Don't laugh at me, Argentina...but, on the other hand, why not?

Image by BlatantNews.com via Flickr

The rumbling sound you may be hearing  is not an earthquake about to engulf the lowlands of Scotland, but my father revolving in his grave.

The two Dear Leaders of France and the U.K., Sarkozy and Cameron, have signed a military co operation pact, creating a joint task force which is supposed to make economies of scale and improvements in efficiency while at the same time preserving the sovereign interests of each nation.

President Sarkozy, as always, went straight to the point.
"If you, my British friends, have to face a major crisis, could you imagine France simply sitting there, its arms crossed, saying that it's none of our business?"

Damn right I can.

To be fair to Sarkozy, I think he personally would be willing to push France into action...he is, as his party belatedly found out, not your typical French politician.
But can you imagine the reactions of a more typically 'French' French President?

Mitterand?

Chirac?

And, to think the unthinkable....Le Pen?

Since the latter hasn't forgiven the English for burning Joan of Arc, he probably hasn't forgiven the U.K. for Mers el Kebir either, so he wouldn't be authorising the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle to sail for the Falklands any time soon. Not that he could anyway...the thing spends more time undergoing repairs in dry dock than it does in the water.

Father...who went through the entire Second World War.... had an unchanging view of the French military....

'Buggers let us down in 1914...buggers let us down in 1940...'

A view not ameliorated by learning that the rockets doing so much damage to the Falklands expeditionary forces had been sold to Argentina by the French.

Now, all this may be conflicts long ago and far away and brave men on the ground are usually betrayed by the  politicians far from the firing line, but I think father has something about which to rumble.

Both countries' military hardwear is obsolete, broken or not fit for purpose....as are the supply systems which support them.

One look at the U.K. Ministry of Defence's purchasing system would give a respectable Victorian counting house clerk a case of the screaming habdabs...and it ought to give us one too.
Their French equivalents keep their methods quiet...and have every reason to do so given the incestuous link between political party funding and big business in France.

So, given the chronic shortage of money...since banks and even butter come before guns....and the refusal to shake up both Defence Ministries...the two bright sparks have conjured up this wizard scheme to pretend to their countries that they are capable of defending national interests by joining forces.

So two broken reeds are suddenly going to form one strong tree?
I don't think so.
Another case of smoke and mirrors to deceive the electorate.

It would better behove Cameron and Sarkozy to declare the exact nature of the national interests to protect which they send their young people into danger.

France still sends troops to shore up the dictatorships of their ex African colonies.....whose value to France is not immediately obvious, but whose value to French politicians is......valuable.

The U.K. sends its troops wherever the U.S. directs....the value to the U.K. of such action is negligible, even counter productive but the value of such policies to U.K. politicians seems to be fat contracts with Carlisle on  retirement and access to the speaking tour circuit.

Were they to consult their people...the ones who have democratic rights for a few minutes in a polling booth every so often....they might find a distinctively different idea of national interests.

A first class education system....
A health service which works.....
Cutting the fat from public systems....all the tiers of management, the consultants, the Quangos....
A police service which serves people not politicians.....
Action, not 'initiatives' on the curse of drug use....
Proper care with dignity for elderly people.....

Supporting African dictators and U.S. politicians would not rank highly, I feel.

November 11th will soon be upon us again, when we remember what are called the 'sacrifices' made by the armed forces in all the declared and undeclared conflicts since 1918.

Perhaps we should be remembering rather that these men and women were 'sacrificed' by the politicians of the time and we should honour their memory, not only by wearing poppies, contributing to charities and attending services but by demanding honesty of current politicians.

After all, we're still waiting for the fulfillment of Lloyd George's  wish that the U.K. should be a country fit for heroes to live in.....only ninety two years on.

Mother has a question...I have the answer.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

When I visited my mother, earlier this year, it was around the period of Armistice Day, so we duly watched the British Legion event at the Albert Hall, the Remembrance Sunday ceremony in Whitehall and the ceremony in Westminster Abbey centred around the tomb of the Unknown Warrior. We also wore our poppies when out shopping. As did most people of all ages that we saw around us.

At all these ceremonies and in all the commentaries upon them, we kept hearing the word 'sacrifice'...these men and women who 'sacrificed' their lives to protect or defend their country. Mother will have none of it, and I think she is right. They did not sacrifice themselves, they were killed. We don't hear of civilians 'sacrificing' themselves....but they were killed too.

For mother, who volunteered for the Auxiliary Territorial Service -the ATS - the second world war war had two aspects...the difficult conditions and the liberty that, as a woman, she had never enjoyed before 1939.

She remembers, shortly before volunteering, she was walking the Surrey downs when a lone German 'plane began to strafe a bus that was ahead of her on the road. She dropped into a hollow and kept her head down, watching the shadow of the plane as it passed on.
There were the fears of invasion, when even the women in the army were taught how to use a rifle, concrete tank traps on all the roads to the south coast and the signposts taken away.
The slogan 'Take one with you.'
The rumours of German paratroopers disguised as nuns and the ribald jokes associated with their identification.
David Niven opening his Christmas present from a female Hollywood star in the Greenjackets' mess and finding it was a hand knitted willy warmer.
Travelling to York on a train with no lights, kept upright only by the crush of men and their kitbags...a jamjar of tea coloured purple by the golden syrup used to sweeten it passed in through a window.
Working in London in a glassed in building while doodlebugs dropped all around the area...coming out of the British Restaurant and seeing a doodlebug flying up the road ahead of her, shooting just over the railway lines, while Italian prisoners of war hooted and jeered at the British dropping to the ground.
A terrible night of bombing while she was at King's Cross railway terminus...the stampede of people when the gates to the platform opened, and the feeling of bodies under foot as she was swept onto the train by the crowd.
Seeing the endless lorries heading down to the south coast before D Day, troops giving the 'V' sign as they passed.
Going with friends to the bombed out houses of their families to try to rescue what they could from the mess..only allowed near at all because they were in uniform.
The misery of friends whose fiances had been killed.

But she was also revelling in the freedom of being released from the narrow world of before the conflict. She met people from social groups she would never otherwise have encountered, made friends, travelled the country, learned skills and gained a confidence which has never left her. She and her friends could even go into a pub without being regarded as prostitutes.
She says she found that she wasn't just a woman, she was a person, and that she was valued for what she could do rather than just for where she stood in society.

Nowadays, she wonders whether the 'sacrifice', the killing, was worthwhile. The society she knew has changed radically, the opportunities the post war generation demanded and obtained have evaporated and poverty and ignorance again haunt society.
She asks herself if, after all these years, life would have been very different if the Germans had won, or Britain had surrendered after Dunkirk.

There is the serious answer...but there is also the lighter side.

Every New Year's Eve, the German nation gathers round its' television screens for a particular programme and, if German hegemony had been established in the U.K., the British nation would no doubt be gathered likewise...to watch

'Dinner for One'.

By order.

Check it out on Youtube and see why Britain had to win the war.