I am therefore at a loss to understand why News International has taken no legal action to protect its reputation in this case. Perhaps the corporation is in such desperate financial straits that it can’t afford to pursue the matter (this would explain why poor Mr Murdoch is so keen to start charging for on-line content). It’s distressing to think of needy, vulnerable and disadvantaged publications such as The Sun being exposed to such merciless ridicule and I’m seriously thinking of starting a fighting fund to help them out. I think I’ll call it “Media Tycoon Aid”. I know there’s a recession on, but in times like these, desperate tabloids need our help and support more than ever.

Yes, that must be what has happened. The alternative explanation – that The Sun is guilty as charged – is quite unthinkable, given the paper’s unsullied reputation for fair, scrupulous and accurate reporting, with not so much as a suspicion of bias, malice or sensationalism. Shame on you, you bully! Go and pick on someone your own size.

Warning: This comment has been prepared in a household that uses sarcasm, so cannot be guaranteed sarcasm-free

By their actions shall ye know them (shrug). Many of us have seen the scorched earth policy of this person as evidence of the sort of repellent liar and coward and vindictive, selfish hypocrite he is. We don’t need to have sat down to breakfast with him.

It’s a weird kinda brown-nosing that claims GB might be outwitted by a turnip, but hey, no one said you were normal Oxymoron.

Which is called ‘lying’ in English.

Cunning? Not really, but it’ll take something smarter than you to catch GB out. A turnip, perhaps.

On which infantile and desperate note, Sy goes back to brown-nosing Brown, the worst PM in two centuries.

There are a some incontrovertible truths:

The MoD is probably the most wasteful government department of them all. They have a history of project mismangement that makes the former EDS look efficient. There are multiple examples of the MoD ordering hardware that is obsolete before the ink has dried on the contract, and non-qualified executives ordering computer systems not fit for purpose. We are talking about sums running into hundreds of millions and even billions. Reforming the MoD is a nettle successuve governments have failed to grasp, but you can be certain that the government that does eventaully have the balls to do this will be spectacularly unpopular in the upper-echelons of the military (albeit your average grunt will be massively grateful). The point is that being unpopular with military top-brass is not necessarily a bad thing.

Today’s equipment for British service personnel is better than it ever has been and, apart from the Yanks who get the best of whatever they ask for when they ask for it, is superior or at least as good as the equipment enjoyed by every other western army. People who take their lead from talboid editors who wouldn’t know a RPG from a BFG and the understandable but misguided pronouncements of grieving relatives will be shocked to hear this, but it’s nevertheless true (and if you listen to COs and troops out there when they are asked, they say the same thing time and again). What problems there have been with equipment centre on logistics, getting kit to the front-line and its allocation once it’s there. With the best will in the world, this is not something a govt minister sitting in Westminster can do anything to influence.

The pay is still disgustingly low and the living arrangements sometimes unfit for human habitation, but a lack of equipment is not a feature in Afghanistan. There was a problem with helicopter numbers originally (albeit even this was hysterically overplayed) but by far the biggest issue is troop numbers. Some territory in Helmland has had to be taken half-a-dozen times because there is insufficient manpower to hold ground taken from the Taliban.

Bottom-line is that NATO needs to send more troops, or we should get out of there. I think it’s a battle worth fighting so I’d support the former strategy, but if this doesn’t happen then I’m not prepared to watch our soldiers dying as they fight war made unwinnable by decisions taken in European capitals far from the guts and the gore.

Abdul. If that Gordo Broon was Indian what caste would he be.
I think it would be very low down.

Would we let him in the shop Abdul ?

I feel sorry for his parents. Why didn’t they educate him so he could get a proper Job ?

However the conversation stops as I have to rush outside to stop nice BNP man being attacked by white liberals.

Peace be upon me.