Ready Rants & One by me

At the risk of repeating myself – oh, go on then – do it.
This Internet thing is quite amazing when one sits down and thinks about it. Even within my grandchildren’s lives it has come from nothing and is now almost all things to all men – like it or not.
Someone wrote a small rant on a forum I read. One of those in a vein that seems attractive right now. “Immigrants. If you don’t like it go home” sort of things. Nothing too fiery, Pushed the line that the English were what they were and that compliance with these standards was obligatory for assimilation.
I have not found a ‘standard’ Englishman. The line being pushed was that we all spoke English. Our National flag was the Cross of St. George and that type of thing. I posted a refutation of every ‘standard’ assumption. There is Welsh, Cornish, Gaelic even before we get into dialect that is not common everywhere. Your St. David cross is not often seen in Edinburgh. Having satisfied my pedantic leanings, I decided to look around and see if there was any central pool from which such rants came – I thought maybe BNP or some such.
Well of course, the Internet caters for all. There is just such a place that supplies ready made rants.  They are all there – suburban BMW X5 users, shoe sizes. You name it – they’ve got it. All ready in HMTL for a neat cut and paste job.
Something that will cause far more problems than stupid bespoke rants is the latest soldier nasty from Iraq showing violence by our soldiers towards Iraqis arrested after some sort of rioting. I’ve seen the extract from the video that the newspaper has used as the basis for their revelations. There can be no suggestion that this was anything other than genuine and not faked like the one published by the Mirror. There are a few weird things about it that raise questions but none that take away the fact that this happened.
There will inevitably be physical resistance at the time of arrest and immediately after the event. The soldiers are armed with batons for a purpose and they use them in their arrest procedures. What we see here is the violence continuing long after arrest when there is absolutely no need for it. It seems that the events took place some two years ago so there can be no connection with heightened tension in Iraq or events such as 7/7 in UK. As an old soldier – ahem – I have carried out arrests in just such the conditions shown. I’ve witnessed very many more and investigated a considerable number where violence overflowed. The qualifies me to state quite clearly I hope that there is no reason for this type of treatment. It must be rooted out with such severity extending high into the command chain that we can be confident no one will ever again even contemplate such stupidity. There is no excuse or reason for soldiers suppressing riots to become rioters.