Blackpool debate on Veterans

We don't want the veterans. Blackpool's continual "wars glorification" marches should not be promoted and honoured by the Ministry of Defence granting Blackpool's hosting of national veterans week vents.I'm not the only one disagreeing as other Blackpool residents and businesses are fed up to the back teeth of top heavy spring and summer weekly parades along town centre main streets of pompous ex-service clones and self-styled war heroes strutting in manic remembrance of good times war adventure.They behave like overgrown boy scouts.Robert McDougall Blackpool

I was absolutely dumbstruck to read Robert McDougall's comments. I have to declare that I am a former Royal Marine but up until five years ago, when I became a co-founder of the Blackpool branch of the Royal Marines Association, my only involvement was an annual visit to the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday.

Having become involved with an ex service association, I can tell Mr McDougall that it is not about self-glorification or self-styled war heroes. It is actually about comradeship, remembering those with whom we served who are no longer here and ongoing support for those who daily put their lives on the line for this country. Sadly we learn little from history and atrocities still carry on to this day but it is fair to say that in many instances it has been Britain's intervention that has halted mass slaughter. We should remember the words of Burke; "All that is required for evil to flourish is that good men do nothing. "The absolute irony is that we enjoy freedom of speech and live in a democracy that was fought and paid for (at a very high price) by the very men and women that Mr McDougall berates. I should like to think Mr McDougall's misguided statement is based on a lack of knowledge and would like to invite him to one of our branch meetings to see first hand the calibre of those he so readily castigates. Perhaps I could ask Mr McDougall to reflect on the words of General MacArthur who said: "The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war."
COUN RON BELL Conservative Parliamentary Candidate Blackpool South

The first letter from Robert McDougal opens the debate. In many ways it is the legacy of inaction and inertia shown by former servicemen that has brought this situation about. Most former servicemen want nothing to do with service remembrance or organisations - I make no apologies for not being politically correct and stating the Females are in the services because it is taken as fact that when it is said men, this automatically includes the women - and that the great number of former servicemen want little or nothing to do with past experiences.

The media has been found wanting. The Blackpool paper, the Gazette has printed a series of articles about the Royal Marines, it's personnel and its esprit de corp which has been totally incorrect. Small things like the marines being one of the finest Regiments in the British Army. Totally untrue. The Marines are an integral part of the Royal Navy.

Maj Jim Houldsworth Royal Marines! A local hero. I will say nothing more than untrue.

The recent Commando documentary on TV where it showed recruits doing the thirty miler. For those who qualified for the Green Beret before PC and Health and Safety, the programme was a disaster. Now I see bandsmen wearing the beret, sons of bandsmen, cadets and cadet instructors. There were no health checks on the run, only instructors with map references and emergency services a discreet distance from those being TESTED. You were discharge blind from a vehicle, given a map reference and left to your own devices. If you passed you were in, if not you failed and was out. I don't say this lightly, but I saw lads with broken feet crawl rather than fail, not a health check every half hour and a food supplement for the weary as shown in the programme.

I will leave the Dinger Bell letter for later. It has been a source of wonderful amusement amongst some former Royal Marines, those silenced and ignored, and those who will not go within a thousand miles of the Blackpool RMA . Highlighted within his letter are statements that have a strong stench of hypocracy about them, and certainly need clarification. I make these quick observations.
If British involvement has done so much good, why were thirty thousand Matabele/Ndebele (30,000) allowed to be massacred under the stewardship of the British - Zimbabwe 1982 -85?

Who is it that has prevented veterans from wearing their Pingat Jasa Malaysia medals?

Who has been selling the Veterans Badge as a worthy substitute for true recognition of a debt that has never been honoured?
And if you are indignant at the freely written words of an obvious bigot, then how indignant must former Royal Marines feel when Secretary Bell ignored their demands to see minutes of meeting in which Dingaling sat as secretary? If that duty was too exhausting for him recently, it raises the question of how effective he will function when dealing with the intimate details of 50,000plus constituents. Many X servicemen feel badly let down with the incumbent MP because there is no common ground - they are not homosexual and have been much closer than two hundred yards to a terrorist bomb than the MP brags about. (Is it true that it is only the British who have not derogated against homosexuality in their Armed Forces?)