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At the start of the Iraq war only one of the three army bases had enough toilet rolls, never mind other equipment.

In the Falklands War most troops spent hundreds on pounds of their own money on decent sleeping bags and other cold weather kit.

We are close to spending billions on upgrading Trident – a weapons system we cannot use without permission from the Americans. The main purpose of this system is two fold – the reward American defence contractors, (So the President will be nice to us.), and keep our place in the Security Council – ie to maintain our status against the French and allow the Prime Minister to go to international power lunches.

What we don’t seem to be able to do is to provide our troops with protective clothing, decent communications and even basics, such as boots that don’t melt in the heat.

We also do not have enough troops. To be highly effective the army needs shorter tours of duty to allow recovery and retraining.  It needs more troops in places like Afghanistan to consolidate gains against the Taliban.

We, I really mean they, also urgently need more helicopters.

Against pirates a number of small, but fast boats would seem more effective than large boats – though I accept that some air support would be useful.

Are we going to be in a major war? Russia is still militaristic – though here well equipped troops on the ground would seem to be the most effective in an invasion of Europe.

China and America. I think is possible, but Britain is about as far away from this conflict zone and we would be smart to stay out of it.

So let’s accept that we are a small country.

Less toys for the Admirals and Air Commodores.

More troops, more troop training, better equipment for the troops and let’s face it this will also reduce the unemployment rate and boost local economies.

The fundamental flaw with education policy after the election is that politicians will get in.

Talking to a couple of teachers, both now thinking of leaving, is which is worse a Labour win – with ‘a policy a day’ Balls or a Cameron government that is made of people, who have seen public schools, (that is the state run places), but have not been actually gone to them, except on official visits, and will obviously send their children to private schools.

The present set of fantastic initiatives, which are mainly designed to build the career of a minister, or as part of the government PR of we are doing a good job and such boo-hoo to the opposition.

The emphasis has been on buildings, computers, hardware and photo opportunities.

The emphasis should be on quality of staff, quality of teaching and a resultant number of qualified, confident students, with self awareness and aspirations.

One way to achieve this is not to have a Minister of Education and a Ministry of Education, but allow education to be organised on a local and regional basis. Then at least the voters can easily travel and complain to, or vote out the local politicians when they get it wrong.

To give an example. Cameron’s new scheme

Maths: In maths what is needed for the vast majority of children is someone who can understand the problems kids are having with maths. Someone with a first in maths or physics cannot possibly do this.

Ideal people should be numerate, able to control a class and probably had some life experience, working, bringing up children. Mature students, people changing careers will probably have more to offer than someone just out of university and teacher training.

Most will only need to be able to understand maths up to GCSE level.

The whizz-kids with firsts would only be needed for the higher level A level students.

Secondly:

Cameron’s scheme will only consider graduates from ‘good’ universities. It makes him elitist and the ‘playing fields of Eton’ is now fully justified. What he is really saying is all but a few universities are inferior.

Third:

Cameron has effectively stated that most of the current teachers are inferior.

One last point.

The best teacher I ever had was Mr Powell. He was an ex-sergeant, who had fought with Monty in Africa and was stationed in Palestine after. He had no degree and was trained up under a specialist scheme for ex-military.

Without hitting students or shouting he controlled classes. He knew how to motivate students.

He had us for the entire Friday afternoon. He made a deal with us. The first lesson he would teach us maths. The second lesson we would work through a set of maths exercises and when the entire class had finished those he would go through his war experiences, giving us details of the battles in north Africa, or have discussions, or play word games like hangman.

To make sure we all finished early most of the class would do our maths work at least a week ahead.

We would help the weaker kids and so the entire class by today’s standards was very numerate.

So invest in good teachers not elite teachers.

Only allow ministers to have one idea at the most a year.