What The...?

Fuck off:

The whole population and every UK visitor should be added to the national DNA database, a senior judge has said.

The present database in England and Wales holds details of 4m people who are guilty or cleared of a crime.

Lord Justice Sedley said this was indefensible and biased against ethnic minorities, and it would be fairer to include everyone, guilty or innocent.

Ministers said DNA helped tackle crime, but there were no plans for a voluntary national or compulsory UK database.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Gordon Brown said to expand the database would create "huge logistical and bureaucratic issues" and civil liberty concerns.

It hardly requires more than half a brain cell to point out the problems inherent in a mass database. For a judge to say this though is disgraceful. An the line I've highlighted in bold says it all. He'd like to see an introduction of Continental style justice that favours the state, where everyone is lumped together and people are assumed guilty till proven innocent. Why should innocent, law abiding citizens be put on a database? They have committed no crime. Further the idea that a database for criminals only is unfair is ludicrous. Might one hypothesise that if an unusually large number of ethnic minorities are on the database its because they have committed a crime? Anyone can commit a crime- white, black, latino. Anyone. And if an ethnci moinority commits more crimes then surely thats a social issue.

The whole thing is so half baked I can barely fucking believe it.

South Korea's Loss

ROK has paid $20 million to get 20 aidworker/missionaries back. By doing so they are directly funding the Taliban to go more people. More than that it shows the worth of hostages in todays media saturated society. Kidnapping hostages is good money- it costs little to do so and makes great profits. Well done ROK.

Are We At War?

If you walk down the street today do you feel like you are at war? Like in the Blitz do you see corpses, ruined houses, men in uniform everywhere? I doubt you do. War has become removed from the civilian population at large, it has no impact. I can't holiday in Iraq but I wouldn't have done that before anyway. I can still travel where I want, do what I want, buy what I want. War impinges on my life only in the time I am willing to spend looking at it or watching the TV. Its a distant thing with little to no basis in my own physical existence.

And that is one of the reasons we have for total apathy in this country. People don't care because the war seems like a foreign affair, removed from us and untouchable. It doesn't really bother us so why care? Both pro and anti war movements are outnumbered by the generally bored, the unopinionated, the drifters. Life has reached a point where you don't have to have opinions because nothing that bad is happening. In the Cold War we might have been nuked or invaded at any moment. A real threat existed. For homosexuals there was the possibility of arrest. Foreigners were abused because so many of them were emigrating (pre 50's racism is often wildly overemphasised). There were issues and causes. Now peoples lives are so comfortable that they don't need to care. And in a life full of easy things it is easier not to care.

This is one of the reasons for such lack of emotion over the war. Whilst we sit comfortably we care not. Even 7/7 had limited casualties, limited impact. Terrorism and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan don't appear in our lives every day but rather occasionally, intermittently. They flicker in and out and we don't care.

Someone needs to bring the issues back to politics. We won't know what we'll be losing till we've lost it.

Retreating

Can we please admit it? We are retreating from Basra because we can't control it. That isn't the soldiers fault: they've done their best. But they don't have the men, the infastructure or equipment to do it. And most importantly the Iraqis don't want to knuckle under. Theres nothing that can be done about that. Militias provide localised government and support to the people on a level the MoD can't match. They therefore take control.

That we failed, for it is a failure, is hardly surprising. As mentioned above there was little to no chance the whole mess could be sorted out by 5,000 blokes and a few Land Rovers. Maybe 50,000 blokes but even then I'd be cautious.

Will the Yanks be pissed? Yup. But so what. Our retreat is exactly the kind of thing they will be doing in a few years. The point is that they have more men and money so it will take longer before they need to retreat. We are just preempting them.

A Privatised Military

Much has been said of the collapse of the covenant between the military and the government/people. Not so much has been said about how to solve it. In many ways the Army suffers due to the lack of Unions. This lack is incredibly important because it measn there is nobody to fight for the soldiers rights except to various private individuals. That said having Unions would be lunacy.

Let us be clear: the covenant has been broken. Soldiers use outdated and dangerous equipment, have lamentable pensions, rates of pay, hours and compensation. They have few benefits back in country and are on the job pretty much 24/7. So what can we do. Well simple...

1. Better pay. If the MoD can pay Afghanis to dress up like Taliban for £50 a day and spend £80 million per Eurofighter then they can afford to spend £50 a day on soldiers wages.
2. Better compensation. As the recent Ben Parkinson/RAF Typist scandal has shown compensation is currently wack. Considering what these men and women put on the line I think more could be done. In particular free private health care for life for those in the warzone might be nice.
3. Better contracts for equipment. I mean just look at this list. One can only surmise some tit in the MoD mistook the chaingun for a minigun. The only other reasonable excplanation for buying a chaingun is that the bloke in charge though guns work in real life like they do in DOOM. As mentioned here, it would make a fuck load more sense to buy tried and tested weapons and kit off the peg rather than spending billions and billions on things that don't work. Fuck the SA 80, use the G36 or SLR. Etc.
4. Decent explosives proof kit. Not just more vehicles like the Mastiff but also some nice anti-Mortar barracks at Basra. Because a mattress just isn't really the same.
5. Morale boosters and free shit. Free post, free cinema tickets etc. If the Yanks can have them why can't our soldiers?
6. More helicopters. No explanation even needed.

Now one of the reasons I mention all this is because of the comparison between say Blackwater and our own MoD. Blackwater provides cheap, useable and well suited kit to its men. Its always there on back up. The MoD on the other hand is still buying things based on how shiny they are. Wouldn't it be nice to add more privatisation to the military?

These are just general thoughts, off the top of my head. No plan, no drafts, just writing. And if even I, a man removed from war by two generations, can think of this kind of stuff when the MoD can't then what kind of chance do our soldiers have?

The Sandbashers Speak

From HERE:

Unaha, the above post answers your question. I can testify to the fact that we used the ‘Snatch’ Landrovers (OK for Northern Ireland, iffy elsewhere) in Basra in 2004 while our counterparts from other Coalition contingents (Italians, Danes etc) had patrol vehicles such as the Scarab (MAV 5, above) and the Mowag (below). Both could be fitted with extra armour for added defence against mines and IEDs:

http://kr.img.blog.yahoo.com/ybi/1/24/56/shinecommerce/folder/8/img_8_13384_3?1183781182.jpg
http://www.armyvehicles.dk/apctest_1.htm

At the start of our tour (May 2004) we were driving into Basra - and to Al Amarah - in the standard ‘Wolf’ Landrovers, which had fuck-all protection whatsoever. Eventually the powers that be realised that this was not a good idea, and the Snatches were rushed into theatre as a snap solution. But then the MOD left it at that, and only started to order Mastiff when more blokes started dying in IED attacks.

The reason why the British Army are using WMIKs and Snatches is due to the breach of the military contract which Francis Sedgemore has written about. Whatever your opinions on Iraq and Afghanistan, the fact that soldiers are being expected to operate with outmoded equipment is an absolute disgrace.

Thank God we’ve got Eurofighter, because that really scares the hell out of the Mahdi Army and the Taliban.

Its good to get the view of someone who's out there. And as the last line shows, whatever else the British Army lacks it still has a wicked (if sobering) sense of humour.

The point is well made and reflects what EU Referendum has been saying for a while, namely that the Eurofighter is useless bcause it is designed for the Cold War. Sure it can be used as Close Air Support but its too fast and can't carry enough ordanance. And more than that its incredibly expensive, not only to buy but also to train on and keep running. On the other hand we could use Super Tucanos like Blackwater does which are rugged, require much less equipment, are the right speed for support and cost a measly $9 million (say £4.5 million). A Eurofighter costs £80 million.

But that isn't the point. The reason we buy things like the Eurofighter and the upcoming Future Lynx is simple: small dick syndrome. Eurofighters are shiny and very, very nice. But sadly they are also completely useless for the job in hand, particuarly in comparison to older but more suitable kit. With a Future Lynx we can show off to all the other countries. Unfortunately we just won't be able to show them off anywhere except on the ground because by all accounts the Future Lynx's predeccessor can barely fly in the desert. Gee whiz, how useful.

The other interesting point picked up on by EU Referendum is that Blackwater are the ones buying cheap, suitable kit. This further reinforces John Robb's ideas about the advantages of privatised militaries. Blackwater don't need to show off, they have limited funds and need results for their money. The MoD has little to no incentive (though one wonders if the MoD's top civil servants were sent on fact finding missions to the UK's furthest outposts in Snatch Land Rovers they might change their mind).