Lions Led by Donkeys

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Politicans should value Britain's armed forces by paying them more than lip service.

Another word often bandied about in place of ‘soldier’ is ‘serviceman’. The make-up of that word is interesting; apart from ‘man’, the other part of that conjunction is ‘service’ which is ironic because these servicemen in serving their country receive shockingly poor ‘service’ in the event of death from their own government.

There is currently a death-in-service benefit of four-times salary for armed personnel killed in action. That fact, sitting there by itself, does not sound particularly generous and in the context of modern-day Britain, it looks much, much worse. The maximum pay for a Private in the army on the lower bandwidth is just over £25k. If someone of this rank dies, that means their dependents will receive £100k of benefit. For a surviving spouse and children, this benefit will go no way in helping them purchase a home when they are forced, after a short time period, to leave army housing. This is where every MP who has dipped into the public purse to pay their children for a non-existent career as a ‘researcher’ should feel ashamed – they have taken from a system which should be looking after families in terms of grief, not helping to inflict more stress upon them.

And what if a serving soldier chooses to top-up their life insurance with a personal policy? A Private on £25k with a family will find any policy difficult to afford, especially one that is likely to be higher than normal considering that in the daily course of their profession they run a real risk of being seriously injured or even killed. Not only that but Pax Insurance which specialises in cover for forces personnel became the first insurer for the military to increase their premiums with a 30% hike in pricing occurring in March 2008.

Al Voice, managing director of Forces Financial, said in May’s edition of COVER that four-times salary is not enough and recommended that that amount be nearly quadrupled for those servicemen with dependents.

That would be a good start.

The relationship between a nation and its armed forces should be built around one simple, universally-understood agreement: those protecting us from our enemies must know that we will support them at the time of battle with fully-functioning and appropriate equipment, and should the worst happen that their families will be taken care of. Right now, the current situation is both shameful and a disgrace.

Peter Carvill

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