Two campaigns:
First, the sending of the shirt from off one’s back to Gordon Brown, proposed by Old Holborn and seconded by everyone*;
Second, the Red Friday campaign recently proposed (or reported as having been proposed) by Andy at Adur Brewery (you see, it does work!).
Andy says:
I’ve got very mixed feelings about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the actual people on the ground deserve our support.
My feelings are relatively unmixed; I think both wars are bloody stupid ideas, quite frankly; lacking any clear objectives and any semblance of an exit strategy, their true purpose appears to be completely unlimited and open-ended: to hold down these countries until further notice in order to facilitate the operations of some foreign oil companies, and to maintain large military forces conveniently close to Iran. Our troops are stuck with this, and the public with the obvious risk of terrorism which it engenders, because the UK has to go along with the USA in everything, however ill-advised, dangerous, expensive or fraught with what old Gromyko always called ‘unforeseen consequences’, rather than risk having the USA take their nuclear weapons back, with all that such a measure would imply.
However, I would be the first to agree that the people on the ground (one of whom is a cousin of mine) deserve our support; it is not their fault that they are there, but that of the ministry of ‘defence’, which ought to be prosecuted under the Trades Descriptions Act.
I’m not sure that I own a red shirt (nor, indeed, any other garment of such an ungentlemanly and politically insalubrious colour; scene but not herd, don’t y’know), but, if it turns out that I do, I’d better be careful not to send it to Gordon Brown.
* because they always log the names and addresses from petitions, does anybody doubt that they will have a large, hand-picked and security-vetted crew of forensic scientists trying to recover DNA from the shirts? You need a powder with POWER! Try New, Theological SCOURGE!
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