j4 | No smoke without wire

I mean, mostly I leave political comment to other people, because I don't have the first clue about any of it, but I just wanted to mention the headline and the poem really. I'm getting ahead of myself, though: today's Cambridge Evening News, if it was the CEN that I glimpsed across a crowded supermarket aisle, had the headline "DON'T STAY BEHIND THE WIRES", which had the immediate if slightly tangential effect of ear(book)worming me with Philip Larkin. On my return to the office, LiveJournal told me that this was referring to the US forces being banned from travelling to London, but by the time I went to the BBC to find out more, it was to discover that the ban had been lifted. Make your minds up, chaps!

vinaigrettegirl voices some valid irritations with the general reporting of this, & in the course of her comments she also gives me a concise and lucid introduction to soldiering; useful stuff, for which thanks, though I have to say that (from my position of still-mostly-ignorance) it does sound rather as if the lifting of the ban was more in reponse to media concerns than military concerns.

In other news, terrorism is the new black.

I'm too busy packing to post much of any interest here. Normal service may resume shortly.