The difficulty with using the TA is the …

Comment posted Axed Argylls deployed to Olympic Games security by newsroom.

The difficulty with using the TA is the impact on the economy of employers losing 3,500 staff at short notice.

This part time nature of TA membership and the impact on businesses of using it at a serious level, also casts doubt on the achieveability of the MoD’s plan to double its size and use it more intensively in theatres of war, with the new slimmed down army.

Recent comments by newsroom

• Arctic Convoy navies celebrated at Loch Ewe as surviving veterans receive Arctic Star medal
  Email Jacky Brookes of the Russian Arctic Convoy Museum in Wester Ross: info@russianarcticconvoymuseum.co.uk (Russian Arctic Convoy Museum)
  She will be glad to hear from you and of your father.
  If you go to this webpage: http://www.veterans-uk.info/arctic_star_index.htm
  - you will find an Application Form for the Arctic Star on it.
  Alternatively, you can phone: 08457 800 900 and take it from there.
  You will be able to get a posthumous medal for your father for his Arctic Convoy service – and although, painfully, he will never have known of it or seen it, he earned it and the medal will be very important to your family.
• First Minister’s choice not to condemn mob behaviour proves Farage point
  We have people in Community Councils in Argyll who are on the record as not wanting ‘people of low incomes’ in their area. And those will be people of a variety of political persuasions. The socialist NIMBY is not a rare bird.
  It is unsafe to give representational status to the fringe adherents of any cause – and that is why the cause itself – any cause – must be clear about what it finds acceptable and what it does not.
  The need for the formal, official representative of a country to be clear on matters like this is even greater – and it sets the bar.
  How would Mr Salmond react to the same treatment the mob offered Mr Farage in Edinburgh?
  It was sudden and unexpected.
  It began with an invasion of the pub he was in.
  It was intimidating – the mob crowded tight in, creating a real pressure.
  The shouting and the abuse was literally ‘in his face’.
  There was no way through nor any offered.
  It would be surprising if the First Minister were not to feel equally shaken by such an experience – and very surprising if he had effectively condoned it as gleefully afterwards.
  Personally, I’m not afraid of much – but the pressure of shouting bodies, the level of unreason, the aggression – with no signals that this might not turn to physical aggression… I wouldn’t have run but I would have been worried for my safety and I would have had no certainty as to the outcome.
  The police clearly had reason to take a quite extraordinary series of measures to protect Mr Farage.
  One of these was locking him in a pub for his own safety.
  That meant that they were uncertain of their ability to protect him against a violence they, who were present – clearly felt was a potential development.
  I feel – on good evidence – that Tony Blair did more damage than anyone to the political life of this country, to its expectation of honesty in those who govern, to its essential democracy and to its security – and that he has blood on his hands: of untold thousands of innocent Iraqis, of Dr David Kelly, of those who died in London in the bombings of 7th July 2005. I feel the most profound contempt for him.[And Nigel Farage has nothing of this level of gravity on his record.]
  But I would act to protect Blair were he to be the butt of anything like this – because I do not wish to be implicated either in what he has done or in any primitive lynch mob response to it.
  The best punishment for the attention-seeking and egotistical Blair is to pay him no attention. He is not an homme serieux.
  The best response to UKIP and MR Farage, if you are opposed to their politics, is not to vote for them.
  Lynda
• Walsh to lead all but Lib Dems, Conservatives and George Freeman
  No – not speculation – otherwise we would have said so.
  But this is not a done deal.
  It has to go for approval to an SNP meeting tomorrow [Monday].
• SNP meeting on Monday may be testing time for mega-coalition proposal
  We would read the political ambitions the same way as you [and there's nothing wrong with having them]. Nothing else has ever made sense of the decision to stand as a councillor, with all of the losses in earnings and authority that the decision will have involved.
  But this was not the chosen route.
• First Minister’s choice not to condemn mob behaviour proves Farage point
  What is untypically distorting here is the citing of extremist remarks made by some UKIP supporters, giving them a representative status characterising the party.
  There is no political party – nor any group of affiliates – that does not have its fringe nutters.
  UKIP is not the BNP but it will have its proportion of bigoted and dark adherents – ‘swivel-eyed loonies’ seems to be the phrase of the moment – as any other group has and as the SNP and the nationalist movement manifestly have themselves.
  In the case of this issue. the First Minister – as Scotland’s First Minister – should automatically and immediately have put a substantial distance between Scotland, his party and the actions of the threatening mob in Edinburgh. He should have done this instinctively in the interests of civility and standards of discourse.
  He instinctively did the reverse – and, personally, I find that a serious concern.
  In failing to speak for Scotland as a civilised country and in failing to dissociate his party from the incident and from those perpetrating it, he has damaged the reputations of both.
  Amusingly, in his scramble to diss MR Farage he deified the BBC and its reporters in so unequivocal a manner as to be equally indiscriminate.

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