UK Politics

[Walsingham]

The Uk budget for non-elected bodies, called 'quangos' funded from the public purse stands at around 80 billion UKP.

 

The budget for the MoD stands at around 40 bn UKP.

 

The case against quangos seems inassailable to me. These are bodies engaged in spending government money - lots of money - without any real oversight and whose senior staff make as much if not more than the ministers who are supposed to oversee them. If they fail to do any good they are rarely held accountable, and even when they do as badly as the Financial Services Authority, they take a long time to wind up. Moreover there is no shortage of bodies engaged in apparent busywork. Such as the health agency which tells us the shocking fact that if we eat fatty food and do no exercise it is bad for our health! Never mind the quango Potato Council who are actually funding an 'eat chips week'.

 

I need hardly go into detail on the case for the Ministry of Defence. It is vastly underfunded, and yet is being asked to make massive double figure percentage cuts.

 

Cut quangos by 75%, raise the the MoD budget 150%, save 20 billion. Simples.

 

I believe that this is THE hot topic in UK politics.

Edited September 9, 2010 by Walsingham

[Humodour]

I don't understand how countries can have such high levels of public debt (anything above 20% of GDP).

[Wrath of Dagon]

It's expensive to be constantly bribing your constituents to vote for you.

[Rostere]

It's expensive to be constantly bribing your constituents to vote for you.

 

Basically what is actually happening in Greece and all the other European countries who are struggling with debts.

[Raithe]

And to think about 15 years ago the budget for those non-elected officials was somewhere in the millions. There are times I really do feel that all the non-english members of the Labour party were going out of their way to screw over the country.

 

But then I have moments of severe paranoia and extreme cynicism.

[Walsingham]

Raithe is right to point out that this wasn't some sort of mission creep here. There was an _explosion_ of quangos in the last few years. Just mad.

[Monte Carlo]

Let's get rid of billion-pound air superiority fighters for starters, all we need is a shed-load of helis (army), tpt planes (give those to the army too) and some fast air for the crabs to... help the army. Fast air can be bought off the shelf from the spams like Apache is, under a licence. Oh, and work out how many one-four star officers you actually need and sack the surplus. Incentivize officer ranks below that with role-related pay increments and lateral development.

 

Brigade the Royal Marines and the Para Regt. Parachute infantry battalions are now as relevant as horse-borne cavalry in 1939. Re-role half the line infantry into air-mobile light divisions, get rid of the Cold War era panzergrenadier mind-set.

 

It's the usual, really. slay sacred cows. Cut the fat from management. Concentrate of core business. Sort of kit procurement. Doesn't matter if you are Tesco or the MoD, it's business 101.

[Walsingham]

Monte, aren't we in danger of doing a 1930s? Re-role everyone because we're fighting colonial wars, and cut air cover and big battle kit. This is all lovely so long as the Yanks are kind enough to underwrite us, and don't do a Falklands.

 

While I have to admit your proposals make sense if the MoD budget has to be cut, the whole point of this thread is that the sacred cow DOESN'T have to be slain, if we slay the sacred turnip of quangocracy.

[Monte Carlo]

Monte, aren't we in danger of doing a 1930s?

 

No, because in the 1930's there were no nuclear deterrents, cyber-attack capability, Web 2.0 global comms culture.... and so on and so forth.

 

I'm trying to imagine the scenario where we will need armoured regiments with Challies cutting across the plains supported by shed-loads of panzergrens in warriors. I'm failing. Even so, we can mothball those and dig them out when required, even FRES envisages light mobile forces. The enemy for the next twenty-thirty years seems to be the insurgent driving about in pick-up trucks. If we start fighting the Chinese or Russia it's going to go tac-nuke very quickly, why fight the 1980's "Hold them at the Weser" three-day battle anymore?

 

Defence is a pork barrel for civil servants and an arms industry that has become the tail that wags the dog. Time for a change.

[Walsingham]

But that is PRECISELY what was said pre Falklands and pre-WW2 (afaik). "There won't be another big war and even if there was Britain won't be fighting with big battalions."

 

It's the reason why we went into WW2 with obsolescent tanks and aircraft. We'd come to rely on the notion of the French providing the big land component, just as we rely on the Yanks now. And hyst like 1939-40 that's not wise. By which I imply no disrespect to our friends in Yankeeland. It's simple common sense.

 

Then again, in the Falklands, had the proposed defence cuts been put through just months earlier there would have been no relief task force. We thought Uncle Sam would be bound to back us up then, given that the British Isles were the de facto 'unsinkable aircraft carrier' USS Ronald Reagan. But nope.

 

~

 

The wilier readers may wonder how this squares with my insistence that radicalism is a critical threat. Well, it is. But in the way that food is a primary concern after water. Terrorism only comes into play when the enemy aren't stomping you flat with Big War toys.

 

The nuclear deterrent is important, but it's not something you can use as a tool of foreign policy the same way you can regular forces.

 

I'm rambling a bit because I'm tired, but I think the central theme is sound. The world is not safer, there's no such thing as a reliable ally, and the fundamental nature of armed conflict hasn't changed. It sucks, but if we cut defence I say we are looking at far worse expenditure down the line when our weakened condition provokes aggression which a stronger force would have deterred.

 

Discuss.

[Humodour]

Wals, I argue the same thing to my Australian mates who suggest Aussies don't need an army because our allies in Europe and America will defend us.

 

It's a ludicrous notion if only because you guys are exactly on the other side of the world and our potential enemies are next door.

 

That said, Monte's suggestions for modernising the military seem sound.

[Raithe]

What was that old quote.. "air power matters, but if you can't park an 18 year old infantryman with a rifle on the ground, you can't control it."

 

Or something along those lines...

[Wrath of Dagon]

I don't think there are too many countries in the world who can stand up to China by themselves anyways, but everyone should at least have the decency to pull their own weight.

[Tale]

It's expensive to be constantly bribing your constituents to vote for you.

I think the proper solution is to establish me as dictator. Won't have to bribe anyone then.

[Monte Carlo]

I don't think there are too many countries in the world who can stand up to China by themselves anyways, but everyone should at least have the decency to pull their own weight.

 

They won't. the Dutch, Germans, Scandies... they just won't. They think the post-WW2 peace dividend and post-Cold War world means decades of the Great Satan America providing all the strategic lift for them. They suckle at the US defence teat and resent you right back for it. German troops sit in their barracks playing token contribution while US and British grunts soak up the attrition.

 

The problem is, the US wants all these deployments and offers blood and treasure as a carrot to get the European defence-lite nations to agree at the UN. A bit of isolationism followed by some local instability might get them to concentrate their minds a bit. But the world isn't like that now, power blocs and triple entente. We have foreign policy a la carte, a system whereby each nation chooses it's allies on a day-to-day basis.

 

And Wals, the reason there won't be a great big war (to which you quote the Falklands, to wit an impressive feat of arms... but to call it a war is like calling my lunchtime BLT and an apple a banquet) is because no sucker in the West will fight. Even the Russians struggle with conscription. Where is the manpower going to come from? WW3 would be small-scale conflagrations, a shock and awe bout of cyber-blitzkrieg then tac-nukes. Ergo we need mobile forces, state of the art cyber defence and lots of bunkers and submarines.

 

Tanks? Nah.

[Calax]

I don't think there are too many countries in the world who can stand up to China by themselves anyways, but everyone should at least have the decency to pull their own weight.

Meaning? They're not saying to toss it all and have (effectively) tiny deployment teams that will dive in, do a job, and leap out like politicians would LOVE To think is possible. Simply that warfare in general has changed since ww2 and that things should change with it.

 

Honestly, I think a lot of the US Military budget is wasted. Sure it's fun to think about that airplane that operates in air like it should be in space, but the best planes most of our enemies field... are on a tech level as the F-15, we're working to obsolete the F-22 which REPLACED the F-15.

 

I think that a lot of streamlining of the military would be helpful. I don't know how our brit friends military works, but in the US it's kinda... slow. Particularly if you force them to get out of the standard pathway. Monte's suggestions seem like a good idea overall, particularly given the closest thing to a conventional ground war we've seen was 50ish years ago (at least in my memory from my US based perspective).

 

The us really needs to get a tank that doesn't take 5 gallons of jet gas to start.

[Gfted1]

1) The F-22 program was cancelled.

2) The US maintains a commanding lead in kickassery precisely because we continue to develop advanced weapons systems, whether we need them "right now" or not.

3) The "military industial complex" brings billions of dollars and thousands of jobs to civilians.

[Monte Carlo]

The US maintains a commanding lead in kickassery precisely because we continue to develop advanced weapons systems, whether we need them "right now" or not.

 

Partially. The US quest for Full Spectrum dominance isn't predicated entirely on technology, although it's obviously a component. The US leads the way because it has consistently shown the political will to do so and sinks millions of dollars into (not necessarily high-tech) key military infrastructure like logistics and stuff like helicopters / transport aircraft and so on.

 

For example, the American Abrams / M-1 tank programme is super-cool, but in Iraq it spent most of it's time behaving like a WW2 assault gun or crushing taxis. You don't need dozens of regiments of it. Maybe a couple of spearhead divisions, sure, but the US would never get all it's tanks to (say) China before the whole thing went tac-nuke. Iran? Seriously, I'd be looking at a medium / light armour solution there and the whole thing would be decided by US air superiority, which is high-tech and you have in abundance. One hi-tech weapons package can allow a military to adopt a lower-tech one elsewhere.

 

If I were a combat infantryman I'd want to see the tax-dollar being poured into stuff like combat medicine, IED tech, up-graded body armour systems, digital reliable personal comms, helicopters, ground attack air assets... not super-carriers, air superiority fighters or the next generation of super-tank. But, hey, what do I know?

[Gfted1]

Partially. The US quest for Full Spectrum dominance isn't predicated entirely on technology, although it's obviously a component. The US leads the way because it has consistently shown the political will to do so and sinks millions of dollars into (not necessarily high-tech) key military infrastructure like logistics and stuff like helicopters / transport aircraft and so on.

 

Agreed.

 

For example, the American Abrams / M-1 tank programme is super-cool, but in Iraq it spent most of it's time behaving like a WW2 assault gun or crushing taxis. You don't need dozens of regiments of it. Maybe a couple of spearhead divisions, sure, but the US would never get all it's tanks to (say) China before the whole thing went tac-nuke. Iran? Seriously, I'd be looking at a medium / light armour solution there and the whole thing would be decided by US air superiority, which is high-tech and you have in abundance. One hi-tech weapons package can allow a military to adopt a lower-tech one elsewhere.

 

I dont know about that. The M-1 was developed in the 1970's (yep, its really that old) to fight the Soviet T-72/T-80. In the beginning of each Gulf War it was instrumental in crushing Iraqi ground forces and its absense would have dramatically increased the duration of that phase. Sure, NOW they seem a bit overkill when everything switches to house-to-house fighting but for destroying Iraq's standing army? It cant be beat. Literally.

 

If I were a combat infantryman I'd want to see the tax-dollar being poured into stuff like combat medicine, IED tech, up-graded body armour systems, digital reliable personal comms, helicopters, ground attack air assets... not super-carriers, air superiority fighters or the next generation of super-tank. But, hey, what do I know?

 

Luckily for us, we are willing to spend a huge percentage of GDP on our military so for the time being we dont have to trade one thing to accomplish another. I also think you may be underestimating the effect that being able to transport a carrier force that outguns most nations has on bad guys. AFAIK, there are currently no new fighters or tanks on the drawing boards, but I get your point.

[Monte Carlo]

The Abrams was conceived in the 70's, but Main Battle Tanks are a bit like aircraft in that they are constantly up-graded to the point where the modern one is only marginally the same as the original.

 

In Britain the army is still using the Spartan / Saracen CVR(T) series APCs which were about in the early 70's. Except ours aren't up-graded.

 

I remember the infamous Iraq press conference where Don Rumsfeld is rendered speechless, and almost booed, by a load of US infantrymen asking him about up-armoured Humm-Vees. They were McGuyvering their own armour on them, the US army didn't have enough light armour. Tanks? Sure. Light armour? Hmmm. No. Bit of a smack on the FAIL button, really. The British army had the exact same problem with land-rovers.

 

So you can be a top-flight military power and still get the procurement basics wrong. The US can deliver iced-soda and pizza hut in theatre in 48 hours, it can drop tonnes of ordnance on a precise area from a mile above the earth and it can ship an armoured bridge anywhere on earth completely independently by sea... but it can't provide adequate light armour protection. I'm not even being facetious, merely pointing out an interesting contradiction.

[SteveThaiBinh]

The Uk budget for non-elected bodies, called 'quangos' funded from the public purse stands at around 80 billion UKP.

 

The budget for the MoD stands at around 40 bn UKP.

 

The case against quangos seems inassailable to me. These are bodies engaged in spending government money - lots of money - without any real oversight and whose senior staff make as much if not more than the ministers who are supposed to oversee them. If they fail to do any good they are rarely held accountable, and even when they do as badly as the Financial Services Authority, they take a long time to wind up. Moreover there is no shortage of bodies engaged in apparent busywork. Such as the health agency which tells us the shocking fact that if we eat fatty food and do no exercise it is bad for our health! Never mind the quango Potato Council who are actually funding an 'eat chips week'.

 

I need hardly go into detail on the case for the Ministry of Defence. It is vastly underfunded, and yet is being asked to make massive double figure percentage cuts.

 

Cut quangos by 75%, raise the the MoD budget 150%, save 20 billion. Simples.

 

I believe that this is THE hot topic in UK politics.

I don't think you could just cut 75% of the budget of quangos. Of course, the amount of money spent by quangos depends on how you define a quango, and part of the problem is that our government is badly designed and messy, and a lot of public money has been wasted. Nevertheless, the spending figures for quangos tend to include things like the prison service, the courts, museums, the bodies that fund scientific research, and so on. Yes, there's a case that some of these bodies don't need the autonomy of quango status and could be brought back under direct government control and accountability, but I don't think there are huge savings there. There are some quangos that could quite easily be abolished and their function simple done away with, though.

[Raithe]

I don't think you could just cut 75% of the budget of quangos. Of course, the amount of money spent by quangos depends on how you define a quango, and part of the problem is that our government is badly designed and messy, and a lot of public money has been wasted. Nevertheless, the spending figures for quangos tend to include things like the prison service, the courts, museums, the bodies that fund scientific research, and so on. Yes, there's a case that some of these bodies don't need the autonomy of quango status and could be brought back under direct government control and accountability, but I don't think there are huge savings there. There are some quangos that could quite easily be abolished and their function simple done away with, though.

 

Just to put it in relevance (and I'll admit it's going to be rough because I'm remembering it from a political talk show a couple of months back) but back in '95, the budget for the "quango" side of things, was somewhere around 18.7 million. 2010 and we're talking 80 billion. Something has to be seriously wrong to say that in 15 years, our unelected officials have grown by that much. Or are you just saying that they decided to change the definition of quango's while labour was running the government?

[SteveThaiBinh]

Just to put it in relevance (and I'll admit it's going to be rough because I'm remembering it from a political talk show a couple of months back) but back in '95, the budget for the "quango" side of things, was somewhere around 18.7 million. 2010 and we're talking 80 billion. Something has to be seriously wrong to say that in 15 years, our unelected officials have grown by that much. Or are you just saying that they decided to change the definition of quango's while labour was running the government?

No, I'm not really saying that, because I don't have detailed knowledge of the subject. I think it's certainly in the character of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown to pass government functions over to quangos on the grounds that they're impartial and at arm's length, and therefore so that if something goes wrong, the government can escape the blame. So the increase in quango spending is very dramatic, I agree, however the spending probably falls into at least four categories I can think of off-hand:

 

1. Functions that should be carried out by quangos and are necessary. (courts, research funding)

2. Functions that are necessary but should be transfered back to government control and accountability. (a number of education quangos fit this bill)

3. Functions that are not necessary and can simple be done away with. (potato marketing)

4. Waste/abuse (like the salaries of some quango heads, or 'training days' in luxury hotels)

 

3 and 4 get the headlines, but I suspect a lot of the spending is actually in 1 and 2. I'm sure there are economies to be had, and direct government accountability over more functions ought to increase efficiency and decrease waste, but I can't see where massive cuts will come from. Do you have a breakdown of where the growth in spending has been since 1995? That would be an interesting read.

[Calax]

Partially. The US quest for Full Spectrum dominance isn't predicated entirely on technology, although it's obviously a component. The US leads the way because it has consistently shown the political will to do so and sinks millions of dollars into (not necessarily high-tech) key military infrastructure like logistics and stuff like helicopters / transport aircraft and so on.

 

Agreed.

 

For example, the American Abrams / M-1 tank programme is super-cool, but in Iraq it spent most of it's time behaving like a WW2 assault gun or crushing taxis. You don't need dozens of regiments of it. Maybe a couple of spearhead divisions, sure, but the US would never get all it's tanks to (say) China before the whole thing went tac-nuke. Iran? Seriously, I'd be looking at a medium / light armour solution there and the whole thing would be decided by US air superiority, which is high-tech and you have in abundance. One hi-tech weapons package can allow a military to adopt a lower-tech one elsewhere.

 

I dont know about that. The M-1 was developed in the 1970's (yep, its really that old) to fight the Soviet T-72/T-80. In the beginning of each Gulf War it was instrumental in crushing Iraqi ground forces and its absense would have dramatically increased the duration of that phase. Sure, NOW they seem a bit overkill when everything switches to house-to-house fighting but for destroying Iraq's standing army? It cant be beat. Literally.

 

If I were a combat infantryman I'd want to see the tax-dollar being poured into stuff like combat medicine, IED tech, up-graded body armour systems, digital reliable personal comms, helicopters, ground attack air assets... not super-carriers, air superiority fighters or the next generation of super-tank. But, hey, what do I know?

 

Luckily for us, we are willing to spend a huge percentage of GDP on our military so for the time being we dont have to trade one thing to accomplish another. I also think you may be underestimating the effect that being able to transport a carrier force that outguns most nations has on bad guys. AFAIK, there are currently no new fighters or tanks on the drawing boards, but I get your point.

The question is why would we waste money on something we rarely use? You could probably get away shutting down production of M1's (which grossly out classes anything that it's come up against, to the point where iraqui tanks couldn't even get in range of american tanks before they were blown to shreds). And I can understand the need to project power and so on, but they recently just laid down hulls for a pair (I believe) of new aircraft carriers (One of which is named the Ronald Regan).

 

The US is currently 48% of ALL military spending in the world (well in 2008). One would think that we could chop that down to... I don't know... the spending of the entire combined armed forces of Europe (particularly when enemies in that territory generally are a couple days drive while the US might as well be the 20 year old in a preschool)?

 

As to the Quango side of thing, somebody want to lay out exactly what they are? Are they basically a catch all for any federal program (so basically anything that's not congress in america=quango?). Sorry to sound ignorant but I'm kinda confused as to exactly what people are referring to.

[Humodour]

This thread just reminded me of a recent analysis of the efficiency of defence spending for the world's 33 largest armies.

 

It did not paint a pretty picture of Australian and American defence spending at all. No mention of where Britain fell.

 

DEFENCE officials have been caught short by a new report revealing that Australia and its closest ally, the US, are the world's most wasteful nations when it comes to buying and maintaining military equipment.

 

The US and Australia came at the bottom of a list of 33 countries ranked according to how efficiently they spent their defence budgets in the analysis prepared by global consultants McKinsey.

 

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/politics/a...f-1225843035413