The Daily Mail reports that the Ministry of Defence is cutting its online letter service, known as E-Blueys, to save £1 million.
Praised by Prince Charles while Harry was serving in Afghanistan, the e-bluey is a vital means of staying in touch with loved ones back home when troops are deployed on operations.
Along with everyone else, I used e-bluey’s extensively in Afghanistan as a secure means of safely communicating with my family and friends but the MoD has scrapped the service saying that troops can use insecure wifi and social media instead. Of course, the Ministry maintains that ‘the security of our people is our foremost concern’.
Doing away with this excellent service while continuing to squander taxpayers money on fat cats and gravy trains serves to highlight, yet again, the deeply flawed thinking at the MoD.
SPIN ZHIRA: Old Man in Helmand is the unauthorised, unvarnished and irreverent story of one man’s midlife crisis on the front line of the most dangerous district in Afghanistan where the locals haven’t forgiven the British for the occupation of 1842 or for the Russian Invasion of 1979. Of course, all infidels look the same so you can’t really tell them apart.
‘Brims with authenticity and dark humour.’
Patrick Hennessey, bestselling author of The Junior Officers’ Reading Club
‘First class’
Doug Beattie, bestselling author of An Ordinary Soldier
‘A must read.’
Richard Dorney, bestselling author of The Killing Zone
‘The best book by a soldier concerning the Afghan War that I have read’
Frank Ledwidge, bestselling author of Losing Small Wars
‘Five stars’
SOLDIER The official magazine of the British Army
‘Not just for soldiers’
William Reeve, BBC World Service and Afghanistan Correspondent
SPIN ZHIRA 