In the last post, we somewhat tastelessly used a picture of the front page of the Daily Mail to tell the story of the threat by Conservative MPs to scupper the granting of a few powers to the Scottish parliament. There were two stories on that page, the other was the attack on school children in Pakistan, by the Taliban.
Niko pointed this out and we changed the page.
Officials
say more than 140 people, mostly children, have been killed in the Taliban
attack on an army-run school in north-west Pakistan.
Pakistan's
security forces say their operation has now ended, with all seven
attackers killed.
Pupils who escaped have said the gunmen went from classroom to
classroom, shooting children indiscriminately.
The
Taliban say the assault is in response to army operations in North
Waziristan and the Khyber area.
It is hard to imagine what kind of mind could come up with this. It is even harder to get your head around the fact that someone thought that killing children was a reasonable way of dealing with unwelcome army operations.
The Scots have clearly been moved by the tragedy and the Pakistani Consul General in Edinburgh has thanked Scotland.
I am sorry, as I said on the last post, if my careless juxtaposition of a frivolous story about the Tories and this horrific tragedy carried out by monsters, caused any offence.
Of course none was intended.
It’s not that often that you’ll find this blog to be overly sympathetic to members of the royal family. However, credit where credit is due. We may be republicans, and disapprove of position as of birthright rather than by ability and hard graft, but I hope we’ll always be fair to people who have little choice in the matter.
I would say that I respect the fact that the Queen has kept out of party politics as much as she possibly could during her reign. Par contre I have deplored the fact that Charles has poked his nose in and wasted ministers’ time by sending for them and demanding this that and the next, in line with his particular interests.
I therefore instinctively disapprove of Andrew’s excursion into political waters the other day when he was visiting Universal Engineering in Weymouth, Dorset, who make armoured vehicles.
He blasted the MoD for 
not ordering the vehicles which Andrew reckons would have saved British soldiers’ lives. His exact words were: “ I would say to you that regrettably they will not get off their fat backsides. The MoD are completely hopeless at these kind (sic) of things.”
He was speaking in his capacity as Ambassador for British Trade and Industry. (The Dorset based company is presumably hoping to exprt these vehicles to other countries.) However, the MoD has been swithering (Scottish word meaning being indecisive) over whether or not to order them for our own troops in Afghanistan. Indeed, Ainsworth went to inspect them when he was Secretary of State for Defence and that’s undoubtedly well over 6 months ago. Still we have no decision.
OK. Andrew shouldn’t have said what he did, but in his defence his office says that he thought that he was talking to a private meeting of the directors. He did not know there was a journalist present. Well, of course he should have known. He should have been advised, and regardless, he shouldn’t have criticised his mother’s government.
He has embarrassed her.
But, on this occasion, even if he was wrong to do it, I’m glad he has brought the matter to the fore. This is more important that Charles and his interference in building plans. This is a matter of the lives of people we send to fight. 
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. If we can’t afford to fight a war, which we can’t, because we can’t afford to house and feed the poor, then we should not be at war.
Vehicles that can withstand twice the blast of any Taliban bomb would have saved lives. We didn’t buy them, even from British manufacturers... It’s shameful, particularly when the MoD is top heavy, full of high rankers on extremely comfortable salaries with fabulous expense accounts and awesome pensions, and a book deal when they retire.
So Andrew was in the wrong and by now I daresay the Queen has hauled him over the royal coals for embarrassing the prime minister and the defence secretary, but if this does make them get off their fat backsides and do something well, I can forgive Andrew. Just this once.
I’m sure he’ll be extremely relieved to read that!
