The Guardian is a Disgrace

I urge you to sit down and move anything light enough to throw out of the way before reading the rest of this post.

Words fail me and normally I would resort to swearing but I simply cannot muster the words to describe my outrage at the Guardian for giving Gerry Adams a platform to make cheap political capital and Gerry Adams.

To quote the article (which I note hasn’t got comments switching on)

On the way home someone had placed hundreds of little name plaques along the grass verge at the side of the road outside Dungiven. The names were of hundreds of citizens killed by the British army and other state forces here during the conflict, including the 11 from Ballymurphy.

Cameron should know they and their families continue to be denied truth. His apology for Bloody Sunday was right. But he said that “Bloody Sunday is not the defining story of the service the British army gave in Northern Ireland from 1969-2007.”

That is wrong.

Bloody Sunday is the defining story of the British army in Ireland.

If you want to read the rest of this drivel, click here

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/16/bloody-sunday-british-army

Read more…

Life on Trident

A good article from the Guardian

At any moment, one of Britain’s four Trident submarines is out there, somewhere, patrolling a continent-sized patch of the Atlantic. When the 160-strong crew slip beneath the waves off Scotland’s west coast, that’s the last anyone sees of them for three months. Powered by a nuclear reactor, the submarines are almost silent and virtually undetectable. While on patrol, direct communication with navy bosses back home ceases, so potential enemies cannot intercept any signals. The crew are almost completely cut off from the outside world.

Read the rest here

Mainstream Media – Defence is at a Cross Roads with no Sign Post

Writing in The Times this week is Allan Mallinson on the subject of the future of the armed forces in which he prescribes some simple medicine;

• Add 10,000 to the Army
• Forget balancing the forces
• Root out amateurism everywhere

Read more…

Mainstream Media – Tanks Unfit for Service

We are introducing a new category today called Mainstream Media.

One of the objectives of this blog is to elevate and broaden the debate on UK Defence issues. At the risk of repeating myself, we don’t have any special insight but one this we strive for accuracy, something that seems lacking in the mainstream media, especially when there is an opportunity to push the ‘pen pushers’ theme that seems so common.

Posts in this category will take stories from the mainstream media and try to correct them.

Kicking off this category is a story in the Telegraph, Daily Mail, New Statesman and Times this morning about the MoD spending £149million on useless ‘tanks’

Read more…

Newsflash – A Times Article Worth a Read

Richard Holmes reports on the lack of a coherent strategy for Afghanistan.

In his usual style he gets to the heart of the matter and the article is well worth a read

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6652496.ece