SOME radical Muslims take the view that our Western society is mean-spirited, morally corrupt and decadent.
Actually, it pains me to say that I think they have a point. The fiasco of the Royal Navy (with Ministry of Defence approval) telling 15 sailors and marines, captured and held by Iran, that they could SELL their stories to the media rather reinforces that view.
The Royal Navy used to rule the waves. Now it has been reduced to waiving the rules, as one commentator put it.
The honour of our country and our military has been compromised by allowing some of the hostages to tout their stories for personal cash gain after their release.

To have allowed that, even while brave British servicemen and women were daily facing great discomfort, peril and death in Iraq and Afghanistan, makes everything even worse.
How could the Navy chiefs have been so bloody stupid? Even if they wanted the propagada value of hostages telling their stories, it was morally wrong and obviously counterproductive to allow serving military personnel to enter a bidding war to tout their juiciest stories.
Tell the stories, by all means, but don't SELL them. That stinks.
It is morally reprehensible to turn into personal distress into a money-grubbing exercise. That ought to be obvious.
Also, anyone who knows anything about the press and public relations would have known that such a strategy would blow up in our faces.
Because after two newspapers succeeded in buying exlusive deals from individual hostages then their media competitors were bound to run spoiler stories and knocking pieces about the whole thing.
That is exactly what happened. It is no use the Defence Secretary now - after surveying the public relations disaster that resulted from stupid decisions at the highest level of the State - suspending permission for the other hostages to sell their stories. The damage has been done.
Hardly anyone comes out of this affair with any credit. The Royal Navy, the press, this appalling PR-obsessed Government, and, indeed, our reputation as a fair and humane nation ... all have been damaged.
What everyone seems to have forgotten here are traditional British values: fortitude in the face of suffering; dignity in adversity; a distaste for propaganda (as opposed to a love of the truth); and an awareness of the corrupting power of money.
Those values are great ones, rooted in Judaeo-Christianity. The trouble is our country has moved away from them and instead now prefers a vague, anything-goes "morality" resting on nothing more substantial than the shifting sands of secular fudamentalism and militant liberalism.
And that is why Muslims can, with some justification, accuse Western societies of being weak, morally flawed and decadent.
We have shamed ourselves and we have allowed Iran to win the propoganda war over the hostages.

ON A lighter note, I had a fabulous 50th birthday celebration in my favourite pub, Hell's Waiting Room, New Brighton, on Saturday 7 April.
Thankfully, I kept off the red wine for the night (sticking to pints of Websters bitter followed by lots of Southern Comfort) so I was headache-free the morning after.
Thanks to Eleganta Chignon and Billy Bustimes for putting up banners and balloons in the pub and arranging the tables for the buffet.
Billy also provided live music, as did Cockney Phil. Commuting Mitch did a great job of the victuals, and it was just so great to see so many New Brighton folk come along.
Thanks for the cards and presents, and thanks for coming along, to (and I hope I don't miss anyone out here): Greta and Commuting Mitch; Annette Kalms and The History Man; Duncan Kindlyface and Lady Di; Dr Gyggle and Litherland Lou; Daddy Hardman; Runcorn Rita and Keefie; Welsh John and Blondie Fantail; Judie and Jack; Talullah Swells (in a dress with a black lace cantilevered top); Delilah Durham and Karen from Bidston; Letitia (who used to ride the Wall of Death at New Brighton's funfair); Dixie the Jazzman; Dec Potter; and The Beast and Gerri.
Also in attendance were my auld mum and my sister, Princess Stephanie of Wigan. They loved the New Brighton people and found them very warm and friendly, as indeed they are.
My mum, Teresa Philomena, told them: "You're lovely people, just like Wiganers."
Hmmm, not sure how they took that.

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