Shouldn’t we be shooting them? I mean, it’s our sovereign territory, and Iran has a duty to look after the people inside and to ensure that territory is kept that way, so why aren’t we defending it to the hilt?

Seems to me that we’re just letting Iran do what it wants. What kind of government do we have? If people here in the UK did that to embassies we would lose -all- credibility and honour, so why is it ok when two-bit regimes like Iran let it happen?

Given that our banks have had to bail out err, well nearly everyone, and we got screwed over just as badly if not worse than you, forgive us if we think we can offer a bit of financial advice to you. Don’t get caught up in your german love affair, we know how well that turned out the last time – rappelez-vous de Vichy?

So I ask the question, if you (we) don’t know how to win it, and really honestly don’t know what we’re doing it for now (since Osama is dead), why the hell are we there?

Surely we’re not there to actually turn Afghanistan into an outpost of ‘the West’, are we? What’s there? Unruly tribes who take every opportunity to kill each other, neverendingly? The emeralds (and there’s lots, apparently)? Some other resource we desperately need (err, no)?

Come on governments, get our boys out of there. We don’t need to be wasting yet more money in a conflict no-one wants to fight and certainly no-one is going to win. The moment we leave there’ll be a civil war, the Taliban will come roaring back and the country will be at square one again.

What makes it even worse, at least in my eyes, is that we’re propping up a despot who can’t protect his own family let alone his own people. And all of Karzai’s posturing around with that silly multi-coloured rug on his back just makes me retch, the man thinks he’s annointed by God or something.

But, then when you see it night after night, and one the subsequent nights, it’s youths smashing shops and nicking what they can, rather than rioting/protesting, then it’s not about that young man’s death. He had a gun by the way, and though evidence points to the fact he didn’t shoot it, he was waving it around.

Now it’s just thugs wanting to see the world burn.

If, as some say, it’s a response to the high unemployment rate (yada yada), then smashing shops to bits won’t help, will it? Any chance of jobs go down the drain then. Not to mention that these muppets are filming themselves on their mobile phones and posting them to youtube/facebook. Nice one: get a criminal record and then definitely no-one will employ you.

Political change does not emanate from a protester’s placard. Or, in this case, from a thieving thug’s brick.

Most people here in the UK would agree that these idiots aren’t helping the situation at all, and I think the vast silent majority (at least from my conversations with friends and acquaintances) would want strict punishments meted out.

A confidential document presented to the Cabinet in January 2006 asks: “We’ve spent all this money, but what have we got for it?”

It warns that the efficiency of the public sector needed to improve rapidly and insisted that “spending growth will slow”. The document drafted by civil servants also says that “ineffective spending” must be “closed down”.

However, Gordon Brown discarded the advice and embarked on a £90 billion increase in spending when he became prime minister.

The expenditure meant that the economy was left facing a record deficit as the effects of the recession were felt.

Possibly knowing that Labour’s time was up, Brown proceeded to spend and spend. Not only is this man an idiot for selling gold at an historic low, he then went on to spend us nearly to bankruptcy.

We, the people of the UK, should demand that these men (and women?) be prosecuted for fraud and mismanagement.

This was our money, and now we are spending -more- of our money bailing businesses and banks out.

I don’t understand why we think it ok that they did this, and yet you hear of people going to prison for embezzling a few thousand. These men, these elected officials, should be looking after all citizens equally, but they nearly destroyed this nation (and, if you consider devolution started by Labour, have).

Interesting to note, this only applies to the US. The FCC, despite what some Americans may think, only works inside the borders of the USA, the rest of the world could give a sh*t less. But what the US does, others eventually copy. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery…

Also something to take note of today, Murdoch is getting closer to purchasing and controlling BSkyB. Is it right that our news is controlled by one person, shouldn’t there be plenty of competition to keep these barons honest? The EU seems to think it won’t affect competition; we’d better write to the Lancet, we’ve found a group of people that seem to have developed collective blindness all at the same time…

A leading Muslim cleric has sparked controversy in Britain by claiming that it is impossible for men to rape their wives.

Sheikh Maulana Abu Sayeed, who is president of the Islamic Sharia Council, told a website that “sex is part of marriage” and suggested that husbands who commit such acts should not be prosecuted.

This is the person who controls the Islamic courts in the UK.

Not only do these muslims expect (and get!) their own legal courts, but now the person who controls them is stating something contrary to the laws of this land.

When contacted by The Independent, the cleric added: “In Islamic sharia, rape is adultery by force. So long as the woman is his wife, it cannot be termed as rape. It is reprehensible, but we do not call it rape.”

I sincerely hope that the UK does not let criminal cases be handled by these courts. How are to even know that the punishments meted out by these courts are in line with the ones handed out by our normal courts?

This is literally what is wrong with Islam, that people (men) who control the “religion” trying to cling to this inequality that the rest of the world is leaving behind. To subject women to this kind of slavery is barbaric, and does not belong here – the sooner this country realises that and shuts down these courts and subjects all muslims to the same laws we have to follow, the better.

At last we’ve apologised for Hiroshima – well, sort of. We’ve recognised the suffering our atom bombs caused –well, kind of. President Obama was showing off his anti-nuclear credentials in the killing grounds of Hiroshima, but this was not to be confused with saying sorry.

I was shocked to say the least. And I’m glad that we’re not saying sorry – let’s be honest with one another here, because it seems to me these days that people aren’t taught the real history of things. The Japanese were engaged in a brutal war against the Chinese for years in the 1930′s, then in 1941 they attacked the Americans at Pearl Harbour and us (the British) at Singapore and Hong Kong.

At that time, the Japanese were brutal, they were cruel, ask any surviving soldiers from the work camps. They weren’t “honourable” as movies might portray today, this wasn’t Shogun in any way. It was a war of conquest plain and simple.

Estimates at the time of the Americans invading the Japanese homeland were that 1 million casualties would result. That’s perhaps one of the main reasons the Americans dropped the bomb. Yes, that’s right, the -Americans- dropped it, not us. Sure, the British and other nations were involved in developing it, but the Americans had their fingers on the button. And for this Brit, I’m damned glad they pushed it. They have nothing to apologize for in my opinion.

The author of that article puts things into perspective at the end:

But it raises another question. When do our war “crimes” have an expiry date. Blair gave his half-hearted apology to the Irish a century and a half after the Brits exported Ireland’s food instead of using it to save Irish men and women who were found dead in ditches after trying to eat stinging nettles. The Americans and the Australians have said sorry to their native peoples. But what about Cromwell and Drogheda? Or the Thirty Years’ War, or the Hundred Years’ War? Or the sack of Rome – a Goth war crime (poor Mrs Merkel)? – or the Roman destruction of Carthage? Or the death of Jesus – I guess Rome’s imperial history means Berlusconi has to apologise, though an awful lot of Catholics have spent centuries living in their anti-semitic world by blaming the Jews. Poor Benjamin Netanyahu!

He’s right, when is there an expiry? And for what? War today is much different than even one hundred years ago, civilians died back then too. Do we take into account who dies, and what led to it, or who won? Magnanimous us, we apologize for the deaths caused by our ending of the war. I’d say that since then the Japanese have done quite well, if the shoe were on the other foot, would we have done so well under German or Japanese hegemony? Would they be apologizing?

Many, many, of the public sector workers earn more, if not nearly double, the average wage. How is that right in a capitalist society? Surely private industry should pay more, or at least, equal? This is where the wealth of a nation is generated.