Friday Funny–Who Needs Warm Clothes In Norway?
By Paul Homewood
h/t the guvnor
Perhaps the Dutch government believed all those stories last winter about Arctic heatwaves!
From Zero Hedge:
No, this is not The Onion.
Dutch military officials forgot to buy winter clothes for their navy soldiers ahead of a winter exercise in Central Norway, and have now resorted to asking the soldiers to go to the stores themselves and buy their own warm clothes… seemingly having forgotten that it can get a little chilly in the Norwegian mountains this time of year…
In what had to be re-read and re-translated numerous times to believe it, Aftenposten reports that around 1,000 soldiers have now been told to go to the store and get warmer clothes as soon as possible, after special Dutch parliamentary decision was made to ensure funds were made available.
Secretary of State Barbara Visser had to assure politicians from both the government parties and the opposition that soldiers attending the Trident Juncture NATO exercise in Norway from October-November will not have to cover the cost of winter clothes from their own pocket, promising that the soldiers will receive an advance of 1000 euros each.
The Dutch Defense regularly sends marines and elite forces to winter training in Norway, but in this case, according to Visser, they had not expected it to get very cold in Norway late in the fall, since earlier experiences from the same season in Lithuania indicated that warm clothes are not required.
Here’s a map to help…
All of which is even more farcical since NATO detail the goal of the Trident Juncture exercise:
"Trident Juncture will test NATO’s ability to train and operate together, also in the northern parts of the NATO area. It will also test the Alliance’s ability to operate in cold weather and difficult terrain."
Politicians from most parties in parliament reacted with disbelief when the newspaper de Telegraaf revealed that the Armed Forces do not have warm clothes for their soldiers.
For politicians it’s a mystery how to get in this situation. There is money set aside for the purchase of warm clothes and Dutch companies say they can deliver. But the Armed Forces purchasing department, called the CPU, has not managed to get what it needs.
In Parliament, Visser could not explain what has gone wrong, other than that the exercise may have moved to colder areas.
We wonder if President Trump has heard how efficient and prepared one of his NATO allies really is…
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
A polar bear costume would double up as snow camouflage.
Careful – such camouflage might just attract a few randy boars.
You couldn’t make it up, but a young friend of mine who was at the time in both the Army and then the Marines serving in Afghanistan, was forced to buy his own kit, including boots, to survive the inhospitable climate.
Which makes me wonder what our governments actually do for a living if they have all this information on climate yet can’t equip our troops with the necessary equipment to deal with it.
If they can’t provide boots to troops when there is empirical evidence from the troops that they are needed, why should we trust them to impose wind farms on us with no empirical evidence of catastrophic climate change?
If you think back to GULF 1 and the BRAVO 20 patrol – these guys went into the desert in gear that was not suitable for the (cold) conditions. On the advice of the MET service. Probably the same MET service that advises our government! Oh, and the one that cannot predict WEATHER for the next 24 hours, never mind the CLIMATE for the foreseeable future. Barbecue anyone?
The government seems not to have a meteorologist of sufficient skills to determine that central Norway (~65° N) can be cold in Oct/Nov.
They could hire one for the price of a nicely equipped Porsche. They likely have a few autos of this quality for moving the brass around. Instead have buying new ones, hire a meteorologist. Or just ask a few of the residents about the weather. How much would that cost?
The Minister of Defence is a woman called Barbara Visser…looks a complete idiot in her pictures. She should be ordered to go out with the troops in her summer clothes and dig the latrines for them. What a world this is for virtue signalling and the appointment of total fools – but the training of soldiers is not a joke.
Barbara Is from Croatia and has probably only a vague notion of snow.
And what country spends the smallest percentage on defence? Why of course it’s Luxembourg, home of ‘Drunker Juncker’.
But Phillip, as a Euro per sq. metre rate they probably lead Europe.
If you look at the majority of the 27 there seems to be an organised pattern of underpaying. Could it be to make America withdraw from NATO (a disaster) and allow the ‘brave’ Europeans and their new ‘federal army’ to fill the gap 🤣🤣 and utilise the vacated NATO infrastructure. Putin must be laughing all the way to annexing Western Europe…
Why is Juncker still tolerated both by his colleagues (unelected and answerable only to themselves) and the wider public. He must have some pretty juicy info/pictures of the rest of this despicable cabal!
An interesting bar chart . 55bn for Corbyn to spend on wind farms. That is not a joke
I read this chart as the national defence spending, not just spending on NATO. Am I correct ? If I am correct then Corbyn will have to trash all our defence spending to get to spend 55bn US Dollars elsewhere.
Nick.
Excuse me a moment. I am from West Virginia, in the northern part of the Southern Appalachians, and went though public schools here. I KNEW that Norway was cold in the winter.
Have these folks never had geography? Never looked at a map? Never seen TV programs? What rock have they spent life under?
One of my favorite childhood books was Marie McSwigan’s “Snow Treasure.” I still have a copy. It is about Norwegian children sledding gold and then hiding it under snowmen which was then taken by ship to America during WWII.
VisitNorway says: You may climb them, hike them, marvel at them – even ski on them in the middle of the summer. But you can’t fail to feel the massive, untamable power inherent in the glaciers.
https://www.visitnorway.com/things-to-do/nature-attractions/glaciers/
What a bunch of crap! This is unthinkable. If your in a unit that is subject to deployment anywhere in Europe then you should be issued the clothing suitable for any place on the continent during any season. There is absolutely no excuse. A troop needs not only to have the clothing and equipment but needs to be familiar with it so as to know how to properly wear or use it.
I was a US Army Special Forces soldier during the cold war back in the 80’s and 90’s. My unit at that time was 10th Special Forces group and was oriented towards Europe and part of the ME and Central Asia. I was on a team that trained heavily in high alpine and extreme cold weather ops. I had my basic issue and then upon arrival at the Group was issued the specific clothing and equipment determined by potential places I would be quickly deployed and the nature of the missions. Everything from the extreme cold weather package to Jungle fatigues and Jungle boots. And during my 8 1/2 years on “A” teams known as ODA (Operational Detachment Alpha) I ended up using just about every bit of it at one time or another. The stuff I didn’t use for the most part was civilian stuff I bought out of my own pocket that was lighter or better than the issued item it replaced.
Any Nation whose military isn’t doing the same thing is just not serious about being prepared to go to war at a moments notice. .
BTW I was wearing my old issue jungle hat while I mowed my yard.