'It's Tommy this, and Tommy that.......'

Pass the sick-bag, Mable. There was Cameron on BBC TV news accompanying Prince Wills to a medals ceremony for the Irish Guards, newly returned from Afghanistan. Most of them. Wills was dishing out the gongs. Was Dave dishing out the redundancy notices?

Already there is talk of merging the three armed services. Easily done, as the UK has not had a standing army since Cromwell and an annual Act is required to keep the services in existence.

In the same week the Government was making a plea for employers to take on young Brits in preference to foreigners when it emerged that a huge proportion of the 500, 000 new jobs created in the last year or so had gone to Poles, Bulgarians etc. This brought forth a riposte from employers that British youth is often semi-literate, does not have employable education, is slothful and undisciplined, and has little concept of the work-ethic.

This reminded me of a conversation with some British Army NCOs when I was in Jamaica. They were doing jungle training. They told me that one reason why there are so many non-Brits in the army – Ghurkhas, Zimbabweans, Caribbeans, South Africans – is that a modern army no longer recruits illiterate jail-bait from sink estates  because it requires both technical skills and resourcefulness.

It was not simply that the average potential recruit was ignorant. It was also that they were so unfit on a diet of junk that the first six weeks was largely taken up with getting them into shape. Many were unable to wear boots because they had never had anything on their feet but soft trainers.

Then there was the matter of motivation. I was told that many youngsters had no concept of actually getting out of bed at a particular time in the morning. They had never done so and the very idea was incomprehensible.

Finally, there was the problem of acceptance of discipline. Never having had any, they could not grasp what it was.

One thing they did know was their ‘rights’. The NCOs told me of a particular recruit who was constantly trespassing in the women’s quarters. One night he was discovered by the guard patrol and as soon as he spotted them he fell down and began yelling ‘assault’.

So they returned to the guard-room, donned their balaclavas, and went back and delivered some old-style discipline.