Operation Oil Theft: Day 4.5

It's Tuesday and I'm home from the pub.

The only small issue is that today (22/3/11) the people from the Queens Road Community Mental Health Team (CMHT) visited my grandmother and informed my father that they want to discharge my grandmother back to her GP's care. As my father is opposed to this idea and because it came on the same day that Croydon Council sent him a letter informing him that they are to pay my grandmother an £800 tax rebate which is about 80% of the amount of my grandmother's money that my father has wasted since gaining a lasting power of attorney he is all of a jitter. As a result he did his trick of eating his dinner really, really slowly in the hope that it would force me to drink more.

Also I've had my haircut so if anything has happened in Libya I either haven't had the time to find out about or got drunk and forgotten about it. I should point out though that in April 1993 the UN authorised a no-fly zone over the former Yugoslavia. This developed into a full scale bombing campaign that lasted for 21 months until December 1995 although Yugoslavia continued to disintegrate into ever smaller pieces for a long time after that.

In March 1999 NATO decided to bite a chunk out of Serbia in an operation that started with a bombing campaign and rapidly progressed into a full scale land invasion. Technically this situation is still going on 12 years later as Kosovar clans fight it out and the Serbs riot.

In December 1992 the UN authorised a no-fly zone over Iraq which lasted for 11 years until America and Britain launched a full scale invasion and occupation. Although the occupation formally ended 18 years later in 2010 the number of car and suicide bombings suggest that there's still a lot of fight left in that story.

Basically the point I'm trying to make is that the current action against Libya may go on for a lot longer then is practical to keep giving twice daily updates.

For example tomorrow (23/3/11) is Budget day which will see the first large scale assessment of Britain's finances since 2010's Comprehensive Spending Review. With growth below target and inflation above target I hope that the Chancellor, George Osborne wasn't hoping that we'd all suddenly forget about this just because there's a war on.

However if you are a UK resident my advice is to fill your car up with petrol, stock up on luxury goods like shoes and remember to bend over because here it comes again.