QuoteAfghanistan trips by celebrities cost over £400,000 in 2011
Cheryl Cole. Photo: PA Cheryl Cole visited Camp Bastion in Helmand province in September 2011
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16691207

The government spent more than £400,000 on sending celebrities to visit soldiers in Afghanistan last year, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said.

The MoD arranged a series of trips to the front line in an attempt to keep British troops' spirits high.  Pop star Cheryl Cole was among those to visit last year.  Defence Secretary Philip Hammond told MPs the total cost, "including an element for UK travel and mobilisation", was £437,637.

"Entertainment of members of the armed forces is, and has for many years, been an important element of the deployment welfare package," he told MPs. 
"It helps to maintain morale and thereby the combat-effectiveness of service personnel.  "The MoD has a contract with combined services entertainment to provide entertainment to members of the armed forces deployed overseas, including Afghanistan."

To keep uk troops morale up £437,637 does not seem that much.

But it raises a few issues, the first one is does Cheryl get paid from that? If so then surely this is not a cause she cares about enough.

The second thing that comes to mind is, how much have the governement put into keeping morale up in our key services like NHS, Police, Fire Fighters. I know someone is going to say it is not compariable but members of our military know what they are signing up for.

Had they paid the Taliban a good bit of that to kidnap her, Simon Cowell and the rest of the X-factor judges for a few years I would have said it was money well spent 

I bet if you were to look at the cost of politicians/royals trips to war zones it would be similar, if not more, and that does a lot less good.

I see it as something that shouldn't be skimped on, along with any other comfort costs for serving troops. If we decide to send people to war we need to accept the full costs, sending people to war whist cutting corners on costs isnt worth doing imo.

I'd assume that was the cost of transport, accommodation and assigning people to protect/look after these 'celebs'.

Whilst you could compare to say the cost of providing DJ's and production teams to say hospital radio at various NHS hospitals it's probably rather a pointless comparison as they've got different objectives/requirements.