The Economist ~ My proposition for military reform

Day 1,070, 07:17 • Published in United Kingdom United Kingdom • by Spite313


Dear friends,

I lied. I said that this was going to be my last article for a while. BUT THEN I HAD AN IDEA. I would like to warn all readers expecting humour, this article is deadly serious and smiling is prohibited.

Now I was smoking my pipe and reading the newspaper this morning, when it occurred to me that we are a proud seafaring nation. We are also a tiny nation on a rock in the Atlantic Ocean, beset on all sides by enemies. Actually this didn’t occur to me so much as come to me in a flashback from my days at university, when my lecturer repeated those two phrases endlessly. But the source is irrelevant. The point is, with all this army reform going around, I thought- why not give my honest opinion on what we should do. Not in terms of figures, legislation or accountability mechanisms, but in terms of overall long term PLAN.

As I said, we are a proud seafaring nation. And yet where is our Navy? Sunk like the supposed bits of meat in your grandmother’s casserole. Where is our fun? Our ambition? Our Rum?


Never forget the Rum

In my eyes the Army has become associated with nothing more than fail. V2 was an epic fail, V1.5 has thus far been a big fail. Blame the admins. But there is hope on the horizon, glinting like Max McFarland’s purse. We just have to get on a big boat and sail to find it!

So here are the facts:
1. I like big boats and I cannot lie
2. Navy was pretty cool, I was an able rate (whatever that is)
3. We currently have almost no government companies
4. Realistically it will be many moons before we rebuild our stocks

What should we do with these facts? I say we use them as the basis for a logical progression of ideas known as a plan. Firstly, we rediscover the joys of sailing with a Royal Navy. This will be, as the old Navy was, a club for medium and low strength professional soldiers, carving out a career in the bleak cold depths of the ocean deep. Secondly, we recreate the SAS. This will be a bunch of oldfags nobody likes but most people end up joining, and will provide healthy rivalry, sodomy jokes and a kind of in-house tanking (ie. Big damage) team. FINALLY, we will create a new branch, the Pirate Navy.

Oh yes, I said it.

Pirates. Who doesn’t want to be a pirate. Orlando Bloom is the answer- he hates pirates. And I hate Orlando Bloom, his smarmy little do gooder face, his silly bumfluff moustache and his complete prancy attitude around women. I may be extrapolating this from the parts he plays in film rather than the actor himself, but you all know it’s true. I bet he wears silk underwear and watches episodes of Sex in the City “ironically”.


What a noob. He’s an insult to facial hair everywhere.

Anyway, back to Pirates. We all know that there is no way we can supply everyone with a limited amount of gunz and foodz. However, England herself had this problem long, long ago. And we solved it by putting everyone on crapped out old vessels, and sending them to rob booty from undefended Spanish merchants. Now I’m not advocating robbing Spanish booty, but I think a self-supplied elite wing would be pretty cool and would take some of the pressure off the main army branches until they get back on their feet. Also, eyepatches. Oh and the Jolly Roger.

Now some of you might be beginning to smile right now. Don’t, I’m not very funny. However I am a preacher, and I’m preaching the Truth. With a capital T, I hope you noticed my not unintentional usage thereof. We need to be a bit crazy. We need to be exciting. We need to have more Rum.


Fourteen pages of google images search for “jolly roger” before I found any porn. I’m impressed.

A self-supplied madman branch, a supplied mid-to-noob branch and an elite branch might sound like old news, and in some ways it is. But it is old news that mostly worked and is almost always associated with winrar.jpg. Also, I’m not a fan of all these silly ranks we have now, making us sound like we’re professional soldiers not a bunch of gamers who like to dress up in stripy tops, black hats and dead parrots. Instead of OF-7 or whatever bollocks we have now, let’s bring back the good old ranks. Cabin Boy, Deck Hand, Captain...Admiral...err...other nautical ranks yo ho etc.

Let’s have some fun,

Iain