spEak You're bRanes

Thanks to Andy and Dave. Assortment of desperately important opinions on the Mail and BBC, on the vital topic of writing on envelopes. Apparently the Post Office just need a house number and a postcode, and you needn’t bother writing, say, the county. They’ve probably also got their own shorthand to speed things up. All good things, right?

I am with Andrea (12.35) on this I will not be party to this erosion that stinks of the EU. Who do they think they are the Borg out of Star Trek where resistance is futile ?. Sorry pal, I am with the resistance on this. There is no way such things as the Cheshire show will be refered to as the 4NW Show. We are not going to throw away over 1000 years of history for the sake of what looks like an efficency drive by the Post Office,which I suspect is an attempt long term to standardise to a EU post coding system by first taking away the individuality of the area.
Mark, Manchester

This is a tricky one. How to shake free from the iron grip of the postie and his shadowy EU paymasters? All I can think of is you could continue to write the county and refer to it in conversation.

I’ll always continue to use county names. The Royal Mail will NOT dictate to me. I AM NOT A NUMBER…….
jb, sussex

I bet your house is called “Dunroamin” you pointless arse.

The Post Office says all they need is a house number and postcode. So, all these years, I’ve wasted hours writing out street, town and county names on hundreds of Christmas cards? From now on I’ll address the card to Aunt Nelly, 39, and the postcode – for the first time ever my right hand won’t be numb on Christmas Day!
Kevin, Belfast

Try sitting on it. Or using your left maybe.

Thanks to Chris.

bigsid
I watch with sadness as our brave soldiers are constantly being reported as being victims of IED’s whilst on foot patrol.

It would seem to me then that maybe in the areas where a lot of this is constantly happening, a curfew should be set at sundown and locals should be made to stay in their compounds or villages (there’s no streetlights so they don’t really have any legitimate business to be outside their compounds).

During nightfall, drones, satellites, helicopters etc. could be watching these hot spots using infrared sights and if they see people huddled by roadsides, or areas known to be likely used for IED’s, they could call in an air strike, mortar or big bomb to land on their heads.

As the locals would have been warned of this curfew and the repercussions of it, they would stay indoors and only IED planters would have any reason to break the curfew.

After a few get bombed, the rest would think twice about planting their sneaky bombs.

Another stupid, cretinous, half-baked idea from some mouthy prick with zero military war-experience of real fighting in the proper army. I mean, when do we use an air strike, when do we use a mortar and when do we use a big bomb? Are we going to scope in smallish, middle-sized and really-big bombs? What about those rocket-sized sniffer-bombs to find the sneaky bombs and desneak them? You’ve not thought this through.

Seriously though, what if a Major General or a Red Admiral or one of those other important army people reads this and gets confused? You’d have big-bomb blood on your hands, wouldn’t you? Maniac.

Scene: baseball game, Philadelphia. Seventeen year old runs on pitch for a larf, gives fat copper the runaround. Fat copper can’t catch seventeen year old, so pulls out a Taser and zaps the little bastard. Hilarity all round, except for the minor having a spasm about on the floor.

Knobhead on the Times applauds, loses thirty years from memory:

This is the sort of hardline approach to policing that wee need to adopt in the UK. Another example is the Times Square bomber – he’s been charged already. In the UK the police would still be gathering evidence! I live in Belfast, and if a US style police force was implemented here – the dissident paramilitaries would be a thing of the past.
Adam Leslie

Even better, send the troops in. That’ll show ‘em.

I was disappointed that no-one at the Times was agreeing with the idea that spending £1.4m a day for the next 20 years on something that’s never going to get used was just fucking brilliant, so I went over to HYS. Among the people sensibly discussing the real-world policy implications of such a move, I found leambloke making the only sensible argument.

Trident was a weapon and deterant of a totally different time and enermy. It does not fit in with todays enermy as they know we wouldn’t use it.
It should be kept until a more suitable deterant or weapon is developed that would scare the bejesus out of terrist like the Taliban and Al-Quieda or even some of the more unstable Middle East nation like Syria Iran etc.
Be prepared to use it as a show of intention not just keep it lockd away in the tubes of subs gathering dust and costing a small fortune to maintain.

Either way, non of the current political leadership would dis-arm unilaterally as there is too much political outfall.
leambloke

See, that’s where we’re going wrong! Everyone’s complaining because they want to spend £100bn on something that’s out of date and not going to get used, but with all these people pointing out that there’s no-one to fire them at, only leambloke has managed to come up with the perfect, obvious, middle-of-the-road solution to everyone’s problems – just use the bastards anyway! Defy expectations! I’m glad leambloke is around to remind us that the option to fire nuclear missiles is always there, at least until Dr. Strangelove comes up with the Doomsday Machine.

Thanks to Dan for pointing out this next one:

A friend of mine has a painted biscuit tin hanging on a nail outside his house. He’s never been burgled. All the deterrent value of a real burglar alarm, without the expense.
So instead of wasting £80 billion on real nuclear missiles, why not just make some hollow metal shells and release lots of photos of them? They’ll never actually be put to the test anyway, so it’s a complete waste of money to make weapons that will never be fired. But if people think we have them, they’ll still work as a deterrent.
Graphis

Spot on. That rusty old tin of Peek Freans that your mate painted white and scribbled “BUGLER ALLARM” across in red marker is exactly the model of deception we’re looking for. I look forward to a nuclear defence policy that consists of sixty cardboard missiles with Geoff Hoon hiding behind them going “woosh, woosh, eeeeooooooowwwww”.

I’m not kidding, that’d be fucking awesome.

Our independent nuclear deterrent is worth much more than the 80bn pounds (upper estimate)it would cost to replace. Without nuclear weapons, we would lose our permanent seat on the UN security council (I don’t know if you’ve noticed but all the other countries are nuclear powers), lose our remaining influence in the world and become relegated to becoming a backwater European power on the same level as the Netherlands. From here, we’d lose preferential trade agreements and much of our strong negotiating position, the cost to the economy as we became more and more irrelevant would be huge. This is all quite apart from losing the industry which depends on the maintenance of nuclear weapons in this country.
Nuclear weapons are about a lot more than just causing untold destruction and it is important that people remember this before just thinking about the upfront cost of a replacement.
Anthony

Also, I heard they’re kicking us out of the Tufty Club because Gordon Brown only looked one way when he crossed the street. That’s much worse, because getting kicked out of the Security Council would only lose us our right to go first in the queue at the UN cafeteria, but getting kicked out of the Tufty Club would mean the nice policeman wouldn’t come and do his puppet show at Parliament.

A bunch of retired generals have written to The Times, saying that Britain needs to rethink replacing Trident. I think it’s safe to say that generals know fuck all, so I just dive right into the comments for my commonsenses and standstoreasons. There’s just so much wisdom there that I didn’t think I’d fit it all in before I felt a compulsion to throw myself under a bus.

No one should be surprised that some of our generals want to get rid of our nuclear deterrent.None of them have had experience of working with nuclear weapons or looking at other state’s nuclear, chemical or biological capabilities and their Army Staff College training will have taught them nothing about nuclear strategy – a subject which still isn’t taught in any depth in the current modern Joint Staff Courses.

The cavalry generals were arguing the same thing to get more tanks in the Cold War – even when all their tanks and 30-40 million of their countrymen could die in minutes without a credible nuclear deterrent. Now its the infantry generals arguing for more money and lives to be spent fighting far away gro-
David Davies

I had to stop David there, because it goes on for a while and he’s a massive twat. You could go and look at the article to find his comment, but I guarantee there’s nothing interesting in the rest of it, and he’s a massive twat. He also posted this at 1.42am, so he’s probably also either a jobless and gormless massive twat, or taking a break from his job playing with his winkie while watching war documentaries on the History Channel and National Geographic – which is probably where he learned everything he knows about the military and which, incidentally, would also make him a massive twat.

Speaking of massive twats…

If it is Britain’s future to be dominated/controlled by the EEC… then Britain is finished. Britain will have no future: A glance at History will tell us that Britain MUST stand on her own two feet. That will require British brains, British confidence…British guts. Sometimes I wonder if we have lost it all.

It is truly amazing how quickly the lessons of History are forgotten in Britain today. Those who forget the past…are doomed!
ANTHONY GUMBS

Lost it all? Jesus Christ, Anthony! That’s not the Dunkirk Spirit! That’s not what won the war for us! We will fight them on the beaches! We will fight them on the streets! We will fight them by the swimming pools, especially if those Kraut bastards try and sneak down first thing in the morning and put their filthy European towels on the sunbeds while we’re having a good British lie-in! For fuck’s sake, Anthony! Nearly seventy cocking years gone by, seventy years of reinforcing that the British won a British war with British guts and British confidence, not to mention British brains spread liberally all over British fields in British France, and you’re wondering if we’ve lost it all?

Don’t worry, Anthony. We haven’t lost it, not if your example is anything to go by – your example of posting about twenty fucking times on the same fucking article with hard-up patriotic bollocks referring to abstract qualities every country in the world claims for their brave boys in uniform. That still says to me that if there’s something utterly pointless and shit to do, then there’ll always be a British man ready to step up and be shit at it while failing to realise it’s all utterly pointless.

This wouldn’t happen to have anything to with the Generals wanting the Army to have a higher proportion of defenence spending?

Talk of a silo based system by the Liberal Democrats also shows them to be unfit to govern. Such a system would:

- Make the UK homeland a target
- Place a strong incentive on an enemy of the UK to launch a first strike
- Be highly vulnerable

A bomber launched system have the same disadvantages but would also require the huge cost of buying or developing a fleet of strategic bombers.
Andre Deutsch

I know for a fact that:

- Our very real enemies currently have plans to fire missiles randomly into the ocean in the hope they’ll hit a Trident submarine, instead of at the places where all the people live
- The locations of the missile silos will all be on Google Maps, along with the nearest hotels with prayer rooms and roadside cafes that don’t sell bacon
- I can’t think of a third one, so I’ll just make something up that seems slightly plausible, because all the really great arguments always make their points in threes

Well the £80 billion is the total system cost of its like, about 25 years.
So £80 billion divided by 25 equals £320 million per year. Given parliament costs about £500 billion per year, and one could also ask to what use I don’t think that is a bad price to pay to dissuade some nutter who might decide to launch a nuke at us one day.
Jack Black

Personally, I think the money could be better spent on remedial maths classes for adults. But then, what do I know. Apart from basic maths.

How far would you go to prevent a fuzzy outline of your genitals being one of hundreds seen every day by a bored security worker?

1 The Rapiscan is not an x-ray machine it uses “T” rays
2 No one scientifically or Medically qualified has done a study as to the effect of “T” rays on living human tissue.
3 Should I be refused permission to board my flight I will immediately strip totally naked in the security queue and show the staff and everyone that I am clean and have no impediments to boarding.
4) Having been seen naked and proved my innocence beyond doubt I will sue Manchester Airport and the British government for millions for denying me my absolute right to travel under admiralty law the highest law on the planet..

john marsh

Funnily enough I know John Marsh. I was behind him in the queue at Tesco the other day. Turns out, there’s been no study by anyone scientifically or Medically qualified on the effect of typing in your pin number to the little credit card machine. I won’t go into the details of what happened next, but suffice to say John is about to become a very rich man and it will be a while before I can bring myself to eat sausages again.

Saw an email joke recently, but it made sense. rather than scanning, have each individual traveler step into a giant bomb detonation device. If they don’t blow up, they can properly board. If they do blow up, hey, happy virgin time and we are safe

Richard king

Jesus, Richard, don’t tell us you got a joke that made sense and then keep it from us. You could have used the space where you had your exploding muslim fantasy wank to tell it.

And thanks to Louis for spotting this slightly disappointed pervert:

“but they also afford clear outlines of passengers’ genitals.” What genitals? Some women have breasts, big deal; the rest is on the inside. It’s like looking out the window: there’s nothing to see.

Phil E. Drifter

Phil, take a deep breath. Now look up and look for a green sign saying “EXIT.” Once you go through that door, you will no longer be in a modern art exhibit consisting of mannequins and empty window frames, and the world will make a lot more sense.

I have to thank whoever made the decision to ask the gnomes “What should Britain’s defense strategy be?”. It just keeps on giving.

It really brought out the very best in them. Many of them appear to have been patiently formulating military strategies and collecting important-sounding acronyms for years. They’ve beavered away in secret, reading about war, thinking about war, fantasising about war and masturbating about Lynda Bellingham. Finally, the little white box has asked them what the army should do. This is their chance to make a difference.

Expand support for special forces, specifically the SFSG, and look to expand SF aswell . Satelitte technology

Correctly equip regular forces with everything ground commanders recommend and unhindered by budget and cost saving

Ditch Trident, make a more mobile rapid response force, split into self sufficent units of 1500 strong supported by helo’s, Littoral combat ships and other defensive counter-measures .

There arent enough words available to be able to describe everything needed .
[BigHitter]

Aw, come on. Cheer up lad. Sure, it’s easy to become despondent when you realise that nobody gives an elasticated wank-nappy about your plan for Afghanistan. Don’t give up and don’t let it get you down! Try and forget that you’ve pissed a substantial portion of your life away patiently shoveling lorry-loads of arseblubber into the internet. Forget that you believed, for no reason that the rest of us can fathom, that this was worth doing. Abandon your conviction that important men with moustaches were leafing through your penetrating observations with grudging approval. Bravely ignore the fact that everyone has actually been shitting themselves laughing at you.

The clues you need are already on HYS. Look, here’s our old friend Ron C, putting you all straight.

…….I`m certainly not amongst them……….
Darkseid Jones,

Like all our hys`s they will always like your`s get lost in the “dark”. The mandarins in the MOD, won`t even bother to read them either, try writing direct. You still don`t get it. Why do you bother posting, its`s only all a bit of fun. lighten up.
Ron C, Northwest, United Kingdom

I think you’ve got the right attitude, Ron. The trick is to lighten up and remember that the only person who actually pays any attention to what you write is me. And I think you’re a lonely bollock.

Domestic defence security is vital with less committment overseas.The new aircraft carriers are a must, as this in turn will bolster our air defences, we also should rethink our nuclear strategy and slim back on this, and consider strengthening the army ground fores with emphasis placed on fast efficient reaction well trained and equipped units. Do something worthwhile about the terrible state of army accommodation and increase pay that its`s well above the highest parking ticket zealet`s pay.
Ron C, Northwest, United Kingdom

Ron? Can you hear me? You need to lighten up, Ron. RON? IT’S ONLY A BIT OF FUN. RON???

It must be tiring, logging into Have Your Say every day and trying to somehow twist the subject round to war. Imagine that you’re very, very good at fighting and love to chat about it (not that you fight very much, you understand… in fact, you never fight, but I bet you could… well, you could if you met someone reasonably short and unarmed.. who was quite tired… and you were half a mile away with a massive gun). Imagine you know a lot about battles, can name 12 kinds of tanks and have possibly painted upwards of 1,000 miniature soldiers (in the RIGHT colours for the period!). You’re going to want to tell the world a thing or two about warships and armies aren’t you? The last thing you need is another discussion about cervical cancer, A-level results or Susan Boyle isn’t it?

Well it seems that the HYS mods have taken pity on horny young war-lovers everywhere and created a thread where they can get it all off their bravely puffed-out chests. Come on little fellas. It’s your chance to shine.

A massive expansion of our Armed forces, this will create Jobs in high tech industries, with good export potential, bring in conscription for 18 year olds, 1 years service to learn self worth, discipline and a worth while trade, be it Cook, Medical, Electronics etc.
Enough resources to allow us to engage in to Regional Wars plus enough reserves for a 3rd emergency response.
Nuclear Deterrent based on SSN’s firing Cruise Missiles, similar to the converted US Ohio Class (SSGN)
Crusader, London

You had me at “massive expansion”.

1. stop fighting America’s wars, we had no help from THEM during the Falklands conflict, why should we care about their interests.

NOT TRUE: The US supplied us with the newest version of the Sidewinder AAM (AIM-9) that gave us an edge over the Argentinian AIM-7, also an Amphibious Assault Ship was put at our disposal incase one of our Capital ships was sunk or damaged.
Iraq & Afghan are the Western Worlds wars, or do you relish the thought of becoming a Shiara muslim State.
Jake, London

Dammit Jake. I was standing proud for a moment there, surface-to air, nearly ready to fire and then you had to go and bring forruns into it. Fucker. Now I’m looking down, somewhat wistfully, at a launch site suitable for a surface-to-surface attack at best.

The people who say we should never fight abroad are viewing the world through rose-tinted glasses. It is an absolutely excellent policy to fight your wars on someone else’s soil. Waiting until the enemy is coming up the beaches is far far too late! We nearly got caught out that way before. Defence sometimes does mean offence. How many lives would have been saved if Hitler had been stopped sooner? It’s easy to be all touchy feely when your protected, but don’t ignore human reality or history.
[numenius], England, United Kingdom

And let’s not forget the exciting world of espionage. We need to get spies in there stealing their secret chocolate recipes before they steal ours.

‘Scrap Trident.’
Jacques Cartier

Without Trident, our country would have no deterrent against invasion or nuclear annihilation. Scrapping Trident is NOT an option.
Paul

Eggsfuckingxactly. The Channel and the army might be able to save us from frenchy fuckers like Jacques, with his “kissing” and “garlic”, but if Godzilla turns up we’re gonna need nukes.

Thanks to Magnus. I’m sure you all were as shocked as I was to see the horrific images of death and destruction in Haiti; the collapsed shanty towns, a product of grinding poverty unable to withstand the awesome power of nature; the feeling of impotence in the face of such terrible suffering that we can do nothing to relieve, except dig a little into our pockets and watch the carnage unfold on our TV screens. Thank God someone has a way to apply their own skills to the situation.

Patriot8384
Figure out a way to allow me to carry my arsenal with me to Haiti and i will gladly stand over the doctors and nurses to make sure they are safe while they help as many as possible. Its so easy to sit in your nice warm house and parade around like you have an idea of what they are going through but get chased around your job by a guy with a machette or an Ak-47 and let me know how willing you will be to work overtime the next day. To anyone reading this and anyone willing to Stand by my side i say lets go and protect people so the Medical response can be swift and decisive. But i wont be a victim so i REQUIRE i be allowed to bring weapons and ammunition to do the job right. The military can only do so much. This situation needs dedicated personel just for the security of these doctors. I have all the faith in the world in the Military but i know realistically they have a job to do as well.

Dear Jim’ll,

Please can you fix it so I can shoot some black people? I have LOTS OF GUNS and I am willing to do it for charity.

Yours Sincerely,

Patriot8384

Thanks to Void for these submissions from the gobshite goldmine. What I found interesting about these three is that they’ve all decided how everything should be run to fit their petty preferences and personal prejudices, and just want a chance to test them out on a plane. For example, Sven Goonson would like Gordon Brown to stop being such a Nazi and do some proper racism.

Oh for god’s sake, what a typical BBC discussion – the answer is obviously no. I suppose the Beeb doesn’t have to suffer the turmoil that us silent majority have to face waiting hours on end in airports packed like sardine cans.

All we need is racial profiling to keep an eye on the people that are most likely to be terrorists, though I suppose Führer Brown wouldn’t dream of being oh so un-PC.

I heard that they even check people in wheelchairs at security. Utter farce.

Sven Goonson, ZaNuLab free zone, United Kingdom

Meanwhile George has a more difficult conundrum: he needs to come up with a way to prevent bombings, but all he can ever think of is bombs.

No. the problem is th US is a wimp now. If a terrorist blows a bomb up in Iraq, we should carpet bomb that neighborhood. that sends the message to the local people to stop terrorists or their block will be destroyed. It a terrorist attempts or succeds in using a bomb on a plane, no more flights in or out of that country for 10 years to the US.
BUt I am sure Obama thinks that is “cruel”.

George, Stuart

It’s harsh, but what patriotic British terrorist would ever risk such consequences?

At least Paul here has a less genocidal axe to grind, and I think we should be kind and take him at his word and assume he’s NOT RACIST IN THE SLIGHTEST and ONLY hates Pakis for their funny names.

I’m sorry , but people with long names ,double barreled or just plain time wastingly long should have to pass through a special desk for checking .Can i say this without being accused of sounding racist (which i’m not), he wasn’t called Jim Smith was he ? I have to spell out even my common name quite often…how long it must take some people to have their names checked i dread to think.. (if indeed they are) Strip search with light refreshments provided is the only way!

PAUL WILLIAMS, MANCHESTER, United Kingdom

Of course, there’s an ulterior motive at work here. For all his feigned concern, Paul really just wants to get anally fingered then given tea and biscuits.