The combined strength of Britain’s hairdressers is now more than that of Her Majesty’s Armed Forces.

The Ministry of Defence is implementing £10.6 billion budget cuts which will lead to regular soldiers being slimmed down from 102,000 to 82,000 by 2020.

But that doesn’t matter, the Government says, because they are going to fill the Army gap with a minimum of 11,000 extra reservists by 2018. That means recruiting an extra 2,750 reservists a year by showing them snazzy recruitment videos....

The only problem, is since 2012, the trained strength of the Army reserve has flatlined. The MoD now says recruitment processes have improved. But even so, between April 2013 to April 2014, the number of trained reservists increased by just 170 people.

That means, by a rough estimate, more British people have travelled out to join Isis in Iraq and Syria than helped bulk up our own reservist force last year. That’s an estimated 400 to 500 jihadists, by the way.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/10924976/Why-Britains-armed-forces-are-shrinking-by-the-day-and-does-it-really-matter.html