Does Alex Salmond think we're daft? Volume 1

So, I've been wanting details about life in an independent Scotland for a while.

Yesterday, we were treated to Alex Salmond's vision for defence.

Now, this is the same Alex Salmond who trashes Westminster at every single opportunity. He's been particularly critical about the Coalition's defence cuts, particularly as they affected air bases at Kinloss, Lossiemouth and Leuchars.

So, I almost choked on my Earl Grey when I read that he'd said this:

"The configuration of the Army in Scotland, the mobile brigade, which is the outcome of the defence review, looks exactly like the configuration you'd want for a Scottish defence force - so that's one naval base, one aircraft base and a mobile armed brigade."

 This was the same guy who marched to save RAF Lossiemouth, who took himself off to London yto make the case to then Defence Secretary Liam Fox for the retention of two air bases in Scotland. Now he tells us that we only need one.

You have to wonder what would have happened if the SNP had won their overall majority in 2007 and won an independence referendum in Autumn 2009. Actually, that referendum would still be being challenged in the courts because there's no way that Labour would ever have volunteered to give the SNP the power to make it legal. But that's by the by.

So, the newly independent Scotland, led by Alex Salmond, with the Coalition barely being a twinkle in anybody's eye, would have closed two air bases and cut the Armed Forces because that's "exactly the configuration you'd want for a Scottish Defence Force".  Who would have thought it?

MOD's weird sense of what's important

I know that service personnel and their families often get a raw deal - there have been scandals about our troops being ill equipped on duty, badly cared for if they are injured and poorly housed at home.

Now I discovered in today's Sunday Herald that the MOD includes travelling time from places like Iraq and Afghanistan in the calculation of soldiers' leave. So, exhausted troops, who may have faced all sorts of ordeals and traumas in the field, have their time at home, when they can relax with their families, and recharge their batteries, cut short.

No wonder soldiers and their families feel undervalued!

What worries me is that there are bound to be cuts in defence spending in the current financial climate. Will this Government sacrifice basic amenities at home and abroad for troops in order to waste £20 billion renewing Trident? Nick Clegg tried to pin the Prime Minister down on this at PMQs last week.

The Government will sign the first contracts for the replacement of Trident over the Summer. The economic climate was very different when Parliament made the decision to replace the system. That should surely be revisited.

It strikes me as bizarre that the MOD is splashing out on a new nuclear weapons system which, as well as being completely immoral, is strategically unnecessary, when the troops that we have on the ground are denied time with their families and not provided with the basics they need to do their jobs. Those are not the priorities I'd choose. In my experience you get the best out of people when you treat them properly. It's a lesson the MOD would do well to learn.

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