Gremlin’s Fireside Chat

As is my wan’t (to quote the great Billy Conolly) I am fond of reading the news and keeping up on what is happening in the world. I usually read the Irish Independent, English Times, English Daily Mail, New York Times and the Sydney morning Herald; But by far my favourite news site is the BBC News website. I was reading this article on turning Busses into mobile sensor traffic platforms for traffic monitoring when I had this thought …. “How long will it be before someone in the police/home-security/MI-5 suggest turning busses into mobile CCTV and other sensor platforms”. Britain is one of the most CCTV ridden places on earth… no doubt adding forward, rear and side camera’s would help no end in public – no I mean criminal and subversive element – monitoring.

Big brother is here to stay unfortunately – and we have only ourselves to blame.

I have always been interested in history, more-so of late – but that is the function of passing time. Today, 28th November, in 1990 – some 16 years ago – The Honourable Margaret Thatcher resigns as Prime Minster and John Major is selected as the new Tory Leader in the UK. Why is this important? It isn’t really, but it is an event I remember well. It was an end of an era, a woman who molded my formative years, and to be honest unlike most politician’s Maggie had definite political views and beliefs and kept to them. To be stabbed in the back by her own side was kind of ironic since at the time the Tory party was usually pretty solid on the unity front; in the 80’s it was the Labour party who made an art of stabbing their leader in the back at fairly regular intervals.

It was quite a shock in the late 90’s and 2000’s when the parties in the uk did a loyalty switcheroo with the Labour having a united front and the Tories kings of the back-stabbing and shooting yourselves in the foot.

Anyway back to Maggie, our Iron Lady. She espoused the philosophy of self-reliance, little government interference in business, privatization of government assets and a gung-ho attitude to interfering foreign powers. She won a war; jumped into bed with the USA (figuratively that is), and helped beat the Soviet bear.

What a woman.

Today is May the 2nd. Nothing too special, a nice day in Dublin; work went well and I relearned a couple of new things about Java and the nature of Watchdogs. But this is an aside. From the BBC On This Day site there were two items that brought back to me the passing of time and I am getting old. The first was on 2nd May 1997 The Labour Party Crushed the corrupt Tory government which had been in since 1979 with the promises of equality for all, justice for all and good clean, honourable Government. I was 32 at the time. I thought the world was becoming a better place – how wrong I was. Look in today’s British papers and you get pretty much what the Tories had become famous for – Ministers abusing power, ministers cheating on their wives or husbands, and incompetence in Government – in all cases the Ministers concerned trying desperately to cling on to their jobs and power; HOW can they hold up their heads in public – not only that but have the cheek to refer to each other as “the honourable memberâ€?; There is little honour between any of them. I won’t go on about imprisonment without trial (although terrorists should be hunted down with as much gusto as we can muster) or going to war on false pretences and telling bare faced lies to the public about it.

The other thing was on May 2nd 1982 the General Belgrano was sunk by a British Submarine and initiating the “hotâ€? period of the Falklands war. I remember it because I was a member of the British Armed Forces at the time (ah the time when I was fit, had hair and had a decent figure – fond memories). My Battalion was on a rifle-range and we were undertaking a Battalion shoot at the time – it was a warm sunny day I remember; It was the day I discovered that I could shoot better with my left hand than my right (I am right-handed by preference). The day was going fairly well for my company (D Company) but there was a buzz in the air about the war – will we be deployed, who do we know who’s out there, how will I react under real combat conditions? will my bottle go or will I be OK and not let my mates down? will there be any fighting or will the various governments back down. All these thoughts and feelings are natural in the circumstances.

The range tannoy system crackled into life sometime early in the afternoon and made a brief announcement giving the basics of what had happened – an Argentinian Cruiser sunk; no British casualties; probable Argentinian. The men – myself included – cheered and roared with delight with national and professional pride (that said, I am Southern Irish and was serving in the British Army, but the family has a history of this and the pay is much better than the Irish Army); At the time I clearly remember an inner disquiet. I remember thinking, “that’s it; no chance of peace now; why am I cheering; don’t these men realise that men have died – they may be Argentinian but they are men like you and me doing a job; it could be you, and somewhere and sometime soon a family is going to be devastated to learn they have lost a son, lover or husband. A child will be fatherless. It is an odd to feel elation and sadness at the same time, you would have thought that they are opposite emotions to a degree and you would feel either on or another.

It really made me think about war, humanity. I often think of the Falklands. Fortunately I was never deployed there. But I knew people who did and some who went and never came back alive. A military funeral is a solemn and majestic thing in many ways – and it really brings home the sacrifice of those millions who fell in the slaughter of the first world war; but to loose some one who is only 18,19, 20 is not the way it should be. We were, and many of those sent out as cannon fodder are little more than children with guns. What a waste of so much potential. What has humanity come to?