6 August 1998 Edition
Editor's desk
If you're on the sick with a sore shoulder, don't allow yourself to be photographed by a newspaper wearing a heavy backpack. Even if you are wearing camouflage and you have your face blackened.
That valuable piece of advice comes too late for Corporal Roy Fraser of the 3rd (Volunteer) Battalion The Highlanders, part of the British Territorial Army.
Roy `Smart Boy' Fraser was recognised in the photograph by his bosses at Craig Dunain Psychiatric Hospital in Inverness and immediately sacked.
One of his military comrades said, ``I don't think there's much chance of him getting a transfer to the Intelligence Corps.''
Taking of Intelligence - or the lack of it - the arrest of former MI5 agent David Shayler in Paris at the request of the British government has led to a juicy controversy in Britain.
Shayler has leaked information on MI5 and has threatened to leak more. News reports indicate he was about to reveal details of anti-IRA operations on the Internet when he was arrested.
Shayler claims that his concern is to expose inefficiencies in MI5 and has absolutely nothing to do with him seeking a publishing deal. A spook with a conscience - it's possible, I suppose.
He has said that British Intelligence plotted to kill Colonel Gaddafy but of course a democratic country like Britain does not indulge in state-sponsored killings, as the people of Ireland know, so that one has led to a bout of soul-searching in sections of the media.
A little fuel was added to the fire by a former MI6 operative, Anthony Divall, who wrote to tell the Daily Telegraph that he had organised covert operations on behalf of MI6 and the CIA. In 1975 he delivered arms to the right wing UNITA rebels in Angola using airfields in apartheid South Africa. That was during the term of a Labour government.
By the way, our old friends in the Daily Telegraph suggested on Monday that David Shayler should be horse-whipped. Good to see that some decent British values remain.
Some of those old values also remain in the Conservative Party, particularly among the new MPs. Labour's women MPs accuse them of sexism, including ``weighing melons'' when the women get up to talk. One of the new Tories, John Bercow, responds to their ``whinging'' by saying: ``It's a defence mechanism against their own inadequacy. You don't find the competent, attractive ones... moaning on about sexism''.
Thatcherism will never be dead.
That valuable piece of advice comes too late for Corporal Roy Fraser of the 3rd (Volunteer) Battalion The Highlanders, part of the British Territorial Army.
Roy `Smart Boy' Fraser was recognised in the photograph by his bosses at Craig Dunain Psychiatric Hospital in Inverness and immediately sacked.
One of his military comrades said, ``I don't think there's much chance of him getting a transfer to the Intelligence Corps.''
Taking of Intelligence - or the lack of it - the arrest of former MI5 agent David Shayler in Paris at the request of the British government has led to a juicy controversy in Britain.
Shayler has leaked information on MI5 and has threatened to leak more. News reports indicate he was about to reveal details of anti-IRA operations on the Internet when he was arrested.
Shayler claims that his concern is to expose inefficiencies in MI5 and has absolutely nothing to do with him seeking a publishing deal. A spook with a conscience - it's possible, I suppose.
He has said that British Intelligence plotted to kill Colonel Gaddafy but of course a democratic country like Britain does not indulge in state-sponsored killings, as the people of Ireland know, so that one has led to a bout of soul-searching in sections of the media.
A little fuel was added to the fire by a former MI6 operative, Anthony Divall, who wrote to tell the Daily Telegraph that he had organised covert operations on behalf of MI6 and the CIA. In 1975 he delivered arms to the right wing UNITA rebels in Angola using airfields in apartheid South Africa. That was during the term of a Labour government.
By the way, our old friends in the Daily Telegraph suggested on Monday that David Shayler should be horse-whipped. Good to see that some decent British values remain.
Some of those old values also remain in the Conservative Party, particularly among the new MPs. Labour's women MPs accuse them of sexism, including ``weighing melons'' when the women get up to talk. One of the new Tories, John Bercow, responds to their ``whinging'' by saying: ``It's a defence mechanism against their own inadequacy. You don't find the competent, attractive ones... moaning on about sexism''.
Thatcherism will never be dead.