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This might not work out so well

The British Army wants to relax security checks for recruits from overseas to boost diversity and inclusion, The Telegraph can reveal.

Britain’s armed forces have consistently failed to hit recruitment targets and are looking overseas to boost ethnic minority representation, which currently stands at 14 per cent of the regular army.

A document leaked to this paper, titled The British Army’s Race Action Plan, notes that the Army “struggles to attract talent from ethnic minority backgrounds into the officer corps”.

Published in March 2023 and understood to be the latest guidance, it outlines a series of “actions” to boost representation and describes security clearance vetting as being “the primary barrier to non-UK personnel gaining a commission in the Army”.

I’ve been vetted a couple of times. Not sure how deep they went but I passed both times (over export licences for military/nuclear goods). It does take time. There are also different levels of vetting – I didn’t get the full going over. But the idea that you don;t want to check those who are going to become your own intelligence officers of the future – no, that doesn’t make sense, it really doesn’t.

27 thoughts on “This might not work out so well”

  1. TalkTV fascinating facts this morning – On this day in 1956, Burgess and Maclean appeared in a press conference in Moscow, five years after disappearing from the UK……………

  2. Hang on, I thought the idea was to better reflect UK society. How does boosting numbers from outside the UK do that.

  3. A lot of Communist spy infiltration came about because of Wartime demands to fast track these clever Cambridge chaps and brushing over their politics and bum banditry.

    We ended up supporting Tito in Yugoslavia precisely because we sent sympathisers to appraise them . ( Milhailovic’s Cetniks were not any better but would fight for gold ).

    It was the case that most non British soldiers are Fijians ( Gurkhas not being counted ). I wonder who specifically the MoD is targetting.

    I said this in a previous post : employ the guys from the boats, give them faulty weapons and then send them to the obvious next flashpoint in Shitholistan and let them desert.

  4. From an external supplier point of view, the Civil Service has already done this – always used to require an SC clearance, but doesn’t any more.

    Be interesting to see how much they’re willing/able to downgrade stuff in the military though – we had this exact situation a few years ago. The crypto in the new (well, new then) Bowman radios was classified at Secret, which requires that SC level of clearance. We also had a foreign Trooper who wasn’t able to get that clearance as he’d not been in the UK long enough. So he wasn’t allowed to operate the radio, which was somewhat limiting…

  5. Bloke Temporarily in Moldova

    employ the guys from the boats, give them faulty weapons and then send them to the obvious next flashpoint in Shitholistan and let them desert

    Faulty weapons?
    So a standard issue SA-80 then…

    (Yes, yes, I know it got upgraded and the A3 variant is a halfway decent weapon. But conveniently ignoring that fact allows me to throw shit at the MoD from my comfortable armchair)

  6. Our man in Moldova

    Got it in one !

    All the Shitholians will say “Ooh look at these shiny guns !” And all then get hit metal in the face when it ejects the cartridge.

  7. We had a Fijian lance-bombardier in my unit way back. He had five sons and I believe they all joined up and at least one was a major last time I heard. Plenty of room in the army for people like that. But in those days nobody was trying to fill a daft quota.

  8. Given the Israeli offensive in Gaza, I’d say that Hamas’d be overjoyed to join up.

    Then once they’ve made sure all the soldiers are Muzzies, the coup will be a walkover.

  9. So they don’t want the British army to be representative of the British population, they want it to be representative of the the foreign world. Do they not understand what the qualifying adjective in their name actually means?

  10. If the yanks weren’t doing the same kind of stupid shit themselves, they should be withdrawing security and military cooperation from us immediately.

    In related news:

    Armed Forces hire over 40 diversity and inclusion chiefs tasked with improving equality across the British Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force – just as troop numbers in the UK’s military hit new low
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13069513/diversity-inclusion-equality-british-army-royal-navy-air-force-uk.html

    Fucking madness. The Tories will sort it.
    Oh . . .

  11. I wonder if the son-in-law of Bharat got any extra vetting before he was handed the powers of the Crown.

    Fucking madness. The Tories . . .

  12. So the directive is almost a year old..

    And none of the people with the fancy stars and laurels on their shoulders have gone up to whoever suggested this and issued a friendly: “You want to what now?” to their faces?

    The one time they actually could have earned their keep…

  13. Jgh – Do they not understand what the qualifying adjective in their name actually means?

    Of course they understand. It’s the gammon who are just beginning to understand that the ‘British’ army is not there to defend you.

    But don’t worry, they’ll rub your noses in it until you do understand.

    Grikath – And none of the people with the fancy stars and laurels on their shoulders have gone up to whoever suggested this and issued a friendly: “You want to what now?” to their faces?

    What do you expect from the uniformed wing of the civil service, really?

    Don’t be fooled by the square jaw, medals and tough guy affectations. The average British army officer has considerably less courage, and less experience of successfully leading men into battle, than the Taliban do.

  14. And none of the people with the fancy stars and laurels on their shoulders . . .

    Good lord, no. You only do that when you’re an ex senior officer.

    To be fair this is nothing new. The armed forces have always been full of these sorts of twats. When wars come they need to be promoted out of the way.

    It’s more difficult for the Russians to get rid of the militarily useless as the senior officers are gangsters.

  15. As far as I can see all that document does (as quoted) is potentially remove an (arbitrary) 5 year residency requirement

    It doesn’t suggest a reduction in rigour of the vetting process

    Pearl clutchers can stand down

  16. PJF – To be fair this is nothing new. The armed forces have always been full of these sorts of twats.

    No, not really. The British army was still a conservative institution as recently as the late 90’s, before it got Blaired.

    The armed forces deliberately privileging foreigners over British people is a new development. So is all the LGBT and Muslim worship. This isn’t just incompetent posh duffers stinking up the officer’s mess, this is an institution that has been ideologically captured.

    When wars come they need to be promoted out of the way.

    When wars come, I give them about 8 weeks.

    Starfish – it’s literally called “The British Army’s Race Action Plan”.

    If you think ‘race action plans’ might in some way not be at the expense of white men, I have a broken down aircraft carrier to sell you.

  17. The British Army officers have always been drawn from a higher class than the plebs. That’s why they are infested with the same virtue signalling wankers as the rest of the (so called) “elites”.

    It’s also the reason why a working class newly commissioned officer discovers that the mess fees are higher than their annual salary – it’s to keep out the oiks.

  18. One hears from Portsmouth, the Royal Navy is making a laughing stock of itself in the approved military manner.

  19. These actions have had a positive impact on
    D&I in Defence. For example we have seen:

    » Armed Forces Continuous Attitudes Survey
    (AFCAS) scores for ‘feeling valued’ are
    higher for BAME personnel than non-
    BAME personnel

    UK Ministry of Defence Diversity and
    Inclusion Strategy 2018 – 2030

  20. Does anyone else find the phrase “British Army Race Action Plan” more than a little sinister?

    I mean, substitute British Army for SADF or German Army, and how does it sound?

  21. Can’t we just recruit more Gurkhas? Seems like a perfectly reasonable solution, with a strong track record. Or are they the wrong kind of diversity?

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