I can't find just one thing to write about today, and so I am taking the unusual step of lumping two issues together in one post. First, there is a news report about American soldiers doing naughty things in Iraq. Anyone who is surprised by this is almost certainly either very young or utterly naive.
Wars are very rarely conducted without atrocities being committed, and either side in a war is usually capable of committing those atrocities. One of the main reasons why wars happen - or at least why they tend to have public support - is the revolting belief that many people have that we - whoever "we" happen to be - are the good guys, and that it must be right for us to go to war because we are somehow not capable of going to war except with good reason.
People do not generally speaking want to believe that their own brethren are capable of committing atrocities, but it is only reasonable to assume that war tends to bring out the worst in many people.
Second, it is reported that UKIP is on course to come second in the European Parliament elections this summer. I have no problem with people breaking out of the mindset of only ever voting Labour or Conservative (or maybe Liberal Democrat in some cases), but surely they could choose a better party to vote for than UKIP. UKIP think that it is acceptable to vote Conservative.
For the record, I expect UKIP to come second in the forthcoming parliamentary by-election in Wythenshawe and Sale East. This prediction is not wishful thinking. It is based on a careful analysis of voting trends in all parliamentary by-elections since the last general election.
I predict also that UKIP's success will be short-lived, but unfortunately that remains wishful thinking - at least for the time being.
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