Holidays in Hell

Whether by accident or design, this War in Terror business has been doing a stand-up job of knocking other stories out of the headlines; for getting on five years now.

Take yesterday for example.

The Top 5 UK and Ireland news stories as selected for me by Yahoo when I first flipped on the Internet for the day…

The full scoop isn’t yet in on the Stingray that did for Steve Irwin, but five pounds says the fucker was a Muslim.

Even if the ray wasn't a member of Al Qaeda that's still an impressive 4/5 score for the War on Terror.

And what about our Poor Bloody Infantry. We’re losing one here, one there, every couple of days and for what? Southern Iraq’s gone tits up and there’s so much heroin pouring out of Afghanistan via the Balkans into the UK you can get fixed up in London for roughly the same price as a pint of premium lager.

All this probably goes a long way to explaining the rash of Army Recruitment ads we’ve seen in the national media over the last few months. At least I think they're for the army. Most of the ads seem to concentrate on the sports facilities and the rigorously heterosexual nightlife available to the modern British Infantryman and have a vague Club 18–30 air about them. Even the material that focuses on the combat side of things seems quite coy about the whole Middle East/ furious native thing and prefers to depict soldiers noncing around in thick, rather European-looking woodland… or skiing.

Something similar went on in 80s when squaddies were being picked off one by one on the streets of Belfast. No imagery of Northern Ireland, plenty of shots of beach sports in Belize and Cyprus.

3rd Para Battlegroup, Helmand Province , Afghanistan

I guess if I could remember that far back I could probably dig out some recruitment posters from 1915 that portrayed Ypres as being just like Butlins, only more Belgian.

As some people who shrug their shoulders when I get into a lather about all shit the going on in the world around us say to me

‘Nothing changes. It’s always been the same. And it always will’