Legion in the schoolyard

The Royal British Legion has launched a sneak propaganda offensive against Irish primary schools.

Unsolicited 'schools packs' have been despatched from Legion HQ in London's plush Pall Mall district in the West End to schools in the 26 Counties. Labouring under the illusion that all of Ireland is still under British rule, a covering letter from the Legion's 'Director of Corporate Communications' tells teachers that the packs meet the guidelines within the National Curriculum: Britain's National Curriculum, that is.

The Legion letter encourages schools to apply for free CD-ROM/DVD sets: "short films suitable for use in school assemblies and for large groups of pupils working together". And teachers are urged to register their interest in "travel and learn" trips overseas.

Not much harm in that, is there? Well not if you buy the Legion's cover story that it's about looking after those cuddly old boys in the Chelsea Pensioners in their nice red frock coats.

But the school pack itself reveals that the Legion helps members of the British crown forces, past and present: "Men and women WHO ARE SERVING or who have served in the Army, Navy or Royal Air Force" (our emphasis).

Legion Secretary General Ian Townsend further exposes the Legion's true colours on his website for any school teachers thinking of signing up:

"British service people are in action around the world every day of the year. They know that if they need our support - now or in the future - the Legion is always on active duty for them."

Get that? "NOW or in the future."

So it's not just all those former soldiers who are veterans of suppressing independence and freedom movements in Kenya, Malaya, Cyprus and Aden (and gunning down unarmed civil rights marchers in Derry on Bloody Sunday), who the British Legions actively aids. No, sir.

All those SAS troopers, Paras and UDR/RIR soldiers still working undercover in Ireland or kicking in doors and 'slotting' civilians in Iraq, they all know that, in their own words, the British Legion "is always on active duty for them... now or in the future".

Don't mention the war

Part of the pack being sent to Irish schools (and to British ones as well) is a very large wall chart with lots of nice pictures and a British military timeline.

The timeline begins in 1914 with the outbreak of the First World War and runs through to its end in 1918 before the Legion's foundation in 1921. And then nothing until 1945 and the start of the Second World War.

Hold on. No mention of the British Army suppression and the 1916 Rising? No mention of the British Army in the Tan War?

Seems like a touch of the Basil Fawltys at British Legion HQ: Don't mention the (Irish) war.

A suitable case for treatment

Willie Frazer, the eccentric, self-styled campaigner for unionist victims (no nationalists need apply), has set alarm bells ringing among even his own supporters with a claim that an ambulance driver deliberately delayed treating his UDR father after he was ambushed by the IRA in 1975.

In an interview with a right-wing, anti-Catholic website in the USA, the ever-imaginative Willie said: "It should have taken the ambulance about ten minutes to get to him. But because it was a republican that was driving it, and he obviously knew where he was going, an hour and three quarters passed before they arrived at the scene. My father actually bled to death."

The ambulance workers' trade union, the ATGWU, called on Willie Frazer to withdraw the remarks.

"If there was an issue it should have been raised at the time, not 30 years later."

Willie says that an alleged eyewitness who saw the ambulance crawling along the road "came to me 10 years ago". Then Willie adds that he reported it to the Peelers in Newry "four or five years ago".

So why did Willie wait then another five years before he went to the PSNI and ten years before he went public?

Didn't he treat it seriously?

Don't make me laugh

At last a Jim Davidson story that will really make you laugh - he's bankrupt.

The Thatcherite 'comedian' and wife-batterer, founder of the British Forces Foundation (which entertains British occupation forces overseas), is struggling to make the payments of £400,000 a year he owes to HM Revenue & Customs, part of a £1.4 million bill from three years ago.

Part of poor Jim's problem was that he had a £2.2 million mortgage. Now he has been declared bankrupt.

"I'm still pretty solvent; I just can't pay £700,000 right now," Jim cries all the way from the bank where the 'Super Brit' lives in self-imposed exile in Dubai.

It pains me, but only when I laugh.

Tiger's Bay watch

Did you notice those nice boys from the Tiger's Bay First Flute Band in the Twelfth parades? Is the Orangefest funding from Downing Street making Orangeism truly more inclusive and progressive?

Obviously new-found fans of Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness, they put a big portrait of our hero on their bass drum. Nice.

And the boys themselves were rather fetching in their natty red and white, line dancing, cowboy outfits, in shirt sleeves, complete with cute little cowboy hats.

Don't they know the DUP doesn't like line dancing?