The Ministry of Defence Shows its True Colours..

Since Tony Blair's election in 1997 it has been clear that the Ministry of Defence (MOD) has not got on well with the Labour government. It would appear that the government's commitment to diplomatic solutions was at odds with the military's necessity to find violent ones. The relationship deteriorated dramatically in 2004 when Britain's operations in Iraq and Afghanistan started going wrong and British soldiers started being killed and injured. This led to three years of accusations that the MOD was not receiving the funding it felt it deserved, calls for special treatment for members of the armed forces and ultimately the ousting of the Prime Minister. After Gordon Brown became Prime Minister the animosity continued and will no doubt be a major contributing factor in the Labour parties upcoming election defeat.

Now with Britain's elected government deposed in all but name it is the MOD's time to shine finally giving Britain's troops the high quality treatment that they claim the Labour government had been denying them for all these years. It is telling then that it was the MOD who yesterday took two British servicemen to court in an attempt to claw back compensation they had received for injuries sustained in the course of their service. The first serviceman, a solider, was shot in the thigh in Iraq. During treatment for the injury complications arose leaving the solider with one leg short then the other. The MOD's argument is that they should only have to compensate the solider for the gunshot would not the other injuries he sustained as a consequence of the gunshot wound. The second serviceman, a marine, sustained a similar injury while on a training exercise. Although the judges in a test case that could potentially affect thousands of British servicemen and women is not expected to return a verdict until the autumn the MOD have already made it clear that if the judges do not find in their favour they will simply appeal to a higher court. Today the Defence Minister, Bob Ainsworth, intervened and announced that he would force the MOD to review their compensation structure although it is unclear if the MOD will now drop the case.

Britain's courts were a busy place yesterday because they also saw the conviction of Ricardo Morrison for the murder of his girlfriend, Amy Leigh Barnes. During the trial and it coverage in the media a great effort was made the emphasise that Morrison was a dangerous, violent and psychologically controlling man who killed his girlfriend out of the selfish motivation that if he couldn't have then no-one else could. The agenda for this story is quite clear, Amy is Amy and I'm the dangerous killer. Aside from the obvious slander I suppose I should be quite pleased at the story because at least the Brits are now accepting that as long as Amy is on the path they laid out for her she's as good as dead. That's a sort of progress.

On a complete tangent today I saw a televised fundraising appeal for a British charity called Merlin. Merlin is an international development charity that operates rather suspiciously in countries such as Zimbabwe, Iran and Burma. One of the things that makes them so suspicious was that they were able to spend millions of pounds a year with no visible fundraising apparatus. That means I'm taking their decision to boost the profile of their fundraising efforts as a clear indication that they are very much still on the game, especially when operating alongside Save the Children, and MI6 doesn't have the ability to change up their operations.