Sorry, sorry, sorry but yesterday was one of those days! A fairly major shopping expedition was required in the morning and as I was feeling a bit 'crook' I was knackered by the time I got back. So I slumped in my armchair, as you do when you're a chap and you lack all that 'keep on going' that the ladies have, and was slowly driven mad by my ex-best-mate Rupe's news service which simply switched from atrocity to atrocity non-stop. I tried some others but the BBC was the same as Sky. The only slight amusement came from RT, Vlad's pet TV station. I waited and waited for them to report on the overnight news that Vlad had panicked and raised interest rates to 17.5% and that the rouble was sinking even faster than a barrel of oil! But no, it was all bad news from the west that it concentrated on until finally, just as I was about to click off, they announced a story from Mother Russia. At last, I thought, they are going to try and tell the whole truth. But no, up came a braggodocio story of a huge military exercise up near the Baltic - that'll teach those swaggering bullies in, er, Estonia and Latvia! - involving 10, 000 troops and an airborne brigade. I think in future I'll stick to 'North Korea News'!
Anyway, in desperation I clicked over to the 'Parliament live' channel - and that was more or less where my day was finished! I am not, I think, an overly emotional type but after watching the Commons Defence Committee hearings into the whole Afghanistan disaster I was seriously upset, by which I mean that I was spitting with fury and very close to tears. If I had tried to write about it yesterday it would have been even more of an incoherent rant than my usual blog posts. Suffice to say that if a very senior general, civil servant or politican of the 2005+ era had been within reach I would have killed him and done my time with a clear and contented conscience. I have calmed down a bit since yesterday and I hope to write about this a little later today.
