One could be forgiven for believing a British company with annual sales of £1billion plus, being the country’s largest employer of science and engineering graduates, recruiting 300 every year, and credited with ground-breaking inventions such as microwave radar, thermal imaging, flat panel speakers and liquid crystal displays would be considered an asset to the nation and treasured by our government. But not only was Qinetiq, the former state-owned defence evaluation and research agency, sold off, it was done in such a way for the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee at it’s public hearing on 3rd December 2007 to lambast the sale as “stinking to high heaven”.

The facts are not in dispute.
In 2001 Dr. Lewis Mooney the then defence minister simultaneously announced the creation and sale of Qinetiq saying, it would continue to remain a British company. Two years later the same Lewis Mooney gifted Carlyle, the American private equity asset-strippers, a 33.8% stake in the company. A deal which made Carlyle the preferred bidder and valued Qinetiq at £125million. Three years later and with Lewis Mooney, now Lord Mooney, Qinetiq’s stock exchange flotation valued it at £1.3billion, ten times the government’s best guess, allowing Carlyle to walk away with a £400million profit.
It was these shenanigans which were condemned by the Tory chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, Sir Edward Leigh, as being “against any concept of ethical capitalism”.
Curiously it is the Labour government which having botched the sell-off now defends the outcome even justifying the self-serving smash and grab by the top ten civil service managers, who helped themselves to a £107million slice of the company for a stake of just half a million pounds. An enhancement described by the Financial Times as representing a 19,900% profit!
John Pugh, a Lib Dem member of the Commons committee hit the nail on the head, “It’s difficult to think what the MOD could have done worse apart from putting Qinetiq on Ebay”.

Deja vu
With an impeccable sense of occasion and on the first anniversary of the Qinetiq debacle Mooney’s successor, Bob Ainsworth, returned to the (stock) market to flog the Defence Aviation and Repair Agency (DARA) based at Almondbank, Perth.
DARA at Almondbank is according to the local MSP Rosanna Cunningham a “state of the art world class centre of excellence” and a “cornerstone of the local economy” according to Perth Council leader Jimmy Doig.
DARA at Almonbank employs 350 engineers and skilled technicians and is to be bundled for sale with the helicopter repair facility at Southampton; together they generate £50million of revenues.
This July the minister announced Vector Aerospace of Canada as the preferred bidder, saying according to the BBC, that the “interests of the workforce will be taken into account at all times”.
Yes Minister! What he means is the cattle at the Perth Bull Sales will get more consideration.
The minister would do well to listen to Peter Allenson, the T&GWU national secretary for the public services who condemned the sale decision saying it “was a betrayal of skilled workers by a government in love with privatisation”.
And the Almonbank workers would do well to consider the fate of Rosyth. In 1997 when Babcock bought the naval dockyard it employed 3,000 ten years later that number has shrunk to 1,300. In 1997 Babcock paid £25million for the dockyard and the 150 acres of associated land; land which according to the Dundee Courier (08/02/07) is now part of a proposed £500million leisure and shopping development.

Swords into Ploughshares
According to the Ministry of Defence (Defence Statistics Bulletin No.7) direct and indirect defence related employment had fallen from 410,00 in 1997 to 310,000 in 2004.
Babcock and Vector might not want the skills of the Rosyth and Almondbank workers but the nation does. It would be a national disgrace if the Almondbank workers are thrown onto the scrapheap of unemployment. Their skills can and must be saved. Instead of squandering the nation’s scarce resources on botched privatisations the government should set a new economic and technological agenda that looks to combat the growing energy crisis, improve public transport and reinvigorate the health services which would use the skills of the displaced defence workers.
Thirty years ago the Lucas Aerospace shop stewards proved that it was entirely feasible to re-direct military spending into innovative civil manufacture at companies like DARA. At Lucas they produced a six-volume corporate plan that matched the skills of the workforce to a proposed 150 products which included, for energy -solar and hydrogen fuel cells, for transport -a hybrid road and rail vehicle and for health -a kidney dialysis machine.
To paraphrase the LibDem MP, John Pugh, Put the armaments factories on Ebay if you wish but preserve the skills of the defence workers for the benefit of the British people.
All the country needs is the political will to do it.

For to everyone who has will be given, and he will have more:
but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.
Matthew 25:29

Lord Guthrie (Baron Guthrie of Craigiebank of Craigiebank in the City of Dundee) and some chums also former Chiefs of the Defence Staff and assorted brass hats have formed an association entitled the United Kingdom National Defence Association to demand more public money for the arms budget.

Their opening gambit at a press conference in London on 8th November was for an extra £15billion a year, a mere 40% hike! Asked by the Guardian where the nation could find such sums he suggested that giving aid to Africa was a “waste”.

In Africa 46% of the under-5’s are registered as underweight and in Africa, according to Water Aid, a child dies every 15 seconds, 4900 every day, from a water-related disease.
On the 2nd July this year the UN warned the whole of sub-Saharan Africa -the poorest region of the world- will fail to meet the goals set 7 years ago for eradicating poverty by 2015.

Of course, Lord Guthrie and his chums are just about the least qualified to talk about wasting public money for not only did the Commons last week identify his friends guzzling their way through £10million of gourmet food and wine in a 2-year long binge but successive Audit Commission reports have condemned the criminal waste in procurement procedures by the Ministry of Defence.
The 2004 Report exposing the Ministry of Defence’s 20 largest projects as 144 months behind schedule and £3billion over budget.

On this evidence Africa might say giving money to Lord Guthrie was a “Waste”.

Fears are growing amongst Scottish Local Councils that next year’s Rate Support Grant settlement will not be sufficient to allow them to meet their service obligations.

The Dundee Courier of 26 October reported Fife Council as believing their 2008 government funding may result in a 3% cut across departments. As the Courier editorial points out “indications are that the fat years are over and the lean years are upon us”.

Fair enough the party’s over.

Let’s forget the fact that ordinary people never did get an invitation, why does a government which is forcing Fife to contemplate quadrupling it’s meals on wheels charges, why does it allow the military top brass to run up a huge wining and dining bill? For following a series of questions by the MP for Durham North, Kevan Jones, a member of the Commons defense committee, the Ministry of Defense has admitted Britain’s top military personnel spent an astonishing £10 million in the last two years on entertainment.

Sir Richard Dannet, chief of the general staff and his predecessor Sir Mike Jackson ran up tabs of £22,000 and £21,000 alone.

In his masterpiece, A tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens comes to the conclusion that life in late 18th century France was depending on your place in the social pecking order, “the best of times or the worst of times”.

And so today…while they’re passing the Krug in the Cavalry Club mess, in Kelty they’ll be asking if the home help will turn up.

Dundee Courier Friday 26 October 2007

From the Courier article we can assume the government’s 2008 spending settlement for Scotland’s local councils means budget cuts and may mean job losses.
Fife Council face a £26 million shortfall and Dundee are grappling with a single status pay structure which may mean wage cuts for some staff.
Gordon Brown, the author of the settlement has of course told the Scottish government and the councils they have got the best possible deal.
If these are indeed cash-strapped times its extraordinary how much cash seems to be available for Trident, the nuclear missile system whose renewal Gordon Brown wants to push ahead with.

James Callaghan, a former Labour leader, who couldn’t find the money to pay the binmen spent £1 billion on a previous nuclear renewal.
Callaghan’s preference for arms not jobs led to the 1978 Winter of Discontent and his defeat at the polls.
This should be a salutary lesson for the current Labour leader who can’t find the money to pay the postal workers pensions but is desperate to waste £25 billion on yet another nuclear renewal.
Nuclear funding like the number of times it has to renewed seems limitless which is more than can be said of the health of the British economy and the coffers of the Bank of England. Gordon Brown must know another Northern Rock type debacle and the longest queues won’t be outside the banks but at the polling stations voting him out and back to Fife where because of council cuts he may have to empty his own bins. Perish the thought but as same issue Courier editorial advises “Savings of 3% across services in Fife are being advised, That might be painful but is there any choice except to get on with it?” Good question.
Well….. how about instead of the hospices, old folks homes and schools having to augment their funds through endless rounds of fund raising and charity how about if Gordon Brown gave them Trident’s £25 billion and sent the generals and brass hats out with their collecting cans on a Support Trident flag day.
Someone should tell him it’s the old story Swords or Ploughshares, Bombs or Jobs.

Once upon a time Dundee Council was a leading light in the Local Authority Nuclear Free Zone movement, today it’s employee’s pension contributions prop up the international arms industry.
The pension fund has over £2million invested in companies manufacturing arms of mass destruction. Of course, £2 million’s not much of a stake, 0.3% of pension investment, but it’s the message it sends that’s important. For just as the Nuclear Free Zones sent a message that Scotland did not want to be turned into a radioactive cinder heap should somebody have been mad enough to fire off a missile from a Clyde-based Trident submarine, Dundee pulling its funding of the arms companies sends a message not just to the companies but to other councils like Aberdeen whose pension funds have a much larger stake in arms profits.
As far as local councils are concerned the elected councillors carry the can. However, the investment of the council workers pension contributions will not be known to them it will be done by a faceless investment manager. But your councillor can do something about it.
If enough people raise the matter with their elected representative then you never know the policy may just change.