According to Roy Lilley's persistently good newsletter on mainly medical issues (and I have edited, very slightly):
Yesterday's defence review describes military medical services as:
- fragmented and underfunded;
- neglected;
- notes the operational relationship with the NHS has been de-prioritised;
- a need to rebuild medical capacity and capability;
- calls for organisational reform within Defence to ensure that medical services are adequately structured and resourced to meet current and future challenges.
So, there's something else that Keir Starmer needs to invest in if he wants us to be ready for war. It's called the NHS, because it is, of course, the backstop to the military medical services. Without a serious commitment to managing the casualties of war, we could never be ready for it.
And don't doubt the casualty rate. Another report I note this morning suggests that Russia has now had a million casualties in Ukraine. That's 0.7% of the population. People notice such things. We could not manage it.
Starmer really has got a great deal to do, and buying whiz-bangs is the last of them.
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Fire and Rescue ditto
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jun/04/fire-stations-in-england-falling-apart-amid-1bn-funding-cut-chiefs-say?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Bring back my mother’s old contribution to WW2 the Auxiliary Fire Service!
To adapt the well known saying, weapons and manpower win battles, but wars are won by logistics. That means production, delivery, repair; in a personnel context: recruitment, training, transport, food, welfare, and medical care. And the tail to teeth ratio can be more than ten to one.
No steer can find the money for defence but not for education, health and poverty reduction.
You do need an educated, fit population to fight.
The UK may get the new kit but will be under prepared population wise.
Thinking in silos never works.
Indeed, John. That was said to be one of the clearest lessons from Boer War recruitment, wasn’t it. Too many men not fit enough to be enlisted.
Looks like yet another lesson that’s been ignored and forgotten.
Interesting article about German infrastructure here and in particular the need to be ‘War Ready ‘
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/03/why-are-germany-bridges-schools-falling-apart-far-right?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Slightly off topic but I have wondered why everyone seems to want war and why we need to ramp up defence instead of ramping up diplomacy. Perhaps this piece from NC explains it.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/06/freedom-cities-and-our-tech-overlords-visions-for-the-future.html
What better way to build support for a walled city state, than frighten everyone about “The Others”
To those of us who are interested in such stuff, especially the ramifications of both data scraping and SEZs, it is bloody frightening and potentially the end of any local democracy. Try to interest most mainstream politicos, including my MP, and the results are zero or ‘conspiracy theory crap’.
https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/defence-medical-services describes the current situation.
It is a shadow of what it was. I have family who have both worked in RAF hospitals here and overseas, (a PM Nurse, an RAF surgeon) and my late Dad who was a patient in them and a brother who was born in one.
Inter-service rivalry led to over-investment in the past, but nowadays we fail to properly care for the men and women we send off to foreign parts to carry out the ill-thought-through plans of politicians, and who return traumatised in mind and body, not least because they aren’t clear why they were sent there in the first place.
And for the sake of reassuring readers of my BBC “impartiality”, would the “Defence” Secretary please outline exactly what the RAF personnel from RAF Akrotiri are doing flying surveillance flghts over Gaza, or landing transport planes at Tel Aviv?
Given that almost the entire world now believes (correctly) that there is a genocide going on, we need reassuring that our troops are not facilitating war crimes. But not reassurance based on lies or cover-up please, the truth will do.
Thank you, Robert.
Dad was at RAF Halton, which had all sorts of training schools, including medical, dental and nursing. The health related facilities, including Princess Mary’s and the dental surgery, supported the local civilian population, too.
You’ve got to give Will Hutton his due in the 1990’s when he spoke of the ‘hollowing out’ of the public sector in his book ‘The State We Are In’. It has all come to pass and we don’t seem able to even defend ourselves and look after those who do it on our behalf as well as create a decent life for everyone else.
Disgraceful and shameful that we are reduced to this in the pursuit of rich people’s definition of ‘freedom’ and liberty.
I have several of his from that time.
There were things we could have done.
Required reading that is and well worth going back to. His description of the proper British establishment symbolised by shoulder-rubbing at sporting events like cricket at Lords (go there on an international match day and wander behind the pavilion to goggle at high British society in all its absurdity), Wimbledon and Henley regatta still resonates.
Thank you, PSR, Ian and Ben.
I still have Hutton’s books from the 1990s.
He and Richard’s friend Larry Elliott helped with my masters on central bank independence, 1994 – 5.
There was some talk of Hutton going to Downing Street with a Blair government.
There was that talk. It didn’t happen.
I still talk to both of them on occasion.
I see – there was a chance I suppose, I remember stakeholder capitalism and all that being gently ushered out the door too.
So, the modus is, if an idea is a threat to the status quo, capital just co-opts it into the franchise – makes it rich – and effectively shuts it down, buys it off.
That’s the Tony Blair political life cycle in a nutshell I think.
The bunkers and infra structure to survive a nuclear war with Putin is unimaginable and probably impossible. As Churchill said, jaw jaw is better than war war.
There is no surviving a nuclear war, even if you have been in a bunker you probably wouldn’t want to come back out to utter devastation and radiation.
The NHS would need substantial investment to be able to provide the required level of support to Defence Medical Services in the event of significant conflict, even if the latter were in good shape. And it would apparently take several years to get there. I understand there’s no mention of this in the Defence Review paper. So it’s seemingly not even on the policy horizon. Negligence would not seem to be quite adequate to describe what’s going on, if you assume there really is any serious intent.
My father was a regular sailor when WWII broke out and was a gunner on Destroyers and Frigates and was sunk 5times, each time with some injury or other. His life was saved by Plymouth Naval Hospital several times. Particularly, when he broke 8 ribs when jumping into the water when the commander and he went into the water together, the commander was invalided out subsequently, but survived as he received good treatment at Plymouth. Later, just before closure, my father in law was an petty office nurse, or something like that, but anyway senior, and fortunately he had just retired when the Plymouth Naval hospital closed. He said not only would the navy suffer, but also the city, which now has one civilian hospital that is hated by local, while elderly folk have fond memories of the care given to locals as well as sailors. My family has generations of sailors, none of the current navy men. or the survivors of previous generations feel that civvy street doctors have the experience to treat war wounded nor the equipment. The sole marine in the family lost a foot because of inadequate NHS treatment.
Starmer wants to rethink before he commits young men to unwinnable wars without sufficient military backup, it’s insane and immortal.
The only hopsital we have in Ely was once an RAF hospital.
One of my cousins was born there when my uncle was at RAF Watton. As far as he knows, he’s never been back. He does not know what he’s missing.
Listening to Starmers speech why the hell does the UK need 6 non nuclear submarines, but capable of nuclear attack, when the future is obviously focused on cyber and drone attacks?
Time to bring back National Service!
Not the old compulsory two years where printers’ apprentices were sent to the far east to be shot at by ‘commie’ insurgents, but a genuine voluntary exchange between our civil and military societies. Doctors, nurses, truck drivers, computer experts in an exchange to hone their skills within the military, aiding in natural disaster zones etc, limited to, say, six-month periods (fully paid and job-protected of course). Equally important, have squaddies and officers move to the civil side for a period to learn a trade or apply management/logistics skills for eventual demob and return to civilian life.
Soldiers then might see what they are fighting for, and civvie street would be made aware of the soldiers’ sacrifices.
No more them and us. A true citizens’ army.