On falling scales.

So you decided you’d better do something towards researching current conditions for armed forces veterans as a result of the ’support the troops’ project described here.

And there you are doing the absolute minimum by rootling around the Ministry of Defence website, when you discover that there is, in fact, a Veterans’ Day. And there has been one since, oooh, last year. Can’t say you noticed, but anyway it’s the 27th June.

And the main event for 2007 is being held in Birmingham. Tee hee.

There also seems to be a satisfying amount of activity regarding keeping an eye on conditions for returning and, er, non returning service personnel. Committees. Working parties.  Consultations. Strategies. The whole enchilada.

You’d be more comforted by this if energetic and well meaning mucking about wasn’t a bit of a hallmark of the current government. But in the health service, to take one example, it’s resulted in what can only be described as an unmitigated disaster for the specialist junior doctors currently attempting to dedicate their lives to the service of medicine and country.

You are, as yet, undecided whether the whole ‘permanent revolution’ state of mind that seems to exist in Downing Street is just a result of the current incumbents’ raging incompetence or whether it’s something built into the necessarily short term viewpoint of the democratic system.

This probably doesn’t matter to the 20% of doctors about to be kicked out of their careers for no reason at all, and certainly the culling method goes beyond overmanagement and is completely and utterly flawed.

There’s a petition for British citizens which can be reached on Aphra’s page via the links above. If anything’s worth signing, that is.