The girlie boys

Forget big green (or sand-coloured) toys, and nasty things that go "bang". If you want to get the Boy King "engaged" in defence, get a general to talk about accommodation standards.

Despite the heroic efforts of the Tory Boy Blog to indicate otherwise, only then you will get the Boy gushing all over the nearest microphone and piggie rushing from studio to studio, wetting his knickers about the need to provide soldiers "with comfortable living quarters while they are not away on dangerous operations."

It was in fact one of our forum members who yesterday pointed out this "girlie" phenomenon, viz-à-viz our own piece about the RAF's air transport capabilities. "The Green Tosser", he wrote,

…can't be seen to be involved in anything nasty that kills our enemies, like armaments, as that might effect the creation of his touchy-feely image in the focus groups ....but complaining about troop transport failures, which keep our brave lads apart from their loving families, is entirely in line with his PR con job of an image. Hence little Liam piping up and the whole tone of that article.

On reflection, that is very much the truth. There has been a stunning silence from the Boy about our military capabilities and the limitations of our equipment.

But he and the Party is quite willing to bring up pay, the treatment of the wounded and now, the standard of soldiers' accommodation. These are all "soft" fringe issues which have nothing specifically martial about them. They do not deal directly with military capabilities (i.e., the ability to kill people and break things), or vital force protection issues. The Boy and his shadow cabinet have gone all girlie.

Frankly, though, when it comes to a dirty bath (one of the pictures sent to the BBC) and a dead soldier dragged from a shattered "Snatch" Land Rover, I know which I find more offensive.

Don't get me wrong, both are important but, in the scheme of things, I would sooner have dirty soldiers than dead ones. It is about time the Conservative Party showed the same sense of values and started getting its priorities right.

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