Santerme

I think that the disingenuous nature of this Govt is amplified by the spinning of sending 125 troops as reinforcements to Helmand, when they are actually Battlefield Casualty Replacements. For every death we have reported, four are injured. 20 deaths this month means and additional 80 injured to a greater or lesser extent. It is becoming a very expensive war.

Preface This book is not about heroes. English Poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, dominion or power, except War. Above all, this book is not concerned with Poetry. The subject of it is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity. Yet these elegies are not to this generation, This is in no sense consolatory. They may be to the next. All the poet can do to-day is to warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful. If I thought the letter of this book would last, I might have used proper names; but if the spirit of it survives Prussia, -- my ambition and those names will be content; for they will have achieved themselves fresher fields than Flanders. Wilfred Owen, the Preface to his War Poetry. RIP Harry, stand down now. Good job Sir!

Congratulations MP 15 year old daughter had it in the middle of last week and kicked it off in a few days. Only as far as me though. So, the weekend a bit of a blur. Just a bit achy and funny tum left to recover from. But the egg and soldiers from my, not so, little girl on Sunday morning went a long way to aid recovery.

Rest in peace Sir. In 1917 he was posted to the Western Front where the RNAS was tasked with supporting squadrons of the Royal Flying Corps which was operating sorties over the battlefields of the Somme. He found himself in the trenches where he was ordered to neutralise the booby trapped bombs left behind by the retreating German soldiers. On the Western Front He never forgot the conditions on the ground. He later recalled being up to his armpits in water with the smell of mud and rotting flesh all around him............................ In World War Two he worked on De-gaussing ships to protect them from magnetic mines. Remarkable innings.

flapjackdavey Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > kanga Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > So Rob da Bank says in one of this evening?s > > freesheets that he likes living in East Dulwich > as > > there are ?not too many suits?. > > > > Judging someone by their occupation (or dress > for > > that matter) is lazy social shorthand at best, > and > > more likely just plain prejudice > (Occupationalism? > > Dressism?) > > > > So piss off, you crusty. I?m tired of seeing > you > > in that stinky rainbow-striped sweater every > time > > you manage to claw a few inches in the press. > > Those ?suits? are probably the very same > > demographic that are tuned in to your > > middle-of-the-road choonz, man. > > > > And while I?m at it, what a banal, idiotic > choice > > of pseudonym. Let?s hope your kids don?t > inherit > > your narrow-mindedness and lack of imagination. > > > > Rant over. > > > " so piss off you crusty " isnt lazy social > shorhand ? .... who the hell are you anyway ? , > leave the guy alone . Four edits?

Never heard of him!

lindylou Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I only posted once on the west dulwich forum, > which was not at all racist. Good lu ck to you if > you want to be associated with a rasisc scum bag. > Have loked u up amnd all u do is agree with TSL. > So >>>>> In English, this means?

1999 Darwin Awards Runner-Up Confirmed True by Darwin (22 March 1999, Phnom Penh) Decades of armed strife have littered Cambodia with unexploded munitions and ordnance. Authorities warn citizens not to tamper with the devices. Three friends recently spent an evening sharing drinks and exchanging insults at a local cafe in the southeastern province of Svay Rieng. Their companionable arguing continued for hours, until one man pulled out a 25-year-old unexploded anti-tank mine found in his backyard. He tossed it under the table, and the three men began playing Russian roulette, each tossing down a drink and then stamping on the mine. The other villagers fled in terror. Minutes later, the explosive detonated with a tremendous boom, killing the three men in the bar. "Their wives could not even find their flesh because the blast destroyed everything," the Rasmei Kampuchea newspaper reported.

I started so I'll finish Stella Rimington's At Risk.. She should have stuck to her day job!!!

Flipper Skippy Mr Ed Lassie These are the true losses to showbiz.

All countries who have engaged in war since the Kellogg-Briand Pact, it can be argued, have done so illegally. Since the Nuremburg Principles there have been quite specific guidelines on what is and is not acceptable on the battlefield. The Hague Conventions predate Nuremburg by almost 40 years, yet this treaty failed to stop the use of gas in WW1. British Military Law is very specific. The British Military Manual on the Laws of War states: The first principle of war is that the enemy's powers of resistance must be weakened and destroyed. The means that may be employed to inflict injury on him, and which include both force and stratagems, are not, however, unlimited. They are restricted by international conventions and declarations, and also by the customary rules of warfare. Moreover, there are the compelling dictates of humanity, morality, civilization and chivalry, which must not be disregarded. The doctrines underlying the British Army's method of conducting land warfare are central to the laws of war, which are proportionality and minimum use of force necessary to achieve legitimate military goals. I am certain from my experience that this has governed, governs and will continue to govern the approach the British military take to armed conflict.

Didn't Churchill say 'Dogs look up to us, cats look down on us, but pigs treat us as equals'?

SteveT Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Why can't the newly arrived homeless be put into > government camps on MoD land, as they have the > acreage, and not take up the precious housing > stock which would remove any possibility of queue > jumping? Arbeit Macht Frei

I am a one man clique

He also said 'History is the distillation of rumour'... I am more inclined to Churchill's, 'when you are going through Hell, keep going'....

I thought it had reached it's natural conclusion as the original assertion had been proven inaccurate.

What a great finish

My wife is Canadian and has been working on a contract in Winnipeg for the last two years so I travel out three or four times a year. Flights to Canada are quite good value, but the Summer season pushes it up of course. Accomodation is not expensive if you choose a premium hotel brand, the standard is very high. Car Hire can be pricey though. Eating out is very affordable on the whole. I fly to Calgary in August and forward booked a return for ?398...I always ask for an upgrade on the day and only once failed to get into Business and for as little as ?50 in most cases. Booking last minute with Air Transat or FlyGlobespan in the past I have got tickets to Toronto for ?99 one way and ?199 back.

I will never understand why people believe we need to export democracy to a region that has never shown any signs of needing or aspiring to such a system of governance. If an unintended consequence of our presence is something of an improvement in the conditions for the Afghanis then that at least is a positive. The largest recruiting sergeant for AQ is the prevailing conditions on the Arab street and the youth bulge which is providing the raw material.

The salient point here is that once they have been granted refugee status they are accorded the same rights as a UK citizen.

I am not going to repeat mine... However, continual repetition of theories without substantation is a bit like an inebriated man trying to drink himself sober Tony. All the evidence is against your assertions and you are basing your arguments of hearsay not trackable data.

Unfortunately Brendan there are some suppositions in your argument which, with respect, are flawed. The military act on behalf of the Govt. The Armed Forces will advise if it can it be done, how they will do it, at what predicted cost and in a timeframe. Policy is not and never should be our function, we merely facilitate. As to the point on being in Afghanistan making the world safer. This is, of course, unqualified bullshit. AQ has successfully dispersed its operations around the world, to Indonesia and the Horn of Africa in particular. I do not believe for one second remanining in AFG makes me more secure here in the UK, in fact 7/7 proves that beyond doubt. The fact we have some hundreds of potential, identified threats being tracked by the Security Services also gives lie to the premise. But remember, AQ existed prior to 9/11 and targetted US, Australian and British interests around the globe.

The United Kingdom is a signatory to the 1951 United Nations Convention Regarding Refugees. The obligations under this Convention, which was extended beyond Europe in 1967, are that refugees enjoy equal rights to UK citizens. Asylum seekers, I believe are covered by the Geneva Convention, under which the UK is once again obliged to, with all due diligence, process and assess each individual applicant before either granting leave to stay or returning the person or family to their country of origin. Refugees have all the rights a UK citizen possesses an asylum seeker does not. Asylum seekers are not on council housing lists, because they are administered by the UK Border Agency part of the Home Office. My understanding is that asylum seekers are entitled to certain benefits at 70% of normal income support. Generally, they are housed in void housing stock, which local councils have been unable to let, or held in detention centres. As for precedent, released prisoners have that don't they?

Jock Stirrup was, against all convention, given a second term as CDS because he is a Govt mouthpiece in my own humble opinion. Dissent cannot be tolerated in the MOD. This piece by Richard Holmes I think hits the real spot. From The Times July 7, 2009 Rupert should not have died for this If we can?t develop a coherent Afghanistan strategy, we should not be risking our soldiers? lives I have worked at officer-training establishments most of my life, and it is characteristic of my profession that casualty lists chart the fate of my friends. Lieutenant-Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, who was flown home yesterday, would not have wished me to suggest that he was more noteworthy than any others killed in Afghanistan, like Trooper Josh Hammond of the Royal Tank Regiment, who died with him. But I taught Rupert on a year-long master?s course, and remember how, in his understated, guardee way, he was a brilliant natural soldier, and a kind and generous man with a rich sense of humour. It is never wise to predict any officer?s ascent of the hierarchy?s greasy pole, but he was my tip for the top. I write not simply to mourn a friend, but to use his death to illuminate the war ? for such it is, however much we may wish to ignore it. We have been so preoccupied with other issues that it is easy to forget that our commitment to Afghanistan has rumbled on since 2001. It has lasted longer than the Second World War. There are currently about 8,000 British troops there, a steady stream of casualties, and every prospect ? for this is an obdurate struggle against tough opponents ? that the stream will roll on. I discern little evidence of public approval of the war. As Help for Heroes has demonstrated, there is abundant support for the men and women fighting it, and the mismatch worries me, for we may easily persuade ourselves that the best way of helping our heroes is to keep them out of harm?s way. David Miliband recently affirmed: ?What we are doing in Afghanistan is incredibly important. For the next three to five years it will dominate our foreign policy. It will be the defining issue for the next government.? Yet seldom has something so important actually been so poorly explained. Do we simply seek to keep the Taleban out, or to change the way that Afghanistan is ruled and to improve the lot of its people? Where do we stand over the poppy crop, women?s rights and governmental corruption? And are our aims achievable? We need a real strategy, not a sequence of tactical ploys; winning battles will not necessarily win the war. Confident assertions that the ?comprehensive approach?, a key plank of our doctrine (notable for its absence from Iraq), is in place must be matched by visible and accurate application of both money and talent, much of the latter by definition non-military. A whole generation of Rupert Thorneloes, our bright and experienced middle-rank officers, is deeply uneasy. A recent British Army Review article uses the common analogy of mowing the lawn, going out time and time again to do much the same thing. It lambasts gobbledegook such as ?strategy of delivering civil effect?, and laments the stultifying prevalence of ?elf ?n? safety?: a sign warns its author to Take Extra Care When Using Stairways. An article by a recently retired major in June?s Journal of the Royal United Services Institute observes that the US Army has undergone a radical transformation as a result of early failures in Iraq, and the British Army has not. It is tempting for some senior officers to lay the Army?s misfortunes at the door of our crippled Government, but the problem is more complex. Although the Army had considerable experience of counterinsurgency (and went on at unwise length about the fact), there is little sign that it applied its own doctrine in Iraq. There was palpable tension between the formal US-led chain of command from Baghdad and input from our own Joint Headquarters at Northwood. Successive British divisional commanders in Basra (individually the stars of their generation) were in post for only six months, making it hard for them to grasp the changing nature of the conflict, and to build and maintain relationships with key Iraqi players. A British officer recently highlighted the difficulty of mentoring an Afghan colleague. ?He has been in post for about three years,? he told me, ?and I am something like the eighth mentor he has had.? Within the military profession there is much debate as to whether Afghanistan is ?the war? ? the defining struggle of our times ? or ?a war?, to be followed by different sorts of struggle elsewhere, for which different techniques and equipment will be required. The discussion is wrapped round the axle of inter-Service politics, more than usually febrile as this cohort of single-Service chiefs departs in an air of budgetary gloom. If it is the war, then the Army needs more people to fight it, and it must change the way it does business. Quantity has a quality all of its own, and excessive recourse to long-range firepower (with all it means in that evasive phrase ?collateral damage?) is often a sign that one is losing the real battle. ?We need to win a war, not spin one,? argues the lawn-mowing author. We need a proper strategy, which will mean nothing if it is not explained to a sceptical electorate. And we need to remember that those folk on their second row of medal ribbons demand attention, perhaps by constructive dissent. Farewell, Rupert. May the dust lie light upon you, and may we use your example to apply ourselves better. And if we cannot, then we should not risk the lives of more brave men like you. Richard Holmes is Emeritus Professor of Military and Security Studies at Cranfield University and the author of Marlborough, Britain?s Greatest General My take is that we need a real strategy, not a sequence of tactical ploys; winning battles will not necessarily win the war. Confident assertions that the ?comprehensive approach?, a key plank of our doctrine (notable for its absence from Iraq), is in place must be matched by visible and accurate application of both money and talent, much of the latter by definition non-military. However we need to remember the imperatives here and they have little to do with stabilising Afghanistan and more to do with geopolitical reality. Which are that Afghanistan is a pivot for relations among regional actors, principally Russia, China, Iran, Turkey, India, and Pakistan. The new US security presence in the region (because that is what we have now and it is increasing) is providing additional impetus toward a redefinition by those regional powers of their strategic interests vis-a-vis each other and the United States. A presence in Afghanistan allows the US to have regional influence in Pakistan and Iran. Central Asian republics also are pressure points for the US in its relation with Russia.

Brendan Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Santerme Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > > At least tell me they are crap at Morris > Dancing, > > the whole fabric of rural life depends on it!!! > > Is it possible to actually be good at Morris > Dancing? It's one of those things that can only be truly appreciated in direct proportion to alcholic intake.