Why the fuss about chemical weapons? The blowy-up ones kill you just as dead (April 22)
If you believe the reports, Britain's contribution to the recent attack on Syria was a bit My Little Pony. While the French and the Americans were launching sophisticated missiles from a range of sleek warships and supersonic aircraft, we were lumbering about in our Sopwith Camels, shouting tally-ho and generally being a nuisance.
One report said that our only warship, HMS Austerity, had to be moved out of the way of the USS Gut Buster because, to save money, it hadn't been fitted with any actual weapons. Another suggested our planes had been built in 1979. In other words, Biggles was flying around in an airborne Morris Marina and winding the windows down to drop gravity bombs on the target.
My favourite story, though, was that the Rivet Joint, our top-secret spy plane, was monitored constantly by President Bashar al-Assad on his mobile phone's flight-tracking app.
Indeed, it's said that all Britain did to support the raid was provide the maps. Yup, forgetting perhaps that most people now have pretty good maps on their phones, the Royal Geographical Society sent over its cartography, drawn up by TE Lawrence himself, so that the gung-ho Americans and lackadaisical French would not hit Persia or Mesopotamia by mistake.
The message here is clear. We turned up with two 40-year-old biplanes, a ship with the armaments of a rowing boat, a spy plane that can be tracked by anyone with an iPhone and Sir Ernest Shackleton's map of South Georgia because Enid in the government's post room had got a bit muddled again.
However, to try to convince everyone that Britain had been a valuable part of a massive international effort to punish an evil dictator, Mrs May made a serious-faced speech in the House of Commons. And there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth on all sides.
Some said she should not have sent our maps without first consulting parliament. Others said she'd only sent them because Donald Trump had insisted. And Mr Corbyn said that he'd need irrefutable proof before making his mind up that Syria is a country, that President Assad is its leader and that there is such a thing as "nerve gas".
Meanwhile, in America, Mr Trump was busy on Twitter telling Wilbur and Myrtle that the USA would prevail just like it had done at the Bay of Pigs and in Vietnam. And everyone was clutching their baseball caps to their chests and weeping while Billy Ray Cyrus belted out "The Star-Spangled Banner."
I, however, was wondering what on earth just happened. Assad had launched a gas attack on his own people. I'm not Corbyn. I believe that. And to punish him, America and France had been given Dr Livingstone's maps to rain fire on a factory that they'd suddenly identified as a chemical weapons plant.
But hang on a minute. When Russia launched a similar attack on Salisbury, the world didn't respond by firing sophisticated weapons at the facility where they'd been made. It simply sent a few Russian diplomats home. We seem to be saying that the punishment for using chemical weapons will be used only if you are weak.
That's by the by, though. The main thrust of my concern is: why are chemical weapons treated differently from any other sort of weapon? Around the turn of the last century, two separate treaties were drawn up in the Hague, banning the use of "chemical agents". But within a matter of years Germany was lobbing chlorine at Tommy in the trenches. This caused the allies to respond in kind, and pretty soon everyone was wandering round Belgium coughing up their lungs.
After the First World War was over, everyone had a meeting in Versailles and decided that, in future, Germany and, er, Bulgaria would never again be allowed to use chemical weapons.
In June 1925 they decided that everyone should be covered by the ban, so they sat down in Switzerland and agreed that while it was perfectly acceptable to mow down thousands with sustained machine-gun fire, it was not acceptable to use gas of any kind.
Everyone went home and began to make as much as possible, because everyone else was probably making it too. So in 1972 there was another meeting, where everyone agreed to stop producing, transporting or even storing it. Nuclear weapons? Yes, they're fine. As is napalm. And anyone can have a Daisy Cutter and an Apache gunship. But nerve agents? Still the big no-no.
Why? We are told that, in the recent Syrian attack, many died, including children, but if you look at footage taken in the aftermath, it looks as if everyone is suffering from hay fever. Maybe that's what Assad did. Bomb them with pollen.
And then there's Salisbury. Russia made a nerve agent and transported it secretly all the way from Moscow to Wiltshire, and yet despite this Herculean effort it made only three people a bit poorly for a while. If it'd simply used a pistol, Sergei Skripal would now be dead, there'd still be a full complement of spies in the embassy and Plod would still be sitting around wondering why someone had shot such a nice old man.
Remember the ebola outbreak? We were told everyone in the world would be dead in a fortnight. But after it swept across six countries, the eventual death toll was just over 11,000. That's how many die on the roads every four days.
This, then, is my suggestion. The world needs to sit down again and get rid of chemical weapons once and for all, because they don't work properly.
And, in future, the good guys will break out John Blashford-Snell's maps and retaliate against anyone who's been an arse, no matter what sort of weapon they've chosen to use.
***
The Sun column.
If you believe the reports, Britain's contribution to the recent attack on Syria was a bit My Little Pony. While the French and the Americans were launching sophisticated missiles from a range of sleek warships and supersonic aircraft, we were lumbering about in our Sopwith Camels, shouting tally-ho and generally being a nuisance.
One report said that our only warship, HMS Austerity, had to be moved out of the way of the USS Gut Buster because, to save money, it hadn't been fitted with any actual weapons. Another suggested our planes had been built in 1979. In other words, Biggles was flying around in an airborne Morris Marina and winding the windows down to drop gravity bombs on the target.
My favourite story, though, was that the Rivet Joint, our top-secret spy plane, was monitored constantly by President Bashar al-Assad on his mobile phone's flight-tracking app.
Indeed, it's said that all Britain did to support the raid was provide the maps. Yup, forgetting perhaps that most people now have pretty good maps on their phones, the Royal Geographical Society sent over its cartography, drawn up by TE Lawrence himself, so that the gung-ho Americans and lackadaisical French would not hit Persia or Mesopotamia by mistake.
The message here is clear. We turned up with two 40-year-old biplanes, a ship with the armaments of a rowing boat, a spy plane that can be tracked by anyone with an iPhone and Sir Ernest Shackleton's map of South Georgia because Enid in the government's post room had got a bit muddled again.
However, to try to convince everyone that Britain had been a valuable part of a massive international effort to punish an evil dictator, Mrs May made a serious-faced speech in the House of Commons. And there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth on all sides.
Some said she should not have sent our maps without first consulting parliament. Others said she'd only sent them because Donald Trump had insisted. And Mr Corbyn said that he'd need irrefutable proof before making his mind up that Syria is a country, that President Assad is its leader and that there is such a thing as "nerve gas".
Meanwhile, in America, Mr Trump was busy on Twitter telling Wilbur and Myrtle that the USA would prevail just like it had done at the Bay of Pigs and in Vietnam. And everyone was clutching their baseball caps to their chests and weeping while Billy Ray Cyrus belted out "The Star-Spangled Banner."
I, however, was wondering what on earth just happened. Assad had launched a gas attack on his own people. I'm not Corbyn. I believe that. And to punish him, America and France had been given Dr Livingstone's maps to rain fire on a factory that they'd suddenly identified as a chemical weapons plant.
But hang on a minute. When Russia launched a similar attack on Salisbury, the world didn't respond by firing sophisticated weapons at the facility where they'd been made. It simply sent a few Russian diplomats home. We seem to be saying that the punishment for using chemical weapons will be used only if you are weak.
That's by the by, though. The main thrust of my concern is: why are chemical weapons treated differently from any other sort of weapon? Around the turn of the last century, two separate treaties were drawn up in the Hague, banning the use of "chemical agents". But within a matter of years Germany was lobbing chlorine at Tommy in the trenches. This caused the allies to respond in kind, and pretty soon everyone was wandering round Belgium coughing up their lungs.
After the First World War was over, everyone had a meeting in Versailles and decided that, in future, Germany and, er, Bulgaria would never again be allowed to use chemical weapons.
In June 1925 they decided that everyone should be covered by the ban, so they sat down in Switzerland and agreed that while it was perfectly acceptable to mow down thousands with sustained machine-gun fire, it was not acceptable to use gas of any kind.
Everyone went home and began to make as much as possible, because everyone else was probably making it too. So in 1972 there was another meeting, where everyone agreed to stop producing, transporting or even storing it. Nuclear weapons? Yes, they're fine. As is napalm. And anyone can have a Daisy Cutter and an Apache gunship. But nerve agents? Still the big no-no.
Why? We are told that, in the recent Syrian attack, many died, including children, but if you look at footage taken in the aftermath, it looks as if everyone is suffering from hay fever. Maybe that's what Assad did. Bomb them with pollen.
And then there's Salisbury. Russia made a nerve agent and transported it secretly all the way from Moscow to Wiltshire, and yet despite this Herculean effort it made only three people a bit poorly for a while. If it'd simply used a pistol, Sergei Skripal would now be dead, there'd still be a full complement of spies in the embassy and Plod would still be sitting around wondering why someone had shot such a nice old man.
Remember the ebola outbreak? We were told everyone in the world would be dead in a fortnight. But after it swept across six countries, the eventual death toll was just over 11,000. That's how many die on the roads every four days.
This, then, is my suggestion. The world needs to sit down again and get rid of chemical weapons once and for all, because they don't work properly.
And, in future, the good guys will break out John Blashford-Snell's maps and retaliate against anyone who's been an arse, no matter what sort of weapon they've chosen to use.
***
The Sun column.