Living in a broken home......

The night is cold, the ground is laden with snow, and as you rush to the scene of the domestic, you find yourself wishing you had actually gone to the cinema and not into work. The Christmas lights look rather stupid, the house is littered with them, maybe the electricity bill caused the argument, it's sometimes as simple as that. Knock, knock, knock, the door opens, a middle aged man, he's very calm, alarm bells start ringing in your head, and not the festive kind.

As you walk in, you notice two young children sat on the bottom step of the stairs, the boy is crying, the girl is looking after him, she has her arm around him, good girl. The man says to you:

'Come in, this way.'

He leads you into the kitchen, a woman is sitting in a chair, dinner is on the table, four place mats, four plates, you notice two empty bottles of wine, the man does not smell of liquor. Your female colleague takes point:

'Are you all right luv, what's the matter?'

Two minutes later you arrested the middle aged man for assaulting his wife, he is taken to the custody suite, where he is interviewed. In the interview he breaks down in tears, he tells you that he can't take it any more, he cooked a lovely meal, for his wife and children, they all sat down to eat it, twenty minutes later, after his wife had drank almost two bottles of wine, she lectured him, she shouted at him, she pushed him right to the edge, so he hit her, once, only once.

You couldn't get a statement from his wife, she was catatonic by the time you went back, passed out on the sofa, the children spent the night with their grandparents. You have been told, time and again, it is not your job to believe or to take sides, the Police gather the evidence, and present it. But that time, you believed the husband, you knew he was telling the truth, you just knew.

You went home at 00:15, driving slowly as the roads were still laden with snow, you weren't thinking about what to get your girlfriend for Christmas, or what to do on New Year's eve, because all you could think about was those two young children, living in a broken home.

'A child sees everything, looks straight at it, examines it, without any preconceived idea.'

Olive Schreiner

Guilty in the press court....

'RTC boss, she says she's crashed her car into a lamp post on the Low road, she wants Police to help her.'
'Typical, she's a woman.'
'No boss, she didn't say she had reversed it in to a lampost, it was a frontal collision.'

At this point your boss burst out laughing, your boss is a female.

It was three years ago, before he went to Afghanistan, in three years a person can change, a person's values and beliefs can be completely reversed, he's been to a war, he has most likely killed people, directly or indirectly.

Yes that doesn't excuse what Price Harry said, saying the word 'paki', it doesn't make it right, in fact it is most likely wrong, but people hang him all the same, declare him guilty, without any consideration of the circumstances.

'He is then shown making a mock mobile call to the Queen, the Commander in Chief of the British Army, in front of other cadets.'

You find that quite funny, most of your colleagues don't care about the Queen, do they do their job for her, no, they all do it for different reasons, but you have never heard the Queen being one of those reasons.

Banter in the military is part of what makes the job great, the day the Politically Correct squad on their high horses take it out, the job won't be half as enjoyable.

'Political correctness is just tyranny with manners.'

Charlton Heston.

The grey man........

When a person speaks out, it shows that they have character, and that they actually believe what they are saying. It is easy, comfortable, to sit back and watch something happen, to not become involved. You suspect that most people sit back, because of fear. They are fearful of what people will think of them if they do get involved, or disagree. They may fear being called a heretic, a bigot, a outcast, downright crazy or just being noticed, picked out in a crowd.

In society being different can be a problem, if a person is not the same as everyone else it causes them to be noticed, to be singled out. That in turn means that they are watched more, their actions are more scrutinized than others. Society has started to breed an atmosphere where being a 'grey man', a person who is so devoid of character, follows everyone else, not noticeable, is the best way to be. In training it was the same, you noticed that the 'grey man', the person who was devoid of any sort of character, just moving along in the background, hoping no one would notice them, always seemed to make it through.

If a person is two dimensional, how can they be found faulting, but all the same, how can people find a trait in them to praise. People need to go against the norm, they need to start speaking and standing up, don't follow the crowd, or become a sheep following the shepherd, being too scared to disagree or to put a different point of view forward. You have criticised feminists in the past, and you disagree with them, but at least they have the 'balls' to speak up, stand up, and for that you respect them.

'If you lose money, you lose nothing, If you lose time, you lose something,If you lose character you lose every thing.'

Swami Vivekananda

Happy New Year..........

As tax payer's money goes up in smoke, British soldiers in war zones don't have the right equipment required to stay alive.



As this idiot,a member of the armed forces no less, uses a Royal Air Force helicopter to visit his girlfriend, and to attend a bachelor party, there isn't enough transport to evacuate wounded British soldiers on the battle field.

'A fool who knows his foolishness is wise at least to that extent, but a fool who thinks himself wise is a fool indeed.'

Dhammapada