General Overkill

No that's not the name of a fictional gaming character. Saturday saw a meeting of high-ranking officers in Lisbon to discuss the future of the armed forces under the economic austerity programme. Nothing unusual about that in these troubled times. Until we discover that 50 generals attended! How can a peripheral country like Portugal justify having 50 generals?

I have doubts about the usefulness of having an army at all and the navy and air force should be reinvented to deal primarily with search and rescue and patrolling the coastline against drug and other smugglers. But that's not the point.

The armed forces are a significant burden on the country's finances and have actually been little affected by the cuts so far. It has always been a job for life (which admittedly has served my adopted family well). And I won't even go into the waste of money and resources that is rife among staff which consider themselves badly paid nor into the inoperative machines and equipment bought by successive governments with no proper consideration of the ongoing operating and maintenance costs.


Of course, those at the meeting may be serving and retired generals as we can't really stop them getting involved after retirement on their comfortable pensions. It later turned out that they were generals and admirals. I hope they resolved to help the belt-tightening exercise, but somehow I think not.