Firstly, my thanks to the ASE for the kind invitation to post here, and offer I am pleased to take up!

It’s always a challenge to tailor a post to the theme or “mood” of a blog. Over on A Tangled Web, it’s whatever I fancy and that’s been the way since 2001. Over on Biased BBC, it’s all about excoriating the State Broadcaster and hopefully creating a momentum to stop it forcing us to fund it’s nasty bias.

But I have thought long and hard about the Eye and concluded that I wanted to post on something that matters to me – namely the huge DEBT that we all owe to the British Armed Forces.

I listened to the father of a young British soldier who has been killed on duty in Afghanistan on the evening news tonight express his pride in his son. He held his photo in his hands as he spoke.

Lance Corporal Nigel Moffett, of the Light Dragoons, from Belfast, and Corporal Stephen Bolger, of 1 Para, died in an explosion. The soldiers were on operation in Musa Qala, in Helmand province.

Mr Moffett spoke in that direct manner one often associates with military families. He had just lost his son, yet he was able to salute his sacrifice and express his pride in what he had achieved. In these days of snivelling gutless left-wing anti-patriotic self hatred, Lance Corporal’s father is a great remedy.

I live in Northern Ireland, a land which has seen hundreds of British soldiers killed by vicious terrorists. I have some dark memories of the details of some of these atrocities and from my friends in the Armed Forces, I have grown to have the utmost respect for these men and women. They are the best of British.

So I end this little post by saluting them all – and for thanking them for their selfless nobility. Politicians betray us by the day, the Armed Forces keep us safe 24/7.

PS Is it a coincidence that my favourite album of all time is also called Armed Forces? ;0)