Davey – many of us vote for Labour for honourable reasons, and it does you no credit to dismiss us.”

You crack me up!

“Cllr Peter Cairns (SNP)

Nonsense….”

It’s not about the numbers though is it… it’s about the tolerance… there was much higher tolerance for death in VN because of the tangible threat of the spread of global comintern and MAD; plus WW2 was not long past.

Nowadays, tolerance is much much lower; expectations, much much higher. We’re not fighting for the survival of civilisation as we know it as we were in the Cold War; we’re fighting a third world bogeyman, who, as a result of globalisation, may live next door.

When I talk of VN, I’m invoking the social, cultural, and political impact; not correlating the numbers of casualties.

Similarly, you are surely also aware that in raising those acronymical figures I’m talking about their significance in terms of the same socio-cultural poltical effects; not specific cherry-picked military decisions.

The media environment and culture is also dramatically different, where desperate newspapers use desperate human-interest tales to rally public emotions.
This is a long war – longer than WW2, and heading towards VNWar length – that is defining for a generation of military personnel, their families, and friends, especially in the context of recent (legal) wars in Iraq.

It’s a toxic issue for labour when working class boys are being shot up by asians in a far away war for no obvious benefit.

In short, I think you know exactly what I’m on about.

With both parties always believing that new policies have to be announced every day no matter how poorly thought out–and then the ‘joys of the election’–the newspapers will be bogged down by enormous amounts of new policies (especially in the normal suffering areas of education / NHS / social welfare) so any changes in how Europe is run (how minor, how far away…) will only be of interest to right wing tories/ UKIP / BNP with the odd support of the tabloid press. (Oh, and the chattering classes like us.)