LAST REFUGE OF THE SCOUNDREL.

 Death's own chariot, rolling

Residents of Royal Wootton Bassett were yesterday gutted, devastated, to'ally and u''erly bewildered.  We wuz robbed, said one resident, shoulda happened when we were in charge,  said another.  Residents wandered the town aimlessly  in the face of the news that six soldiers killed in a not very armoured car in Afghanistan would be repatriated, as they call it,  to some other town.  Waddarewegonnado, moaned Corporal Ted Moustache of the British Legion.  Our folks are addicted to clapping, like, at the coffins, and frowing them single roses at the 'earses and being on the telly.  To some a my members it was the next best thing to when Princess Di was buried, in that theme park, wot 'er bruvver runs.  'Sall very well, them making us a royal wotchamacallit, but we need bodies, a steady supply of bodies, uvverwise we're just like every uvver bastard who dunno what the fuck's 'appening, over there, with the FuzzyWuzzies. I mean, six ov 'em,  that woulda made a great show.

In Glagow, the Chairman of Celtic Football Club, Lord Mr John Shirtsleeves, 

 

famous for his drinking, his parliamentary brawls and his stalking of Ms Primarolo, said, Och, not so bad, the noo, there's fifty grand a year from Celtic, and a few hundred grand from my various former-home-seckatry's-security-interest-directorships, Och, whisht, awa' wi 'ye, Blind Boy Blunkett hasnae got them all sewn up,  and then there's ma pensions and ma wee perks in the House of Lords, although I must make it clear, d'ye ken, that I sit on the Trotskyite benches in the Hoose of Lords,  so there's nae  problem aboot me gorging meself in proletariate-subsidised bars and restaurants, nae bother, I'm a man of strict principle, me. What, no shots fired in anger, in Afghanistan. Ah said that?  When I was defence seckatry?  No way, Jose.  And if I did  you have to understand the context in which I was speaking.  It's all in the  ciontext.  The Devil, as ever, is in the details.  When I said that no shots would be fired in anger at our brave cannin fodder over there, what I meant,  clearly, was that it wouldn't matter a flying fuck if hundreds of them were blown to fucking pieces in a war that we could never win..And it doesn't.

The biggest, most indigestible  hokum noire associated with this ghastly misadventure is that it is in some ways a British mission, that Britain, offering up it's young corpses to Uncle Sam's  bloated juggernaut of oppression can somehow affect, improve, even, the outcome in this benighted shithole.  That We, ie Flashman and his spivs, some mewling, puking shithead like Seckatry Hammond,

Just pretend, Phil, that you know what he's talking about.
Nod you head, like you were Nick Clegg

poncing and pontificating, painstakingly articulating his fairystory doctrine of decet, can  leave Afghanistan a better place, no CIA drug trade, no arms being funneled to the people we're supposed to be fighting, no international aid money going to the pimping government of Karzai, all that stuff,  the Afghanis rigidly policing their own cousins and brothers, all the girls going to school and that We, less than ten percent of the occupying force, can achieve all that just by, well, just by letting Ahmed kill  his  share of our troops, as if  we were a mighty empire, as if Uncle Sam is going to sit down and say to Flashman, now, junior, what is it you want to see in place  before we bring our guys home, pronto?  This is Uncle Sam's war, and he, not some unelected, blustering  jackanapes in MediaMinster will determine its duration and its outcome.  And the sooner the fucking better.

Way to go, Commander Obama, bring your boys home, and ours.