Although She's Dressed Up To The Nines

I have read the then-future Pope's wrong but unremarkable words to a military memorial event in Argentina. It is part of the job of the Archbishop of Buenos Aires to mouth the platitudes, which in Argentine terms was what these were, on this sort of occasion, just as it is part of the job of the Archbishop of Canterbury to do much the same thing.

And all that I can say is that at least Argentina can be bothered to remember. Look at the decades-long struggle for the slightest recognition of everyone from the Arctic Convoys (still not allowed to go and collect a Russian medal which they have already been awarded, even though hardly any of them are still alive), to the Women's Land Army, to the Bevin Boys, among numerous others.

To this day, nowhere in the world is there a memorial to the British Fallen of Mandated Palestine. That is absolutely disgraceful. Disgusting, in fact. If I were there, then heaven and earth would be being moved in order to erect a memorial to them on one side of Saint Stephen's Entrance, and a memorial to the ILP Contingent on the other side of Saint Stephen's Entrance.

The only thing that the Cold War headcases of the 1970s and 1980s Radical Right had against Galatieri was the invasion of the Falkland Islands. Before that, it had loved him so much that when the invasion came, it had to be repelled by deploying ships that until that very moment Thatcher had been about to flog to him at a specially knocked down price.

Likewise, the only thing that that Radical Right's successors today have against Kirchner is what is as yet her purely rhetorical claim to the Falkland Islands. Other than that, she is exactly their kind of politician. Complete with, being a Cameron-like economic disaster area.

While it gives me no pleasure to say this, a third of people in Britain do not now support the Falkland Islanders, rising to 49 per cent, within the margin of error for a majority, in the 18-24 age bracket. Although I was alive at the time, I cannot remember the Falklands War. But I am older than serving members of the present Government, as well as older than at least two people who will be in the Cabinet after the next General Election, one of whom is on Question Time as I write.

It took us nothing like 30 years after we had expended vast amounts of blood and treasure in their defence, to give up vast possessions in Asia and the Pacific. In the most important case, it took us all of two years. Yes, we had to do it, mostly because of that very same war. But having so recently fought a war in order to prevent ourselves from having to do it did not stop us. Never mind having fought a war during which the Parliamentary Secretary for the Cabinet Office had been born, as is now the situation here.

Be afraid, British Falkland Islanders. Be very, very, very afraid. But not of the Pope.