Since 1997, the British armed forces have been 'slashed'.

Soon the Navy will have lost ten thousand men, the Army nine thousand an sixteen thousand from the RAF. A fifth of our tanks gone, 130 of our aircraft and a quarter of our surface ships too.

This is from Michal Ancram's speech at the Conservative Party Conference.

The reduction is British forces is despite being involved in wars in Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq.

All this is not directly relevant to the welfare state. However it is a reaction to the pressure on government funds which, in turn, is a symptom of this administration desperately trying to make the NHS and state education work better by devoting ever increasing amounts of money to them. The government has to cut everything else to try to raise the money without increasing taxes too much.

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in General

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