Simon Jenkins wanking weakly

"Defence budget? I prefer to call it expensive showing off: the armed forces chiefs don't like it up 'em – but at last a government is putting their gargantuan spending to the sword." Always bearing in mind that we do not control the titles editors dream up for our articles and books, the heading for Jenkins' latest offering has the jejeune tone that characterises his comments on defence matters.

The absence of upper case letters suggests he wrote it on a Blackberry or similar, presumably while his other hand was giving physical expression to the self-indulgence of his writing.

Let's start with "showing off"? You can take the boy out of the "independent school", but you can't take the independent school out of the boy, can you? The adult term is ostentation, just as "bullying" is intimidation. Grow up, for God's sake. But the substance of the article is just as infantile.

"As for Her Majesty's Trident missile, it will no longer stand proud and erect on the ocean floor but lie impotent on the shore of some Scottish loch". Ooooh! How daring! Let's put it in the skool mag.

It allegedly now costs as much to train a bandsman to play a trumpet on a performing warhorse as it does a pilot to fly a fighter jet. [1] Either way, at the same time as colours were being trooped, jets from the RAF's Vale of Glamorgan base were equally steeped in history, practising world war two bombing runs [2] in the valleys of Snowdonia in a pandemonium of screaming and roaring. No plane flies this low in combat.  It is too vulnerable. [3] Contour flying has as much to do with modern warfare as a trombonist on a Percheron. It is expensive showing off.

1. What imbecile alleges this? Apart from Jenkins, that is.
2. They are not practising World War II "bombing runs", twit: they are training for ground attack.
3. Contour flying remains the best way for non-stealth aircraft to avoid the attention of SAM batteries.

Anyone who delves into the defence budget knows it is awash in waste, in semi-derelict barracks, dusty London office blocks, half-used air bases and ghostly ships "in mothballs". [1] It is steeped in defence attaches, goodwill visits, needless patrols and flag-flying. [2] On the Queen's cruise round Scotland this summer the navy thought it fun to accompany her in a type-23 frigate. [3] The navy has so much money it just does not know how to spend it.

1. None of which constitute a significant charge on the defence budget. They are the product more of uncertainty about future needs or disposals than of departmental costiveness.
2. So, Jenkins doesn't like military ceremonials - got that; now then, about those "needless patrols" - what is it about training that offends him?  
3. It's called an escort, arsehole - in case our Head of State got into trouble.

When one considers the Ruritanian level of over-officering, the deeply politicised and corrupt procurement system, the fact that the MoD employs more civilians than uniformed infantry, the fact that there is no longer a strategic requirement for an independent RAF - and so on and on - Jenkins' lazy triviality is worse than a wank; it is a waste of time and column space that might have been devoted to adult commentary.