Gordon Brown's Sunday Reading

Sunday afternoon - an East Neuk beach

Visualise this: This morning a security guard delivers the Sunday papers to the front door of a sturdy Scottish villa which overlooks the River Forth. Only one occupant of the house is interested in the contents of the newspapers, although the children fight to read The Broons and Oor Wullie in the Sunday Post.

Their father takes himself off to his reading room, opens the Sunday Times and starts to read this article. The bellowing of un-Sunday language can be heard by the security staff who surround the building day and night and the wailing can be heard by the other occupants.

The mother enters the room in a futile attempt to calm the situation, but when her husband thrusts the newspaper into her hands and shouts, "Read it," she realises all is lost. She leaves the room shaking her head and mumbling, "I knew it would come to this."

And it has. A devasting official report, suppressed by ministers including Bob Ainsworth, has revealed that soldiers lives are being put at risk by 'endemic' failures at the Ministry of Defence. The secret dossier, which was due to be published last month but was buried, blames 'political fudge' and Whitehall incompetence for the plight of soldiers in Afghanistan who are provided with inadequate frontline kit. It also claims the scale of MoD bungling is so severe it 'is harming our ability ... to conduct difficult current operations'.

The author of the report, Bernard Gray, a leading businessman and former special adviser to Labour defence ministers writes:

“How can it be that it takes 20 years to buy a ship, or aircraft, or tank?

“Why does it always seem to cost at least twice what was thought?

“Even worse, at the end of the wait, why does it never quite seem to do what it was supposed to?”

"The problems, and the sums of money involved, have almost lost their power to shock, so endemic is the issue. It seems as though military equipment acquisiton is vying in a technological race with the delivery of civilian software systems for the title of 'world's most delayed technical solution'. Even British trains cannot compete.

Back to our scenario. Gordon Brown was last seen and photographed (picture above) on a local beach. The villa by the river resounded with childrens' laughter. The guards smiled for the first time in a week.

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