Cuts in top brass? Not if the unions have their say

I read the headline Hammond axes defence top brass in £4m cull and had two thoughts:

1. Really? This isn't just some shuffling of posts or folding jobs into the Civil Service?
2. £4m isn't even noise in a £33bn defence budget - it's about one hundredth of one percent.

It does seem, however, that this is an actual cut - 26 senior military and civil service posts will go, and not be refilled elsewhere. Wow. I've been so jaded by MoD spending and over-employment that even this tiny, tiny cut seems like a momentous event. Lewis Page would no doubt approve though he, like me, would only describe this as "a good start".

You can tell that this is an actual cut by the scum-sucking parasites that come out of the woodwork to protest:

Last night critics warned that the cuts could damage morale in the Armed Forces if it led to frontline officers being burdened with more paperwork.

Well, if extra pointless paperwork appears, we follow it back to its sources and fire them too. Rinse and repeat. But what astounded me was what came from Labour's former Defence Minister:

Labour MP and former Defence Minister Kevan Jones said: 'Philip Hammond has already said that he has balanced the Ministry of Defence budget, so he needs to explain why these measures are being taken.'

Philip Hammond is getting the MoD to waste less money on pointless top brass (no mean feat in itself) and you are demanding that he explain why he's doing this? What kind of Defence Minister are you, Jones - oh, a former GMB union official and a Government + Public Policy graduate. That explains why you see the armed forces as a trough for funding full employment rather than, say, as an actual fighting machine. You've never had a useful job in your life. You even criticised Joanna Lumley:

Jones described Joanna Lumley's behaviour following her fight for Gurkha rights as 'irritating'.

which puts you beyond the pale.

As long as weasels like Kevan Jones are able to gain power over the MoD, its dysfunctional behaviour is never going to be fixed. Kevan, why don't you go and do something actually useful to the UK Armed Forces like join the Catering Corps and peel some potatoes - it's probably the only practical thing for which you're qualified.