The Batlord

I think he's pointing out that Britain can't have its cake and eat it too. If you wanna cut back on military spending, don't be surprised when your military suffers as a result. Not that I think Britain should raise its military spending, but consequences are consequences. Maybe this just goes to show that Britain shouldn't jump every time America decides to invade some country or another.

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Urban Hat€monger ?

Any wars that Britain gets into is because of little man syndrome in Whitehall, these old farts who can't handle the fact Britian isn't as important as it used to be.
Britain doesn't need a big army, It doesn't need to be getting mixed up in every war around the globe (Apart from Argentina, that's personal). And it certainly doesn't need to fork out £100bn on Trident.

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hip hop bunny hop

Not really. There are a few dominate political ideas in Britain;

(1) A general belief in equality which extends beyond political boundaries (e.g., an immigrant is just as British as ______ )
(2) A strong feeling that the government can and should intervene to prevent excessive inequality (whatever that is)
(3) A general feeling that the plight of the poor is largely the fault of the rich, not the poor themselves

Is it really very difficult to see how this manifests itself in an interventionist foreign policy? If the general dialogue in Britain is one that the Government is both obligated to and capable of bringing about greater equality, that the political divisions which separate people are (or should be) meaningless, and that the Top 1% is responsible for the problems of the Bottom 50%, then how can you not have lapses into neo-liberal "humanitarian interventions"?

edit: seriously, I'd love to hear how you can square the above with a position that's against, say, nation building in Aghanistan?

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