It Can Only Get Better

Rading any of the very British national daily newspapers today makes depressing reading

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The Daily Telegraph today runs a front page story about cuts in the Royal Navy, reducing it, as some would aver, to the status of a coastal defence force.

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The Daily Mail, on its front page, launches a crusade against waste recyling, warning of a plague of rats as Councils cut back on collection frequencies in order to pay the extra costs of meeting recyling targets.

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The Times gives its front page news of a proposed ban on rabbit-human embryos but also devotes two whole pages (as does the Mail) to the "crisis" over the "squalid homes" provided for our armed forces.

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The Guardian choses to climate change as its lead issue, with "environment minister" Ian Pearson (who he?) complaining that airlines aren't taking it seriously enough.

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The Independent offers, "for the first time", a ''real blueprint for peace in Iraq'', by Ali Allawi, the former Iraqi Defence Minister. Well, yes indeed.

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The Sun, when you get past the "killer bus" front page story, is running an "exclusive" headed, "Infantry crisis as troops quit". Defence editor Tom Newton Dunn is claiming that the Army is facing a massive crisis "as troops in frontline fighting battalions quit in droves over poor pay and slum homes." All but one of "39 bayonet battalions" are undermanned, he claims, and overall they have only three-quarters of the men they need. Yet some of the worst-hit units are STILL being sent on dangerous operations to do the job expected of a full-strength battalion.

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Oh well as Tony Blair said ten years ago '' it can only get better''. Well without doubt, Tony was more wright now than he was then.