from power, making way for a whole new set of ruthless dictators. When will these corrupt rulers come to realise that guns cannot silence the people? Only reality television and talent shows can do that.
The people of Yemen have also overthrown their ruler, and now Syria is trying. The young lesbian from Syria who wrote an online blog was actually a 40-year-old fat American. As I discovered after arranging to meet her in a Travelodge car park. Despite common perceptions, lesbianism is actually becoming a more popular lifestyle choice for young women in Syria, now that all the men are dead.
What are all these Middle Eastern rulers going to do now they’ve been chucked out of a job? Become Northern Ireland peace envoys? Back home, people are asking why other Arab leaders haven’t got involved; given that most Arab countries are currently being ruled by an ‘out of office’ email, that might be a bit of a problem. The leader of the UN wants the world to have one clear opinion. The world won’t even buy the records of The X Factor winners they voted for – you expect consistency?
For all that I in my middle-class, lefty reality tunnel imagine that people aren’t behind Britain’s wars, I sometimes wonder if that’s true. I look at the Top Gear-style news items about the rockets we use, the computer games where we symbolically join in, and I think maybe everybody is right fucking into this.
Britain sent over new Apache helicopters and Typhoons to Libya. Are we just parading what they could have bought had they not decided to make things awkward? Our Tomahawk missiles have a camera on the front, which provides great clip-show footage worth £250 a go to help pad out the defence budget. There’s even talk of a couple of new ships if Channel 5’s controversial You’ve Been Maimed gets the go-ahead. They use the latest sat-nav guidance system, replacing an earlier model where two mice sat in a transparent nosecone yanking at a joystick as they bickered over a tiny map.
Some of our troops are to be issued with special bomb-proof pants. Yes, I can think of nothing that will ease the pain and suffering of grief-stricken parents more after being informed of the death of their son than being handed his perfectly preserved cock and balls.
Meanwhile, US soldiers have started using a futuristic rifle that fires radio-controlled bullets that can travel round corners. Now, they’ll be able to shoot British soldiers without even aiming at them. There are strict guidelines for their use and they’ll only be sold to rogue Middle Eastern states if they’re willing to pay more for them than their enemies.
The US army also wants all its troops to eventually carry military smart phones, with various battlefield apps. The apps will contain all sorts of useful military information, including phrasebooks. Though if you’re out of signal, a bit of paper with ‘You killed my wife, you western devil!’ should cover most of the things you’ll hear.
The US army are putting everything into this. They will have apps with training manuals, and the capability to order new equipment and downloadable maps of all the enemy’s positions. British soldiers will be getting a text message saying ‘Duck!’ Some soldiers are killed when protecting their squad, and some soldiers are killed when patrolling the streets. Future soldiers will be killed by replying slowly to a text message asking if you’ll definitely be home in time for Uncle Alan’s retirement party.
It will take a few years before the technology is developed for every soldier to carry a military smart phone. By that time, they will probably be quite useful because we’ll be placing phones in the hands of the first generation to have been raised by parents with mobiles. And if there’s anything to inspire a lust to kill strangers, it’s being given the object that prevented your mother from looking or communicating with you for the last 18 years.
I’m not sure why they say mobile phones are the weapons of the future? From where I’m standing, it looks like handing every child a cancerous stick of isolation and apathy has pretty much destroyed humanity already.
The US army also wants all American soldiers to have 24-hour internet access. It’s essential for operations that they continue to be anaesthetised by porn and Tekken, even when being begged to stop throwing grenades at a school.
The much-anticipated game Medal of Honor came out but it’s not realistic at all. You’ve actually got a chance of winning, and all the equipment works. The next one, however, promises to be just like the real thing. It takes 27 years to complete and, whenever your character dies, you get a crappy, badly spelt letter from the prime minister.
There was outrage because of plans to let you play as the Taliban. You can’t ban a game that has fighters in it just because they kill British soldiers. What about all the ones with US troops in? I’m quite advanced at it. The thing to do is be the Taliban. Then, when you get to Stage 3, sneak off and hide in a British coffin. Next thing you know, you can be pumping bullets into the till girl at Somerfields in Wootton Bassett.
France and Britain signed a treaty to share aircraft carriers. One week we’ll put nothing on them, then the next week France will put nothing on them. Having a military agreement with France feels like getting help with your school homework from Peter Andre. At a joint conference, French military chiefs told their UK counterparts they were looking forward to the cost-saving consolidation of their respective forces, and the English ones replied, ‘Hello, my name John is what I’m called, and my hobby I am cinema watching.’
David Cameron insists budget cuts won’t affect our fighting capabilities – we’ll keep losing. The army has to lose 7,000 soldiers. Probably the best way to do this is to put them on joint military manoeuvres with the Americans. I’m just worried that with thousands of unemployed troops, and Simon Cowell with a spare £100 million, The X Factor will move into its sinister second phase.
More than a quarter of the civilian posts at the Ministry of Defence will be cut over the next five years, following the Strategic Defence Review. Which will make James Bond films less interesting. ‘Ah, Miss Moneypenny … has gone … I keep forgetting she had to go off and retrain as a classroom assistant.’ Part of the defence cuts is the withdrawal of forces from Germany … Really? Do you think it’s safe yet? Do you think there’s a chance we could return them, only to have an 80-year-old Nazi try to destroy the tube network with a Doodlebug?
The British military are spending £8 million a year on parties. You can imagine how much they’ll spend if we actually start winning any of these wars. And there’s uproar that military bosses are travelling the country by helicopter. Why would they do that? I mean it’s not as if they’ve made it awkward for themselves to travel by tube. One general flew a military plane to Wolverhampton. But I suppose the only way to happily approach Wolverhampton is when you’re watching it through a missile-targeting system.
25 per cent cuts across the board for education, health, social services – yet only 20 per cent on defence? That’s like a family skimping on buying medicine, books and clothes so they still have enough money to catapult shit into next door’s garden. The army admits it’s lost more than £6 billion worth of equipment. That’s the problem when you cover everything with camouflage.
They’ve also scrapped HMS Ark Royal. What does it say about the safe future of our country when the first boat to be scrapped is the Ark? We’re building two aircraft carriers that, eh, won’t have any aircraft on them. Basically, we’ll defend ourselves by threatening hostile nations with a giant floating ironing board. What are they going to use all that space for? Sailors’ hornpipe practice or overflow parking? Why would you build an aircraft carrier if you had no aircraft to put on it? Probably for the same reason that my father built a sun room in Scotland. It’s a very handy place to store bulky furniture.
