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Just Wrong?

Soldiers accept money to do what they are told. Often, what they are told to do is to kill people, either with their hands or bits of metal or chemicals, in my name, and in yours, wherever you are. Human beings being what we are, states cannot function without people who will fight for them--practically no society can.

You'd think that the British state was capable of reciprocating a little of the sacrifice and duty that is expected of its soldiers. But, no, this is a country whose prisons will charge you bed and board, per hotels, if you are found to have been imprisoned after a wrongful conviction, and which will deduct the money from any award.

Still--isn't anybody the slightest bit perturbed at the notion that the Army is charging soldiers for their meals (more than Members of Parliament, I might add), and for bringing their kit bags onto planes to the battlefront? Anyone?

I don't know what this state does to its soldiers, but it chills me. Here's a rather good rendition of a John Lennon classic that springs to mind, though I wonder if an older Austro-British drag queen lady millionaire singing in New York doesn't just compound the offence for any of Her Majesty's soldiers who wander onto this site. Baroness Sacher-Masoch (whose family invented masochism) does sing very very well, though. A dhaoine uaisle, An Aimsir Láithreach.

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