Walsingham

You got a point there, Kitty. But you'll admit that celebs are the new aristocracy. Rules don't apply to them, most of the time.

I believe 10% of men are good, 80% will be good if watched closely by the first ten percent, and the remainder are total bastards who must be prevented from gaining control over the 80. While this may be untrue, Rand seems to assume 100% of men are good, unless subjected to a perverse arrangement of state. Given teh choice between living my life by that dictum and believing the earth is flat I'd chooose flat earth. At least that won't get me killed.

Chris Tarrant (Who Wants to be a Millionairre) gets stopped by police and drives off. the police said: NOT FUNNY YET What's funny is her own account ( my emphasis): She was being officially reprimanded by a police officer and she felt intimidated and trapped so she left! ROFL It's pricelessly middle class.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegal...ide-attack.html

My point is that if you jeopardise the effectiveness of a military operation you don't just waste ALL the money you spend on it, you wind up costing yourself more money. People seem to have this mad imperial notion that our boys will always triumph. It's like living in Victorian England. Disasters can and do happen. So yes, compared with spending money on cancer care I think it's not worth it. And without any metrics for measuring the contribution of morale to effectiveness we can't sensibly debate the point. All I _can_ say is that the difference between the US Army, and the Argentine Army (1981 style) is not any one thing it's a mass of quite small things in concert. Trim this small thing, trim that small thing, and suddenly KAPOW the whole system collapses. in any event, it seems the Pentagon agrees with me, because they've apparently made it clear that front line troops will be exempt.

I miss Dark Raven.

I just realised that the whole +38 weapons schtick is basically just laziness. *gasp*

I don't like the Beatles. But then, I hate hippies.

Agreed.

You know i don't disrespect you, but this statement is wrong in every way. Worse, it is an example of the thinking which wrecks so many government activities. The purpose of government activity is to be effective and efficient. Not simply cheap. But as Enoch will probably affirm, cuts and restrictions are always employed in such ways as to make the activity ineffective. If the system ceases to do its job then a single penny is a waste of money. This is never more apparent than in the Armed Forces. What we are talking about here is a move to cut a few million off the whole budget, but which will stress the men and women doing a job which is already incredibly stressful and depressing and disturbing. You are impairing effectiveness when that effectiveness is unbelievably complex and delicate. And it's not just about causing the stresss, it's about sending the message that you are willing to cause the stress.

I get nervous if I'm reading less than three books in any given 24 hours. But I wouldn't claim they're always very good. In fact I relish 'bad (i.e. entertaining and non-introspective) sci-fi.

Ironically, if you had become an elective non-reader you wouldn't have to read the statistics.

Tpoic is press behaviour, not Israel behaviour.

That's not unfair as a comeback Krez. I agree it's about a healthy dose of comradeship. However, whatever form it takes, cigarettes are what the poor sods want. If they wanted kangaroo porn I'd be up for shipping some out there. My point is quite simply that while we expect serving soldiers to give up almost everything that might be regarded as normal in life do we really HAVE to ****ing lay extra sacrifices on them? It's not an essential sacrifice. As an aside, winning hearts and minds, our lads are going to be a bit c***ed if they try to make friends with arab/Afghan males without cigarettes.

I took some trouble to hunt up illustrative quotes last night before bed. Both come from John Ellis' indispensable book The Sharp End of War. It's been recently re-released and I urge you all to read it. (R.W. Thompson, p346) (Unknown officer, 1st Royal Scots, p348) I should like to contrast the spirit of these remarks unfavourably with the remarks with the attitudes so far displayed in this debate. The latter in particular shows an entirely contrary spirit. The officers of the battalion did not risk their lives to send forward an instructive pamphlet on the dangers of smoking. They accepted there was a need and provided for it without censorship.

As I say, it's not really supposed to be about the specifics of the situation. I'm not saying you can't believe it if you like. I'm just saying how interesting it is that a paper completely removes a vital caveat on the story. If I got told the same story and I agreed with it, even believed it, then found out I'd been effectively deliberately mislead I'd be furious.

I want to make it clear that this is about the media, not a specific incident. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/mi...ck-1746485.html The story is an interesting one, worth bringing up. I've read it in a few places. What is interesting is that while the stories make interesting reading, and seem plausible on general points, they are totally anonymous. They could be genuine, but they might equally well be fictional. However the fine readers of the Independent newspaper don't know that. Because the Independent doesn't bother telling them. Al Jazeera bring this up, they don't. I thought this was interesting as a clear case of media manipulation, if anyone wanted to put it in an essay or whatnot.

Boats need anchors. Stops them drifting.

It would make us all feel better. Dammit, let's take things further. If bankers are the high priests of capitalism, let's make them be a bit more priestly. No wives, no ...um... no hot showers, no clothes but sack-cloth. wait, that would never work, because to implement it we'd need soldiers, and all our soldiers will tell us to get stuffed for being such out of touch wankers.

I respect your observation about it being for another time. But I suggest that the reason why it is for another time is pertinent. It doesn't matter whether the country is having soldiers do pushups or digging ditches or stab people. The point is that they're doing what their country asks. And they're doing a ****load of it. "Thanks a lot for having to live away from your friends and family for months at a time. Giving up your time, your sweat, and possibly a few limbs. Now let's see you give up smoking! DANCE! MONKEY! DANCE!" I'd like to see politicians forced to give up a few of the things they demand we give up. In fact, sod it. I'd like to see them have to give up a few things we don't. Politicians should be forced to live in barracks, away from loved ones for months at a time. They should only be allowed one shoe at a time, and live on a diet of nothing but garden peas.

Because it makes sense and therefore, there is no counterargument. So it would seem.

Remind me not to expect Kaft's robots to do anything delicate or supervise a nuclear reactor.

Yup. I have to say I thought you were a bot to start with.

I agree that it's hard to be certain about what happened, due to lack of credible reporting. However, I do think one an make some sensible background observations on what one would expect to find. 1. As a rule human beings are quite racist and prone to mob violence 2. These tendencies can be reduced if the individuals exist in a culture of non-violence. I suggest that a dictatorship is not such a culture. 3. People on the bottom rungs of any society often suffer offences and injustices which make them predisposed to believe offences against them have taken place. Making 'just causes' for violence more common. It strikes me that some pretty unpleasant things are likely to have occurred, and occurred on both sides. Simply because I see little reason why they shouldn't have done. I was interested to see the behaviour described as ethnic cleansing. Is it fair to say the same is true of paramilitary violence in Northern Ireland?

OMG. 100 ounces? I thought those things were a myth.