(Via the Group Captain.) The Spectator (UK) has a revealing report - Why I quit the army: Gordon Bourne has resigned his commission in despair of a profession destroyed by red tape:
The government’s obsession with political correctness has been applied to the military with such relish that at times it seems almost insane. I have lost count of the number of forms I have had to fill in giving details of my ethnic origin. These forms used to be anonymous, but the last one I had to complete carried my name, rank and service number. Perhaps this was a reaction to an earlier (anonymous) form, which had revealed that in our all-male unit there was a huge number of Bangladeshi single mothers! There was always a great reluctance to fill in these forms, the fear being that anonymity had been removed so that the government could check how many members of ethnic minorities were being promoted. In response, the military chain of command offered soldiers an inducement: if they did not complete the forms, correctly, without jokes, on a Friday afternoon, they would remain in barracks for the weekend and fill them in at their leisure. No doubt that’s what New Labour means when it talks about being ‘Investors in People’.Follow the link for much more. And lest you think that only the cousins have a problem, check out my post from on July on what the Ecoweenies have done to US armed forces training.
...
One of the unfortunate side-effects of this civilianisation of the military is the need for the government to ensure that they are legally protected from soldiers - past and present - who seek to take advantage of the current blame-and-compensation culture. This is what is behind applying health-and-safety legislation to the military. The Royal Marines endurance course is one of the most admired and gruelling in the world, but it is apparently too tough for the big girls’ blouses in Whitehall. Health-and-safety inspectors are blamed for recommending that chlorine be introduced into the underwater tunnel, in case some poor Commando picks up a bit of dysentery or a sore throat as a result of wading through dirty water. The steep ravines worn into the slopes that recruits had to run up and down at various points on the seven-mile course were also contrary to all sorts of well-meaning legislation. The recommendation was for proper steps and handrails to be installed - just like the ones you find in the mountains of Afghanistan or the wadis of Iraq. Anybody even half-interested in ensuring that, when troops are deployed on operations, as many come home as possible must see that this sort of interference can only make an already perilously long jump from training to reality even longer.
The purpose of the military is to kill people and break things in an orderly and proficient manner, and it is a minor miracle that they are able to do so despite crappy pay and the horde of bureacrats and lawyers afflicting them. How long before the tinkerers manage to screw that up?
