Merry Christmas to all

It’s that time of year again. December the 25th. Christmas Day.

So I take the time to wish a Merry and Happy Christmas to all readers.

For many who celebrate Christmas the rush to get everything in place is now done. What has been left incomplete will have to be managed without and it is time, hopefully, to Celebrate the birth of Jesus and to enjoy the company of friends and family and a meal together.


For many the sense of comfort will seem stronger for contrast of warmth light and company indoors while the cold and snow and long nights are kept at bay outside.

Generally it is true. There is a sense of good will to our fellow men, throughout Christendom, even amongst those of a more secular leaning, even amongst those of some other religions.

A powerful example of this was during the Great War (WWI), the so called “Christmas Truce” all along the Western Front around Christmas of 1914. This was not an official truce, more a ’grass roots movement’.

It would be truly wonderful if that sense of good will, capable of briefly holding at bay a full blown World War, could hold for the rest of the year.

Alas there are evil individuals and groups filled with hate who make that unlikely.

Although we celebrate the birth of Jesus on December the 25th, it is quite unlikely that he was actually born on that date, That is simply the date the early church picked to mark the occasion. Unlike Easter, where the date is accurate, according to the Lunar Calendar.

The date of Christmas Day probably owes more to the fact that most pagan religions had a feast and celebration around that time to mark winter solstice and the fact that days were at last getting longer again and there was the distant but real promise of spring and summer to look forward to.

New converts would have been very reluctant to give up such a highlight and so it is likely the early church decided against forcing potential converts to have to make such a choice.

The relationship between the date and the actual solstice may have been further altered by use of a calendar introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 BC called the Julian calendar that was much better that what had been used before but was still slightly inaccurate over centuries.

Some orthodox Christian Churches still use the Julian calendar to calculate December 25th and celebrate Christmas. That corresponds to around January 6 or 7 of the Gregorian Calendar. So they have their Christmas 'late'.

The Julian year was around eleven minutes longer than the actual solar year. It might not seem much, but it adds up to a gain of about three days per 400 years - and drifting of the calendar against the seasons.

This was later compensated for with another calendar reform that introduced the Gregorian calendar that we use today and ‘lost’ or shifted back some calendar days.

Welcom to A new US president

Today is the inauguration of President Elect Obama as the 44th President of the United States of America. Arguably one of the most powerful offices on the planet.

There is an incredible optimism associated with this particular inauguration. It is seen as a sea change in US politics and society. It is doubly poignant as it comes after Martin Luther King Jnr’s day and is in many respects the realisation of his dream.

Everyone speaks of a black president. As someone pointed out to me it is largely in people’s minds. Barak Obama is in fact 50% black and that somehow makes him just “black”. You could use the same logic to say he was “White”.

Whatever, many people have invested a huge amount of hope in him. Maybe they should dial back on that just a little? He is human, not a superman. He does not have a magic wand.

If people build him up unrealistically in their minds they are likely to be correspondingly unrealistically disappointed if he can’t deliver on their every wish.

So here is a hope that people don’t expect too much and too fast and then get annoyed if he can’t do miracles. Especially with all the troubles the world is beset with right now.

Between Memorial Bridge and Arlington Cemetery, there is an inscription on the memorial to the Seabees, the U.S. Navy Construction Battalions. It says:

“The difficult we do immediately. The impossible takes a little longer.”

UK Government to pull troops out of Basra, having failed to make it safe.

The UK are handing over control of Basra to the Iraqui ‘forces’

This sounds OK, on the face of it, but a report to MPs paints a different picture.

It points out that Basra is in fact run by militias and it’s police force contains "murderous" and "corrupt" elements, it also notes that the whole purpose of the UK forces' presence may be in question due to cuts.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the invasion of Iraq, having been part of it, it is surely our moral duty to leave the people of Iraq, at least no worse off as a result of our being there, and preferably in a better situation.

Have we done so? No - Why?

Well the main reason is the insurgency. There are vast amounts of money, arms and often foreign fighters pouring into the country, whose sole purpose is ensure things there never get any better. This is funded and cannon foddered by Islamicists. Some, no doubt, see their financial contribution as charitable. It is promoted and sustained by Iran, Syria and certain elements within Pakistan, not necessarily all for the same reasons.

All this has made the job of the armed forces insanely difficult, but what has made it impossible is much closer to home and lurks in the palace of Westminster. It is the Government.

They have, as they say, overstretched and over committed the limited available forces to the point where, as good as they are, as willing and brave as they might be, there are just not enough of them to get the job done in any one place and they can’t keep up indefinitely with no rest.

There are not enough forces there to do the job and the Government has reduced them on the ground in Iraq because of political expediency. They weren’t too worried about it wen they got into it, now they want to drop the ball and run off the pitch.

There is certainly not enough funding to sustain our forces out there, again because a greedy short sighted government wanted to – and still does – want to, take advantage of the so called and largely illusory ‘peace dividend’. By cutting military funding to the bone. To the extent that vital personal equipment is not available where it needs to be and heavy equipment, even if it is there, is not quite suitable for the job in the environment and not necessarily actually functional.

They should have realised that without the pressure of the cold war superpowers that the potential for medium scale conflicts that demand more, not less, troops would rise. Having the bomb is ok as a deterrent, but is not much use in situations where you can’t use it and it is not a credible threat. Then there is no substitute for plenty of well equipped, highly trained forces.

Although it is said that war is an extension of politics, you can’t play around in a field of conflict like you can in a debate and the consequences of getting it wrong can be much more ‘permanent’ for those who actually have to try to back up the hot air. Being able to talk the talk is worse than useless if you can’t walk the walk too.

Book Review

The Weapon
by Michael Z Willamson

Published by Baen ISBN-13 978-14165-2118-1
Science Fiction

At £4.40on Amazon UK
or $7.99 Amazon US


Ken Chinran lived on an independent minded Freehold colony world that had declared independence from earth. A very bright and somewhat disaffected youth who joins the military and is recruited to an elite military unit.

The story follows his incredibly tough training and subsequent military career and development, during diplomatic postings and in combat, as he matures and his career progresses.

Meanwhile the diplomatic situation between his home world and the Earth Government deteriorates and he is recruited to lead a deep cover operation on Earth against the possibility of war.

Plenty of military action with a ring of truth, the novel also considers the impact of combat and war on all those involved, on causes and motivations. An excellent read, both entertaining and thought provoking.

Gordon's first PMs Question Time

Yesterday was Gordon Brown, the new Uk Premier's first PMs Question Time. He Waffled on a lot for the political greenhouse that is Westminster - but he said very little that would actually engage the electorate - Disappointing.

He has used his first Commons statement as Prime Minister to talk about earth shaking stuff like:

Giving up the power to appoint bishops - That’ll make a big difference to my daily life.
Giving up the power to declare war – Parliament, a committee, or the PM. Again big deal, It won’t be up to me – probably looks good on paper though.
Elections at the weekend – are you kidding! We all have better things to do with our weekends without having to fit in staying local to vote: Leave them on Thursdays.

One suspects it he fondly imagines forcing us to vote on a weekend may increase turn out, or his vote, he is sadly deluded. Still it is daringly French isn’t it?

Maybe he is dimly aware that a lot of the electorate has gone one or two issue and don’t necessarily vote on party lines any more.

He is not keen on addressing the issue of Scottish MPs being able to vote on English matters, but English MPs not being able to vote on Scottish matters. Well he wouldn’t be would he ‘cos that would include him wouldn’t it?

He avoids the really important though - He is obviously really not at all keen on a referendum on the EU constitutional Treaty. He might have scored some brownie ;-) points with the electorate if he had the intestinal fortitude to call for one. That’s a cross party single issue (democratic principles) people a who are interested are unlikely to forget.

David Cameron, ironically echoing Tony Blaire’s “Let the people have the final say” (Or was that “The cheque’s in the post” or “Of course I love you”, I get confused) challenged the new PM saying of the Treaty "It should be put to the people,".

Brown, in a typically irrelevant to the rest of the country, Westminster type response, pointed out that only Ireland so far was having a referendum (conveniently ignoring the fact that most of the ‘treaty’ was so good it had already been thrown out once already by the French and Dutch) and anyway – Nur-nur-nur-nur-na - the last Conservative government didn’t have a referendum on the Maastricht Treaty, or any other treaties, so there!

Now Gordon. We all know that MPs and Parliament can’t be trusted with something like the Constitutional Treaty. We know we can’t really rely on the bulk of MPs to represent our interests in this, instead of the political elite’s interest - Also what the Conservatives may, or may not, have done in the past is not a legal precedent and we wouldn’t be impressed with the argument even if it was.

You need to ask yourself. If you foist this ‘treaty’ on the UK Electorate without a specific mandate will it actually ever receive any support from the people? Will you in the end be doing incalculably much more harm than if you were honest and called a referendum?