Former defence secretary, Geoff Hoon who was behind last week’s attempted leadership coup and now has nothing much to lose (there’s never going to be a Lord Hoon), looks set to do further damage to Gordon Brown with the disclosure that he (Brown) vetoed the purchase of vital military helicopters.
Leaked letters show that, when chancellor, Brown prevented Hoon from ordering life-saving battlefield equipment for Afghanistan and Iraq. Hoon, who was dismissed as an embittered traitor by Brown’s allies (?) for the failed email plot, has the potential to further undermine his leadership in the run-up to the general election.
According to the Sunday Times, the leaked letters show Brown personally overturned earlier Treasury assurances that the Ministry of Defence would be free to spend extra cash on troop-carrying helicopters. Hoon had warned that, if Brown refused to back down, “We would have to scale back on major equipment programmes.” He went on to claim that the helicopter programme in particular would suffer.
Last night, Hoon refused to comment on the letters, passed to The Sunday Times by Royal Air Force sources, but this is hardly important now, as the Sunday Times has it splashed over its front page. It is likely that Hoon, who is due to give information to the Chilcot inquiry, will now be asked in detail about the letters.
The leaked letters show how Brown’s actions from 2002 to 2004 meant that the military were unable to buy new helicopters which could now be in service in Afghanistan. The lack of air support has forced British troops to take dangerous journeys by road, exposing them to deadly Taliban bombs.
Military chiefs have long complained that the Treasury under Brown starved them of resources.
The revelations will be personally embarrassing to Brown, and damaging to the image of a Prime Minister who has waved the union flag and lectured us at length about showing support for the troops who are fighting (so he says) to keep the Taliban off the streets of England (by which he really means is London).
Brown out 2010
ReplyDeleteGets more and more likely by the day...
ReplyDeleteThis has been mooted a few times in the past year Tris but there was no evidence, just certain anonymous politicians saying he didn't attend meetings on Iraq etc.
ReplyDeleteYou're off the mark this morning!!
The Mail on Sunday are doing a good story about Gordon aswell.Definitely bonkers by all accounts !
ReplyDeleteWell, the Sunday Times feels confident enough to lead on it SR, so there must be something in it. Yeah... couldn't sleep!
ReplyDeleteYes, read that too Anon... bonkers is surely the word!!
ReplyDeleteOh and did you read Ian Dales account of Iris Robinson ? Affairs with the toyboys dad and someone else in the 80's !
ReplyDeleteMungin
ReplyDeleteFor me the most devastating feature of this latest revelation is not that Brown is a congenital liar, nor that he is contemptuous of the military and is willing to sacrifice human being on the altar of his sociopathic ego it is the unmasking of those around Brown and the parliamentary Labour Party in particular.
Hoon, whose name has passed into the Greater Modern English Argot as a substitute for a part of female genitalia reveals all.
Here he is, Hoon, trying to get helicopters to allow our troops to carry out their duties, in a safer, more efficient and expeditious manner that was, and still is, the case by way of land convoy.
Here he is, Hoon, being denied the funds to carry out these purchases by the unstable monoculist bean counter.
Here he is, Hoon, with a charge and, despite being a fully paid up atheist, I call this a sacred charge, and what does he do?
Nothing.
Nothing, except shut up, toe the Party line and lie through his back teeth to the Press and the Public about how well everything is going. This hold onto the relevant paper exchange in order to protect the anatomical hole opposite his personal virtual "hoon."
Nothing, except wait until he can use this for whatever personal objective he choses.
So, some "RAF" sources, yes unbelievably so, choose to release copies of the relevant exchanges showing Brown in a very bad light and Hoon as a loyal Minister.
Anybody spot the flaw?
Hoon is loyal to whom?
To the soldiers, the ones who dies or were injured because of the lack of helicopters?
To the defence of this Realm to which Hoon is sworn?
To his Party, first of all and to himself a close second?
This is as close to treason as I think you can get without duffing the Queen's corgis.
When Brown and his assorted gang of fraudsters, thieves, mentalists and comedy singers are finally consigned to the cesspit of history does anyone think that we will get a better class of crook from the other Unionist parties?
I think not, if history is any guide.
ReplyDeleteI give you some words fro Kipling written in 1917 about another war in Mesopotamia
They shall not return to us, the resolute, the young,
The eager and whole-hearted whom we gave:
But the men who left them thriftily to die in their own dung,
Shall they come with years and honour to the grave?
They shall not return to us, the strong men coldly slain
In sight of help denied from day to day:
But the men who edged their agonies and chid them in their pain,
Are they too strong and wise to put away?
Our dead shall not return to us while Day and Night divide -
Never while the bars of sunset hold.
But the idle-minded overlings who quibbled while they died,
Shall they thrust for high employments as of old?
Shall we only threaten and be angry for an hour?
When the storm is ended shall we find
How softly but how swiftly they have sidled back to power
By the favour and contrivance of their kind?
Even while they soothe us, while they promise large amends,
Even while they make a show of fear,
Do they call upon their debtors, and take counsel with their friends,
To confirm and re-establish each career?
Their lives cannot repay us - their death could not undo -
The shame that they have laid upon our race.
But the slothfulness that wasted and the arrogance that slew,
Shall we leave it unabated in its place?
Anon: Will go to Ian's page right after this. As Munguin himself said on another post: he hopes that if he turns up at the Pearly Gates just after Mrs Robinson, that he's had the foresight to pack a deck chair, and flask of coffee, (and I'd suggest War and Peace) because reading out this woman's sins sounds like it's going to take the longest of times.
ReplyDeleteDo you know, I may seem to have been judgemental about Robinson, and I'm sorry about that. Her sexual affairs are nothing to do with me. I couldn’t care less. But she's taking my money as a tax payer, and using the time that I help to pay her for, to spout this "holier than thou" nonsense, and all the time she's behaving like the devil's apprentice. ....
Anyway, in the spirit of friendship, I trust that she has a great holiday skiing in France, while she leaves Peter to sort it all out.
I just hope that the Assembly can be saved, because if not, the future for the province looks bleak. Still, we can't have that interfere with the pleasures of Mrs Robinson, and I'm sure her god was guiding her every step of the way.
Bugger: Nice to see you!
ReplyDeleteAgreed. If I remember rightly there was only one Cabinet Minister who resigned over all of this, and it wasn't the Defence Secretary.
I've said this a few times before: why does no one have the courage to do something about the way that these wars were initiated and prosecuted?
Not cabinet ministers, not junior ministers, not the War Office, not the very senior officers, not the Queen.
No one.
OK. They may have fought hard in the back ground (or they may not have), but they didn't feel strongly enough to give up their big salaries and pensions and the chance of a seat in the Lords. With the exception of the Queen that option was open to all of them.
Perhaps your haunting second post explains why.
Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
I see there's no mention of the Hoons comments on BBC Pravda or of the former Labour General Secretary's news that Broon is indeed bonkers. How long do we have to pay for this despicable waste of £3Bn a year. And to think we have to pay for this biased organisation on fear of a prison sentence.
ReplyDeleteHey Barking:
ReplyDeleteNothing that Brown does would surprise me. He might pull a health one on us and take to Chamonix like Mrs Robinson. It seems that when you have completely cocked up, and made everything you purported to stand for a complete laughing stock (like Robinson and Brown have), the antidote is a .......skiing holiday.
This lot are putting the satirists out of work. You couldn't satirise this lot, could you?
It's bound to get messy when thieves fall out.
ReplyDeleteYes Brownlie... and you couldn't ask for a bigger set of thieves, could you?
ReplyDelete