Wages

[poliphilo]

At the end of September the army gave Joe two weeks wages and told him to live on them for a month.

I guess we should have jumped up and down about it but, well, I'm not sure we even considered it. I hate authority, but I'm cowed by it. I guess, that's why I hate it.

And if Joe hadn't been living with us he'd have probably ended up on the streets. Perhaps that was the intention- that he'd get himself in such a fix that he'd go running to his Sergeant Major asking to be taken back.

The Prodigal returns.

But that's history now. He's toughed out the lean times, and now they've paid him what they owe. It makes it possible for him to take a grip on his life. And the first thing he's done is sign up for a course in gym work.

There was an article in the paper a day or two back about how morale in Joe's old regiment is shot to pieces. They got sent to Iraq to fight a war that many of them considered illegal and wound up doing dirty police work in and around Basra, dealing with a populace that mainly didn't want them there. No wonder they're not feeling too good about themselves.

I'm not invoking hellfire, but I'd like to see those who were responsible for getting us into this war punished. Bush and his gang. Blair and his gang. We know they lied; so why are they still there? Like I said, I don't want them to burn, I just want them driven from office- with mockery.

Comments

[bodhibird.livejournal.com]

I'm a firm believer in mockery. I think a lot of crimes, great and small, would be better punished by a punitive fine and public mockery than by imprisonment. Wouldn't it be lovely to see that whole bunch driven out of office and made to own up, publicly, to what they did and to apologize for it? And then to know that they weren't living on bloated pensions for screwing up during their years in office. (Actually, I don't know what happens for an ex-Prime Minister, but that's the privilege of an ex-President.)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Ex prime ministers have it cushy. Blair (like Thatcher and Major before him) will make millions from writing his memoirs, trotting round the lecture circuit and sitting on the boards of business corporations.