Tribune – Comment, news and reviews from Britain's democratic left

As the Ministry of Defence continues to cut jobs across the services some eye-catching statistics from former military intelligence officer Frank Ledwidge in his recently published book Losing Small Wars. Mr Ledwidge, who saw active service in Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq and has civilian experience of Afghanistan, says the British Army now has more generals than it has operational tanks – pro rata many times more than other military nations. The author and expert, who is damning about British policy failure in Basra – in which, he says, control was handed over to “a savage militia” of religious zealots masquerading as the “police” – points out that the British Army has 350 Challenger ll tanks, a large proportion of which are in storage, and 256 generals. He compares it to the Marine Corpsin the United States – a comparable size to the British defence force – which is statutorily limited to 86 generals. Further, the British Army has,pro-rata, four times the number of generals as the US Army. The Israeli Army, a formidable force similar in size to this country’s, has 48 generals in total.

Meanwhile, irony of ironies: it has been reported that the Russian Army’s decision to stop buying AK-47s – because it already has more than enough, thank you very much – has caused such a stir that the news is reportedly being kept from its 92-year old inventor, Mikhail Kalashnikov, for fear it would kill him. The iconic instrument of death went into production in 1947 to become the Red Army’s standard field rifle. Today there are an estimated 100 million of the rifles in circulation. Russian President Dimitri Medvedev, in all seriousness calls the weapon “a national brand which evokes pride in each citizen”. The brutally simple, and effective, Kalashnikov, is famed for its ability to withstand theworst of conditions and for being idiot-proof – its inventor said soldiers didn’t have university degrees or time to calculate marksmanship under fire.

Chancellor George Osborne temporarily left his party conference in Manchester for a bit of lightning shuttle diplomacy with fellow EU finance ministers in Luxembourg to resist the planned Robin Hood tax on financial transactions. In yet another example of economics and politics as we know it being turned upside down, the tax – bitterly and fiercely resisted in the City of London as anti-competitive – is supported by not just billionaire investor Warren Buffett but also his younger poker-partner and admirer, Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Both men think the tax could be an unequivocal public good with the estimated $50 billion in revenues from it a “game changing” resource for good causes worldwide.

Every working reporter knows that it’s not just Blue Peter that can turn to one it made a little earlier. Print and broadcast deadlines can often be such that it is established practice to have two versions of a particular story depending on the verdict. This is even more so now that news outlets have various on-line versions of their main titles or programmes in which it is so often more important to be first, rather than right, with a story.

Hence, it was not only the Daily Mail On-Line that rushed to “print” with its incorrect story that Amanda Knox’s appeal against her conviction for the murder of Meredith Kercher had been rejected (the reporters monitoring it on news channels confused the initial ruling that her three-year sentence for her slander conviction was upheld). But where it really went pear-shaped for the Mail news juggernaut was when it published detailed quotes and reaction from both sides – none of which happened or could have. Not really what the Mail, or the industry, needs as the Levesoninquiry breathes down necks. Isn’t life grand?