Friday, July 31, 2009

IT IS OK TO COMMENT

Dear Readers - or what ever...
You may hate what I write on this BLOG, find it moderately interesting, totally boring, unpleasantly arrogant, presumptuous, bigoted, ill-informed, pretentious. Your comments would enlighten me. No bad thing...

Thursday, July 30, 2009

GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER

My apologies to any Telegraph or News of the World readers I deceived into buying the Guardian last Saturday. I was in error earlier. The piece on Herefordshire for the Travel section comes out at the end of August...

FAT OLD BLIMP

My wife accuses me of ranting. I do rant. Ranting goes with being a Fat Old Blimp. - probably because we know that we are powerless to change the evils and injustices we witness or counter the multitude of stupidities born of a failure to study even recent history.

THIS VILE GOVERNMENT

I come of a generation with military service. We have fierce feelings of loyalty to those serving today. The Regiment in which I served as a moderately incompetent junior officer, the 16th/5th Lancers, is now amalgamated with the 17th/21st. Though leaving the army more than fifty years ago, I take very personally the casualties the Regiment suffers.
This vile Government orders young men, many of them in their late teens, into mortal combat. Some are killed. More suffer appalling wounds. Meanwhile the Ministry of Defense takes Court action in an attempt to curtail disability payments.
I listened today in enraged disgust to the weasel excuses for this Court action offered by the new Minister, Mr. Ainsworth, in an interview on Radio 4. New Minister? Of course. Frequently changing Ministers stops the present Minister being held responsible for even recent errors. It was all a previous Minister's fault. Or a previous Minister's...
In this case, the previous Minister was Mr. Hutton. Mr. Hutton is favoured by many in his Party to replace the present Prime Minister. Mr Hutton was Secretary of Defense for a mere six months before accepting promotion to the Ministry of Health. A man of honour would have refused to leave his post until those he had ordered into battle had completed the task this Government set them. Honour? Amongst a Governing Party of which less than a dozen Members of Parliament bothered to attend either of the last two Parliamentary Defense debates? Presumably they were too busy seeking excuses for fiddling their expense accounts.
Are the Tories any better?
Probably not - though David Davies seems to be a man of honour.
Well, well, well - got that off my chest. Do I feel better? A little...

DISGUSTED AND ENRAGED

I should be concentrating on the build-up to the BIG CHILL, finishing an article on Herefordshire for the Guardian, praying for good weather so that I can mow the lawn before it grows into a hay field, reading more books on India, writing the final two chapters of a new novel and, most imperatively, attempting to converse with the Resident Teenager who has been in full grunt mode for the past three days. Am I to blame? Probably. Presuming my guilt, yet not knowing of what (in this case) I am guilty has kept me awake most of the past two nights.
This morning my anxieties have been replaced by fury. Why? Read the next entry.