Government blunder - again

 

Government hammered again by Select Committee.

 

The Public Administration Committee has responded with anger at the Government's failure to respond to their call to re-introduce a Grand Strategy. A member of the committee Paul Flynn said, 

"It's incredible the Government do not recognise that the disastrous absence of strategic intelligence or consideration of UK's national interests when the decision was taken to invade Helmand.  We are still paying the consequences in blood and treasure.

The new report published today says:

" Getting National Strategy wrong has real and sometimes dire consequences. At the  time of the Helmand incursion in 2006 only two British soldiers had been killed in battle in Afghanistan. The total is now 349 – almost all as a consequence of the Helmand decision. 

 Yet the Government has failed to respond to evidence given to us that that decision was taken in the absence of a coherent strategy at the politico-military level and without any grand strategic sense of our national interest. The Government has yet to produce evidence of the extent to which the doubling of aid to fragile and conflict states will reduce threats to 

the UK'.

 

Committee Chairman, Bernard Jenkin MP said:

“The central contention of our first Report is that Government has lost the capacity to think strategically. We argued that the Government needs to reclaim the art of creating “national strategy” which should encompass all areas of Government activity and not focus just on national security. 

“Getting strategy right matters. Failure to anticipate threats or seize our opportunities puts at risk our future prosperity, and safety”. 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Junican]

That is very good.

[Junican]

Mr Flynn.

I fail to understand what is going on with your blog.

The remark above was just to confirm to myself that a comment could be made. And yet, a previous comment, trying to address the serious matters which your blog raised, was rejected with the message 'sorry - we're unable to accept your data.'

I can assure you that my post was did not contain 'swear words' or anything of that nature - and yet it was blocked.

There must be some reason for the above message being emitted. Do you know why it appears?

[patrick]

Junican
There is obviously no block on you (or anyone else) posting comments as the two posts above clearly show.

As some of your previous posts have been quite long it might be the amount of data that is causing it.

If you break up a large post into two smaller ones you should not have any problem.

[Paul Flynn]

There is no problem, Junican. In fact it's easier to post now than it was six months ago. If there are problems at your end, you can e-mail at paulflynnmp@talk21.com and I will add comment,

[Kay Tie]

I can confirm it's easier to post. Sometimes the server at Typepad is a bit flakey and maybe that was the problem.

[Junican]

Thank you all for those suggestions.

The odd thing which has been occurring is that a comment which has been rejected (as I have indicated above) on a thread from, say, a day ago is accepted on a thread of, say, today! This, despite being a simple cut and paste transfer of the text.

Yesterday, I tried cutting the comment up into small sections, without success.

I will see how it goes and email if things go wrong.

Many thanks again.