Michael Yon has a great piece up about Brit. troops in Basra:

The British are planning future operations. These soldiers are so good that I have requested from British commanders to be allowed to stay longer.

LINK(Link)

Well, when you are paid a lot less than the spotty MoD 20 year old who signed the order sending you into combat; when your wife and children live in squalid quarters that even the EU would baulk at accommodating pigs in; when the hospital treatment you receive upon injury is of such a low level that your men ask that if injured they would rather stay in Iraq or Afghanistan (the Canadian military hospitals apparently don't have muslim orderlies who spit at wounded soldiers) then I am surprised that not more of our chaps are flocking to the Iranian border.

As the joke today goes "What have the Royal Navy and the BBC got in common? ... They're both losing ratings."

Is this an argument against free trade?

Julian,

It's ITV, not the BBC. Makes more sense- particularly if you've read today's copy of PopBitch.

I'd rather be arrested some place a little less dangerous. Vermont perhaps.

The market would sort that out pretty quickly. Once is a potential exclusive, twice a follow-up story, three times not really news.

And there's only so much sentimental pseudo-therapeutic guff about the feelings of the captives even the soggy end of the public can soak up: such an audience would prefer to contemplate its own emotional correctness. Cf. the transfiguration of Diana.

Hasn't this thing become an absolute farce?

I might go to work for 'the man'.
Making audio-recording devices for the RAF.
Apparently the Navy uses a different company.

Iranian Television.