Say it ain't so, Geoff

Babble on.

Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary for Tony Blair's Labour government is apparently planning significant cuts to the British military.

Some 20,000 military and civilian jobs will go, and with them four infantry battalions (out of 40), three Royal Air Force squadrons and a dozen surface warships. Of these losses, the one most troubling to Americans should be the cuts to an army that, at 102,000 men and women, will number half what it did in 1980.

Traditionalists will be especially upset to learn the bureaucrats intend to "turn all 19 of the army's oldest free-standing regiments into battalions in regional super-regiments." This would include such storied units as the Black Watch and the Royal Scots.

This all sounds depressingly familiar to anyone familiar with Canada's military woes:

"The forces see themselves doing a bloody good job and see themselves getting the politicians endlessly out of trouble, and their reward is to be cut," [Major-General (Ret.) Julian Thompson] said. "Well, it’s just bonkers...The way the armed services are being used as a political football between the Chancellor [Gordon Brown] and the Prime Minister is an absolute bloody disgrace."

Under the heading of 'misery loves company', I welcome our British friends to the through-the-looking-glass world inhabited by the Canadian Armed Forces under seemingly-perpetual Liberal rule.

Babble off.