What a Change!

Five weeks ago I drove my eldest son to Sandhurst to begin his Commissioning course and this last weekend was his first weekend home since then.

It seems that he has had an eventful time. He survived the exercise, which is more than can be said for one of his colleagues who ended up in the hospital where I work, but then he spent last week in the MRS in Sandhurst with a kidney infection. Unfortunately, it meant that he didn't "pass off the square", which is the drill test that all the Cadets have to undertake.

Despite Alec's best efforts, he was unable to convince the Medical Officer, who coincidentally I had served with in Iraq, to release him in time, so he will have to do the "pass off" in a couple of weeks.

So he arrived home on Thursday evening, changed and took me to the pub for his first alcohol since before he went. Then he spent the weekend spending the money that he'd been earning on essentials to take back with him and catching up on the sleep that he'd been missing out on.

Everyone here noticed the difference in him in just the short time that he'd been away. He was even vaguely tidy! It’s just a pity that his brother and sister couldn't have spent a bit more time with him than they did, although they were actually permitted to come with me when I drove him back to Sandhurst on Sunday. Maggie was particularly keen to see the place as she intends to study medicine and then join the Army herself, so will probably be there in a few years.

Now he's about to embark on a 36-hour patrolling exercise somewhere Wales, so I hope that he straps his feet well. We'll find out when we visit him in two weeks.

Meanwhile, while he has been enduring all this, in the real world, one group of blood-sucking leeches has given in to another, or to put it another way, the Government has rolled over about the banker's bonuses.

So here we are, less than three years after the British Government spent billions to bail out several banks and still the profits that they are making are used not to pay back the money that they owe but to pay undeserving people vast sums for a "job well done"!

I know that there was the argument that if the Government stopped the bonuses from being paid then the bankers would leave. However, I don't see the problem. If these morons had done their job correctly in the first place, then the banks that they work for would never have been in the dire straits that they found themselves and needing to be bailed out. In other words, why pay money to appease people whose fault it is that they are in a mess in the first place.

In fact, the banks that were bailed out should pay no bonuses until such time as all the money that was given to them during the bailout has been repaid, with interest. And if the bankers leave? Replace them with competent people! Personally, I think that they should have been sacked in the first place anyway.

But then, what do I know?