Understated Concern

One effective way of putting into perspective the Government's treatment of its armed forces' Iraqi employees is to look at the Government's treatment of the armed forces themselves. Besides lack of proper equipment and lack of proper health care, the Ministry of Pre-Emption is now offering a lack of proper housing. The Government has said that the issue is "a priority" and, true to form, has imposed disproportionate cuts on the housing budget. Most of the family quarters were sold off in a penny-pinching exercise by the interregnum in a suit which occupied the Prime Minister's office between Thatcher's downfall and Blair's ascent, so the Ministry plans to spend two-fifths of the money set aside for "upgrading service accommodation" on renting the buildings back from the company which bought them. Meanwhile, forty per cent of family quarters are substandard, as is more than half of the accommodation for personnel who are single and thus, presumably, less in need of good housing than their married counterparts. Still, the Ministry did manage to avoid "postponing work such as the construction of all-weather pitches and the resurfacing of tennis courts"; a prioritisation it concedes now "seems questionable in hindsight".