Mick Smith - Times Online - WBLG

Letter from the Left Coast: Don't Dis' the Pastor Barack!

Bang on time, another Letter from the Left Coast arrives with Ian Bowater watching US liberals with their knickers in a twist over that nice, pleasant chap Pastor Jeremiah Wright

My counter-intuitive prediction of last week paid off. Sheffield Wednesday still have all to play for. And after Pennsylvania, so does Hillary Clinton. A ten-point win set off another round of whining and whingeing, pissing and moaning about the damage this contest is doing to the party. All the P ’n M was coming from the Obama crowd who want their cookies – now! House Rep Clyburn of South Carolina who told Bill to calm down in February announced that there was a lot of gossip in the Black community about Bill trying to make it impossible for Barack to even win in November. How does that work? It’s Obama’s missteps off the teleprompter, his truthful but damning assessment if the rural white working class and his pastor, Reverend Wright, who appear to be bringing the poor chap down. I guess we’ll never know where Bill Clinton fits in.

My Son's in Afghanistan: Why Are the Princes Using Our Wounded Boys to Repair Their PR Job?

Another dose of hard talk from Mandy whose son is fighting in Afghanistan

Ah! Prince (I’m outta here) Harry and Prince (Reprint of Budgie) William hold court at Headley and we all smile and dig deep into our pockets just in time for sunset on the steps of St. Pauls Cathedral. Excuse me while I do a Two Jags and find myself arrested for overfilling my wheelie bin. In the name of decency will someone please stand up and denounce this gluttony of PR resuscitation. Soldiers have earned the right to be treated for their injuries with dignity. End. No more squabbling. No more dishonour. And no more sideshows. Just give them the money.

It Wasn't Like That In My Day! Accommodation Fit For Rats

For former soldiers like myself, the current conditions faced by our troops are incomprehensible. At a time when living standards in this country were very much lower there was never any suggestion that we should live in the kind of squalor apparently common for today's forces. Here is an old friend of mine Chuck Unsworth with a new column looking at different aspects of service life from the view of a veteran:

A few days ago I drove down the old A3 from London to Portsmouth.  From Guildford to Pompey the whole area is littered with the remains of military or naval establishments, some still in use.  On a whim I made a slight detour to take a look at the former Longmoor Camp where I had been stationed before being posted to Singapore – a very long time ago.  Some of the original barrack blocks and other accommodation still stand and are in use.  These buildings are at least seventy years old. The subject is much in the news of course, after pictures emerged of mouldy barrack blocks with sewage pouring out onto the road.

Fighting Behind the Wire, The View From the Serviceman

Over the past couple of months, this blog has been adding some new voices to the debate, including Mandy, the mother of a soldier serving in Afghanistan. Today we add another voice, no names, no pack drill, this is from an unnamed British serviceman, still serving, fighting from behind the wire and anonymous because of the infamous DIN (Defence Instruction and Notice) banning servicemen and women from giving their opinions.

It was reported a few months ago that The Parachute Regiment alone had lost nine officers in the past few months, all quitting in disgust at the lack of resources and poor treatment of soldiers and their families. One was the commanding officer of 3 PARA, Lt Col Stuart Tootal. The OBE officer, hotly-tipped to one day head the Army, highlighted poor pay,  a lack of equipment for training, appalling army housing and shoddy treatment by the health service. His letter to service personnel chiefs was described as a “devastating indictment” of the Government. Apart from a few news articles what impact did his actions or others before him really have, what good did they actually do for the forces?

Letter from the Left Coast: A Devastating Prediction!

Now Ian Bowater with the latest Letter from the Left Coast

On the final weekend before the last big or at least the most meaningful primary, in Pennsylvania, I am being goaded into making a prediction if not an endorsement. I have been bombarded with articles and polls that all favour Barack Obama – boy, are they organized! Having been urged to drink the Kool Aid, I will now make a prediction. With a heavy heart and against all that I hold dear, here goes… Sheffield Wednesday will be relegated from the Championship. I say that in the vain hope that like everything else that has been predicted in these troubled times, it will be wrong.

My Son's in Afghanistan, Getting Bombed with Rations by the RAF

Another post from Mandy, the mother of a soldier fighting in Afghanistan

“Hi mum, How’s it going? Just a quick letter from the Sandy Land! I’m fine anyway and topping up the tan in sunny Kandahar. Just eaten Pizza Hut, home from home eh? We’re gonna be at base for a while, so I’m happy with that. We stayed out in the middle of the desert for the last few nights. It was eventful….it rained! This is a big thing in the desert! But then the RAF dropped some re-supply and just missed our heads! Lol The only way to get us out of the way was for them to shout ‘stand to’ which means ‘we’re being attacked!’ Christ! Hey! The Taliban are officially Airborne….they’ve got planes…as we all scrambled about the place laughing. It was really funny!”

The RAF Needs to Remember - Turkeys Don't Fly

The MoD’s defence of Prince William’s use of an RAF Chinook helicopter to ferry himself and Harry to a two-day stag party at Cowes is looking increasingly threadbare. William had already passed his flying course when he went off for a ten-day familiarisation course on the Chinook helicopter. It is transparently obvious what happened here. The wings ceremony at RAF Cranwell was scheduled for the same day as cousin Peter’s stag party, a two-day binge in Cowes. How were Wills and Harry going to get there in time? Don’t worry HRH, some helpful officer says, we can sort that. We’ll give you a training flight that will take you down into the London heli-lanes, you can make a landing in a confined space at Woolwich, pick up Harry, then you can make a water crossing to the Isle of Wight and land at Bembridge, we do it all the time and you’ll be minutes away from as many pints of Strongbow as you can handle. Take away the italics and you have a completely routine training flight which any Chinook pilot needs to practise on a regular basis. So where’s the problem?

Letter from the Left Coast: Another Day, Another Clinton Reshuffle

After a few weeks in Europe, a brief respite from the increasingly fractious US elections, Ian Bowater returns to the Left Coast to find nothing has changed!

Three weeks away from the campaign and one thing has emerged – nothing has changed. Hillary Clinton has yet again re-jigged her staff with a firing. The Worsel Gummidge of the campaign and fashion adviser to Christopher Hitchens, Mark Penn has gone.  He was caught discussing Free Trade with the Colombians who had a contract with his political PR firm, Burson-Marsteller. Despite their history, free trade is a definite “no-no” for the Clintons these days, so Penn has left to spend more time with his money. Which will be considerably less now that the Colombian government cancelled their contract with Burson-Marsteller in the wake of brouhaha.

In Memoriam: Killed in Action in Southern Afghanistan

I strongly recommend that everyone reads the TimesOnline article today on the death of 51-year-old Gary Thompson, clearly a very good man lost in a cause he believed in. Gary was a successful businessman but three years ago decided to join the Royal Auxiliary Air Force Regiment and less than two months ago was sent to Afghanistan. Asked why he should do so at an age when most men have long since given up such activities, Gary replied: “I have five daughters, three of whom are at university. I want women in Afghanistan to be given the same opportunity that my daughters have had,” he said. “It means I can come back and say I have played my part in trying to make that happen.” At the time I first put this post up, 14 servicemen had just been killed in the explosion of Nimrod XV230, their deaths had brought the numbers killed in action in southern Afghanistan in six months to 28. Since I put it up, a further 59 have died in action, including Gary and his 23-year-old colleague Graham Livingston. The article on Gary Thompson - who seems destined to become a truly inspirational figure - can be found here

My Son's in Afghanistan. Now Gordon, Ed and Quentin are Lining up the Next Victims

More controversy from Mandy, the mother of a soldier serving in Afghanistan.

Cadet recruitment has increased steadily since 1980. They are chugging along very nicely, encouraging our youth to try out orienteering, sailing, flying, comradeship and developing would-be leadership qualities. An already established oasis of calm for many young people. No shortfall there. And no requirement to enlist at the end.  Just so we’re clear. Then along comes Quentin Davis's review of relations between the public and the forces and its recommendation that every school should have its own cadets. The cadets have been hijacked by Brown, Balls and Quentin, (BBQ) almost certainly as a means to procure yet more medium rare topside for their flaming coals of war.

Why Should Our Troops be Denied the Basic Right to Life?

The decision by a High Court judge that relatives of servicemen who died as a result of defective equipment or lack of the proper equipment could sue the MoD for failing to protect their human rights, in this case the very basic right to life, is a good one. There has been a lot of ill-informed ranting from people who ought to know better about how this means that anyone could sue on the basis that they weren’t given the best possible equipment. That is not the case, and we have seen too many scandals where servicemen died because they weren’t given the equipment they needed or because it was not working properly to be fooled into thinking that. There is in fact a case that was already on its way to the European Court of Human Rights on precisely this issue...

My Son's in Afghanistan, So WHY is the Media Obsessed with Trivia?

More news from Mandy, the mother of a soldier fighting in Afghanistan

It’s been a tough week emotionally. Ian decided it was time for the lake. It’s my special place. I sat down and wept. I wept for the families and friends of the two Royal Marines killed in Afghanistan on Sunday. Disgracefully, ‘Facebook’, made the front pages. I can’t begin to imagine the dilemma editors would have faced had it been Prince (I’m outta here) Harry.