Friday 5 April 2019

That Corbyn Target.


                       
My first thought on seeing the above picture was that those elite-force Paras must be very poor shots.

I know they were only firing wax pellets at the picture of Jezza, but with those rapid-fire pistols one might have thought they'd hit the target more than just occasionally!

Quite a fuss has been made about their choice of target. How dare a member of Her Majesty's armed forces shoot pellets at a Marxist MP. Had they chosen a photo of either May, Mogg, or Boris, those same (ahem) complainants would probably have cheered and raised strings of bunting.

Of course targeting politicians of any political colour is in very poor taste, and is not to be encouraged.

Seeing the above reminded me of Harold Wilson, a distant Socialist Prime Minister. Back in December of 1966, Wilson met the then Rhodesian (Zimbabwean) Prime Minister, Ian Smith, on board the HMS Tiger off Gibraltar. Smith had recently declared UDI after the UK's insistence that white majority rule be scrapped, and Wilson wanted to have words with him.

When the talks were over, Wilson honoured every member of Tiger's crew with a signed photograph of himself.

As Wilson walked down the gangplank to leave ship, he could see beneath him dozens of his signed photos floating on the water. The whole crew had simply tossed them overboard!

No record was made of Wilson's reaction; unlike Corbyn and his target photo.



35 comments:

  1. Saw this on our news too. I bet everyone is imagining their own political disaster on the firing line. I can imagine quite a few here that would make admirable target practice.

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    1. I imagine there'll be a lot of changes at the next General Election.

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  2. We said in Philosophy class this week how on earth do such things reach the national news. Must be social media.

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  3. The Queen's Regulations for the Army (1975) para J5.581 states: Regular personnel are not to take any active part in the affairs of any political organisation, party, or movement.

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    1. Quite right. They must be prepared to fight for any colour of party.

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    2. I remember that back in their day the military flights used by Wilson and Brown always arrived with the provided booze and pipe tobacco pots empty.

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  4. We used to just content ourselves with drawing glasses and a moustache on a photo of our boss taken from the company's internal magazine.

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    1. I still do that... mostly with politicians.

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  5. As an anarchist communist who rather likes his comfortable situation in the western world, I offer no comment about Corbyn.

    I am not sure what UDI is? Can I guess Universal Declaration of Independence?

    Our 1970s conservative PM Malcolm Fraser was very active in ending minority white rule in (southern?) Rhodesia. But be careful for what you wish for. It subsequently all went so horribly wrong.

    Was Wilson the worst Labour leader in Britain? I don't know him well. I remember Kinnock, Callaghan, the bumbling Foote, the nasty Mr Brown and of course Blair.

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    1. I did initially write about it all going wrong, but thought it sounded a tad racist; so removed it. You are right about UDI.

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  6. Living in this country as I do, I can assure you that if photos of May, Mogg or Boris had been used as target practice there would have been just as much of an outcry from 'complainants'. The Metropolitan Police have issued a plea to all politicians to think carefully and modify their language when speaking in public in this febrile and volatile atmosphere. To have the British Army using any politician as target practice is not helping things.

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    1. I recently heard Mogg referred to as an 'Etonian Moron' by some backbencher. There were roars of approval. There were no complaints; not even from Mogg himself.

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    2. And Rees-Mogg continues with his schoolboy mentality by referring to 'remainiacs' when being interviewed by the BBC. The man is an arse who does not deserve respect.

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    3. It never entered my head it would have been any different if it had been May. Either way I thought it was not newsworthy. But stupid things go viral these days.

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    4. I couldn't care less, but since the original Brexit related murder of Jo Cox (remember?) and the threatened violence to MPs of all persuasions, the Chief Constable has a point. Silly side-taking based on your political leanings is even more juvenile than taking the piss out of Rees Mogg. In the film, Colonel Blimp finally understands the changes happening around him regardless of time-honoured tradition.

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    5. And it is social media which spreads this shit quicker than fire, of course.

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    6. The voice of reason, thanks.

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    7. Taking sides? Don't insult me.
      I was stating a fact.

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    8. I think he was trying to suggest that I had 'taken sides'. My para 4 deals with that; I was simply pointing out the obvious.

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    9. I thought he was suggesting I had taken sides!

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    10. You don't always take sides but you always take things personally. It is a form of egocentricity with you. Oh, this is to Rachel to avoid any misunderstandings. The original comment was toward Cro, as he rightly understood. You just claimed it as your own.

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    11. I was explaining my own comment and probably should have put it with it but it seemed relevant to both in any case.

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    12. And anything you say about Jo Cox I assume you are aiming at me.

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    13. Ah, the rain is clearing; I may go for a walk.

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  7. Thought I'd just leave this here....
    https://kmflett.wordpress.com/2019/04/04/is-jeremy-corbyn-a-marxist-the-view-of-karl-marx/

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    1. Since he's been elevated to his present position, he now tries to hide his true allegiances. I might suggest that he has never made a secret of it before, he still reads Marxist press, and was insistent that his friend Tariq Ali was allowed to become a member of the Labour Party. I could go on.

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  8. The crew of the Tiger were quite something. During the same meetings they refused to socialise with the Rhodesian armed forces because they found them so objectionably racist. Zimbabwe is one of the great tragedies of our times. Both because the final settlement in 1980 was a disgrace to Britain; and because the white community could not compromise earlier. The British establishment is now doing to its own people what it did to Zim in the late 70s - trying to force a solution the country doesn’t want, using “geopolitical strategic policy” as the excuse. We all know how it ends

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    1. Badly!

      I believe that the two opposing forces on the Tiger were ordered NOT to fraternize. Probably for the best.

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  9. Politicians portraits frequently feature on rifle ranges on every British military base. Rarely is anyone stupid enough to put it on the Internet. Soldiers of every rank have their own opinions and always have.

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    1. I imagine that pictures of all sorts of people appear on dart boards in squady bars everywhere.

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  10. I didn't know that about Wilson - but I always wonder why politicians of any party should think we want a signed photograph of them.

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    1. I remember it so well. The papers all had pictures of the floating signed photos; I thought it was hilarious.

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  11. Harold Wilson was the reason my family emigrated to Canada.

    Rhodesia? Family there were burnt out of their farm. The land has never been cultivated and the farmhelp are still not working.

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    1. Dear Wilson ruined the education system, yet introduced the Open University. He was a man of extremes.

      As far as post-Smith Rhodesia is concerned; it's been rough. I remember my father saying to me in about 1970 when the Biafra crisis was just beginning, "We know there'll be slaughter and starvation, but the will of the people must ALWAYS be respected". He was right about the former, but the latter is hard to swallow.

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