POSTER BOY OF REASON?

Joe Glenton bobbed up on the local news again today.  He joined the army in 2004, and in 2007 went AWOL from the war in Afghanistan.  In 2009, his court marital began in Bulford, Wiltshire.  Glenton argued that because he believed the conflict was illegal (and said he would produce an expert in international law who could prove that), he was not a deserter but simply an absentee without leave.  In March of this year he was jailed for nine months - ironically the same amount of time he went between deployments in Afghanistan.

My first reaction about this case was that  Joe Glenton's argument was ludicrous.  A soldier cannot join up and then pick and choose which battles he is willing to fight.  If we're going to get down to brass tacks here, surely all wars involve illegality of one sort or another,  one of the simplest forms being the fact that it is against the law to take the life of another human being.   It surely must flicker across the frontal lobe of anyone joining the army that at some point or another they might have to kill another person, or do something else they generally don't agree with for the good of the unit.

I do not agree with the war in Afghanistan.  I did not believe the war in Iraq was legal or justified in any sense.  But I am not in the army.  Unfortunately, if one is a soldier, one must put up and shut up. 

In the army, a person is simply a number, a body to be used in the fight against the enemy, who or whatever that may be.  The army breaks you down and builds you up, into a fighting machine that obeys orders.  That is why to function in civilian life can be difficult and ex-soldiers complain that the army's provision for mental health issues is poor.  A soldier is simply a flesh and blood cog in a huge war machine.  The army is only interested in a soldier's short-term killing potential, not their long-term mental fitness.  Unfortunately, with flesh and blood comes emotions and feelings - and thoughts. 

 Army guidelines (and unfortunately, that's all they are) recommend eighteen months between tours of duty.  Joe Glenton got nine months before he was sent back into the killing zone.  This is an attitude towards its soldiers which appears to be prevailing in the army at the moment, certainly in America.   Minds deal with stress in various different ways. Glenton has post-traumatic stress disorder.  He disappeared from Afghanistan for two and a half years before handing himself in.  Now the anti-war lobby are holding him up as a martyr for their cause. 

In war, no one ever really wins.

IT'S A ROYAL WEDDING!

Apparently Prince William is getting married to Kate Thingummy.  I think I caught a subtle and tasteful announcement about that on one of the television news broadcasts yesterday.  The media are almost wetting their pants with excited anticipation over the wedding.  I can honestly say I am genuinely unmoved in every and any possible way.

I used to be vehemently anti-royalist.  Such news a few years ago would have sent me reaching for the "off" button on the remote control as I frothed at the mouth and swore about the over privileged lifestyles of the elite.  However, I had to rethink my beliefs as it actually occurred to me: if I was so anti-royalist, what would I do about them?  I'm British, and the idea of lining people up against a wall in a cellar and shooting them doesn't sit well with me.  Nor, for that matter, am I any good at embracing the concept of change. (I finally got settled into secondary school and all of a sudden I had to go to university.)  Who or what would replace the Queen as figurehead of the Commonwealth?  It would certainly make a good series of The X-Factor... 

So I relaxed into a routine of total and utter indifference to the royal family.  Mohammed al Fayed could benefit from a similar attitude. 

To me, the royal family are just there, like vanilla ice cream or the weather.  I don't know them, they don't know me.   It's not like they're a friend of a friend and I might have to send them a wedding present.    The royals are apolitical, have no tangible influence on anything and basically live in a bubble of advantage that they have reached by nothing  other than an accident of birth.  Neither my immediate, nor my wider world will be rocked in any way by the implications of this engagement.  Although I might pop out for a walk when the royal wedding is on.

ONLY IN AMERICA...II

Fox News is a tedious, scaremongering channel at the best of times. I tune in occasionally to see how crazy our neighbours across the pond are getting, and whether it's time to run to the hills.  One afternoon, on a live link, I actually counted twenty five squad cars chasing after two suspects who had allegedly robbed a 7-11. Tonight's Fox Health Extra was particularly ludicrous:

"This is Jane Doe," a woman's voice boomed, "and she is particularly worried that her hands are looking way older than her face."

Yes, you read that correctly. A woman in America has absolutely nothing better to do with her time than worry about how old her hands are looking in comparison with the rest of her body. And because we're dealing with America, there is a treatment for old lady hand syndrome. For 750 dollars a pop, a surgeon will laser your hands for twenty minutes until they look young again. A couple of ice packs later, you're ready to go.

"It will take from three to five treatments for the best results," the presenter booms. (Quick calculation: that's as much as 3, 750 dollars...) "and the treatment will last up to three years."

Or the patient could just take their 3, 750 dollars and flush them straight down the toilet. Because there is no such thing as old lady hand syndrome. It has been made up by plastic surgeons to fleece vain and gullible individuals to part with more of their cash, to make what they believe are their vile and claw-like appendages match their glowing, youthful new faces.

One obviously needs plenty of spare cash if living forever is to be a viable option...

THE QUEEN'S SHIT LIST

The Palace has dragged the Royal family kicking and screaming into the 21st century by organising a Facebook page for the Queen.  Whether they want to or not, they will embrace and love this new techonology.  It will be a fantastic PR tool,  and will prove to the seething masses that the Royal family are just like them.  However, the person who had this bright idea hasn't been a regular Facebook user, or done much research about the internet.  The internet is a fabulous encyclopedia of knowledge and information.  However, it is also a repository of bile and hate and misinformed opinion (remember the bizarre outpouring of sympathy for Raoul Moat?)  Quite predictably, within the first few days of its existence, the Queen of England's brand spanking new Facebook page has been hijacked by users leaving abusive messages about the Duchess of Cornwall.

Now, if I was thinking about leaving a message in a similar vein, I might think twice.  Why?   Because the Queen of England has security officers who keep an eye on her.  MI5 and MI6 work for her - she's the ruler of all she surveys.  You drop a nasty line to the Queen (who will never look at her Facebook page, let's be honest, it's just a PR coup) and before you know it, you've been traced through the Internet as a potential troublemaker.  In this day and age, the feasibility of what might occur is enough to land a person in court.  If a person is capable of venom towards a major royal personage, what's to stop them being a threat to THE ROYAL PERSON?  A couple of nasty words to Prince Charles' second wife and the perps' feet won't touch the ground.


What am I trying to say?  Think twice.  For some reason, people get access to a computer and all of a sudden it's easy to say terrible things because it's a faceless confrontation.  Ironically, once opinions are written down, it's harder to take them back.  If I had been involved in the Raoul Moat fiasco, I would be investigating the background of every person who stuck up for his actions through the medium of the Internet.  It's only the fact that the police are underfunded that is stopping them from doing this type of thing.  They have to spend their money on fast cars and helicopter fuel in order to chase thieves and search for bodies.


Take responsibility for your cyberactions, people.  We live in crazy times.  Technology is advancing at an incredible rate.  Some time in the near future, the Internet police will become a reality and then we could all be in trouble.

Money, money, money...

There is an advertisement doing the rounds at the moment featuring a certain silver-haired comedy god.  The more times I see it being beamed  through the cathode-ray tube, the more ludicrous it becomes.  

The premise is this:  said silver-haired comedy god is seen to be a fool for being stuck in his ways and not listening to his progressive, more open-minded screen daughter when the roof of their fictitious house starts to leak rather badly.  Instead of calling a plumber or a roofer, what is the first thing she does?  Rings a company that has spent years building up a reputation for helping stranded drivers by fixing their cars.  Not a company that has spent years building up a reputation for reliably fixing your roof.

Think about it: would you let a vet treat your grandma?  Even if they assured you they were competent?  (Actually, don't answer that...)   Or ask a plumber to mend your car?  Or let a lawyer fly you to Malagar?  We all know farmers have to diversify, but businesses?   It's just an extension of how the Post Office treat their customers when all the customer wants is a stamp:  "Did you know we offer insurance?  Would you like a mobile top-up today?  Can I relieve you of all your cash before you leave our establishment?"  

IS IT TOO MUCH TO ASK THAT COMPANIES SIMPLY STICK TO WHAT THEY ARE GOOD AT?

Customers increasingly seem to be seen less as people who would like a half-decent service and more as cash cows with unlimited supplies of cold, hard cash that companies would do anything to get their hands on.  There seems to be a headlong chase for money in this climate of cuts and hard graft and it seems unBritish in the extreme.