Posts Tagged ‘military’

The Swedish military certainly have a way with a publicity stunt, if the story that’s surfaced about poorly designed military bras is anything to go by. Or so my churnophrenic state of mind is telling me, as I dig unceasingly for the truth behind the news. Put it this way, if it’s not a PR stunt, somebody is going to receive a serious dressing down.

According to reports, “flimsy military brassieres are unable to stand up to the strains imposed when female Swedish troops perform ‘rigorous exercises’”. The bras are “routinely bursting open or even [catch] fire – so forcing busty young conscripts to hurriedly strip off in the field.”

This being Sweden, they are presumably not bursting out into Barbara Windsor cackles when it happens, but it couldn’t otherwise be any more Carry On if it tried. And the churnophrenic part of me is wondering who could have planted this one on the press.

Strangely it is the Swedish Conscription Council, an organisation concerned with the rights of conscript troops in the Swedish forces, who have been most vocal on the matter. Council spokesperson Paulina Rehbinder stated in Swedish paper The Local that the problems have persisted for twenty years. “Unaccountably, however, it appears that the male-dominated Swedish military hierarchy has failed to act.”

But, with 2000 new young female recruits said to be joining the armed forces next year – women who will no doubt be expecting to be taken seriously when they are sent of to conflict zones like Afghanistan – they may have to sort out their military bra supply.

My guess is that this story was designed to encourage young men to join up in case this doesn’t happen. And if it doesn’t happen, what then?

Swedish women soldiers! Questionable bras! Striptease in battle situations! I wouldn’t be surprised if someone makes a film…

I’m intrigued by the Daily Mail’s leap to the defence of computer hacker Gary McKinnon and am certain that there’s a certain PR agenda underlying their campaign on his behalf.

Whilst it is utterly in keeping for the Mail to campaign to keep the trial of a man with Aspergers Syndrome in the UK so that he can live a semblance of the life he had and see his mum from time to time – a man who claims that the only reason he hacked into US military networks was to discover if there was evidence of UFOs to be found there – I suspect that the Mail are also keeping in mind how many hits they can get on their website.

There’s no doubt that the McKinnon case is attracting a large amount of interest from the UFO-loving community, a group not normally known for engaging with the world at large, except where it concerns potential visitations from the universe at large. McKinnon is a cause celebre in these circles and the Mail, I am certain, has its eye on attracting them to their website – presumably they are not expecting them to leave the computer to actually buy a paper.

Only time will tell; if we see stories on UFO sightings appearing in the deeper recesses of Mail in the near future, you’ll know I was right. In the meantime, here’s hoping that the surface agenda – keeping a frail man who knows he did wrong but does not deserve to be torn entirely from his family for it – works as well.