Funky Farmer & Friends Please keep coming back. I may be serious, I may be frivolous, but most of all I hope I am never boring. I pray that I am blonde enough to be scatty yet grey enough to be wise!

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Wednesday, September 21st 2005

9:36 AM

Ain't life grand

Thought Of The Day NEVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night

Here dawns another thrilling day in the offing. I wonder what I should do today? Hmmmm. let me think? Now here lies the problem. Thinking starts out just fine , then suddenly, I'm thinking something completely different, or at least I think I am because I have forgotten what I was thinking in the first place. If you understand what I mean.

Now where was I? Oh yes, The weather. It will be mostly faggots, peas and gravy for dinner.. Memory loss is not the only cross we oldies have to bear you know.A pal of mine tells the story of how he was was lying in bed one night . He was falling asleep but the wife felt romantic and wanted to talk. She said, "You used to hold my hand when we were courting." Wearily, he reached across, held her hand for a second and tried to get back to sleep. A few moments later she said, "Then you used to kiss me." Mildly irritated, he reached across, gave her a peck on the cheek and settled down to sleep. Thirty seconds later she said, "Then you use to bite my neck." Angrily, he threw back the bed covers and got out of bed. "Where are you going?" she asked. "To get my teeth!"

Ain't life grand me ducks?

On a seriuos note i feel I need to share a few thoughts on the conflict in Iraq.

“RIOTERS set fire to British troops,” says the Telegraph’s front page. Beneath that headline there’s a shot of a British soldier in flames leaping for his life from a Warrior armoured vehicle.

The war in Iraq is back on the front pages, and it makes for a sobering, appalling and captivating read.

But what triggered this attack by rioters in Basra? Wasn’t this city the place about which British troops did their rounds in soft berets? Weren’t they cheered when they first entered the streets?

This was no friendly fire. Things have changed in Iraq’s second city, and to the chant of “Murderers out”, the Telegraph puts the attack on the British soldiers in some kind of context.

The paper says the violence broke out after two members of the Special Air Service, the fabled SAS, were arrested in the city by a militia loyal to the Iraqi government.

The two men were sent to a jail in Basra after they were stopped at a checkpoint. The story goes that they identified themselves but shots were fired when the local police tried to arrest them. (The Times hears that in the exchange of gunfire an Iraqi policeman was killed.)

So the two men were taken to prison. They were photographed, and on the front page of the Times readers see the pair sat in jail looking bandaged and sweaty. Plans were then set in action to free the men.

The first rescue attempt resulted in the awful scenes of the Warrior vehicle being bombed and a British soldier in flames.

Time for Plan B. And for the Telegraph to hear the Ministry of Defence issue a denial that in the course of this raid tanks had deliberately broken a prison wall. A wall was “damaged” says the paper. No more than that.

But the Times hears a different version of events. As the start of its coverage says: “British forces used six tanks to smash their way into Basra’s main jail.”

Oh? “After the walls were breached, troops stormed inside to locate and rescue their colleagues.” They were successful. The two unnamed men are now free. As are around 150 unnamed Iraqi prisoners.

Inside the Times, readers can see a graphic of how the ram raid played out. And learn that the result of the violence is, reportedly, two Iraqis dead and three British soldiers seriously injured.

But we can’t be truly certain what occurred. Perhaps until either or both of the SAS soldiers at the centre of the day’s activities write their books, we never will know the truth.

All we do know is that things are not going perfectly. Not everyone in Basra likes the British troops being there.

But this is an armed conflict, and such is the way with live ammunition and fighting, people are always going to get hurt.

And that includes British soldiers... This old soldier believes "Enough is enough" and we should never have gone to the god forsaken hole in the first instance. I have been to many world trouble spots in my life and always with the same result. We go there, our young men get killed, we get out having solved nothing. WHEN WILL THE POLITICIANS EVER LEARN?