Tough Shit Froggies! The Repercussions of Open Borders

Well, I said it the other day: when EU agreements threaten the sovreignty of Germany or France, the rules get changed.

Well, France want the Schengen agreement changed after the influx of Tunisian immigrants via Italy. 

Modifications to Schengen appear to follow other EU rules, in that there needs to be a majority of member states agreeing to the changes before they can be enacted.

So good luck to the French trying to herd those cats. Thats about how difficult it'll be to get those changes through.

There's still tacit support for asylum seekers trying to get from France to England, so its great to see them getting a taste of their own medicine. Especially as Tunisia is an ex-French colony so the bulk of the immigrants will most likely want to settle in France and not trouble us here too much in great numbers.

Do you think the French will suck it up and just accept things as they are? No, I don't either. Should be worth keeping an eye on.

Another Senseless Waste of a Bomb Disposal Expert

Yet another waste of a life, that needn't have been cut short. Another life of many in the Ordnance Disposal Section that the top brass seem to deem expendable.

The fact is in any job, statistically eventually you are going to make a mistake because you are human and fallible. If that job is defusing bombs that someone else has set to kill you, statistically the odds of surviving aren't good to start out with. Combine the two and throw into the mix the effort and stress of defusing bomb after bomb, day after day, in an active and hostile theatre of war anyone with any sense would see that the odds of surviving a tour of duty without death or injury would be be pretty slim. If the odds of surviving a tour are that low, its tantamount to asking or troops to do suicide missions.

Those who day after day, under such immense and unimaginable stress on behalf of their fellow brothers/sisters in arms continue to disarm IEDs with the certain knowledge of their low odds of survival deserve our utmost respect and admiration.

Its just a pity that such waste is senseless, when other hugely safer means of clearance can be used instead.
As long ago as World War Two, we had flail tanks: armoured vehicles that were used to clear mines, with very little risk from the occupants. Today, in our war zones,  we see British Ordnance Disposal staff walking in front of convoys, with no protection from IEDs and just a flak jacket to stop small arms fire.

IT HAS TO STOP.

Its about time our top brass wised up and changed tactics, rather than put our troops under such stress. A female bomb disposal expert being killed might highlight the issue and make a difference, although it shouldn't. I just wonder if at some point, under such unimaginable mental stresses, we'll get the first bomb disposal expert to send a letter home to say they deliberately set off an IED to kill themselves.

It doesn't have to happen: years ago DOTR provided an alternative solution, the d-9 armoured bulldozer. The Americans are using the breacher, a bulldozer/tank hybrid. UK forces have an equivalent called the Trojan.

We could quite easily use such vehicles to clear main routes to and from bases. There is no need to endlessly patrol back alleys and risk the lives of our soldiers in such obvious ambush territory. If one of our bases is being attacked, send out an armoured convoy with the breacher in front directly to the enemy position and engage them. That bomb disposal experts and their fellow comrades are being sacrificed to end their days in some dusty alleyway in order to prove a point by supporting endless, pointless foot patrols just seems to be a waste.

Our armed forces are at their best when they innovate, invent and integrate new strategies into their operations, putting the enemy on the back foot. Its about time our top brass disengaged from their 1914 mentality and engaged the mentality and strategy of 1944.

"Could"? "Could"? I'd say its an absolute neccessity:

David Cameron says he could veto Gordon Brown's move to the IMF.

I'd say it should be a cast iron guaran.... no hang on... bad wording.

I'd say it should be a certainty. Not because in my opinion Gordon Brown is the most incompetent Prime Minister this country ever had, but also because if he was allowed to move to the IMF it would stink to high heaven.

During his tenure, Gordon Brown watched over the biggest bailout of private companies in this nation's history. Hundreds of billions of pounds were sunk into the banks, which were in essence companies. Those companies, when they were solvent, paid dividends to private shareholders. They did not contribute to the coffers of the treasury other than the tax revenue they paid, like any other company.

The government's obligation, if it had any, was to secure the money invested in the acounts of the high street banking arms of the big banks. It didn't have any obligation towards the casino style investment banks, yet Gordon Brown oversaw their bailout and rescue.

What he should have done is let the insolvent banks fail, compensate high street bank account holders and then let the solvent banks pick over what was left.

In that one act, he consigned us to decades of austerity rather than a short, sharp shock.

So not only is Gordon Brown in my opinion unfit to hold even the lowest job in any financial institution, it also sends the message that a senior minister... THE most senior minister in the land, can divert huge amounts of the countries capital into saving an insolvent industry that didn't need to be saved, then having "saved" that industry, leave his ministerial position for a while and take a senior job in that very industry.

If that isn't tantamount to corruption and misuse of ministerial powers, I don't know what is.

And for those pedants, I don't care that we didn't bail out the IMF. I'm more concerned with the cosiness of his relationship with the banks, which obviously influenced his decision to waste so much taxpayers money.
Back room deals with big bankers are obviously not the exclusiveterritory of the Tories. The sooner Labour voters wise up to the fact that none of the traditional working class heroes like the Labour party and the Unions are run for their benefit any more and are just out to exploit the very people they're supposed to stand up for, the better.

Anyway, back to the original point: I'd appreciate it if Gordon Brown wasn't given a feather-bedded retirement nest-egg of a job thank you very much. In my opinion sack cloth and ashes are far too lenient for the misery he's going to cause my children and grandchildren for decades to come. For the first time I think in a very long time, I'm a member of a generation that can look forward and see a less prosperous future for my offspring. Thats a fucking depressing thought I can tell you, and I know who's to blame.

And no way does he deserve a fucking cushy job at the IMF.