Rejoice

The Vicar of Downing Street's dear old mother has been induced to give an inspiring message to our boys. It is twenty-five years since Margaret Thatcher defeated tyranny and violence by liberating some rocks with sheep on them from the Official Hitler Revived and Imminent Threat to World Peace of 1982, the evil Argies.

Thatcher noted that "there are, in a sense, no final victories, for the struggle against evil in the world is never-ending"; it appears that the Bush administration's global struggle against nastiness, or whatever it's called this year, still has at least one passionate acolyte. "Tyranny and violence wear many masks"; perhaps this is why the democratic, peaceful Thatcher government got on so well with the cunningly masked, or at least considerably moustached, Saddam Hussein. "Yet from victory in the Falklands we can all today draw hope and strength." I can just see our boys in Basra drawing strength from victory in the Falklands, provided of course that I am careful not to open my eyes.

As Tony has been on occasion, the old bag was at pains to remind our boys of the suffering and deprivation involved in sending other people to war: "Sending troops into battle is the gravest decision any prime minister has to take. To fight 8,000 miles from home, in perilous conditions, against a well-armed, if badly led, enemy was bound to be an awesome challenge", even without the moaning minnies: "Moreover, at such times there is no lack of people, at home and abroad, to foretell disaster." Truly, war is a perilous undertaking - possibly almost as perilous for the troops as for the prime minister who uses their corpses as stepping-stones on the hazardous clamber to greatness. Doubtless listeners to the British Forces Broadcasting Service, particularly those in Basra and Afghanistan, were duly perspectivised.