Amazing what comes with the morning post, a veritable cornucopia of goodies, that always gets the Spaniel parked below the cage into which the letters drop. It’s there because he’s an equal equalities dog, and wants his mail. I keep telling him that 1 – dogs don’t do letters and 2 – they are there to be read not chewed. This morning brought the usual mixed bag of bank statements, freebies advertising everything from Viagra to sausage rolls.(my head tells me there are some fearful linkages there but I decline to go further). Mixed in with the bunch – a plain white envelope in a hand I did not recognise. Opening it and reading the contents stirred up the dust so much in the kitchen that my eyes were severely irritated for a few minutes. It was simply some documents that related to a Dornier shot down at Rochfort in October 1942 by an AC2. I will of course be putting it in the Flash. Possibly the first Enemy aircraft shot down by the Corps – 357 rounds of 303. Wasn’t that that caused the eye infection, it was the last paragraph, in which the sender Mr L Pearce, apologised for his hand writing, as at 92 his hands were not as good as they used to be. “We stand on the shoulders of giants” is a much used phrase when today’s serving members talk about my generation. These were the men on who’s shoulders we stood, and pretty big shoulders as well. The Americans have a saying where they thank their veterans for what they have done. I am never an avid devotee of the Cousins ways, but in this case, “Thank you and the thousands like you Mr Pearce, for the service you gave”. Per Ardua

You would think, after 18 months in government that the Tories would have another song to sing rather than the inheritance they got from Labour.  It is as obvious as the nose on your face that Teresa May is done.  Even the demise of  Liam Fox was not as obvious as this.  The plain and simple truth is Teresa that you are the Colonel of this particular regiment and if one of your company commanders makes a hash of things its usually the Colonel who gets canned.  Why –  because you have the accountability – to Parliament and to the British People.  The old Forces saying, “Big Boys games Big Boys rules”, always applies to ministers – that’s why they are Ministers.  You get to take all the decisions but then have to account for them

May’s sanctimonious slamming of Beverly Hughes, in 2004, after  Hughes attempted to blame civil servants in Sheffield for allowing a backlog of immigrants to build up, resulting in some being admitted to the UK without the correct checks, has been   quickly unearthed and used.    May told Ms Hughes at that time that she was sick and tired of ministers in the Labour government who blamed other people for their mistakes.    That May had the expectation that she should be be treated any way different to Ms Hughes speaks volumes about the arrogance of this coalition.

The missed fact in all this wind and fury is  that if you are in charge as a minister the buck stops on your desk.  The very least Teresa May should have done was to accept that she had failed to supervise her department properly and as a result, whether Brodie Clark had overstepped the mark or not,  the Border Agency failed in its main task – the security of our borders, on her watch! If she had told Parliament that then she might, just might, hope to survive.  But she didn’t, and anything from now on that disproves even the smallest point her statement to the house on Monday and today is now magnified tenfold.

Additionally, she seems to have taken a leaf out of the Ed Balls handbook of personnel practice and castigated Brodie Clerk in public before the outcome of any proper disciplinary process. Any junior manager would have been able to tell her that one is a recipe for an Industrial Tribunal or has she forgotten the name of Sharon Shoesmith?  The question will now be being asked in the corridors of Tory Central office is ” Two mistakes in as many days is this going to be a running sore for us and is she no longer the safe pair of hands that she seemed a month ago”  When you add the Border Agency to the countrywide rioting of the summer and the laughable present concentration on “Gang Culture”, it would seem that in comparison to Liam Fox, Ms May is living a charmed life.

Her tactical ineptitude so far is in sharp contrast to the actions of  Brodie Clerk, who astutely resigned his position and is looking at constructive dismissal.  He can now fight his  corner without hindrance to the disciplinary process of his employers and exercise his right of free speech whenever he wants.  I am certain that there are a few skeletons in his cupboard that Ministers thought they could lock up and now realise he has already left the building with them.

The wider repercussions for the coalition are obvious.  The Euro zone let down is what should be concerning government together with an obvious downward revision of any UK growth figures in Osborne’s Annual Statement.  I always thought it would be the Tories who would break this coalition because of the lightweight nature of their press ganged Lib Dem allies.  I was wrong, there seems to be slightly more bottom about the  Party of Clegg.  That makes me really worried about the Party of Cameron.  Still Taxi’s are allowable as expenses for MP’s so after DC’s resounding backing for the erstwhile Home Secretary, I wonder how long it will be before we get the shout “Taxi for Ms May”

I have to admit that some days assaults on Hat Hill are more painful, in aftermath, than others.  Today was one of the more painful ones – the lurking arthritis savaging not only knees but ankles and thumbs as well.  Pity, as it was a glorious  autumn day with a kaleidoscope of colours amongst the trees – native beech, oak and horse chestnut, sprinkled with latter-day firs of a variety of origins, a brisk southerly wind and Mediterranean sunshine – a morning when you just feel lucky to be alive. Spaniel and Border were lustily rampaging amongst the rusting ferns and the remnants of the blackberry bushes lending a joy to the spirit.

Home again and a look at the papers and BBC “all day, every day 24 hour” news filled with Trades Unions trying to make a reasonable point and Government Ministers going through the ritual of hoping against hope that the Trade Unions will have forgotten that if something quacks and waddles with a large brown beak then it probably is the same rehashed deal put on the table.   The pursed faces of (dare you say it because someone did on BBC) Mrs Merkel and the newt faced Sarkozy winding up thier collective electorates before the deciding to mallet Papendreuou was all so predictable.  But the match fixing trial of the Pakistani cricketers has saddened me immeasurably.  Firstly because I love cricket.  I always have, I skivved off school when I was a lad, when we had the only TV in the street and watched the greats – Benaud bowling and batting, Trueman and “George” Statham  the doyens of English fast bowling, and of course the great spinners Johnny Wardle, Jim Laker and Tony Locke.  I got used to climbing out onto the roof to avoid my father on the rare occasions when he returned home for his lunch.  We played cricket incessantly in the school yard and I developed into a useful batsman and not so useful spin bowler.  It was always a joy – the rules were the rules; none of this football stuff and arguing with the ref – moan afterwards about the umpires cataracts or his family history of selective blindness but get on with it.  I even managed to educate intelligent females to the merits of the great game(although a hot summer in Hereford and Botham’s Ashes probably helped).  I even had a match called off because of incoming mortar fire in Cyprus.   The point is I know how much cricket is revered in the sub continent and the players they have produced.  I reckoned if cricket means as much to the population of Pakistan as it means to me then I would be a very unhappy and shamed guy tonight.

A lot of stuff is written about racism and multiculturalism in this country.  The particular slant being from whichever side of the political divide you come from.  Here is a sport that has demonstrably crossed the divide and become truly multi cultural.  And now they cheat at it – for a few tawdry pennies at least 3 young men will never ever play for their country again.  One of them made an impassioned speech of apology to the judge after he pleaded guilty, describing how proud he had been to pull on his Pakistan jersey and how he had wanted to sleep in it.  Just a laddie from a remote village in the Punjab.  But he cheated!  And so did the others – and the ones who were not caught – this time! And  they know the rules!

There have been 14 players caught match fixing or consorting with Bookies since 2000.  3 South Africans, 4 Indians, 1 Kenyan, 1 West Indian and 5 Pakistanis.  And some of those have had their bans overturned in local or district courts.  I have to believe that there is something not quite right there.  It brings the scandal of Bob Woolmers death flooding back and the allegations of ball tampering, while the pervasive odour of bookmakers and fixing lingers everywhere.

I could at this point simply say, as most commentators, that the IOC has a mammoth job to do, bearing in mind this was brought to a head by the News of the Screws. But this is the second reason for my sadness this afternoon, I see a darkness around the Pakistan, with allegations of involvement in Afghanistan against the American led coalition of forces.  The geography of Osama Bin Laden’s apprehension and death can scarcely be a coincidence and  rumours of  government collusion with terrorists in the death of Benazir Bhutto, remind us that Pakistan’s heritage is a bloody one.  The involvement of British born Pakistanis in terrorist attacks in this country and the constant assault on the institutions of the British people are now turning even the most tolerant of Britons into the arms of the fascists.  Our successive governments have allowed this to drift under a banner of multiculturalism.  Well I am a Brit and proud of it and I have to tell you guys in Government that it ain’t working – not one little bit.

It would appear to me that far from being us, the Great Christian Fundamentalist Crusade, that has lost our way,  it is Pakistan desperately searching for its soul.  Cabals within cliques ruled by the need for power or money or some other materialism hold sway over a diaspora that stretches from Islamabad to Bradford  The values of the Islamic religion are being  despoiled and held up for ridicule deliberately by manipulative mendacious people in an attempt to warp  British tolerance, and they are winning.

And in my sadness, there is an anger at the inability of my government and politicians to understand that I simply want to live lawfully under the common law of our country, which has been built up over a thousand years.  Britain is a Christian country which allows universal worship without persecution.  I have no choice in being British – I was born here and so were my ancestors going back to 1215, when they came across from Ireland to Scotland.  I conform to the laws and to the mores of my native land.  Why can’t my Government understand that there is a difference between wanting to live according to my culture and being a racist.  Why does everything that does not smack of even handedness and political correctness have an racist or fascist label slapped on it?  I am neither a racist or fascist but what I want to know is why cannot my Government give me what I want – the confidence to live out the rest of my life knowing that my British culture will be recognised and valued –  that our institutions will be maintained, that we will be free  to parade with our poppy’s without having to run a gauntlet of braying fundamentalists, burning a symbol of our beliefs with impunity.  Those poppy’s remind us of the men who carried rifles to defend the liberties that I would like to uphold.  The sacrifice and the effort they gave, my own family members amongst them, gain them honour.  I carried a rifle for Her Majesty as well and, like most, I believed in what I did when we heard the odd angry shot.  My sadness and anger this afternoon was caused not by some laddies cheating at cricket – it was about the deafening inability  of our elected leaders in both Pakistan and in Britain to call spades spades and understand that despite our differences all we really want is to live in peace and harmony together.

The rise of, the then styled, Colonel Gaddafi(he was only a signals officer, a Captain) in the deposing of King Idris of Libya in 1967 was uniquely swift by the standards of change in the Arab World in the wake of the 1967 Six Day War.  His departure to whatever post life destination he has earned was equally as swift, and surprising.  Few commentators had imagined that he would hide within the tribal heartland of Sirte.  Nobody had envisaged him fighting to almost the last man and the last round in the manner of a true soldier and yet he did.  Was this a last spasm of hubris or a realisation that all he had left was a legacy amongst his own that would best be served with him a martyr?  Whatever the motives of this complex and deranged man, he met his end somewhere outside his home town yesterday morning.  The inquest and speculation as to what exactly are the details of his death will fill the press and conspiracy theorists for many days and weeks.  Already it is mooted that the body was one of his doubles and he is now safe in Niger with a fortune in gold coins – such are the fantasies that become half truths and then accepted wisdom once Hollywood manages to take the story on.  The thing that must not be lost is that Muammar Gaddafi was a taker of lives on an industrial scale.  He exported and financed terrorism across the world for almost 30 years.  As Britain was the last colonial occupier of Libya and a stalwart ally of our cousins across the pond we have borne a major share of the Colonels wrath.

The tracing of his fingers in the pie of death range from the Libyan embassy siege where Yvonne Fletcher was callously murder by a member of the Embassy staff – probably a member of the Military Intelligence Force, the main arm of Libyan Intelligence.  The resulting furore allowed Gadaffi to enhance his credentials with many terrorist organisations around the world and with the Soviet Bloc.  Supply of Semtex from Sovbloc countries to organisations like ETA and PIRA further enhanced his reputation as a supplier of the gears of war to “freedom fighters”   Gaddafi,  however,  strayed across the thin line in 86 when he was implicated in the death of American servicemen in Germany.  The American response was swift and did massive damage to Gaddafi personally,  his family and Tripoli but also to his reputation as an untouchable in the Middle East.  His response to this was to strike at the lesser of the two protagonists in that attack – the UK.  We had allowed our bases in UK to launch the F111’s; a major part of the strike package.  For the next 3 years, Gaddafi proffered oil money around the Middle East in search of a means to strike at UK and US.  His first attempt was in 1986 on a hot sunny Sunday afternoon in the British base of Akrotiri in Cyprus.

Immediately after the Gulf of Sirte incident and the subsequent American attack, Gaddafi offered £5 million to any group that could strike at Anglo US assets in the region.  The deadly linkage between Libya and Syria now started to pan out as he was aided significantly in planning of his attack on Akrotiri by them.  I was  made aware of this as I sat in the command post of 48 Sqn RAF Regiment early one morning having tea and a bacon buttie after an all night patrol.  The electric bullet men, tracked an inbound Syrian Airforce MIG 25 Foxbat recce overflight of the base. I listened as two Rapier Missile launchers locked on visually and with radar and asked over the direct line to CabinetOfficeBRA in London, if they were clear to fire, as their Rules of Engagement were fulfilled. I heard for the third morning running, the voice on the other en, a very senior politician, telling them to hold fire in  calm tones, very much at adds with the single Anglo Saxon epithet  spat by the detachment commander.  This set the seeds of a partnership which, it has always been acknowledged, reached its fruition in the skies above Lockerbie three years later.  Suffice to say in August of that year a cobbled together group of supposed Palestinian Fedayeen attacked Akrotiri using RPG’s mortars, grenades and small arms against families enjoying a warm Sunday by the sea.  Three people were wounded and the terrorists returned to Damascus.   A lot of friends and  families were under those mortars as they landed.  One of them, a gangling laddie of 14 was hosed by a “hero” with an AK47 from a range of less than 15 M.   Almost 50 rounds were fired at him and luckily not a scratch but such was Gaddafi’s legacy.  The Lockerbie atrocity came three years later and then, almost like a little child who knows when they have gone too far, the chameleon like face of Gaddafi turned again to embrace the West and civilisation – or so it would seem.  Little is talked about his involvement in the Chad wars where he did his best to stop peace coming.

So there is a personal element to the sense of payback for me today.  But of all the crimes he was responsible for we must not forget two things, his greatest crime was against the people of Libya of whom he butchered and tortured in their thousands for having the audacity to dream.  That his end came violently, perhaps from close range through the forehead, is of no surprise or sorrow.  The other major point never to forget is that we , in the west, allowed him to prosper, not just by doing nothing but by pursuing policies that impose our will on sovereign nations.  Much of the chaos in the middle east over the last 30 years would never have occurred if the foreign policy of the US had recognised that leadership is not being the worlds policeman and imposing American solutions on nations that were the cradles of civilisation centuries before the first Spaniards set foot in the Americas. We must learn to collaborate and not dictate if we are to solve some of the most intractable security problems of the next decade plus.

Am I losing my marbles or becoming a totally grumpy old man?  Has no-one else made any comments about the delayed undercover police report?  All attention diverted because of the another guy – not in the terms of reference for the Kennedy case – giving a false name in court under oath thereby skewing the whole weight of evidence – I think not!!!  This seems to be the latest in a series of new tactics which give the semblance of transparency whilst sticking solidly to delivering nothing of substance whatsoever or even postponing it for a better day for the sitting administration.   The Russians are past masters at this stuff even having a military doctrine entitled maskirovka which means keep the patsy’s eyes fixed on the unimportant stuff whilst sneaking the important stuff through unseen

I have no doubt that the inquiry was conducted with integrity and depth and that great tomes will be written on the lessons learnt on police undercover operations.  What I would question is whether or not the report will make any comment at all on the overall management and credibility of the police officers who managed this operation.  7 years this guy was undercover; 7 years of taxpayers money to pay him and his support team; 7 years of opportunity costs to pay for those people who did what he would have done in the active police force – this was a costly operation. The Telegraph estimates around £250000 per annum for just the first two – £1.75m over 7 years.  They also intimate that there were another 15 officers in the same operation.  The National Public Order Intelligence unit must have a fairly substantial budget to be able to deploy resources on such a scale.  As a result the trial collapsed when he swapped sides.   He, by the accounts of the red tops at the time, had a fairly enjoyable time not subject to police disciplines and all those irksome things we find so tiresome – like getting up for work in the morning.  But, I ask you, 7 years infiltrating a climate change group, hardly the main caucus of Al-Qaeda GB was it?.  How on earth did they, or he, manage to con the reviewers into maintaining the operation?  Who made those decisions to carry on or was it just left to drift? Who scrutinises this lot; one would presume it is the Home Secretary?  Has she sacked anybody because a disaster on this scale in military terms would certainly get someone their P45. probably not because that would cost money and in any case it would be easier to blame Labour for something else.

This is the main point of my diatribe this cold but frosty morning in the depths of rural East Anglia, in order to actually win the next election, at some point David The PR Guru will have to stop blaming Labour and claim some stuff for himself.  One wonders if he will run out of time or can he blame labour for the downturn in world economics.  Perhaps he can blame the Euro-zone on Labour – well if he lets that particular rabbit off within his party the end result will be a melt down of Chernobyl like proportions.  Day before the election – hardly, how will he claim he led the country out of disaster and surely he doesn’t think the British Electorate is as daft as that?  Hmm they did almost vote him in didn’t they?  It might work David – keep trying !

So Liam Fox has gone! Inevitable really once his best man and confidante Werrity was acknowledged to have been supported by a private intelligence company and an Israeli philanthropist.  I am sure I must be getting paranoid as the word Mossad leapt into my mind; but no – Mossad are very professional, if I imagine that then its too obvious – isn’t it?  In any case Dr Fox went some days late.  he was a dead duck on Monday and I said on Wednesday that it would be difficult for him to lead a Ministry after this.  Still not had any printable feedback from the troops, the view seems to be – just another suit and wonder what kind of fruit-loop we will get next.

Interesting that the Conservative spin machine is stressing that he took the decision himself and that DC has been quick to do the faint-hearted praise  and stress the same.  It strikes me that there was more to come over the week end and DC decided it was time that Liam took the decision to resign – no greater love hath a man than lay down his career for Davy boy.  Strangely I think this will have weakened Cameron as it proved that he failed to take the decisive action he needed to take.  All well and good gathering the evidence and having a man innocent until proven guilty.  However, in politics, as PM, he needed to be seen to be decisive and given the amount of U turns on policy already shown in this Parliament, it is now getting more and more difficult to identify any form of coherent  leadership for many of the initiatives the Tories are pushing.  Cameron needed to show he was in charge and his procrastination over Liam Fox writ loud and large that he was not.  The question is; was that due to the fact that he blinked (again) or he does not have that amount of support  against the right wing of the Party?  Either way Ed of the giant forehead has an opportunity both ways to trash him at the next PMQ;s.

While he is at it, he might want to remind DC of the Noel Coward moment – to loose one right wing darling is a pain but will Oliver Letwin follow Foxy?   Throwing Cabinet Office and constituency papers into public dustbins in a park like a larcenous postman disposing of evidence is not a recommended action for the man in charge of policy for the Government.  In fact to hear him say that it was not a sensible thing to do staggers me.  Of course it wasn’t and even if they were just constituency papers it makes future credibility in selling policy to an already doubting electorate just a tad more difficult and convincing his constituency party of his loyalty almost impossible.  I wonder if will be a taxi for Mr Letwin next week – the Sun appears to have got its teeth into him as well Ho Hum – a day in the life………………………..