Time ripe for a military coup?

Here in Blighty we seem to take some form of perverse pleasure in Johnny Foreigners debilitating history of military coup d'etat's. The recent sabre rattling over the Falklands, and the frankly hatstand assertion by a BBC reporter that we somehow collectively look back fondly on Thatcher's election saving 'conflict' with Argentina and their hard jawed, golfing Generalissimo Galtieri, got me musing that the conditions which normally prompt the military men to stiffen their upper lips, firmly clasp the old Webley revolver and takeover governments can't be too far away.

Most of the components that would ordinarily lead to a disenchanted military seizing control of the levers of government and imposing strong arm tactics on the electorate and economy are already here. 

We've seen the erosion of civil liberties; the introduction of the nanny surveillance state, a basket case economy built on second mortgages and credit cards, with uncountable debts and no way out of them, a crushing depletion in our manufacturing base, rising unemployment figures, ( Iain MacWhirter's frankly terrifying account in yesterday's Sunday Herald talks of 2.5million, factor in the part-time and the underemployed sees that figure head north, possibly up to 8.8million,) the rise in popularity of the scapegoat baiting far right, a rapidly increasing ageing population whose care will fall squarely on the shoulders of the young, the break down in our social fabric, squaddies getting blown up every other day whilst bogged down in an unwinnable war with poor resources and no discernible tactics, add to the mix the fact that the Yanks have just Guantanamoed the only senior Taliban member that fancied a negotiated chin wag and you start to get the picture how plum tuckered Afghanistan really is.  

Our version of democracy has been flushed down the bog. Apathy rules completely. The irony that more people pay to vote for their favourite on everything from 'Britain's Got Extra Chromosomes' to 'Big Brother' than participate in yer actual bona fide elections, tells the tale. I was rather perturbed, but not completely surprised to discover that more people voted for the blind chappy who participated in the last 'Big Brother' popularity contest, than the entire number of votes cast in last years Scottish MEP elections. 

The ongoing expenses and sleaze scandals that infest UK politics are not going away, the public are becoming more and more pissed with politicians with each passing day. After the initial furore of the expenses, I naively thought we'd see humbled MP's apologising and doing their utmost to win back support in their neverending beauty pageant. Not so, the sight of seasoned trough fillers demanding reductions in amounts due back is enough to float yer back teeth.

We have, in Gordon Brown, a PM with multiple personalities, none of which attract the multitude. His appearance after the crap 'Men and Motorist' terrorists at Glasgow Airport was the last time he looked like an actual man of gravitas, opposed to the wraith that currently infests our telly screens getting wibbly about dead weans and his father's moral code. He and his barrel scraped cabinet seem incapable of empathising with or understanding the tortuosities of their constituents.

Our oppositions north and south of the border suffer from intellectual cowardice. An old Etonian cabal is not the answer, the days of our private schools producing the type of chap who profoundly distrusted rhetoric and was capable of administrating an empire whilst buggering the third under butler is long gone. Instead we're left with the scion of a watered down merchant class, determined to fill their boots and those of their friends the have-mores. In Scotland, the official opposition are plain embarrassing, I mean Iain Grey, really. How far removed is he from Plato's philosopher turned King?

The number of recently retired military chiefs, when safely ensconced behind the barriers of their gilt edged pensions, belatedly discover silvery tongues and speak out against a PM who breaks D-notices for PR purposes is on the increase, the junior ranks must look around at their better equipped allies, their supposed superiors (Bob Ainsworth ffs) who supposedly espouse state and nationhood and grieve. How soon before one of them cracks?