Hi All hope you are all well.

What a beautiful start to Saturday. Have not long since taken Cathy to work. The view and the weather were quite lovely. As I was driving down the road , the vista to view was just like one of those enviable "Sunrise" photos. The Sky was clear and clean, the gold's and yellows of the rising sun merging with the blues of a new morning. Silhouetted against the sky were the Chimneys and Buildings of the Steel works in the far distance - what a view - Stunning.

I would like to thank everyone who commented on my last blog. It makes me very happy to know people "like" what I'm typing.

It would appear that the Bush / Blair alliance are pressing on with their plans. It was interesting to read blueyoohoo's to my last posting. With due respect to blue, I have copied his comment below:


"Don't believe everything that you read - the majority of the American people are behind Bush on this thing. I don't know why this has been coined a "war;" it won't be any more a war than the Gulf War in 1991, and maybe even less so. Then, our mission was to turn back an invading force, and now our mission is to topple a one man government.

But that's just my opinion."

Posted 2/26/2003 at 12:01 am by blueyoohoo - delete - block user

I found this interesting. Firstly , he is quite right, we are only "told" what they want us to know - but the problem, I suppose, is that we only have an emphasis on the UK news, and over the last few weeks the given view is that Tony Blair seems to be taking ALL the flack, and that President Bush is just getting on with what he wishes. This is probably not even close to the truth, but that is the perception.

In some ways, I do sort of agree with the Franco- German proposal to give the Inspectors more time - but then you get to the stage where you can give additional time ad-infinitum, and the longer that goes on, the harder it becomes to take the ultimate hard decision.

Also, I do actually agree with the comment about the Gulf War - that was a definite goal. Iraq was the obvious perpetrator, and this time it is the stubbornness of the individual. But is the destruction metered on the general populous the right way to achieve this "desirable " goal.

The one thing that has "annoyed" me about this situation this week is this thing with the destruction of this missile system. This teed me off on two levels. Firstly it was obvious that the Iraqi regime deliberately forced the situation - with the "no we won't", "no we won't", "no we won't" and then "Oh alright then - I suppose". But then when there is a little co-operation, the second annoyance is that the alliance leaders immediately dismissed this as time wasting and the build up continues.

The major annoyance I find with this situation is that it is continually quoted that Iraq is in contravention with various UN resolutions and we must deal with this. What I find even harder to bear is that countries like Israel have similar "restrictions" about their treatment of the Palestinian's, but they continue to attack them with not a word seemingly being said.

I am not a particually political animal, but I do know what tee's me off. I still think, at this point in time, we should not go to War. It is a pity the job wasn't completed the first time.

Just another point - History has this habit of labelling confilicts as Wars. A perticularly English Conflict was the Falklands. At the time, and for mainy years after, it was insisted that this was a conflict, but in most material I have seen in recent years it is certainly a War.