Scram! The Gripping First-hand Account of the Helicopter War in the Falklands

By Harry Benson

Having followed the Falkland’s War as a school kid and read quite a number of other books on the subject from many differing participants; I eagerly looked forward to reading this unique account. Overall, I wasn’t disappointed, though the ‘memories’ presented do seem to get a little blurred occasionally.

So why is it a ‘Unique’ account? Well as far as I’m aware, this is the only version of the Falklands War written through the eyes of the helicopter pilot’s, or as I now know them, the ‘Junglies’. The author, Harry Benson was a young, 21 year old helicopter pilot straight out of training. As a result, Harry didn’t sail with the task force but went in one of the later waves of pilots sent down to the battle, only arriving towards the end of the conflict. As a result, his own experiences of the war largely concern his immensely slow and frustrating voyage down there and then his flying in the last couple of weeks of the war.

The lack of personal experience doesn’t detract from the story as Harry has spent a significant amount of time interviewing his former colleagues, many of whom have never told their story before. He now presents a chronologically correct account of helicopter operations from the task force setting sail to the Argentine surrender and beyond.

Many of the stories told are pretty riveting such as the landing of SAS troops on the Fortuna glacier on St Georgia and their subsequent evacuation with the loss of two out of three of the helicopters involved. Descriptions of the rescue operations of the Welsh Guards after the attacks on Sir Galahad and Sir Tristan in Bluff Cove are particularly poignant.

A major takeaway from the book is the number of errors made by our own forces along with the lack of organization, leadership and co-ordination of resources that occurred. There are also details of a ‘friendly fire’ incident involving an Army Gazelle helicopter that I wasn’t previously aware of.

Notwithstanding the lack of leadership, the bravery of the Junglie crews comes through, especially as the war progressed. This is where Harry’s own story comes to the fore; flying night time rescue missions on the battlefield right up to the front line to ferry back the wounded from both sides whilst under artillery fire. It shows how adrenalin can often overtake experience,

One of the scariest moments was a sortie on Mount Tumbledown. They found themselves in an incredibly exposed position on the ground for, “little more than a minute but it seemed like an eternity”; they were being fired upon and could clearly see the heads of enemy soldiers moving around in their trenches. Only when they reached their debriefing were they informed, it had been an operational error - they had been sat right in full view of the Argentine front line.

A particularly obvious theme throughout the book is that of the inter-service rivalry that exists in our armed forces, I noted there being a particular lack of respect between the ‘Junglies’ and the ‘Pingers’ (anti-submarine helicopter pilots). Another neat put-down by Harry was of the RAF’s efforts to bomb the runway at Port Stanley via the long range Vulcan raids, the implication being it was just a token effort and a complete waste of time!

There is a level of bitterness in the book from the author with a recurring feeling that he was cheated out of a proper war by his late arrival on the frontline. Overall though, this doesn’t detract from what is an immensely readable and enjoyable book.

Marketing Call It ‘Rebranding’, I Call It Polishing a Turd

What is it about rebranding or renaming of not just products, but companies and in the UK’s case, whole Government departments? Where did it come from, how did it stealthily get under our finger nails? And why did they bother?

I suppose it’s an art, an extreme test of creativity and, when done right, results in a bouncing baby brand. You get visibility, findability, differentiation, relevance – a great renaming evokes an appropriate emotional response in the target market: hipness or gravitas or whimsy or dignity or aspiration. It’s the beginning of a compelling brand narrative. But when renaming is done badly as seems to happen in government circles it’s just a confusing waste of public money.

Snickers of Ulay

One of the early re-brands was that of the nutty chocolate bar Marathon which changed its name to Snickers, and then there was the likes of Oil of Ulay which morphed into Olay. Norwich Union became Aviva. All well and good in the private sector, it’s their money; they can do what they want with it really but it does cost money !

Aviva must actually rate as the best. Once you had Commercial Union, General Accident, and Norwich Union. Through various incarnations they became CGU, CGNU then NU and finally Aviva. All product literature and all stationary gets reprinted each time with the old stuff being chucked. So not just expensive but environmentally unfriendly too!

Gove’s Fluffy Fun Factory

When it comes to the Government though, now that’s our money they’re using. I didn’t realise how often they did these things but it’s more common than you think. Can anyone remember, for example, what the government department responsible for schools is called at the moment? Is it the The Department for Children, Schools and Families, Department for Education and Skills? Department for Education and Science? Department of Education or Department for Education? Or maybe it’s just Michael Gove’s Fluffy Fun Factory?

I could look it up but to be honest I really can’t be arsed with it. The task appears even more hopeless when you realise that just about every other government department goes through a similar rebranding, wasting hundreds of millions of our pounds in the process.

I suppose If they are going to waste our money on changing the names of their Departments how about eradicating the word "Defence" from "The Ministry of...." and sustituting the word "War" which is what the Department used to be called, and is more akin to what it’s been for the last 15 years.

Labour were worse for it

The last Labour government spent a small fortune on department rebrands. In 2009, one rebranding project, the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) was renamed Communities and Local Government (CLG). The change involved producing a new logo for the department’s website and headed paper. In a parliamentary answer, a Minister explained that the name change was deemed necessary to ‘emphasise the mission of the department’. Freedom of Information documents revealed that the rebranding cost £24,765. The DCLG was only established in May 2006, after the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, under John Prescott, was abolished following a string of revelations about him shagging his secretary. Interestingly Prescott spent £645 of public money on a new brass plaque for his office, replacing a sign saying Office of the Deputy Prime Minister with one which read Deputy Prime Minister’s Office. He was given the sign as a memento when he left his office in June 2007.

The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) was renamed twice between 2005 and 2007 at a cost of £250,000. Then in 2009, Lord Mandelson decided to change its name for a third time to the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills!!!

Why change these departments names at all? We all know that virtually all departments should be called: "Department for waste and sabotage and perks for the few at the expense of the many"

Why bother?

Why do they continually rebrand? Well In the private sector three points are usually considered

1. It could be the existing company name has become inappropriate or faded or failing, even these judgments put storm clouds on the horizon because they are subjective.
2. There are always timid people who believe names shouldn’t change, which adds rumblings of thunder to the clouds.
3. There are fears of losing brand equity/visibility/reputation/whatever if the transition is badly handled.

These rebrands aren’t always successful; the company I work for has rebranded and renamed itself 4 times in the 10 years I’ve been there. The name now has gone back to virtually what it was when I joined.  

But do these really apply to Government Departments? I doubt it somewhat. Perhaps ministers really do believe things can mask the truth about something.

One Success So They Kept Doing It

We’ve all heard of Sellafield in Cumbria, well many moons ago it had the name Windscale and the reputation of an evil, radiation leaking, nuclear reprocessing plant, something it still is by the way. But some bright marketing spark decided the best way to get rid of the reputation of Windscale was to rebrand it as Sellafield, a place which has only ever dispensed love and fairy dust into the Irish Sea. It worked and since then it’s been an unbridled success. It’s even a tourist attraction with its own Visitor’s Centre.

But that was the only real success they had. Government ministers conveniently forget the £2million that got lost when the Post Office tried to deliver a disastrous name change to ‘Consignia’ more than a decade ago.

A benefit cheat who claimed this sort of money would be prosecuted and publicly shamed. But ministers can waste millions to billions and get away scot-free. There are many ministers and departments of government in need of serious rebranding to reflect their true worth. My choice of name for both would be Unemployed and Defunct. This would solve a very large part of our financial problems. If we did not employ so many idiot ministers they would not be available to waste public revenue on these idiotic schemes.

Marketing a Junior Industry

The only thing I can put all this down to is the emergence of marketing as a bonafide industry in itself. This triumph of style over substance in Government didn’t simply start with Mrs Thatcher’s voice coach or with Tony Bliar’s orthodontist. Rather it was when someone decided that “marketing” was a proper career rather than something the secretary turned their hand to. Astonishingly, the universities were persuaded that you should be able to get a degree in it.

So, from the early 80s, thousands of talented and otherwise intelligent young people were persuaded to pop on a pair of red-framed specs, grab a brightly coloured waistcoat and some yellow socks and talk rubbish at us for the next 30 years. 

So, having just demolished an entire ‘creative’ industry, I’ll leave you with one question. What’s best: name change or real change?      

Bliar – The Movie: Part 3, Blair’s Toxic Legacy

On the 27^th June, 2007, Toby left office as UK Prime Minister and disappeared into the wilderness, ha, ha, if only that were the case! He should have been charged and taken to taken to court on numerous criminal acts which vary from war crimes, to lying to parliament in general, there was the cash for honours scandal,  then there were the lies about his part in giving Formula One an exemption from a ban on tobacco advertising after meeting Labour £1M donor Bernie Ecclestone. Seven years on the list continues to grow but still no summons.

All the time Toby continues to strut the world stage, pretending to be bringing peace to the Middle East whilst he rakes in £20 million per year (or maybe even more) to support his vast property empire. He also thinks he is a suitable candidate for the office of President of Europe. But maybe he doesn't realise that should he assume that office, he would then be located somewhere handy for the War Crimes Court at The Hague.

So What Did He Leave Us With?

• A political culture of unelected quango’s; special advisors and spin doctors.
• A 'No responsibility for their actions' culture for ministers and senior civil servants.
• A system in the NHS involving paying people off with a gagging order to stop them revealing how bad things had become under New Labour's "Targets Before People" culture. The North Staffs fiasco brought this to a head.
• Let thousands of patients die needlessly in hospitals with appalling standards of "care" whilst introducing a totally ineffective hospital inspection body.
• Doubled the pay of GPs then let them shed responsibility for providing evening, weekend and holiday medical care to their patients while privately making a fortune, moonlighting at A&E departments.
• Thousands of PFI deals across the country which at the time went under the New Labour investment banner but which we will still be paying for in twenty years time at ten times the original cost.
• The 'vulgarisation of Britain' campaign where to fly the national flag is deemed a racist act.
• A 'peace process' in Ulster, which involved rolling over and letting the IRA tickle his tummy while he gave them more or less anything they asked for.
• Turned the police force over to management speak target-chasers, who deflected the aim of the force from fighting crime and protecting the public to persecuting anyone with loose change. The victim was turned into the criminal.
• In the decade before the 2011 census, let 4 million migrants into Britain to fulfil "social objectives", which included trying to get more potential Labour supporters into the country to become dependent on benefits courtesy of the taxpayer.
• Politics as a career rather than a vocation now being the norm, leading to selfish, gutless MP’s who’s only convictions are to themselves.
• A looming ‘lights-out’ issue in the power sector, no investment in new power stations during the New Labour reign whilst existing power stations were closed means we are approaching potential supply problems.
• Bliar was one of the instigators of a war that led to the deaths of three-quarters of a million people, that became the best recruiting tool of jihadists from Dhaka to Vancouver, that destabilised a region, that re-enforced the attitudes of the most tyrannical and violent regimes around the world, that fractured this nation's belief in ethical and honest government, and in large part contributed to the economic mess we find ourselves in now.

The True Legacy

Anyone looking for the true legacy of Bliar and New Labour need look no further than the riots of the summer of 2011. A know drug dealer who was the target of a Metropolitan police operation against guns and drugs was shot dead during an arrest operation. His "community" rioted, looted everything they could lay their hands on and burnt down their own shops and homes.

The rioting spread to other parts of the country, including Manchester, Salford, Birmingham and Liverpool. Looters operated under the noses of police, which had been emasculated by New Labour's cult of bogus human rights and which were led by senior officers who had bought into New Labour's culture of a society without responsibility and blame.

The Labour party and its allies at the BBC called the riots a direct consequence of "Tory" cuts in public spending – cuts which at the time, hadn’t yet been made! Labour apologists ignored the uncomfortable truth that New Labour's 13 years of reckless spending had driven the economy into bankruptcy and left a mountain of debt which will be a burden for at least a generation. They also failed to acknowledge that the rioters were schooled during the New Labour era of “Education, Education, Education” or were immigrants brought in when New Labour opened our borders. We had ended up with the worst behaved teenagers in Europe, who sought a New Labour ASBO as a badge of dishonour to rule their neighbourhood with.

High taxes, low tax thresholds and distorted welfare policies created an army of welfare junkies, families in which no one works or indeed intended to work, and a culture in which idleness paid more than employment. This is what Bliar’s policies created, what really lead to the 2011 riots was a toxic legacy of Bliar.

The Women

After leaving office, whilst Bliar remained married to the awful Cherry there were other women in the frame, were there any affairs? Was he playing away? We’ll probably never know. What we do know is that Rupert Murdoch divorced his wife, Wendi Deng after ‘something’ went on between her and Bliar alone at the Murdoch family home. There’s also a level of ‘closeness’ between him and the former News Of The World editor Rebekah Brooks that seems to go way beyond a professional relationship. We know he sent her a series of text messages signed off with kisses at the height of the phone hacking scandal. He repeatedly offered her his help as she prepared to face questions from MPs in the days before she was arrested. Getting a little too close there Toby?

Succession

On leaving office, Toby fulfilled his pre-election deal with Brown allowing Brown to replace him as both Labour leader and Prime Minister. However, with the economic storm brewing, Toby knew that Brown didn’t stand a cat-in-Hell’s chance of being re-elected so he’d already started the process of grooming his true protégée. This was a guy from a similar background, with a similar ambition, right wing, New Labour tendencies and was liked by the people. Toby set about grooming David Milliband as his ultimate successor, this was the man who would bring Labour back to power in 2015 and keep Toby on as a highly paid “special adviser”. All was going to plan right up to the leadership election in 2010 when David won the first round of elections as planned.

What Toby hadn’t forseen was David’s ultra-left brother, ‘Red’ Ed Milliband !! RedEd had gone native and gained the support of the unions. Ever since being banished to the far corners of the earth by Mrs Thatcher, the unions had been looking for a leader who could allow their re-birth and re-growth, up until then, all the party leaders (Labour and Conservative) knew it was political suicide to allow the unions back into politics. Red Ed however didn’t care about that, he didn’t care about the future of the party, he didn’t care about his own brother either. He was going to win this election and the union vote would win it for him. And so it came to pass that Ed shit on his own brother beating him by the narrowest of margins (1.35%). Yet another of Bliar’s legacies went toxic.   

Blair’s Toxic Legacy

Bliar carried on to the end insisting that everyone thought he had done the right thing, and that he was viewed as a combination of Lady Thatcher, Winston Churchill and Mother Teresa, with a touch of Eric Clapton thrown in for good measure. The public however, saw a corrupt liar, who postured, failed and moved on other disasters. He became the first Prime Minister ever to be interviewed (several times) by the police following the exposure of New Labour's policy of selling honours for donations and loans to the party. Public perception is also one of a man who saw trouble coming over the hill and scarpered, leaving others to clean up his mess.

Bliar's government failed to undo the worst excesses of the earlier Tory governments, with New Labour effectively becoming Thatcherism-Lite. The PFIs were kept in place and increased, the City allowed its head, civil liberties weakened, unemployment and the welfare state allowed to grow while employers were given the wink to keep their workforce "flexible", the nation ended the noughties torn apart by inequality and geography, all in the name of Bliar’s political expediency.

I like to think that upstairs in Bliar’s attic there is a Dorian Gray type painting which keeps a track of his moral decay. While downstairs, he continues to pamper himself and strut on the world stage, his painting in the attic acts as a reminder of the effect of each act of deceit and betrayal, every unnecessary death in Iraq, and each dodgy million pound deal, has upon his soul. Each sin is displayed as a disfigurement of his form, or through a sign of aging - for this painting was completed before Bliar expediently became a Catholic. By now the vision which greets Toby when he dares venture upstairs most be truly stomach churning.

The Ultimate Irony

How ironic is it that a man who promised to be purer than pure while trying to wrap himself in Lady Thatcher's successes should end his career as a raddled old political money grabber; as someone tainted to the hilt in lies, corruption and sleaze?

How ironic is it that a man who was always ready to apologize for every single one of his country's imagined past misdemeanours never saw any disgrace in his own crimes against the British people?

I’d like to think that if the Scot’s do get their independence they’ll extradite him and put him on trial for his war crimes, unlikely but a nice thought nonetheless. Maybe one day someone will make “Blair The Movie” and tell the real story of his life.

  

Credits

A specific credit for this blogpost goes to @LeonieThomas18 who first came up with the phrase “Blair’s Toxic Legacy” on Twitter and inspired me to write this trilogy. Thanks Leonie.