Digitus Impudicus

The Decline and (Further) Fall of the British Empire

First, the story:

Promotion freezes as cuts bite in Navy

Telegraph (UK)
By Thomas Harding, Defence Correspondent
Last Updated: 8:13am GMT 06/01/2007

Promotion for Royal Navy officers is to be frozen for five years in a cost-cutting measure that has caused fury in the Fleet, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.

Morale is plummeting as officers stand to lose more than £10,000 a year in pay.

An official Navy document passed to this newspaper states that all promotions to the rank of Lieutenant Commander or above will be halted until 2012. The internal memo, labelled Galaxy 36/06, said that a temporary halt will be required to "rebalance in favour of the front line".

With billions being spent on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and on costly procurement programmes, the Ministry of Defence is desperate to make savings. The Navy has become a target and proposals to retire a further six frigates and destroyers to bring budgets into line were revealed by The Telegraph yesterday. The fleet will lose almost half its warships with 19 out of 44 laid up in port.

...

There are also fears that the promotion freeze will have a negative effect on recruiting bright young officers to a service suffering substantial manning problems. The details on the promotion freeze and RNR cuts are expected in March.

Well, considering the vastly damaging dhimmi-friendly multicultural policies* of the current British government, this doesn't exactly come as a surprise. Apparently Britain is content to leave their own security to the Europeans.

"Great" Britain: the new Canada.

* If anybody wants examples, just ask. I've got multiculturalism on speed, and a couple examples of free speech suppression by the government.