Saw this is yesterday's paper too...
www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jul/30/triden...panies?newsfeed=true

Trident bases to be run by private companies
MoD signs contracts putting companies in charge of 'day-to-day running' of nuclear missile submarine bases
Monday 30 July 2012 The Guardian Richard Norton-Taylor

Britain's Trident nuclear submarine bases at Faslane and Coulport on the Clyde will in future be run by private companies, the Ministry of Defence has disclosed.

The ministry has signed a 15-year contract with AWE, the consortium which already operates the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire, where nuclear warheads are designed and maintained. Additional contracts have been signed with Babcock and Lockheed Martin, part of a new consortium to be known as the ABL Alliance.

The consortium will be responsible for the day-to-day running of the Clyde bases, according to officials. The MoD will rely increasingly on skilled and specialist staff from outside the ministry, they added. The ministry and the navy face a shortage of skilled personnel as existing specialists retire.

As part of the agreement, 149 MoD civilian posts will be transferred, and 39 Royal Navy posts seconded, to the ABL Alliance, the MoD says.

In a reference to Aldermaston, it describes the new agreement as "a natural extension of [the companies'] current role in supporting the nuclear warhead carried by our Trident missiles".

The AWE at Aldermaston is run by a consortium of Jacobs Engineering Group, Lockheed Martin UK and Serco, which have a 25-year contract to operate it until March 2025.

The deal covering the Trident bases on the Clyde comes as the MoD presses ahead with ambitious and controversial outsourcing plans. Its move to privatise the multibillion-pound agency that provides the armed forces with military equipment were criticised by a leading security thinktank for being ill thought-out and potentially dangerous for British troops.

It said the outsourcing plan suffered "from an inherent weakness, since it appears to rest on an argument that, because the government is not very good at negotiating and managing contracts with the private sector, it is going to negotiate an even bigger contract with a private-sector entity to undertake the entire task on its behalf. Persuasive arguments against this logic need to be marshalled."

Comments from readers (thanks)..
most of Britain’s nuclear capability is already outsourced to corporations (SERCO in the main) so this will be more of the ‘final piece in the jigsaw’ rather than the top of the slippery slope.
Strange how they waited for the summer recess and the start of the olympics before announcing this. Strange - or the usual coalition cowardice?

The Tories have always done this.

They get into "power" and the immediately set about de-nationalising the railways, the gas, electricity, health, education, prisons... - name it. Wherever the Tories have a friend or relative involved, they de-nationailise and invite "the public" to buy shares.

This ensures that even if "Labour" win the next election, the privatization will be left intact in case "Labour" upset "the public" who have put their pennies into the pot; and no one insists that it is all handed back to The Country for governing.

And no one will. The Public will all sit there and say, "Rght Oh".

In so many ways, "the public" get exactly what they deserve.

+1

My daughter sent me this yesterday.

"Limmy: "When is England gonna learn, you vote in the Tories, you vote to sell off the NHS. It's like voting in the Nazi's then saying 'Where's aw the Jew's gone?"

It's kind of what the tories say on the tin innit

Rightwing thinkers are keen for free schools to be allowed to make money, says Peter Wilby, but there is little evidence that this would improve children's education.

There is nothing they won't consider giving to their mates to screw a buck out of.

G'day.

This could possibly be a case of setting up a scenario in which 'plausible deniability' is used for a nuclear strike ... "It wasn't us that did it, it was the company in charge of the nukes".

To be fair though...those that did vote never actually voted for them, did they? Libdem wankers...

Can I get arrested for that?

All a load of shit anyway, as you're voting for the same arseholes every time, in essence.

Rewind wrote:
A contractor to get contractors? WTF?

Conservatives and Labour...

As Gorgeous George said "Two cheeks on the same arse."

Ab Origine wrote:
G'day Ab Origine.

Or same shit, different arse.

I AM ALL I AM wrote: I'd like to think this was beyond the realm of possibility, but unfortunately it isn't.

Rewind wrote:
Hang on a minute...why don't we just do what we've always done before when skilled personnel retire?