Has social media affected how we view the army? (UK only please)?

Hi Kev

built into a lot the british military way of life is good earner. yes you could lose your life, but have a good life most of the time and as you see we are very proud of our soldiers and the work they do.

i would agree at a higher intelligence level it does seem like they are still cannon fodder.

some have had connections with the military over generations and very proud of the fact.

who are we tell them they are wrong. i would agree with you that the idiot politics has a lot to do with so much pain and misery.

where does a lad without a good home life find a real comradeship and true mates who will stick by him through thick and thin and never give him up. the army has always been there for many in the past and why mess with the idea as you see we still have some very brave guys volunteering to do the job some sadly lose the plot.

this is life though.

Really, when I joined up there was no Iraq, no Afghanistan, no war on terror. People enlist for various reasons, some out of a sense of service, some out of family tradition, some to just to get a job, some for the adventure. Even as an ex recruiter I could not list why every single individual joined the British Army. as for why we are so high in public opinion, then you need to ask the general public that and not the troops.

If you find the support of our troops unpalatable don't worry it will blow over in a couple of years with our removal from Afghanistan next year. The British public are very fickle. I for one found it refreshing after being treated like a second class citizen for my service over the years.

When dictators tell us what to believe, and they are lying, it's great to have a network of friends that can react with a little resistance. That's exactly what happened with the Global Warming hoax. The big money speculators wanted the climate "experts" to back them with threats of Global Disaster, then they could make billions of dollars in a carbon trading scheme. Their scheme had resistance from the start, but not from the traditional downstream media. You'll notice in countries where the dictators are trying to control resistance, they try to shut down the internet?

The truth is that here in UK we've always had a very high opinion of our armed forces. Back in the far off days of my youth most young men got called up to do two years of National Service (Conscription) with the Armed Forces, mostly in the Army but also in the Royal Air Force and some even in the Royal Navy.

Thus, back then public opinion of our armed forces was high.

Look at it like this. Back in 1957 when I was 15 I joined the British Army - my principal aim was to further my education and to learn a trade - both of which I accomplished by age 18.

1957 was the era of the Cold War and many of us believed we were about to be attacked by the Soviet Union and that millions of us would die in a cold war. In my mind then was this idea that if I joined the Army, I could, like my dad and his dad before me, help to serve my country and if they posted me abroad, which was the case, then I might be part of a vast allied Army with air force and navy which could then attack the enemy and bring the war to a close with an allied victory.

Seems far off and daft looking back, but you've got to bear in mind that in my childhood and youth the country was populated by millions of our people who had fought not just in WW-One and WW-Two but even in the Boer Wars in South Africa in the very early part of the 20thC. I had a great uncle who had served in the Royal Artillery in the Boer War and then again in WW-One.

And my family, a mixed bag of Quakers and Methodists are not exactly military types but it's a duty thing.

All I know is that we are free because we have been prepared to protect our liberty even including dying on the battle field. There are civilian heroes too - those who have been killed right here in London 7/7 and in an earlier attack in our sister city of New York where over 3,000 died on the Home Front in a single attack.

Similar attacks have been planned and thankfully foiled. But we must remain ever vigilant against those who wish to kill us and to impose upon us a tyranny which will take away our liberty forever.

Battle Standard duc de Normandie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU3JY34iDD4

London UK 291113.1220GMT

Sure, it lets us see our servicemen throwing hand grenades at flocks of goats for fun. Soldiers are mostly drunken @ssholes when they deploy.