A new take on an old socialist favourite.

Medals for all. That's the clichéd view many opponents of British style socialism have held for, oooh, decades. Medals for all whether they were deserved or not. And it turns out we were wrong. It's really medals for all except, after a certain number has been reached, those who really fucking do deserve a medal.

A WHITEHALL quota system that restricts the number of medals given to soldiers in wartime has resulted in more than half the recommendations for awards for bravery in Afghanistan being turned down.

Fucking hell fire, how dribblingly stupid can you get? This is the flip side of the target culture, and just as repugnant. How the cunting fuck can there be a quota for acts of bravery?

Many senior serving and retired officers claim the system is outdated, fails to recognise the intensive fighting seen by British troops in Helmand and has resulted in hundreds of servicemen and women being denied recognition for their courage.

The Ministry of Defence places limits on the numbers of medals that can be awarded for each six-month tour of duty, meaning only about one in 100 soldiers deployed can be rewarded for bravery.

It's a recruiter's fucking dream, eh?

Join the Army. Get sent to some shithole where you'll be taught how to be shot at. Live in substandard accomodation and on shit wages. Possibly come home from deployments horizontally (breathing optional). But you will get the recognition you deserve... unless you're one of the majority who don't.

“The way the quota is used at the moment is very strict, the rules are very inflexible,” said Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan.

“Commanding officers are lucky to get a 50% strike rate for their medal recommendations due to the conservative nature of senior officers who sit in London and decide these things.”

Well at least the squaddies know that the regimental commanders or whoever sends the medal recommendation to London recognises their efforts. Maybe among soldiers that's enough, I don't know. But wouldn't official recognition be better still?

Service chiefs have expressed fears that if they did not place limits on the numbers issued, this would “undermine” the value of those given for valour such as the Victoria Cross and the Military Cross.

Look, nobody's suggesting everybody gets a VC just for showing up, but you can't be niggardly either. Nor does any kind of quota make sense. Acts of heroism and bravery aren't like a fucking bus timetable you know. If we accept, as probably everyone does, that there may be no VC-worthy acts of valour for years and then there might be two within a couple of years it follows that the same applies with other medals and commendations. Maybe in six months not one soldier among 10,000 deployed to a certain place will do something to merit a particular gong, but maybe it'll happen five times a week throughout the whole tour. And if the latter you can't just reward the first half a dozen and tell the rest 'too bad, boys and girls, the quota's been used up'. Doesn't that undermine the medal system as well, you fucking tools?