This is the last straw, the time for an Election is now long over due. Perhaps if the MP’s paid back the money they fiddled on expenses it might help. I would really like to hear you views on the article below published by the Times.
Pete

The Territorial Army has been told to stop training for six months to save millions of pounds from the Army’s budget because of growing financial pressure on the Ministry of Defence.
Drill-hall instruction, weekend exercises and all other training associated with the TA will stop, cutting costs by about £20 million.
The Land Force budget of the Army has been cut by £54 million, and the TA is the first to be affected. The huge cut in TA spending will mean that the weekend warriors will not be paid. “They are paid to go training, and if there is no training, they won’t get paid,” a Ministry of Defence official said.
A spokesman insisted that the savings and the ban on training would not affect the TA’s operational contribution to Afghanistan, where about 500 Territorial soldiers are serving. There are also ten TA soldiers in Iraq.
The spokesman said that TA training for Afghanistan would carry on as normal. TA soldiers train with their regular army counterparts, before deployment to Helmand province. The MoD’s pledge to keep the operational TA safe from cuts was, however, greeted with scepticism by senior officers in the volunteer reserve force. “This is dangerous. When you cancel training at one end, it is bound to have an impact through the TA, especially if this goes on longer than six months,” one senior TA officer told The Times. “If the MoD shuts the whole place down and says, ‘Come back in April’, there will be a number of TA members who will just go off and find something else to do, and all the skills they have learnt will fatigue.”
That would have repercussions throughout the TA, and could eventually affect the availability of volunteers for Afghanistan and other operations, he said.
One MoD official said that care would have to be taken to ensure that the temporary suspension of training did not undermine the TA’s role in Afghanistan. The official also said that, given the budget restrictions, the training suspension could last longer. The annual budget for the TA is about £143 million.

Call me a smug old b****** if you like but I judge governments on the effect they have on me and my family and the fact is that this one has done me and mine no harm and some good.   Child care vouchers for my grandchild and free bus travel for me spring to mind most easily.   I'm quite impressed with the local Health Service these days too.   It was the Conservatives who linked pensions to inflation rather than earnings thereby costing all of us over 65 about £30 per week at the moment.    Politicians of all stripes care little for the military except as a means to further their policies and careers - think Thatcher and Blair.   They probably think we are all completely mad to have volunteered to risk our lives and health for them. Who is to say that they aren't right.