Friday 19 December 2014

Women on the Front line

A Ministry Defence source says: 'there is a real desire among Ministers and the military to open up ground combat roles to women . There is a genuine hope this will become a reality by 2016'

So how many lies are there in that sentence. One at least - I have spoken to many soldiers of all ranks and have yet to hear any single soldier express any such 'desire' at all.  Anybody who has ever been a soldier knows this is political correct madness which will have a negative effect on the combat ability of front line troops. So why do it? well it is all part of the great 'Modernise Britain ' campaign so ably promulgated by our Prime Minister but I just wonder whether anyone has even thought of what risks women on the front line might actually face when push comes to shove and the bullets start flying - death or injury sure that is a given - but - frankly- I wouldn't want to be a woman front line soldier who ended up a prisoner of ISIS and I wouldn't like to be the Minister explaining how this state of affairs has been allowed to happen. .    

No doubt that same lying spokesman from the MOD will maintain that 'standards of fitness and strength and stamina' will not be jeopardised in pursuit of our Dave's aim of  making the army more 'inclusive' well pull the other one will you - because we all know that that is exactly what will happen.

Tuesday 2 December 2014

London house prices and Boris

On a visit to London I picked up the Evening Standard - two articles caught my eye. In one Sam Leith reported that ; "...even thirty somethings - the sort you would expect to be life blood of the up and coming fringes of the city - are fleeing to Birmingham, Nottingham and Oxford in search of affordable housing and agreeable lives."

Turning a few pages I came across a picture of a T shirt clad Boris Johnson (not a pretty sight) who was in Kuala Lumpur where - surprise, surprise - the developers of  Battersea Power Station are staging a road show to sell the properties to the Malaysian rich

Now I'm sorry but if I was Mayor of London I would be seriously concerned about Sam Leith's piece -which he wrote on the back of a report form the Office of National Statistics who found 60,000 people in their thirties left the capital in the year to June.  In fact so concerned would I be about the ridiculous level of house prices in London that instead of promoting sales of the Battersea Power Station development in Malaysia I would have thought his time would be better spent in lobbying the Prime Minister to look at bringing in legislation to either heavily tax foreigners buying property in London or to restrict foreigners right to buy in London - and by the by - don't tell me it can't be done because the Swiss do it rather well.

High property prices are not a boom - they are a curse. Walking round London last night through Kensington and Chelsea  whole streets are in darkness with hardly a light showing in blocks of flats or rows of houses - so many are now owned by rich foreigners as 'investments.' Simple Edwardian terrace houses in Battersea and Fulham are now routinely fetching well over £1.0 million making them unaffordable to all but the highest paid and all Boris does is promote more sales of London property to more absentee so called 'investors' -it is a bad joke.