The All New Navy Lark

I had had a note on the home page about the irresistible questions of "Did your guns jam? "Did HMS Cornwall's guns jam?" and the creeping sensation that something didn't sit comfortably with our ideas of what British forces are supposed to be about. But this whole situation just gets more and more embarrassing.

Well, the Britannia that rules the waves these days is perhaps the insurance company of that name. Certainly we sail under a flag of Risk Assessment; and if we are to be rational any risk assessment of the situation might have concluded that to surrender and await release via diplomatic means was the best option. Any risk assessment might lead to another: surrender in this instance means surrender into the hands of a country whose military and security forces vary wildly in their discipline, loyalties and regard for international law but all answer ultimately to a religious authority that considers our forces to be acting as an enemy of that religion.

One of the British party is a woman. There instantly is a pressure upon the men. Some Muslims use Koranic texts to suggest that rape of an infidel woman is not techncally rape (usually with additional stipulations that are all about practicalities and technique, not moralities and situations). Women on the front line? Not sure we're evolved enough for that yet.

So if the personnel have received any sort of briefing they should expect mock executions, mistreatment, demoralisaton and threats. We at home will expect a lack of communication with the captives and footage of them looking bedraggled, scared and after a time giving a shambling performance of an obviously prepared speech in grammatically unsound English about the activities of the Great Satan and its allies.

What we didn't expect was "Wish You Were Here" meets "Military Fat Camp". I was waiting for the contestants from "Masterchef Goes Large" to turn up and run them off a quick goat casserole ["This competition just gets tougher John, they're in their cooking an eight-course meal for hostages who haven't eaten since breakfast"]. All the footage showed them having a right cosy laugh together over a fag and a coffee. The apologies to camera were natural, media-savvy and sounded bloody sincere to me. It isn't enough later to say "We put in words like 'apparently' and 'from what we've been told'"; that's called semantics and it doesn't wash.

Goody bags at the airport? The personnel literally shouldn't have touched them. One or two looked uncomfortable and perhaps angry. I fully expect at some point not too far down the line somebody will say they were brow beaten not by the Iranians but by more senior colleagues into making everything as comfortable for the group as possible, whatever the cost in honour, status or dignity.

And now the icing on the cake. The members of the group are to be allowed to sell their stories to the press while still serving officers. So that was it, it was International Big Brother all along. The inmates are 'avin' a fag by the pool while a grovellin' apology is bein' made in the Diary Rooooom...

You would not tell them with such high zest
That old lie Dulce et Decorum est
Pro Hello Magazinum Exhibio

And Finally...
It now transpires that the Royal Navy can no longer carry out its policing role in the waters bordering Iraq and Iran. This isn't due to risk assessment or a cautionary letter from the insurers, it's simple logistics: the Iranians haven't returned the two boats they captured and apparently there are no more down there. So, there we have the theme for this year's Blue Peter Appeal; they did sterling work for the RNLI in times past and once more we civilians need to start saving our bottle tops. It'll have to be down to us, "bottle" being somewhat in short supply in the Royal Navy, it seems...

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