More please, BBC

Why you will never hear a soldier say the words “Yes, we’d love to have a journalist embedded with us on active operations”:

BBC reporter’s diary

... the 24-hour ration packs are very good and if there’s time are heated up on small, metal solid fuel stoves which are light and ideal for boiling water. The silver bags of ready made food are popped on and 10 or 15 minutes later the meal is piping hot.

I struck a heavy duty match or two on the side of the car and lit the stove, wandering off and thinking little of it, but the first match head had flicked onto a rucksack and it had caught fire. Fred the cameraman spotted the flames licking about a gun propped up at the side and the fire was out in no time, but the fuel, and thousands of rounds of ammunition on board could well have gone up. It’s when you realise the value of military discipline, and the dangers other than coming under fire of living a semi-nomadic life in the desert.

I’ve now been denied access to matches.

SOXX 2 B U

Real junk mail received 10 years ago. It was already this distinctive sepia colour, and seemed to have been sent out 30 years before at a gentler, more innocent time, when the concept of wearing one pair of socks while having another pair in the wash was apparently a novelty.

( “Let me tell you the whole story” )

Fun with racism

Tory suspended over racist e-mail

A Conservative parliamentary hopeful has been removed from the list of candidates and suspended from the party over the forwarding of a racist e-mail. The Illegal Immigrants Poem, sent from Wiltshire town councillor Ellenor Bland's e-mail address, jokes in a mock foreign voice about welfare claims. She has been suspended pending a full investigation by Conservative HQ.

Mrs Bland told the BBC it was her husband who had forwarded the e-mail, adding: “I’m not a racist.”

The poem in the forwarded e-mail, which is sent on from Mrs Bland's account with the message ”Oh yes! Ellie”, ends with a picture of the white cliffs of Dover and the words “piss off – we’re full”.

Mrs Bland said: “It was forwarded on by my husband, who took it in the form that he thought it was sent and that was a light-hearted view, which, again, anybody broadly thinking would not have made anything out of it, as has been made to be at this present time.” [She certainly talks like a sodding MP.]

She added that “apart from clocking my husband around the ears, there’s not a lot I can do about it”.

So it's just a harmless bit of fun. Who could possibly accuse “The Illegal Immigrants Poem” of being racist? Well, quite apart from anyone who reads it and has functioning synapses, the American author of the enticingly-titled “World O’ Crap” (says “the Web of Evil”) did some excellent homework about this very poem two years ago, and found it has a rich and varied history of being targeted at ethnic minorities, notably having been updated and disseminated some years ago by a member of the Stormfront White Nationalist Community.

Still, I'm sure the Blands do some terribly amusing impressions at dinner parties.

Fish update

North Sea cod fishing ban urged

A complete ban on cod fishing has been “recommended by experts”. It looks like someone at the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea has been nobbled. This is only the start.

Readers may remember that this journal was the first to raise the alarm over the imminent threat of fish terrorism. You are advised to stay calm and be alert for any sudden strong smell of brine. We will prevail.