Was none who would be foremost
To lead such dire attack:
But those behind cried ‘Forward!’
And those before cried ‘Back!’
And backward now and forward
Wavers the deep array;
And on the tossing sea of steel,
To and fro the standards reel;
And the victorious trumpet-peal
Dies fitfully away.
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'I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free'
About Me
Posts
Heroes
- Axel Leijonhufvud
- E.E.Evans-Pritchard
- Edmund Leach
- Francois Couperin
- Joan Robinson
- John Maynard Keynes
- Louis de Soissons
- Mario Draghi
- Noam Chomsky
- Pablo Picasso
- Paul Klee
- Pietro Porcinai
- The Earl of Onslow
- Umberto Boccioni
- Wassily Kandinski
- Wilhelm von Humboldt
Blog Archive
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▼
2008
(473)
-
▼
March
(44)
- Not Content
- Basra
- Who Rules England?
- Incoming
- The Advantages of Hereditary Office
- Animal Spirits
- New Labour Old Enemies
- Someone, Anyone, Teach Him Some Manners
- Why Are British Troops at Basra Airport?
- Nuclear Expansion Offers Mutant Production Efficie...
- Acts of Union to be Disturbed
- 'British' Prime Minister Forced to Accept Heart a...
- In Heart and Conscience Free
- Jubilate
- Security Strategy Concordance
- Reserve Forces and Special Measures to Contain Jon...
- Bought But Not Paid For
- The Clinton Rush on the Ultimate
- Brass Neck at Northern Rock
- The Aristocracy of Labour
- Merit and Choice
- Do They Have to Have GCSE English?
- Managing Local Democracy
- Another Day, Another Run
- Two for the Price of One.
- Are We Nearly There Yet?
- Freedom of Conscience
- So What?
- Laffable
- All Things Bright and Beautiful
- A Tissue of Lies
- What Governance Is This?
- Angels Slightly Foxed
- Golden Slumbers
- Bestialising Humanity
- Just for England
- Then As Now
- Scotland may prefer not to be dragged into the Eu...
- Slithy Toves
- A Fool's Bauble or Representative Democracy
- Liberal Democrats Must Keep Their Manifesto Commit...
- Held Close in Brown's Embrace
- British Homes for British Workers
- Secondary School Place Allocation
-
▼
March
(44)
Fallen Angels
- David Cameron (for risking the disorderly dissolution of the Euro)
- Giorgio Napolitano (for stance on Budapest 1956: Prague 1968: Italy 2013)
- Mervyn King (for bailing-out Northern Rock)
- Nicholas Kaldor (for inventing VAT)
2 comments:
The Tuscans raised a joyful cry
to see the red blood flow
(?)
The incoherences are puzzling. What is the line of authority that the commanders in Basra airbase are following? I doesn't lead to the Labour regime because the reports 2 days ago that local political and diplomatic British representation in Iraq itself was calling for the forces at Basra airport to move from over-view to action suddenly stopped; they wouldn't have begun if Brown and Browne hadn't thought that was the plan and meant it to be implemented.
But it isn't, is it? The commanders in the airport are not going in. So who are they answering to? (Apart from an admirable sense of self preservation and professional assessment of their chances in Basra street fighting or on any other kind of fighting in the whole sector).
Browne is reported to have said it would be presentationally unacceptable for them to leave - an astonishing view of what factors he believes count in such decision taking.
Brown and Browne said forward but someone else has said back. Not the way the democratic politics of control of the armed forces is supposed to work. (the quote is about the conflicting orders really, and the perception that a great army may have been led into loss).
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