Official: not equipping soldiers may be bad move

It's always frustrating when you lack the necessary tools to do your job - a faulty computer giving you nothing but stress, for example, or a broken coffee machine creating lines of angry customers in your once-quiet cafe. Transport that principle from the workplace to the battlefield, though, and Westmonster would hazard a guess that it goes from being merely "frustrating" to absolutely "cack-your-pants terrifying".

UK High Court judge Justice Collins would seem to agree with us, having passed a ruling stating that sending soldiers to fight with defective equipment could be a breach of their human rights. It's certainly a groundbreaking development ... and once which has really rooted itself up the nose of Defence Secretary Des Browne.

The UK doesn't seem to be able to do anything right of late - from the chaos at newly-opened Heathrow Terminal 5, to the continued presence of Alexa Chung on television, it won't be long before the whole country is simply named Disaster Island. And now this uselessness is filtering through into the military, with soldiers being sent on patrol - and therefore constantly subject to attack - with equipment that doesn't work properly. A breach of human rights? Well, duh.

While the Defence Secretary plans to appeal the ruling - yeah, that's right, get the public on your side, Des - oppositional leaders have at least had the common sense to welcome the notion. Shadow Defence Secretary Liam Fox said:

"It should not take a court ruling for the Government to realise that it has a responsibility and a moral obligation to ensure that when it sends troops into harm's way, they are the best trained and best equipped in the world."

While Lib Dem spokesman Nick Harvey hoped the ruling would: