Gaddafi is a very unpleasant individual & I shall shed no tears at his demise, but the more tricky conundrum for the Government to explain is why we are undertaking this little adventure when frankly we can not afford it.I find myself mentally totting up the cost of each laser guided bomb, bullet, tank of aviation fuel, Paveway bunker buster, cruise missile etc. and comparing that to the very painful £70 - 80 million Central Beds is taking out of its budget during this Comprehensive Spending Review.Now I am no bleeding heart liberal, far from it, but I find myself in a difficult position when it comes to supporting a war, which is of peripheral interest to the UK, when we cannot even afford to look after our own old people properly.A much more honest approach would be to say that we are now in the business of systemically reducing the size of the state, not so much because we are unable to afford such a bloated bureaucracy, but because a smaller state is in itself a good thing for Britain.I find myself in a difficult place explaining to people why we are cutting services because we cannot afford to run them anymore, when hours earlier the TV showed graphic images of us spending another few million quid dropping vast quantities of high explosive all over the northern Sahara Desert & a lot more just getting it there.
