The Green Ribbon

High stakes in the defence debate

The Mirror’s new political correspondent James Lyons has an important story about the defence chiefs’ attack on Gordon Brown last month:

Three retired generals who
attacked Gordon Brown for not spending enough on our troops have
lucrative jobs with defence firms, the Mirror can reveal.

The Prime Minister was accused last month by five former military chiefs of short-changing soldiers.

But
Admiral Lord Boyce, Field Marshal Lord Inge and General Lord Guthrie
did not bother mentioning that their firms had made fortunes from huge
military contracts and the war in Iraq.

Yesterday
Labour MP Eric Joyce called for a probe into why they ignored
parliamentary rules. He said: "They should say sorry to their fellow
Lords and come clean about how much they are pocketing from these
defence firms." (Mirror)

A very good reason to get on and abolish the House of Lords.

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TomGriffin

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2 responses to “High stakes in the defence debate”

  1. Charlie Marks avatar
    Charlie Marks

    Agreed.
    I think this is an example of what used to be called the “military-industrial complex”, no?

    Reply
  2. Alex avatar
    Alex

    This is also an example of truly egregious Government spin, hack journalism, and Eric Joyce being very very useful to the Labour Party and the Government. Note that every time anyone in (or ex-) the Forces speaks up about Iraq, Afghanistan or related topics, Joyce comes out with knocking copy like this; last time he was complaining about the CGS’s restaurant bill for entertaining the French Chiefs of Staff.
    (Strange, I didn’t see his FOIA request for the costs of entertaining Bush…)
    Joyce, we may recall, was a super-Blairite and cheerleader for the Iraq invasion; he has every reason to do the new leadership’s dirty work. The Mirror will presumably get its payback for stenographing this in terms of access.

    Reply

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