The PM Glass Box.
The Glass Box is where the PM team meets in at 18.00 every weeknight to discuss the content of the programme.
We try to be honest with each other, but not hurtful, as we talk about what worked and what didn't...what met our expectations and what fell short.
This virtual glass box is where you're encouraged to take part in the same spirit. Tonight's editor Eloise Twisk will read your comments and may well add her own.
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© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~59~RS~)
Comments
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The fact none of the Politicians or Generals will acknowledge is that the war was wrong in the first place. The policy was flawed from the beginning - as was Iraq. No amount of argument over helicopters, body armour or whatever else is going to change it. They need to stop deluding themselves and face facts - they're not going to win anything. The only question is - how much more killing they will do before they announce 'Northern Ireland style' peace talks will commence?
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That Upshares Downshares weekly theme. Just "vocal chords" needed now, Eddie and they can be spliced together a la Mike Oldfield and make an album called "Tubular Nils"! Can I suggest Caroline Wyatt for narrator?
"Plus Tubular Nils"!
A law suit can be started agreed?
F & C Asset Management. Twelve Million pounds?
F & C. Funny that. Exactly what I said - especially after lost Pom in Oz has sold his story "exclusively". lol
There are dozens of people all over the world booking their flight to Down Under as we text......... allegedly.
Where am I? lol
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sp 2, How about Swanee whistle and kazoo like on ISIHAC? I have a kazoo.
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I personally use the Kazee.
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(Car-zee)
C'mon...
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CRB checks - last night (Thursday) a gentleman on your programme said one check would be all that was needed - when I worked in schools you needed a separate check for every school you worked in e.g. Bristol/Gloucestershire/Wiltshire. Will the authors be required to do this? Where are the teachers when these people give talks - surely they are supervising?
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Do you remember what Helmand was like under the Taliban? There were no Nato bombers dropping bombs, no Nato soldiers armed to the teeth or Nato helicopters darkening the skies.
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I had so many problems with that interview with that soldier that I'll wait till it appears on action replay.
I shall be looking out for soldiers who never consider telling the politicians they won't do it!
And plans to combat the recession by building ships which would save lives in Afghanistan? WHEN????
And something Mair looked as if he didn't want to press the bloke.
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What I love is the assumption that authors actually want to visit schools. The ones I know do it only because they are told by their agents that they must, and it is generally a very unpleasant experience for them, and without pay.
I know at least one who is greeting this new rubbish with cries of joy because she can now refuse to waste a day on travelling for hours before being insulted by staff and left sitting for hours in draughty corridors and provided with neither food nor drink nor toilet facilities.
Every so often there is a school that doesn't in its heart despise these inky scribblers, but unfortunately there is no way to tell in advance which schools these will be.
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fJd 4, Is that a hybrid?
TR 7, I wasn't there.
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Times of social and economic crises are exploited by groups such as the BNP to gain power by pointing the finger of blame at vunerable minorities. The Nazi's did precisely that at a time when Germany had a particularly vunerable democracy (The Weimar Republic). When they took power on a minority vote because of a division betwen the democratic parties , they quickly move to take power on the streets using their thugs of the SA and SS ,and by banning the opposition parties, and then by the use of dispossesion of property and jobs,concentration camps and mass murder. Fair minded people such as yourself were cowed into silence as their neighbours were taken from their homes for being mentally challenged ,or Gay,or being outspoken in opposition to the NSDAP.Then the same fair-minded people joined the NSDAP in large numbers, and recruited their children into the Hitler Youth or The League of Girls in order avoid persecution themselves. Of course after the war and the exposure of the crimes of the previous 12 years denial of responsibility was the order of the day. For goodness sake grow up, do some research on the nature , the history , the not publicly stated intentions of the BNP and join in on the campaign to expose them before it is too late.
Who voted for you Eddie?
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DMcN (our CIA correspondent) says
the helicopter shortage
freeing Helmand from the Pashtuns
stopping Taliban plans to blow us all up
are all parts of a single narrative to try to get a majority of the electorate in favour of this thoroughly unjust war.
Pm is so media savvy, so is it true?
PS I think he's right.
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More on UK military and Afghan civilian casualties
Eddie, thanks for responding to my comments yesterday, but as was pointed out, PM's efforts to cover this matter were hardly adequate.
If I am forced to make a choice, I am more concerned about the deaths and welfare of Afghan civilians than I am about British and coalition occupying troops. I think it's very poor that at least equal time is not given to this. Why are Afghan civilians less important than British soldiers? Why does it take only a spectacular atrocity against women and children (which is always taken as read by over-compliant journalists to be an accident) for coalition PR people to be rolled out for a quick interview before being tucked away until the next mass-killing?
What about the civilians that must be dying on a weekly basis either directly or indirectly as a result of the coalition presence. If they are happening, as I suspect is likely, should we not know about it?
As far as I can see, although military deaths seem to cause some doubts to be raised about the UK presence in Afghanistan, they are also, perhaps perversely, great publicity for a British army still reeling from its multiple humiliations in Iraq and have allowed the Government to push the argument, such as it is, for maintaining the war (deaths not to be in vain, cowardly enemy tactics, etc.). As long as there is no organised mass anti-war movement such as there was over Iraq, individual doubts about our military presence can be largely ignored or managed. The funerals also help distract attention from the sorts of questions regarding Iraqi civilian deaths that caused the Government so many problems during the Iraq occupation. It also seems that slightly bizarre debates about helicopter numbers that have suddenly popped up just as the spate of military funerals have faded away and which journalists seem happy to promote without argument, are also a convenient distraction from the sorts of questions that, if researched and asked in a concerted and detailed way, could quickly spell the end of Britain's presence in Afghanistan as the public come to realise, as they did in Iraq, the true human cost of the coalition's occupation of that country.
If full and honest coverage of the civilian death and casualty toll in Afghanistan leads to trouble for the Government in justifying its continued Afghan operation as well as difficulties for the military which is still struggling to recover its reputation after its Iraq debacle, then so be it. So far, it seems, the same military that terrorised, killed and tortured its away around Iraq for six years have undergone a miraculous conversion which we are apparently all expected to believe. However, I have yet to be convinced and I'm wondering, in the absence of any decent information on the matter from the BBC and PM, just what the civilian situation really is in Afghanistan.
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Rose is saying that the Iraq War should have been opposed by the generals and admirals, then but wasn't.
He seems to think the Afghani War should be similarly opposed by the generals.
A bit late.
10,00 extra troops in Helmand late.
But if he is right (and he is) there shouldn't be a senior officer prepared to carry out any order but COMPLETE WITHDRAWAL FROM AFGHANISTAN.
Mair surely should have pressed him as to whether the UK should withdraw now. Is the exchange on the cutting room floor? Did he say 'Yes'
Does it really turn out that like our bankers and our politicians our generals are morally bankrupt and won't say 'This is wrong. I order my forces to return home'.
The government has no power to order armies to continue actions that the officers are refusing to carry out.
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Ref 9. Chris_Ghoti
"What I love is the assumption that authors actually want to visit schools. The ones I know do it only because they are told by their agents that they must, and it is generally a very unpleasant experience for them, and without pay."
Depends on the individual. Some writers enjoy engaging with their potential readers; the ones you know obviously don't. The 'children/young people' market is extremely difficult, publishers are inundated with submissions from 'hobby' writers. People who've read their children or grandchildren bedtime stories sometimes think this qualifies them to write a successful children's book. They might be lucky, but they are competing not only with others having the same idea, but with the professional writers. One wonders why they even bother to write a book if they can't or won't engage with their audience, as their income and their agent's income, depends number of books sold. The writer enters into an agreement with an agent voluntarily, and the percentage agreed reflects how much the writer is prepared to engage in marketing their book. Unwillingness to promote the book will raise the percentage sought by the agent; simple as that. The notion that promoting their book sales is "without pay" is absurd, as writers are self-employed. (unless they are an 'employee-writer,' but they are salaried/paid by the hour)
"I know at least one (so is that two?) who is greeting this new rubbish with cries of joy because she (no, it's one)can now refuse to waste a day on travelling for hours before being insulted by staff and left sitting for hours in draughty corridors and provided with neither food nor drink nor toilet facilities."
Bizarrre. Does she get her appointments mixed up? as school times are highly predictable: they have time-tables And don't schools have toilets?
I suspect your acquaintance feels she is "despised" because she's going into the schools with the wrong attitude. Is she writing for children - or down to children? Does she "despise" children herself? Successful writers in this market generally relate to children well and school visits provide a valuable opportunity for feedback from both children/young people and the teachers. Perhaps she's in the wrong job?
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The Afghanistan War:
The most disturbing parallel with the Vietnam War is this.
It seems almost axiomatic that left wing governments (left wing relative to their political rivals) have to prove themselves sufficiently nasty to justify their being in government. To avoid, by being downright nasty themselves, the torrent of nastiness disguised as 'proper policy' that their right wing rivals can otherwise unleash and so sweep into power.
That surely is what Johnson's involvement in Vietnam was about, as was Blair's involvement in Iraq.
Vietnamese lives paid for Johnson's rather liberal policies at home. That ruthlessness with peasant lives kept the Republican wolves at bay.
Had Blair opposed the Iraq war, I am confident Labour would have been swept from power by a Tory Party that would have made Blair look like a St Francis in foreign affairs.
The muscle flexing that every left President has to display by supporting or failing to oppose some Israeli barbarity or another is another aspect of this problem for the left, that of keeping right barbarians at bay.
Simon Jenkins (you didn't expect your barbarians to be anything but urbane and seemingly plausible, did you?) says Britain is wrong to stay and wrong to leave Helmand and that the whole situation is an American trap.
Sadly it is a trap for America! For whether Obama will stay there, is assuredly the 'rabid Republican' 'test' of a black President with Islamic relatives. If he doesn't pass it. he won't be able to do any of the good stuff that he, I think, truly wants to do.
The British are there to take casualties so that the numbers of American casualties do not destroy Obama's support in his own party and so leave him vulnerable on every front, a recipe for his destruction.
Britain and the US (Obamam and Brown) aren't trying to find a way of both getting out now. Both see the virtue of joining in with the other. After all, it's only peasants suffering. This time the Pastun peasants.
The list of hideous and cruel policies pursued by left governments to stem the tide of right reaction is endless. Benefit claimants' persecution, single parent persecution and so on, and so on.
This Afghani War is such a hideous example that it should be opposed anyway. The war against this War cannot be lost. It is just, of itself, too important.
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Ref 13. Joseph Walker
"If I am forced to make a choice, I am more concerned about the deaths and welfare of Afghan civilians than I am about British and coalition occupying troops."
I'm with you on that point. Our soldiers had a choice. Our government had a choice. The civilians in Afghanistan had no choice. They've been helpless victims of power games.
Good post.
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Ref 16. ThinkerRetired
Situation 2000: Three countries in a row, all with vast oil and mineral resources. The weakest either side; the strongest in the middle. None aligned to the 'west.'
Strategy: 1-2-3. Conquer the weakest one side. Conquer the next weakest the other side. Now the strong one in the middle is not so strong when surrounded.
Problem: The two weaker states were more 'complicated' that expected. It was a setback, but it won't detract from the overall objective (1) Afghanistan (2) Iraq (3) Iran.
They're building the case for Iran now.
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18
Thank you.
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I have heard very little about Afghan casualties, as victims of either allied troops, or Al Qaeda reprisals or as a result of destroyed livelihoods etc.
Just like there are no reports of how many killings are made by the allies. All we here are the allied casualties, as if it is one way traffic.
Also, who made the decision to refer to Afghans as Afghanis now?
Why weren't we consulted?
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T8 20, Because Afghans are also rugs and dogs.
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RSM 15, That's nothing. The campsite we just used in France didn't provide toilet paper in the loo blocks. Won't be going there again!
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Richard_SM @ 15, the particular author in question is probably someone you've heard of, being (apart from JK Rowling, who causes the shops to distribute advance tickets for her signings and thank goodness she set that precedent!) one of the half-dozen best-known authors for children in this country: the sort that Blair fell over himself to invite to Downing Street in order to look as if he knew or cared a sausage about culture. The sort of author over whom the publishing houses have bidding wars for the reissue of her earlier works. Not a struggling wannabe: up there in the league who get invited to Australia and America all-expenses-paid to do six-week signing tours with two signings a day at schools and libraries. (Have you ever done two signings in two different towns on the same day? I do recommend it as a way to discover what a life of ease these inky scribblers live.)
She doesn't "get her appointments mixed up": she has better manners than to be so crass. She has on occasion turned up at a school in advance of her official time-for-the-talk to find that they have not yet arranged which room this will be in, let alone who will be coming to it, and then dealt with a dragooned bunch of kids who were not expecting her to be there. The problem is not her relations with the children (and the adults) who adore her work; it is with the adults who run schools and libraries, and don't apparently think that authors are human beings.
Schools do indeed have toilets; getting them to tell you where these are if you are not on their regular staff may be a problem, though not as bad as it is at the Hay literary festival, where they *lock* them and you have to find the holder of the key.
Authors do not need to sit down except during their actual talk, even if they have had a broken back and wear a neck-brace. This is simply a fact, as far as some schools know. And also as far as the staff at 10 Downing Street were aware: that one had to ask for a chair rather than stand in pain for a couple of hours while Blair posed around for the camera crew that followed him everywhere.
An author has an agent because -- well, did you try to get published without one, recently, like during the past twenty years? Heard of a "slush-pile"? Know how many years it took for J.R.R. Tolkien's work to find a publisher? And as for pay, oh dear, I get this feeling that you believe the hype in the papers about "Alistair Reynolds gets million pound advance" or "Terry Pratchett richer than the Queen"... well, I have talked with both these authors on the subject, and I promise you the papers are overstating the matter just a bit! Take a chap with three successful books published to date, a fourth on the go at the moment, and a contract for another. He earns enough from these thousands of sales in hardback and paperback to be able, just about, to pay for his rent and food and personal travel. If he is lucky, his publisher pays his expenses for him to go to Scotland for two days to a convention at which they expect him to promote his work for twelve hours a day. They do this as much as ninety days after the event (the claim is sixty days as a rule, but the actual cheque for things, in publishing, is always on the last possible day). If a signing session is in say Cardiff and he planned to visit Bristol on the way they *may* do so, but not for the travel to Bristol. If it is in central London they expect him to get there from the suburbs, and he gets no expenses for that, nor unless the bookshop is particularly friendly and well-organised does he get offered a cup of coffee for his pains. A signing is a day he is not working, and believe me, when you have a deadline for a book taking the day off means harder work on another day, and not donkey-work either: this is creative work that doesn't come "on demand" when you sit down in front of the computer, and is rather more difficult than say a university essay of 2500 words once a fortnight on a set subject. It's that amount every day, ideally double that. Self-employed means that you don't earn if you are not working.
I think you can't be in the business. My family firm was a publishing house (now taken over by Macmillan -- I forget who owns them at the moment, keeping track of who bought whom when is a full-time job in itself) and I have known this stuff all my life. I have sat in a publishers' office asking politely for the money owed to an author and now ninety days in arrears to be given to me so he could pay his mortgage, opened the envelope I was handed after a two-hour delay and found that the cheque was for just under half what he was owed and dated a week later (and his next book was dedicated to me for it because I then required them to pay the full amount and whilst they were at it the further thousand-plus that they were going to owe him the following day). I have listened to someone who is another household name discussing the nigh-impossibility of getting his publisher to reveal to his agent his sales *at all*, or tell him the size of any print-run. I have watched publicity ladies from a publishers panic because they didn't know the name of the shop their (over from America for a tour, book at number one in the New York Times list) author was meant to be at next, and in one case on which train to which town the poor man should be put.
Marketing their book? Oh, please. I have known the rep for a publisher fail to mention to a major book-chain that a well-known author who has a book out lives in that town, and sell four copies of his book on sale-or-return to a shop that would have asked him to do a signing that might have sold fifty copies for them, and the publisher, and the agent, and the author, if they had realised that he lived a twenty-minute walk from their door.
As one agent put it to me: "It took ten years for me to make X into an overnight success."
(You *will* have heard of that one, unless you've been living on Planet X for the past thirty years, so I shan't name names.)
So yes, many authors feel that going to a school for no pay and with no sales immediately obvious as a result, losing a day of work and shelling out for the privilege, may not be the best possible use of their time. An excuse not to do so on a point of principle might be a godsend to them. Until now, if they said "no" they would get a reputation as "difficult", and now they can do it without hanging that albatross round their necks.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
CG 23, Oops, they didn't like that one. The sensayuma mods are away.
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Chris (23)
I can well believe much of what you say about how the experienced public (in your case authors) are seen and dealt with by educational establishments and others.
In my friends case they were invited (as an expert by experience) to talk in some lectures at a university. This was in line at that time with government instructions that certain degree courses (mainly social sciences, mental health and social work) needed to make provision for experienced users and and receivers of such services to be incorporated into the learning curriculum. Minimum involvement level was set down and had to be provided for by the course managers. After initial meetings with the course manager, my friend came away a little confused as he felt no one had actually told him what he was expected to do, talk about, perhaps the best way to his convey what he had to put across about his experience. It was while Blair was still at the helm and was probably one of those trendy 'looks good' ideas that emanated from that neck of the woods. Although he had been on teaching training courses, my friend felt the tutors (who had direct everyday contact with the students) should really have been more helpful in just giving him a feel for the ambiance and nature of the whole shibang. Especially as my friend was going to be the first one to undertake this knew government initiation of experienced service users in teaching on this particular course.
Like your author friends, My friend dutifully turned up at his first session only to find (surprise, surprise)no one was quite sure where the lecture was to take place. Having spent many hours in preparation, my friend had brought along all his notes along with a power point presentation, hand outs and the like,(as requested by the course manager) only to find (once a room had been found) that there was no equipment available for him to present his talk and that no one had really seemed interested in what for him was a big event in his life. He had campaigned at government level to gain improvements and proper recognition of the value of experts by experience. People like himself had up until that point had been seen as a bit of an idiot, talked down to, patronised, paternalised, etc. It was only the charity that he had been involved with that had been able to recognise the immense importance and value of the input of those who had experienced the subject matter. However, what he didn't fully understand was, how much a threat this might be to the 'technically qualified' establishment.
As the weeks went on things got no better in terms of organisation and my friend became increasingly frustrated. It also had dawned on him that although the government had made provision for him to share his so important experience at university level, no provision had been made (by government) to recognise this most important contribution by way of remuneration. My friend due to his 'expert' experience of what he had to bring to the teaching had been labelled as disabled and was therefore dependent on the benefits system for his meagre income. Bearing in mind, my friend was part of a so called ground breaking move being officially incorporated into the curriculum as an expert by experience, the benefits agency refused to acknowledge this and he was not officially allowed to paid by money or in kind for his (and remember no other member of the university team could have brought the insight and experience my friend had to bring to the learning process)contribution.
My friend had to put up with ignorant damaging insults during some lectures from some students as he shared personal experiences but because this was a cause close to his heart and personal to him, he continued to persevere. He told them straight about his negative as well as his positive experiences of the service that the students were eventually to be a part of. He would suggest ways that students might personally influence change for the better, once they had got established in the real world. He espoused how many charities along with his own were lobbying and challenging government and media stereotypes of the people they would eventually be working with and much power over.
However, it became clear to him as time went by, the course manager's and tutor's main priority was to get as many students through the degree without to much challenge and failure. After all, this is what brought in the university income. It looked good on whatever tables were on the go at the time I suppose as well. Dispirited and hurt my friend finished his stint at the uni (without pay) and although never complained, he was never invited back again. He continues to unearth prejudice and establishment injustice in other places now. He also learned some valuable lessons from his university experience and what a threat he could be to qualified academia.
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Hey, the Labour Party won back a seat in a bye-election for Warwickshire County Council, this week. From the Tories!
The previous incumbent was disqualified as a Councillor and stood again.
Just shows how important WE think it is that politicians absolutely observe the rules.
And not just politicans. BBC people are claiming tax advice on expenses. Hey, ho.
26 There really is a problem with assessing university education. As a whole, per university and per person.
I said to my partner, leaning over Clare Bridge last Saturday, that you never hear people from Oxbridge admitting their education was rubbish. The imprimatur is too important to them. That's how they coin it.
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ThinkerRetired @ 27, my father (an academic for almost all his life, in the end) took his undergraduate degree at the Queen's College, Oxford, in the forties. He said to the end of his days that the course and the teaching were lousy (and the in-college accommodation unspeakable and in his view unfit for human habitation but unavoidable), and that only one tutor he had anything to do with as an undergraduate was any use, and she didn't really have much to do with the course he was supposed to be doing. (Enid Starkie.)
So he went away resolved to improve matters, if not at Oxford at least at some of the older universities (and one bran-new one) at which he then worked for all but ten years of his adult life.
He reckoned that it was impossible to get any accurate picture of the value of any academic qualification, because there were too many variables for an overall assessment to be valid.
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Looks as though CCTV is being trialled for the Moon... Remind me, was it Michael Jackson who did the "Moon Walk"..?
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-apollo18-2009jul18,0,6513400.story
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Why do I increasingly have the feeling, Nature's getting her own back on mankind..?
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_INVASIVE_MUSSELS?SITE=AP
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CG 23, What I said was that a certain writer for a newspaper discussed his sex problems as a teenager so much in a book he wrote that he probably wouldn't be allowed near a school.
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Walter Cronkite? Henry Allingham. Both dead?
I grieve.
113 years young the latter and speaking to the missus just now - microphone sound coming thru OK? lol - I guess I will be Mr Allinghams age before Great Britain will stand up to the USA and its prejudices.
Walter Cronkite? The most trusted voice in America? Lyndon Johnson didn't stand again because he had lost Cronkite's trust? John-son? Hmm. I know what he means.
Subject: Safety questions over swine flu jab - down and out - when a dash list meets no dash list - accurate australia restrains England
Anagram: Dna to wound - BT son SFO - USA lawyer jive - (sift)Queen - Dna - stealth - essential - wisdom - shh - Cad legal reassure - irritant sauna cant
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22
Glad you washed your hands of it?
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Many of my friends from http://www.pensioners.co.uk/ feel the HM Government have not fully explained the reasons why we are fighting in Afghanistan. Drugs / the growing of poppies is not reason enough ( aircraft could deal with that)
If the reason is new oil pipelines or nuclear threats via Pakistan ? Then the HM government must explain the position in detail, the public will not accept sound-bites such as "Drugs on our streets" "Stop terrorist training camps" How many other countries fall under this banner?
The large pensioners.co.uk senior community are a digital generation. We will highlight the value of experience and our contribution to society.
The emblem of the poppy is not one of wasted lives. Nor is it anything other than food on the table in Afghanistan.
Explain in financial depth why we are in Afghanistan.
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sp 32, And GB has no prejudices?
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fJd 26, You are turning into another PMleader.
CG 23, So are you.
TR 16, And you.
RSM 15, Ditto.
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36
Do their CIA files seem that similar, David?
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Sunday Morning
Early dawning
Sunday morning
It's just the wasted years
so close behind
Watch out, the world's behind you
there's always someone around you
Who will call
it's nothing at all
Sunday morning
Early dawning
Sunday morning
It's all the streets you crossed
not so long ago
Watch out, the world's behind you
there's always someone around you
Who will call
it's nothing at all
Sunday morning
Sunday morning
Sunday morning
Sunday morning
Cheer up, it's all but over.
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David (36)
That is scary...but looks like I'm in good company.
But tell me, how am I supposed to compete with your immaculate one liners?
Also could you please tell me what CGs post said before it got referred? I didn't get chance to read it. Oh and what is this secret you have of winning friends and influencing them? Pray tell...
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fJd @ 40, I think I mentioned a previous persona of PMLeader by name, and wondered about the reading capabilities of same in a vague way.
I have not the faintest idea why that was deemed to break the House Rules, but maybe the Mods will tell me, some time about next Thursday, that it broke them though not which one nor which bit of it did so.
*sigh*
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TR 37, I'm MI5. A lot closer...
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TR 39, I went to a Lib Dem BBQ today. Very nice.
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FjD, CG, As I was out most of the day, I missed it before it was referred (I wonder by whom?). Which of the many names did you refer to Chris?
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fJd, You have to get conception of immaculate one liners.
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DMcN @ 44, I mentioned Mac. If this gets taken down, we'll know that mentioning any computer other than one from Microsoft is against the House Rules, I suppose. :-)
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CG 46, Was M** one of the names PMleader used? Can I mention an ITV newsreader? Or Natasha Kerplopski?
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I thought captured, questioned soldiers only gave name, rank and serial number. Or is that only in films?
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Oh Lordie, now we are never going to hear the end of the Ashes. Bring back Andy Murray.
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I see Australia took a few lessons from England about how to cheat.
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42
No you're not. (If that doesn't give too much away).
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43
Was Paddy Pantsdown there? He says that the job of soldiers in war is to kill the enemy.
The British army was in Victoria Square this afternoon trying to find some more youngsters to be trained up to do just that, I suppose.
I accused them of them themselves being killers (ones who had or would kill).
They had a big green gun, a land rover and a khazi camouflaged khaki. I think. Anyway it had got to be that colour somehow.
Then it started to rain so they went home.
None of the 16 year olds I spoke to on the Paradise Forum steps were over impressed with serving soldiers taking over the Square. 'Anyway, one of them said 'I'm too young to die''
True. No Brit soldier younger than 18 has died in Afghanistan
You have to be Pashtun for that particular honour.
The Floosie in the Jacusi said nowt.
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48
The people they torture aren't even acknowledged as soldiers when they are.
The dead ones don't say anything.
Civilians captured, have black hoods put over their heads, are pushed around, degraded, kicked, punched and waterboarded.
I worry more about them than I do about dead British soldiers.
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Davis (45)
There was an old* man named McNickle
who was really a little bit fickle
with his one liner jokes
he would stick it to folks
but then found himself in a pickle
*about 68 years
You mean like that? Theres five in a row for ya
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Actually David (45)
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Fjd: I'd be careful, if I were you, calling anyone as young as 68 by the term 'old'. Remember, Henry Allingham lived for 45 years beyond that age. So, by my reckoning, 68 is 'middle age'.
There's a certain amount of self interest here, after all we're none of us getting any younger!
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Big Sis (56)
Good morning.
Yes, I thought about this - hence the footnote. You are right about middle age. But, where does middle age stop and old age begin? I though retirement age might be the politically correct cut off. However, I still feel about...mmm...yea anyway, I'm still a youngster compared to Mr M. well, enough said.
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TR 51, I am, but under another name.
TR 52, No, he wasn't. It was local. Watch it, our son-in-law is an Army recruiter and served in Iraq twice.
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TR 53, He's American.
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fannyJd 54,
An old family poem:
Mrs McNickle made some pickles
All on a summer's day
Mrs Martin came a'f**tin
And blew them all away.
Ay least 65 years old. Mrs Martin was a neighbor in Pennsylvania.
Yours was a Limerick, not five one liners. Maybe five bin liners.
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fJd 57, So how old are you, big boy? I'll take you on in a foot race any day. I used to do 100 yards (those were the days) in under 10 seconds.
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DMNC (61)
"I used to do 100 yds (those were the days)in under 10seconds".
What runnin' from Mrs Martin when she came a f**tin!?
I couldn't race you David, I wouldn't want to get done for cruelty...
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61
Don't forget when you grinned a bear to death, caught flies between finger and thumb (during) your Frank Harris exploits and all your under the covers work.
All under different names, of course.
'There's only one DMcN,
Repris'
Your brother in law 'served' in Iraq. Served what cause, to what honorable purpose?
He 'recruits' young people. For what good, for what just endeavour?
Self interest suggests his life's work has its problems, too.
The question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not very damned many.
Dick Cheney, 8/14/1992, when he was Secretary of Defense.
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I've had email about my post at 38 explaining why it was modded.
Apparently it ran foul of the "defamation" rule.
I had forgotten that I mentioned the fact that merely because one author might have been convicted of child-molestation, that didn't mean that all authors were paedophiles.
I carefully didn't name the author I was referring to, nor give the date on which this person had both confessed to the offence and been found guilty of it, but I have just searched the name and the details of the case are on the BBC website, so it is hardly something that is not in the public domain not to mention if I am risking defaming the author then so are they.
What possible justification is there for modding a post that gives neither name nor date, when both are on a BBC website already, for goodness' sake?
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Ah, I see. Because I only said "an author", that would mean that every single author in the world might assume I meant them, and sue.
Gah.
OK: let's see how this goes.
"William Mayne confessed to and was convicted of child molestation in 2004 and sentenced to imprisonment, but that doesn't mean that any other author is a paedophile"
was what I carefully didn't say because I saw no reason to be nasty to William Mayne, who has been punished already.
But it is a fact, and it can't be thought that I meant anyone else, so that ought not to be "defamation", merely reporting what is on a BBC website as I write this.
And what I meant was, in this sort of case one person doing something doesn't mean that all others of the same profession are also going to do it.
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