Sanders can stick it up his arse.
Britons need to be “think like troops” in the face of spiking tensions with Vladimir Putin’s Russia with the size of the regular armed forces dwindling, the head of the British Army will warn today.
With the number of soldiers having dropped below 76,000 – its smallest size in centuries – General Sir Patrick Sanders will outline his concerns when he addresses the International Armoured Vehicles expo in Twickenham.
He is expected to say the Government will need to begin calling men and women up to the armed forces to plug the gaps, according to The Daily Telegraph.
Gen Sir Patrick will stop short of calling for the introduction of conscription, but will use his speech to call for a “shift” in the mindset of ordinary people, where they think more like troops, and are mentally prepared for conflict with Russia.
Fuck off. No, absolutely not. This isn’t 1914 when people gladly threw themselves into the slaughter for king and country to give the Hun a bashing. That stuff doesn’t cut it anymore. Modern youth are far more likely to resist. I’ll be too old, but I’d resist as well if I was young enough. We didn’t start this fight. Politicians did. Let those fuckers put on fatigues and get themselves killed. Our bodies do not belong to the state to throw away on their international squabbles.
Two years ago, after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, he said the UK was facing its “1937 moment”, stressing the nation needed to prepare to “fight and win” in the face of Russia’s expansionist aims.
Russia’s ‘expansionism’ is limited to the immediate locality – the old Soviet Union. I also don’t seriously expect a strike on a NATO country either. Putin’s an arse, but he’s not entirely stupid.
If this country was threatened with invasion – if an enemy was amassing at the Channel ports ready to invade (okay, before some smartarse says it, yes, I know the boat people are effectively invaders, but this isn’t the point), then defending the country makes sense. I still wouldn’t put on a military uniform even then. Getting involved with a foreign war is not defending our country and such a conflict is unjustified. Sending someone else’s children out to fight is the height of cowardice. No one should be sent to the front lines until every politician and every civil servant and every senior officer is out in the trenches leading by example. Maybe then they would think twice about sabre rattling and using the country’s youth as chess pieces on their ridiculous international game.
“Russia’s ‘expansionism’ is limited to the immediate locality – the old Soviet Union”
Well yes, I would have to agree.
But allow me gently to point out, that the Old Soviet Union included half of Germany.
No, that was part of the Eastern Bloc along with Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and so on. I appreciate that the difference is subtle, but it’s still there.
For clarification; the old Soviet Union (USSR) went up to the Eastern borders of Ukraine and Belarus. The territories from there to East Germany were officially the ‘Warsaw pact’. Overseen by Moscow, but not part of the greater country.
Rather like the UK and western Europe is currently overseen by the USA.
Map here; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Soviet_Union_Administrative_Divisions_1989.jpg
You’ve put my thoughts into words far better than I could, as usual.
The recent change in US recruitment advertising from pink-haired non-binaries with two mothers to hard-arse young white mid-westerners was striking.
There’s a brilliant selection of memes doing the rounds of Twitter on the GenX conscription!
they have spent the last forty years disarming us at every opportunity now they want to give us back our guns to defend them, my opinion is that they can get fucked
They can give us the guns though.
It’s not just disarming but threatening kids with armed police for playing with toy guns in their own home.
“a “shift” in the mindset of ordinary people, where they think more like troops, and are mentally prepared for conflict”
They won’t even let us own guns for self defence. You’re right, they can definately fuck off
I’d be willing to fight and die for family (some of them), my friends and myself. That’s it.
As for joining the British Army, fuck that. So I can be underpaid, under-equipped and viewed as disposable, bleeding out in some foreign desert, all for the privelige of sleeping in a shop doorway on my return?
Get fucked.
That’s my position. I’d happily engage in defence on my own terms but wear one of their uniforms and obey their orders on foreign soil. Nope. Never.
If he’s worried about Russia, I suggest he buys some more kit. I don’t even know if we make 155mm ammo here, but we should. We should also re-configure our forces to keep up with the new uses of drones. Drones in the UK have been managed by high priests in Nevada, RAF officer pilots. Drones in Ukraine are at every level. We should certainly have drone platoons in every battalion-sized unit, and anti-drone kit too. (Currently we seem to have three drone jamming vehicles run by the RAF regiment. Three.)
But really, Russia? Our most likely threat lives right here and wants to take over. An illustration of Rhoda’s rule three, you never see the one that gets you.
First Word War (and earlier): “Lions led by donkeys”.
2024: “Diverse Snowflakes led by old cis white guys”. What could possible go wrong?
/applause
Those people are disgusting. Same as nato bureaucrats who do all they can to keep the gravy coming when their purpose disappeared 25 years ago. Russia is not an enemy but I guess they have the bad taste of having their country next to all those US bases. The western “elites” really need to be culled.
This war has been pretty catastrophic for Russia (and for Ukraine) and while Russia may eventually win, it would be very much a pyrrhic victory.
But hey ho, having (assumed he does) swallowed Ukraine, Vlad will be marching up Whitehall in few years.
Oh DO fuck off!
The backbone of the army has always been the white working class, but these are the very people who are decried as bigoted, racist scum and subject to actual apartheid, pretty well on an hourly basis.
Best of luck calling them up!
Like you, I’m far too old. I’ve not given up on this country yet, despite it seeming to have given up on me, I still think there is something there worth defending.
But ten years from now?
If the globo filth want a war, why don’t they fuck off to some island somewhere with their drones and get on with it. Why do they need us?
Despite some bellicose noises from Moscow, there is no likelihood of it happening. If they think we should be boots on the ground in Ukraine or elsewhere in Eastern Europe, they can fuck right off. The thing is, unlike previous generations, this one is more likely to tell them just that.
They want to call us up to fight.
For the country that keeps telling us we’re all racists and transphobes etc.
Oh, and if we have to fight to defend our stuff we have to make do with fists and harsh language, and would still get banged up on an instant if we even slightly hurt them an ‘ickle bit too much. But when their interests are threatened it’s “here’s a 155mm howitzer and an F-35 – ain’t no such thing as overkill, have at ’em!”
Fuck ’em.
And who the fuck is going to pay the mortgage if I get conscripted?
A private’s salary ain’t going to cut it. I’d need to be put in as at least a colonel. Can’t see that happening really. And I don’t think having the wife and kids turfed out of the house by the bank is going to do wonders for my fighting motivation…
No Russians soldiers in Germany.
The US of A has lots in Germany. And just about every other European country. Just to protect us.
Why would Russia want any part of Europe? It can’t be our natural resources, the usual reason for “liberating” an oil rich country. Are they desperately short of wind turbines? Their mates in China can sell them all they need, along with Earth saving battery cars.
Maybe to force us to buy their oil, gas, steel, titanium, fertiliser. and all the other stuff we stopped buying cheaply. Don’t they know that we donna need no steenking fossil fuel and we got Sleepy Joe and he kindly sells us that stuff at a bargain price of only three times more. Along with Super Duper Ajax tanks, F35 planes, AWACs, Poseidons. Psst, want a cheap Boeing 737? Even whole forests to burn in our Green Drax boilers.
Besides, Russia has found countries to the South and to East that will buy their cheap stuff. Even if it is to re-brand it and flog, with a reasonable markup, to the nation’s (us) who cannot bring themselves to import feelthy Ruski filth.
Let’s face it. We are fucked. And just because we are a monarchy, constitutionally, we are Royally fucked
Rant over.
Here in New Zealand,our Government are sending 6, yes, you read that correctly, 6,members of our minute Defence Force to help in the battle against the Houthis.The way the Green Party has reacted I thought at first they had mistaken it to mean another ANZAC campaign. However the Defence Force will now have a problem of having enough players for the football team.
A) Eastern Europe did not show itself to be our friend over Brexit
B) Why not try fracking to undercut Russia’s economy first.
Because keeping the gas in the ground is the best place for a strategic reserve.
IfWhen it all kicks off and oil and gas prices are through the roof, and gas is hard to get via ship without being kaboomed, we can frack and have gas.The eco stuff is just a cover.
At least, I hope someone in charge is that smart…
The alternative is that we are actually governed by clowns…
I hate to say this Chernyy, but I think the clown alternative is the real one.
But perhaps you can say something equally complimentary about the government of Oz.
I was in my school CCF. I can damn well shoot pistol and rifle accurately and chuck a grenade. But fight for these scumbag politicians who sneer at plebs like me? No. Not until we first ethnically cleanse our country of the 5th column.