Gone Travelling...

Humphrey is currently travelling on business, and is unable to do any blogging updates. The next article will probably be posted around 28-30 March, jetlag permitting!

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Rank Hypocrisy - The Military & 'Equivalent Rank'

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  There are a few easy ways to cause an outburst of “OUTRAGE” from service personnel and veterans on social media. Any announcement celebrating the appointment of someone who isn’t a white male into a senior role can upset people worried about ‘standards’. Suggest that the Army should have beards is another (apparently its about ‘standards’ and the risk of imminent NBC attack for a good gas mask seal – thank god all our troops carry their gas masks on them at all times to avoid this risk). The last one is to suggest that perhaps Civil Servants in different grades are the equivalent level of a member of the armed forces in their own rank structure. At this point its usually full-on pitchfork wielding mobs out in force to hunt down the heretics who’d suggest such a thing. UK MOD © Crown copyright 2023 The most recent people to benefit from the power of the mob was British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS), who committed the serious ‘crime’ of producing a chart that showed not only...
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The United Kingdom is still a Warrior Nation.

In a deliberately provocative article on Sat 10 November ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/9667102/Max-Hastings-Farewell-to-our-warrior-nation.html ) , Sir Max Hastings used a column in the Telegraph to argue that the UK is no longer a warrior nation. The gist of his argument was that defence cuts will lead to an unwillingness by political leaders to use force in future, and that our glories belong to the past, and not the future. The author strongly disagrees with this very fatuous statement. At its most simple, the UK is a warrior nation. For centuries the ability to willingly inflict violence upon others who threaten our existence and way of life has been a hallmark of the UK national character. The means by which we have done this have changed out of all recognition; allegations that the military is now smaller than the end of the Napoleonic wars can easily be countered by the realisation   that the modern military is infinitely more capable than a Napole...
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Sir Winston Churchill and the 1960s Ultra Security Breach

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  In 1960 the Joint Intelligence Committee found itself with an unexpected problem. Among the challenges of the Cold War and attempting to predict what the Soviet Union may attempt next, it was also identified that the content of some of Sir Winston Churchills papers, then under transfer to the   Archives   was potentially about to cause a major diplomatic incident with the USA. This led to urgent ‘action this day’ to resolve the matter. This is the previously untold story of the Churchill papers. Like many leaders, Churchill accrued a significant amount of files governing his personal life, as well as records of his time in public office. To this day they remain accessible via the ‘ Churchill Archives’ which stores thousands of papers linked to his time in public office including as Prime Minister during the 2 nd World War (known as the ‘Chartwell Papers’) and also the later period of his life after July 1945 (known as the ‘Churchill Papers’).   The Chartwell Pa...
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