One thing evil Putin’s shown us is we need REAL Armed Forces
THERE aren’t many things for which we should thank Vladimir Putin, awful stone-faced thug that he is.
He has used nerve agent and radio-active weapons on British soil.
Bullied his neighbours in Georgia and barbarically invaded Ukraine.
Now he’s issuing dark threats about nuking us.
All in all, the man is about as vile a specimen of human life as we’ve seen on the world stage for many a year.
But we might be grateful that he has woken us up, at last.
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Because if truth be told, if we had to fight a war against Russia now, we couldn’t do it.
Putin knows that and we know that.
And costly though it may be for all of us, that has got to change.
Right now, we spend a little more than two per cent of our GDP on defence. In 1958, the figure was eight per cent.
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In other words, our comparative spending is now just a quarter of what it was.
We have roughly one eighth of the number of fighter aircraft in the RAF that we had in the 1950s.
Our Armed Forces in 1960 had some 520,000 personnel. It is now a little more than 150,000.
Like every other Western European country, we have kind of decided over the years that we don’t have to look after ourselves so much any more.
The plan being we’ll either roll over and play dead or let the Americans bear the brunt, if trouble ever comes along.
In fairness, we are one of the best at paying our fair share of Nato’s costs.
While we spend more than two per cent of our GDP, the Germans pay only 1.3 per cent, the Italians 1.2 per cent and the Spanish 0.9 per cent.
Given that the Spanish GDP consists of about two blocks of Manchego cheese and a donkey called Pedro, that’s 0.9 per cent of bugger all.
But then, we all thought we didn’t need to spend on defence any more.
We thought, after the Cold War was over and the USSR disintegrated, this was the “end of history”, as one learned dingbat put it. But it very clearly wasn’t.
What have we been spending money on instead?
The welfare state — more and more benefits, often for the terminally idle.
WELFARE REFORM
And more than anything else, on the National Health Service.
A vast, staggeringly inefficient institution, weighed down by bureaucracy and our own ever-expanding expectations of it.
One senior Conservative MP, Jeremy Hunt, has said that we should increase our defence spending by about 25 per cent.
I think he’s right.
And to do that without introducing wretched tax hikes that would impoverish us all, we need to reform our welfare system and the NHS.
No longer should privatisation and compulsory medical insurance be off the agenda. We have indulged ourselves for way too long.
And we were sure to be caught out sooner or later.
So thank you, Putin, for opening our eyes.
And we should remember that while he might not last much longer (hopefully), there will always be another mentalist coming along who wishes to invade or bully one of his neighbours.
You can only take these tyrants on from a position of strength.
Let us get our strength back.
What a Berc
THE most ludicrous and dislikeable British politician of the last 40 years has just got his comeuppance.
John Bercow is a smug, pompous, arrogant hobbit.
He used one the great offices of state, Speaker of the House of Commons, to pursue his own political agenda.
He wished to stop Brexit. And did all he could to achieve that goal. When he was meant to be neutral.
He’s now been banned from Westminster for life for bullying.
And so, suddenly, I have some sympathy with him.
Because the complaints against him seemed ludicrous.
And then there’s this: Should grown men complain about being “bullied”?
Yalda a true talent
THE BBC reporter Yalda Hakim has really come into her own, anchoring Newsnight’s war coverage from Ukraine.
The Afghan-born Australian is calm, articulate and superb at eliciting information from her interviewees.
She’s been at the BBC for a decade but flown a little below the radar.
Come to think of it, Newsnight in general has been pretty good, especially with Kirsty Wark presenting.
It has improved immeasurably since leftie gob-on-a-stick Emily Maitlis, and editor Esme Wren, both left.
IQ of a bowl of chicken dippers
IT’S The Apprentice again tonight, but I’m not sure I can be bothered to watch.
The average IQ of contestants has been falling for some years.
But this is surely the first series in which almost all have the intellectual capacity of a bowl of chicken dippers.
Witless, and to a man and woman illiterate.
One team even managed to call their children’s computer game app, set in a snowy wilderness, Artic.
The contenders now resemble the kind of people who might appear in an uplifting Channel 4 documentary about mentally challenged people striving to get to grips with the difficulties of everyday life outside the care system.
Why does Lord Sugar persist with this show?
As a successful businessman, surely he must recognise when a product has lost its entire point?
Think again on tax
WE have a real crisis coming our way.
Soon, millions of people will simply be unable to afford to heat their homes. Or fill their cars with petrol.
Oil and gas prices are soaring to astronomical levels because of the war in Ukraine.
There’s not very much the Government can do about it.
But it can make an emergency decision to SCRAP the planned rise in national insurance contributions.
Because this tax rise – and that’s what it is – will cost the average worker £410 per year.
As the Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves put it: “They’re going to make the cost of living crisis worse, hitting workers with a double whammy from an unfair, terribly timed tax rise”.
Dead right – and there are plenty of Conservatives who agree with her. Including Jacob Rees-Mogg and Tom Tugendhat.
Think again, Rishi and Boris.
The poorest of us need financial help, not another greedy tax swipe.
Jab No4 needed
IT’S still around, you know. Yes, I mean our old friend Covid.
I know we have bigger things to worry about these days.
But a new and fairly lethal strain is causing a lot of deaths in Hong Kong
I’m in favour of all the loosening of restrictions.
But I do think the elderly should be offered another booster jab against the disease.
Better to be prepared, no?
Apology to witches
PART of my job is to keep you up to date on pointless, grandstanding gestures made by the intellectual pygmies of the liberal Left.
And so, this week Nicola Sturgeon apologises to witches.
Scotland’s First Minister said sorry to those many women who had suffered injustice under the 1563 Witchcraft Act.
Nicola, they’re all dead, aren’t they.
Dead for a very, very long time.
Their broomsticks have shattered into dust, their cats have left the building.
Saying sorry doesn’t mean a thing, does it?
How about saying sorry instead for being uniquely annoying?
Caprice goes way back
I WAS very much taken with Caprice Bourret’s stand against the invasion of Ukraine.
The former glamour girl got her kit off and daubed “FUwar” across her back.
Or more likely got someone else to do it, I suppose.
I don’t think there’s any world event for which 50-year-old Caprice would not get her baps out.
Given her age, she probably did the same thing as a protest when a meteor destroyed all those dinosaurs.
Footie hooligan
THE Scottish grandad who has gone off to fight for Ukraine has a bit of form.
Seems like Rab Grady was a football hooligan back in the 1980s.
And a fervent supporter of Hibernian.
I suppose it’s very brave of Rab to go, seeing as he’s 61 years old and should be sucking Werther’s Originals in front of the fire, rather than chowing down on borscht in a blizzard.
I just hope nothing gets lost in translation over there.
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Such as the moment the Ukrainian commander says: “We fight with all our hearts!” And Rab goes berserk.
“Hearts? Hearts? I’ll dee ya in! Don’t mention Hearts to me.”
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