Invest in the best

I read this morning that a green paper on plans to expand the Territorial Army will be announced on 8 November. It’s going to include financial incentives for businesses to employ members of the TA and a provision for two weeks paid leave for any reservists employed in the public sector.

Also this morning I posted on my website a report of how a government department – the paradoxically-named Department for Communities and Local Government – got caught out on a contractual dispute and was successfully sued in the High Court for more than £760,000.

Why did it lose?  Because, to quote from the report, the contract was “not drafted by lawyers”.

Fantastic.  How much money did our government waste in costs of the litigation only to blow the best part of a million pounds which, one infers, could have been saved if it had spent by comparison a modest sum on people who knew what they were doing.

What are these reservists, paid for out of the public purse and/or by struggling businesses that the government is currently trying to help (work that one out) going to be doing? 

Will we be sending them out in place of the highly-trained marines and others who continue nevertheless to be killed by a very capable enemy in Afghanistan? 

Just two examples of how this country now seems to be wedded to a strategy of second-rate performance.  They’re two of many – read all about the legal system and the health service in many earlier posts on this blog.

This is all done in the name of economy, because we need to cut expenditure.  Show me where any of it is working.

The contract dispute – expensive mistake.

The NHS – paying out millions every week for its incompetence,

The Ministry of Injustice dismantling our legal system to save virtually nothing.

The MOD (already quite proficient at some of the above) killing off anybody to save money.

We have to get back to doing what Great Britain has for the last few hundred years done so well - leading the field - even if it costs a few quid.

Invest in the best. All else follows.