Lots of media hype going on about a shortage of helicopters in Afghamistan for our troops and naturally the Tory opposition is squeezing all that it can from the situation.
Just one thought for this blog though. In Vietnam the US had so many helicopters buzzing around the sky that they had to queue up to land. They still lost thousands of men and in addition they also lost the war.
I often feel as though I’m like that little boy in the story who could see through the lie of the ‘King’s new suit of clothes’ and that he was in fact, naked.
As the number of coffins passing through the Wiltshire town of Wootton Bassett became a regular occurrence a few shopkeepers and others stood in silence as they passed by and fair enough. As this became a news item the numbers of people have increased into the thousands with most coming from miles away. Media cameras can be seen poised on high points and helicopters relaying back the spectacle. Teenaged girls wailing and hugging their boyfriends, conveniantly near to microphones and cameras and couldn’t even shut up for the 1 minute silence. BBC24 managed to cover the event for several hours non stop. Glowing tributes are read out by commanding officers for each and every soldier who gets killed and it seems to me that if you want to survive it’s best to be a complete arsehole that nobody likes because they never seem to die. The hype goes on.
It all seems to me to link in with the final paragraph that I wrote concerning Michael Jackson and the sense of powerlessness that people have. Most don’t think for themselves but swallow the lie about our military dying to prevent the Taliban coming down a high street nearby. Young men mostly join the Army because they can’t get a job, think themselves immortal and believe they will have a life of adventure. They don’t expect to come back in a box driven through Wooton Bassett.
The people of this nation are not powerless unless they allow themselves to be. If we stuck together and demanded change, demanded better education for all our children, demanded useful employment and demanded an end to us fighting wars in some part of the World for centuaries, then we would get it. The establishment stick together, the capitalists, the monarchy, the arms manufacturers and dealers, the agro-chemical companies and so on, they all stick together and they get what they want. It’s the majority who suffer because we forget that we are indeed the majority and if we choose to have the power then it is ours. Will it happen though? I doubt it and our dead young men will continue to pass through Wootton Bassett.
The royal family’s travel costs have been spiralling out of control for some time and with the Royal Train being used at a cost of tens of thousands of Pounds for even short trips the Queen has embarked on cost cutting.
Yes she has, really! She wants a Royal Jet at a cost of £3million plus the cost of fitting it out in a style fit for a queen and of course there’s the running costs and as for the carbon footprint, well, let’s not even go there.
President Obama of the USA and President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia have signed an agreement to reduce their respective stock of nuclear weapons. This is of course to be welcomed and it’s a START (Strategic Arms Reduction Talks) However, let’s not get too carried away. Currently they have well over 2000 nuclear bombs each and they have now agreed to reduce the numbers to over 1500 each; progress, yes but still sufficient to destroy the entire globe.
The time must be right for the UK to contribute by not replacing Trident which has never been ‘independant’ anyway while at the same time saving us a massive £70 billion that we can certainly do with in the present economic climate.
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