Ah I'm rich.... Oh wait it's the Express carry on all.

Fuck me! They've only gone and reported the news! Still room for some spurious medical bullshit though.

It involved teh soljerzzzz, of course they were going to report it. Never one to miss a trick for petty jingoism.

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"Even when you're a super-computer with an IQ of 2000 it's brown trousers time."

Reclaiming "methinks" for the nation

Latest blog post - 2011 - a review (updated 07/10)

Indeed. And I'm pretty sure the 'death toll' in Afghanistan is a bit higher than 404. I can only assume that to the Express, only British fatalities count as deaths. I'm sorry for the families, just as I am for the families of people on the other side, too. That headline is a fucking disgrace.

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Soppy anti-British, pro-crime, anti-education, pro-immigration, anti-family nonentity

Agreed. That headline is just... abhorrent.

Six soldiers lost their lives. That's what matters. Sensationalising it as "murder" or anything else is just abusing their deaths to make sales.

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Changin' avatars like there's no tomorrow

6 is "mass" now?

Contrast with reports of the start of the battle of the Somme. Over 20,000 killed and 64,000 "casualties" on the first day alone.



Not a mention of Heroes.

Both are bad in their own ways. One is sensationalist, one overlooks mass-sacrifice.

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Changin' avatars like there's no tomorrow

On the first day of the Somme the casualty figures weren't apparent, even to Haig.
They were much discussed subsequently, but in terms of balancing the cost against the potential gain.
Almost every dead soldier got a notice in his local paper, and national newspapers carried full lists of the dead. But the paradigm was of men being killed doing their duty for king & country, not of tragic heroes somehow dying for a lost cause due to machinating politicians, despite the war aims being largely naked national self-interest.
It wasn't until the 1930s that the paradigm shifted and the 'futility of war and sacrifice' theme was established.

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Where there is great doubt, there will be great awakening; small doubt, small awakening, no doubt, no awakening.

I think by 1916 they'd stopped counting.

Au contraire. There was a lengthy debate in parliament over the human cost of the war, which led to Lloyd George refusing to release newly trained recruits in the UK to go to France until the generals found less bloody ways of waging war. Which they largely did, until 1918 when mobile operations began again and the butcher's bill went up.

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Where there is great doubt, there will be great awakening; small doubt, small awakening, no doubt, no awakening.

+1. That and there is a big difference between mass murder and war casualties. I feel bad for the families of the soldiers too, but that kind of writing shouldn't be alowed.

Tell people what is happening in the world, and leave it at that.

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"Now get those trousers off before someone dies!"

It's a bit complex, but because we're technically not at war in Afghanistan (it's - I think - a police action or some euphamism), the Taleban don't count as 'enemy combatants' as per your Geneva Convention. So it's a bit like the IRA killing people - they claim they're at war, we say they're thugs with guns.

I'm aware that this sounds horrbly unpatriotic, and I've had thoughts like this since the Gulf war, but I'm really quite sick of this sentiment expressed in the British media that the enemy are in some way cheating by fighting back.

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Ten seconds... the pain begins.

Fifteen seconds... you can't breathe.

Twenty seconds... you give up and turn off the Jeremy Vine show.

I defer, Sir, to your superior knowledge.

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Sick Left-wing Zealot.