Maths humour

This is genius...........perhaps i need to get out more.

Join the dots

It's been an interesting week and there have been a few news stories lately which i'll list below. I wonder what the link, or common thread of these stories is?

1. Hostages released
2. 7/7 bombers charged
3. UK troops killed by IED
4. Bombers killed in Casablanca
5. Algerian explosions
6. Bomb attack in Australia foiled
7. Turkish airliner hijacked
8. More troops for Afghanistan from Aus
9. Posecutor in Bangladesh killed
10. Helicopter shot down in Somalia
11. Suicide bomb threat against Pakistan gov

All of the above news stories occcured in separate countries and i'm not suggesting that there is some overarching conspiarcy or organisation responsible but the one word that doesn't appear in my 'headlines' above is 'Islam'.

The religion of peace; yeah right.............

Ashamed to be British

Well the hostage debacle has proved to be an humiliation for all concerned. Any investigation has been quashed despite Tory calls for one.

I find it hard to work out who, the RN or the UKG, is trying to cover-up the episode, if there was any conspiracy behind giving the sailors meida rights or just what the hell is going on in the corridors of power; we'll probably never know.

I can't believe the state of our Armed Forces, particularly the RN personnel. Who are these people? 'Topsy' and 'Mr Bean', what a great advert for our troops!

Hopefully this isn't a reflection of the Forces as a whole but the personnel have hardly covered themselves with glory. I hear reports that not all of the 'frightened fifteen' caved in under pressure but we've heard very little about that, just endless footage of the fifteen having a laugh, reports of 'Topsy' giving 'mummy hugs' and horror stories of having your neck flicked.

I'm lost for words..................

They're to be released!

Well i never! Ahmadinejad has just announced the hostages are to be released as a 'gift' to Britain. Along with medals to the commanders invovled obviously.

I wonder just what assurances were given to the Iranians behind the scenes, they have obviously got what they wanted; on the face of it, mainly the humilation of Britain, the isolation of the UK from the EU and shown the impotency of the UN.

What they really got, we'll probably never know.

It'll be good to have the hostages back unharmed and i'd be interested to hear their side of things, assuming they are allowed to talk that is.

Games in the Gulf

So, nearly halfway through Blairs '48 hours' and what have we got? Nothing. We are into day 13 of this crisis and the best we have come up with is that the government are happy to have made contact. Made contact?! What the hell have we been doing for 12 days?

I must admit, i may have been a bit harsh on Captain Air earlier. It is hard to know what kind of duress they are under and the Iranians will be piling on the psyops. The latest photo

of Captain Air and the others, shows Lieutenant Carman and him next to each other clearly looking unhappy. Hopefully these two officers are at least dicussing the situation, and what to do about it. Their primary responsibility is to keep the group safe and hopefully they are fully aware of the games the Iranians are playing. The photo gave me heart that perhaps all is not lost.

Also interesting is the fact that none of the captives are wearing shoes. I think that this is probably a measure to make it harder to escape, coupled with LS turneys lack of headscarf, she wouldn't be able to blend in, and the lovely tracksuits.

The Iranians are playing their hand very well and it would seem that ours is being played by people who don't know the rules. Whilst many people are decrying comments made by people safe at home behind their keyboards, i think this is wrong. This whole game is being played out for the benefit of the 'viewing public', how this looks is precisely wha this is about and so the 'behind the scenes' diplomacy is affectively irrelevent.

All this talk of finding a 'face saving' way out for Iran is ludicrous, we should be looking at forcing them into a humiliating climbdown because that's exactly what they are trying to do to us.

The Iranians are playing a weak hold'em hand and are hoping that if we raise the stakes they can do a face saving fold. They however are finding that we are quite happy calling with our strong hand and if we aren't careful they'll hit a good hand on the river. We also have to take into account that we are being urged to fold our good hand by our 'friends'.

The Falklands, 25th Anniversary

Today, 25 years ago, the Argentinian junta invaded the Falkland islands. Suspecting the British wouldn't have the capacity to fight over a remote island, they were surprised when Mrs Thatcher decided to send a taskforce to liberate the islands.


The short campaign was ultimately sucessful and the islanders very grateful. It also showed the world that we, the Brits, still had some bulldog spirit left in us.

What a change from then to now, especially as far as the Royal Marines & Royal Navy are concerned. Compare the two images of Royal Marines below, how times change....

The picture above is disgraceful, we seem to have found that appeasement is our foreign policy.

Whilst the Falklands war was not without its controversy and its share of disasters, we prevailed and won a famous victory. We stood tall against tyranny and managed to stand firm in 1991 against Saddam and then finish the job in 2003.

Tony Blair has gone on record to say that he would have fough the Falklands if he had been in charge, one wonders if that was bluster. Will he continue to appease the Iranian/Islamic fundamentalists or finally discover his backbone and manage to stand up to tyranny?

I must say i am not confident of this at all considering the rumours of sending an envoy to Iran and talk of promising the Iranians we won't trespass again. If true, we are just running up the white flag. Is a there Churchill somewhere who will do what needs to be done? If not we won't see pictures like this anymore.

Royal Marine captain Air, spineless?

Well, it's day 11 today and still no movement on either releasing the hostages or doing anything about threatening the Iranians.

What is more galling, and frankly people should be spitting teeth about this, is the latest footage of a Royal Marine officer, a captain no less, acting like he's giving a fucking briefing, on Iranian TV!!!
What the hell is that about?

I can understand the lower ranking personnel doing pretty much anything the Iranians say but a commssioned officer in the Marines? Give me a break, this guy should be refusing to comply with any Iranian demands. Granted we don't know what kind of duress he is under but he sure looks pretty relaxed.

The Iranians are milking this for all they can get and even they probably can't quite believe how much they are getting away with. The media, the politicians and the public seem to be under the misapprehension that the Iranians are somehow inferior to us and are just 'larking about'.

The Iranians aren't stupid and to be honest they are much better than us at this game. The one thing that we should have is the will to win, the will to do what it takes, the will to not let a foreign power humiliate our armed forces. We have lost that will, we've even lost the will to even care about the situation.

25 years ago today a remote part of our 'empire' was invaded by a hostile power, in 12 weeks we managed to assemble a task force, sail 8 thousand miles and re-take our Islands. Sometime in the intervening 25 years we have lost that will. If the Falklands happened today, what would we do? Even if we suddenly found that will, the capability isn't there anymore, we'd just capitulate.

If this is the way our armed forces are going to act, we may has well shut up shop, disband the lot and then bend over the table and let all and sundry have their way with us.

How the mighty have fallen

It's been nearly a week now since 15 members of our armed forces were detained at gunpoint by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Navy. This is the second incident where Iranians have captured military personnel. In the first case in 2004, the 8 men were released fairly quickly as Her Majesty's government didn't really dispute the Iranian claims.

This incident happens at a time when relations with Iran are strained and the release of the 14 men & 1 woman doesn't look imminent.

Frankly this incident raises lots of issues over and above the obvious one of the location of the personnel.

Firstly, why did the Iranians do this? Well a number of reasons arise, retaliation over capture of Iranians in Iraq, attempts to diffuse the UN sanctions vote, bargaining chips over Irans nuclear ambitions, who's to say, but the Iranian claim that they did it because the personnel were over the border is a red herring.

Secondly, how was this allowed to happen? This raises lots of questions leading from the tactical situation right up to policy decisions made within the MOD and government. Why was HMS Cornwall too far away from the scene, allegedly because its draft is such that it could not enter the shallow waters although the ship being inspected wasn't exactly a dhow.

Even if HMS Cornwall couldn't provide close escort, surely the helicopter should have stayed around until the RIBs were en route back?

Without this close support it is no surprise the personnel surrendered as they would have been outgunned.

The Lynx wouldn't have been able to do much once the capture had been effected but it could have prevented the capture in the first place had it still been overhead.

For the Iranians to have pulled this off they must have been waiting close by and indeed to have pre-planned the 'attack', which means it wasn't an apprehension for voliation of its waters.

On a more stategic level, why do we not have more ships in the area given the situation in the ME at the moment. HMS Cornwall and some minesweepers do not a Navy make, the government has steadily reduced the capability of our armed forces at such a time when we need to be expanding our forces to cope with all our commitments. We cannot even adequately perform in our current theatres, with our troops being nicknamed 'The Borrowers' and 'The Flintstones' due to our continued reliance on the US for equipment, air support and our lack of modern/correct kit.

The MOD seems to be trying to equip itself for a war we might have to fight at the cost of providing correct kit for wars we are actually fighting. I hear that in July this year our

Royal Navy will be smaller than the French fleet for the first time in 400 years, what is going on? I also believe that we are to send the Ark Royal out to the gulf, but without any aircraft because the F-22 isn't in service yet and all the Sea Harriers are either de-commissioned or in Afghanistan.

Mr Blair seems to trying to talk the talk without paying for the ability to walk the walk. If we are going to follow the lead of the US and be a major player in the 'War on Terror' we should at least try and fulfil our promises, which means adequately supporting the forces with kit they need for the task and proper mandates to do the task.

Which brings us on the the Rules of Engagement, why are the RoE set to be de-escalatory? Surely if a country tries to abduct or troops in areas they are legitimatley allowed to be in, we should be able to at lest fire warning shots and act in self defence? The aren't enough details of the current situation yet to comment fully but there should have been some level of support to threaten the Iranians with to at least make them think twice about proceeding. And why did the captain of HMS Cornwall have to refer to 'head office'? There must have been plans in place for this eventuality without having to phone up for guidance, what a way to conduct operations, is the nanny state this bad that the Navy need to ask permission to act?

Thirdly, what are the government playing at? It's now been a week and we haven't even threatened the Iranians with anything other than harsh words if they don't return our personnel. Some idiots have been calling for nukes but there are a raft of measures varying in lethality that could be employed.

Financial pressures, trade and economic contracts could curtailed, detaining consular staff, explusion of diplomats, build up forces in the area, capture of Iranian oil facilities and then all the way up to targetted bombing of military installations and special forces operations if they do not comply. Instead all we get are much hand wringing and 'polite but firm' and 'measured' overtures. This gets nowhere with dictatorships such as Iran, they already know how we are going to respond which is why they targeted British forces not US.

We are steadily getting backed into a position whereby we will have to either cave-in or take some level of military action. Our reputation as a nation and our self respect amongst our NATO allies is taking a pasting. By all means over diplomatic solutions but we must back them up with some level of threat.

Finally, for now, the propaganda footage of the personnel is causing yet more 'outrage' amongst our politicians but no actual action. People are decrying the comments of LS Faye Turney as being not becoming of a soldier, of not resisting coercion and being effectivley traitorous. People should bear in mind that we aren't in a shooting war and that these personnel haven't been trained in anti-interrogation techniques. The standing order is for the detainees to do whatever the Iranians want. It serves nothing to resist and would just make their capture harder to bear.

To be frank the images of LS Turney wearing a head scarf was far less irritating than seeing a BBC reporter in Iran having to wear one when recording a report for the news. That says it all really, they can make us do anything they want and haven't the balls to stand up for ourselves anymore. Why the hell should we keep kow-towing to these draconian religious laws when they don't even follw the rules of our culture? They know that the Wests resolve to be 'multi-cultural' and to not offend anyone is erroding our will to fight. Whilst there is no obvious 'battlefield', make no mistake, there is a 'war' and we are losing. Until our leaders wake up to this fact we will see continued 'stunts' like this one occuring with more and more frequency.

For continued updates please follow the action here

'War' reporting gripe.

I'm a bit of a 'fanboy' when it comes to military history so I'm probably just being pedantic but neither this

or this

is a tank. They are mobile artillery, a tank is an armoured vehicle used for direct assult against an enemy, mobile artillery is used from behind the frontlines to support attacks or defense and does not engage an enemy directly.

Also a canon is a large calibre gun usually above 20mm, not just any old machine gun that looks big. They are just machine guns.

I could go on but it just irks me when journalists don't bother to find out even the basics of military terminology or descriptions.

Another thing is the way the media, mainly the 'left' leaning and politically correct media, love to sensationalise the effect of the Israeli 'onslaught' and devastation of airstrikes. Do the journallists know what effect the IAF could cause if they wanted too? The pictures of destryed buildings and numbers of casualties caused so far are nothing compared to the effects of a concerted air campaign conducted indescrimately.

When it's reported that Israel is targetting civilians it's by sources that aither don't know what they are talking about or are misinterpretting an isolated incident. If the IAF wanted to target civilians the death toll would be in the tens or even hundreds of thousands and the Lebanese cities would all be rubble.

The same goes for reports of the 'hundreds' of Hizbollah rockets 'raining' down on Israel. I don't know the true numbers but if those numbers are ture, the missiles are pretty ineffectual.

Religion or Politics?

I thought I'd comment on what looks to be an imminent ground invasion of Lebanon by the IDF (Israeli Defence Force). Lots of commentators seem to be polarised into the pro-Israeli camp and pro-Lebanon camp but it's not really that simple IMO.

I support the Israeli response, to a degree, in that thier nation is under attack and that requires a response. They are surrounded by nations of Arabs who want to see their nation wiped off the map and they seem to be immune to the liberal media boom who want to make nice-nice with religious fundmentalists.

There is no point negitiating with Hamas or Hizbollah or whatever Islam terrorists are the flavour of the month because they aren't interested in diplomacy, except if it makes Israel lose face or influence, all they want is the annihilation of the 'zionists'.

However, the wholsesale invasion of Lebanon isn't the way forward, it will only exacerbate the anti-Israeli feelings among the Arabs. Then again the Israelis don't seem to care as there seems to be no way out of this mire of spiralling violence and tit-for-tat escalation.

I don't know what the soluiton is and I'm not sure there is one. The Arabs can't live with Israel and Israel ain't going anywhere. Apart from the massive loss of life a full-scale war would involve, the only long term solution I can see is a large scale ground war with the victor in charge of the whole Middle-East; not a scenario I, or anyone else, would want to see happen.

So where to go? Politics is the ultimate driving force here and unless a long-term political solution, involving the Palistinians, is reached the relious differences between the two cultures, (and 'christendom' - the US) will continue to influence those in positions of power.

Complete eradication of religion in the ME (and the world) would prehaps enable some degree of reason and lessening of hatred amongst the decision makers and a long-term peace involving co-operation between humans can be attained.

I'm not too hopeful, it has to be said but I don't think the conflict will spread as Syria and Iran don't have the means to stand up to Israel and they aren't stupid enough to try.

World Cup - and Englands sporting demise

Well, it's all over - the World Cup has been won by Italy and whilst it's a shame England weren't playing in the final it's been a good spectacle. Zidane's head-butt will, I think cast a black cloud over the event for some time to come as will Rooney's stamp and Ronaldo's (Christiano) cheating.

FIFA must take action against players diving as it's getting ridiculous now. It's always been part of the game but some teams seem to be taking it to extremes.

As for English sport, man it's bad. Just over 6 months since we were on a high now our sports are in the doldrums.

Cricket - what happened? Admitedly we have had lots of injuries but even so, the high of winning the Ashes has gone and I fully expect normal service to resume in the winter with a drubbing by the Aussies.

Rugby - what can i say? We have the players but the management isn't so great and there just seems to be no will to win anymore. Johnny being injured hasn't helped but there are other players who should be able to step into the role.

Football - I was an Eriksson supporter early on but now he's gone i think he was not so great. Our players should have been brilliant, on paper most of the team could play for any side in the world. Again we were struck by injury and again there seemed to be no will to win. Hopefully McLaren can get them to play together properly but i'm not convinced - Scolari would be better, maybe in the future.