Bad News Day

Yesterday, Thursday, 14th May 2009, was a bad day for News. Not bad in the newspaper sense of no news. It was a bad day because there was so much bad news. One striking bit of bad news was reported only in the middle pages of most newspapers. Four more dead soldiers were driven in hearses through Wootton Bassett as they returned from Afghanistan. The local people lined the streets as they now always do; some saluted; some just hung their heads; flags were lowered. It seems that the inhabitants of this village have taken on the role of official mourners on behalf of the nation every time more dead soldiers arrive back at RAF Lyneham. The fact that the event was not unusual does not diminish the sacrifices made by these men. There was a time when four soldiers arriving together would warrant front page news - but not yesterday. How long will it go on? Why are we in Afghanistan? It seems clear that our soldiers are sent out with inadequate equipment - guns, vehicles, telecommunications, etc. and asked to do an almost impossible job. We pay them so badly and they get killed. And the reason that even in death they cannot make the front pages is because yesterday all of that space was used up by reports of MPs fiddling their expenses.

MPs are paid £65,000 per year [more than 3 x the pay of a junior soldier] and it is clear that many of them are boosting their incomes by all kinds of ludicrous scams. In the whole of my life, I don't think that I can remember a single event in politics that has so riled the whole nation, from the single mother in downtown Salford to the comfortably off in rural Berkshire, like this matter of expenses. While young men are being killed trying to do an almost impossible job imposed on them by parliament, our MPs are hard at work feathering their nests and asking us to pay for everything from second [and third] homes to cleaning the moat and trimming the wisteria.

There is something is rotten in the state of Britain