Railfreight and the Explosion Musuem

Freight! This is rail freight. Each of these inert mines in the magazine at the Explosion museum in Gosport is on a narrow gauge wagon (not those floating sky high in the roof area of course). This was Monday 10th April 2017 during Aunt Anne's funeral wake. It was not my idea to hold this in the Explosion Museum but it was a dammed good idea. The Navy based catering was excellent. The views superb. Whoever has displayed this museum has had a keen sense of the surreal. The internal architecture and subject matter lend themselves to this. In these uncertain times, when we all urged to loyalty, and pulling together (as you do in a harbour), it is difficult to strike the balance between being a good team person, never wanting to disappoint, but somehow deep down in the heart feeling that the nation has taken corporate leave of its senses and not really being totally convinced that we will recover them on June 8th. I hope we do but I suspect my fading years will all be about enjoying Brexit, rediscovering how great it is to pour scorn on the neighbours and their plans. Portsmouth is a wonderful place to get a handle on this. The Mary Rose is a lasting testimony to the practice of Euroscepticism in action. Whilst the Victory shows the extent of the victory possible against wrong headed continental thought. Behind Portsmouth (and I had not seen any of this before) the Portsdown line of forts (and Fort Nelson) which is open to the public are simply breath-taking. Fort Nelson reminded me how the cult of the volunteer and the amateur (the Victorian Militias) underpin so much of British life. The true Brit cannot be confined by rule and process and that was the European mistake! (or so we imagine for the narrative). Anyway providence is remarkable, my short break to the heart of the British Navy is within the week followed up by the unexpected (to everyone but Drew Blane) call to election arms. The lady in Bristol (was'nt it?) sounded a bit put out. I don't know if I am put out or not. I do know, really know, we have to get beyond the last four years somehow, and I know who I blame for the last four years and it is not actually Mr Corbyn!

Alan Henning

Alan Henning has been murdered so we must pray for him, his family and his murderers. What else must Britain do? The prime minister vows to use all necessary means to bring the murderers (and behind them ISIS) to justice. At https://www.facebook.com/robert.forsythe.39/posts/733428010064290 I quote a letter, the tenor of which is both: much of this conflict is totally ununderstandable but then even so the West is ultimately to blame. Two matters are present here, the complicated philosophy of causality and the urgent need of what to do. On causality the letter is very persuasive, ultimately however it is appeasement. These events take place on the border of a NATO member. They take place on lands where for a 100 years Britain or France has been deeply involved (and that is putting it simply). To fail to respond extremely forcibly to such murderous barbarism is to invite the movement to expand and ultimately work on our own streets. In the past this sort of insanity was present, it is not new. It happened in the 19th century. At those times we had the power to project. If you compare this to Khartoum, you would build a railway, assemble ships, march in a relieving force. It is hard to think Britain can do this now. ISIS essentially claim 8 Tornados "caused" them to murder Alan.

So what do I think needs to happen. At a deeper level we need to accept that the ease with which certain Islamicist groups resort to disproportionate violence has to be tackled. It has been there for a long time. To say that Salman Rusdie (himself with a Muslim background) was one victim is to hardly go far back in history. Islam says it is a religion of justice, its adherents (and I am sure many agree) must then insure all its member behave with great justice, and not pervert justice into barbaric inhumanity.


And since history suggests we are in this for the long haul. We need to re-arm, I think every military commentator I have heard, has said that only a well trained Western style army can get in there with any speed and wrest back the communities involved. It is a very unpleasant prospect and I assure you I would be the world's worst soldier despite my father's example. But if we will not do this and ISIS prevails, initially their barbarism will be both writ across the Middle East and as our own British nationals show, it will be exported back to us in person. The murderer was British. It is astonishing. Like the recent referendum this suggest deep unsettlement with our national British identity.


So the bottom line, if ISIS is to be consigned to history, expect an expansion in Britain's armed forces despite all the recent cost cutting. Not just to work in the Middle East but there is also the rather forgotten matter of the Nigerian girls, a former colony and one with a large British community with us. My brother is married to a Nigerian. We are responsible and we should act there too, if Goodluck Jonathan would let us.

General Pitraeus

"Dubbed the warrior monk, he proved no monk at all". BBC R4 Today 0635. The subject General Pitraeus (or Betrayus - a word play not new but now made more apposite). The subject is sex and the divide is between ideals and pragmatics. I accept that the human is essentially a sexual and imaginative animal. I applaud diversity. But there has to be boundaries. If you lie to your partner or risk state secrets there will not be a happy outcome. It would be better if Pitraeus' wife (or Hilary C for that matter) had learnt to apply a chastity belt. The technology is readily available nowadays. Or if absent partners had managed their dalliances in a more straightforward way. Not for nothing does the phrase "camp follower" exist in history and our British military authorities in World War faciliated brothels. Now if you find this all distasteful, perhaps soldiers and others should not leave home for another's country in the first place? This little link well describes the ups and downs of such situations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagh_El-Birket .

Background to this.