Cuts to the Armed Forces announced at the weekend were worse than previously feared, with 22,000 defence jobs to be axed by 2015. Coupled with a similar planned decimation of the already stretched police service, LibLabCon Britain is set to become an even more dangerous place in which to live. 

The first wave of redundancies saw almost 2,000 armed service personnel dismissed, and hundreds more are set to go before the month is out.

Some 930 RAF and 920 Army members were told they were being made redundant, 750 compulsorily, as part of the first ‘tranche’ of job losses.

On September 30, the Royal Navy will dismiss as many as 1,600 personnel, possibly including Royal Marines who this year served in Afghanistan.

Critics protested that the cuts represented a gross betrayal of RAF and Army heroes currently serving in North Africa and the Middle East.

An MoD spokesman confirmed that the second tranche of redundancies will take place in early 2012. There will be ‘up to four’ such tranches implemented to enact the sweeping cuts enforced on the military to meet the budget reductions of 2014/15, by which time 22,000 military personnel will be dismissed, he said.

However, one Whitehall source pointed out that ‘by the time we get to rounds three or four, it's hard to imagine there will be any volunteers left’. Another official added: ‘It's hard to tell how things will look, but this is not likely to get any easier.’

Predictably, Defence Minister Liam Fox and other ConDem MPs blamed the eternal scapegoat of the previous Labour government for the deficit behind the sackings, despite the fact that the ConDems have not only flagrantly continued Labour’s policies of waste but, in many cases, have accelerated them, involving our forces in yet another unnecessary and costly foreign war, and increasing the annual foreign aid budget, to name just two examples.

At the same time as soldiers are laid off, the government will also cut police numbers by 16,000 as part of a 20 percent budget reduction. Ironically, the number of officers to be cut is the same that was needed to police London during the race riots last month.

The budget savings of £1.2 billion for the for the military and £1.36 billion for the police over the next four years add up to just over half of the planned £3.9 billion increase in foreign aid over the same time period.

Once again, the traitorous LibLabCons have got it backwards.