War has broken out in Europe, a terrifying prospect. I am a child of the Second World War, though I was too young to remember anything about it.
But it was ever-present in the background as I grew up.
Sunday dinner was eaten with Forces’ Favourites on the radio, along with music and messages for our troops occupying Germany.
National Service was compulsory. Wartime rationing of food and clothing was still in force. Bomb sites disfigured cities.
The horrors of hostilities were over, but the peace was grim.
Anybody who has been to war – especially the soldiers who do the fighting – say that it is hell, wasteful and futile.
Before we jump into the next one over the Russian invasion of Ukraine, let’s stop and think. This is not UK, or even Nato, territory. We must avoid being dragged into a full-scale war with the power-drunk dictator of the Kremlin.
Punitive international sanctions will hit the Russian economy hard.
They will also have a serious impact at home. Oil prices, which underpin everything from transport to food, are shooting up. War also means turmoil on the stock markets, with damage to companies and employment. And it’s ferociously expensive.
The Second World War bankrupted Britain. Gordon Brown only paid off the last of the US and Canadian loans in December 2006.
This is a time for cool heads, not hotheads. Belligerent Foreign Secretary Liz Truss claims Putin “won’t stop at Ukraine”, suggesting he will invade Poland, the Baltic states or Hungary and Romania.
If that happens, it will be war between Nato and Russia, with the military might of the USA thrown into battle.
Why talk up that danger?
Britain’s initial response was hesitant, but it will ramp up, and the Russians will almost certainly react with cyber attacks.
For the record, for what it’s worth, I support the democratic Ukrainians wholeheartedly and totally condemn the Kremlin’s invasion.
But I fear that many months, if not years, of madness lie ahead. This feels like the dawn of a new dark age.
Business as usual for toadying ministers
The Campaign to Free the Downing Street One is well underway.
Without waiting for the Met police decision on guilty Johnson’s lawbreaking, his cronies are softening up public opinion.
Toadying business minister Paul Scully demands “a real high bar” of evidence before any Prime Minister can be forced out. He means his boss, of course.
Scully is the “liberationist” ex-businessman who stopped in its tracks a Bill to end the grotesque, and growing, practice of “fire and rehire” for workers.
It’s one law for Tory politicians and another for those who work for a living. Workers can be sacked and rehired on lower wages and worse conditions at the whim of an employer.
But lying Johnson must be saved for the good of the Conservative Party. Sick, I call it.
It's the Boris Fault
An earthquake registering 2.8 on the Richter scale hit Walsall. Fortunately, it struck at 11pm – turning-out time – so few people noticed.
There are moving pavements outside most pubs, in my experience.
Black Country humour was soon online: “Several Broad Street babes fell off their high heels. Mam said it made her teeth rattle – in a jar. They’ve begun digging the North-South divide. Let’s name it the Boris Fault, everything else is.”
