65 years ago today Royal Air force Bomber Command carried out an attack on the German city of Dresden.

 

Over 700 British aircraft were involved in the raid which was followed up on the next 2 days by further attacks by the United States 8th Army Air Force.

 

The impact was devastating - the firestorm caused by the incendiary bombs killed many thousands of people and the architecturally beautiful city was almost completely destroyed.

 

Aerial photographs of the city after the attack are available here.

 

This air raid has been incredibly controversial in the post war years and debate has raged between those who consider it to be an allied war crime and those who argue that Dresden was a valid military / industrial target.

 

To me the only thing that makes Dresden different to the countless other cities bombed by both sides - London, Coventry, Berlin, Hamburg etc etc - was the proximity to the end of the European war.

 

Germany was at the point of collapse by February 1945 and one does wonder if this type of attack could really be considered a strategic necessity?

 

The raid on Dresden has, to some extent, overshadowed the role and the sacrifice of the young men who fought in RAF Bomber Command during World War 2.

 

55,000 Bomber Command aircrew were killed (roughly 44% of all those engaged) between 1939 and 1945 with an additional 8,400 wounded and 9,800 captured as prisoners of war.

 

Many people have questioned the importance, impact and the morality of the strategic bombing of Germany.

 

A cogent argument supporting the air campaign was presented by Albert Speer, the Nazi governments munitions minister, who said 

 

 

Whilst researching this I was amazed to find out that there currently isn't an official memorial to the brave men of Bomber Command anywhere in the UK.

 

 

There are plans to create a permanent memorial in Green Park in Central London - this is long overdue and the Bomber Command Association is still actively collecting funds for this.

 

 

 

 

Amazing - another outbreak of legal common sense.

 

It seems that the penny may be starting to drop with our judges - shame that the Crown Prosecution Service still seems intent on persecuting home owners protecting their property.

 

John Healey MP, the Housing Minister, was incredibly clumsy with his choice of words on Radio 5 this morning.

 

On the day that the Council of Mortgage Lenders announced 46,000 homes were repossessed in 2009 he really should have had more sense than to claim that:

 

 

I think that I know what he was trying to say - there can be extreme circumstances when the loss of a home to repossession may actually stop a dreadful situation worsening.

 

For heavens sake though, the overwhelming majority of those 46,000 repossessions represent personal tragedies, the loss of a dream, a loss of self esteem and, of course, a huge financial loss to the people concerned.

 

For Mr Healey to try to spin these dreadful repossession figures into some sort of positive news message was hugely insensitive and politically damaging.

 

Many more stories like this and New Labour will soon be known as "the nasty party".

I am sure we are all pleased that this man has been convicted and imprisoned.

 

It is interesting to note that his lawyers are only likely to appeal the length of his sentence rather than the verdict.

 

However, in my eyes the senior officers who repeatedly over-promoted this criminal because of their slavish conformity with political correctness, fear of accusations of racism and obsession with diversity are almost as guilty as Dizaei.

 

With "leadership" like this, what chance do we have of having an effective Police Force (not service!) in London?

More dismal economic news yesterday:

 

* 500 jobs lost at Vauxhall in Luton

 

* 400 jobs lost at Cadbury's in Bristol

 

* The trade gap between what we import and export widened again

 

The final point is really worrying.  As the £ is incredibly weak at the moment our exports should, in theory, be doing well as our goods are cheaper for foreign buyers.

 

Apparently our exports did rise slightly but this was outstripped by the level of imports.

 

This is, in part, a consequence of the car scrappage scheme - there was a significant increase in car imports, especially of the small foreign models that the scheme favours.

 

I seem to remember that critics of the scrappage scheme pointed out that the real beneficiaries would be foreign manufacturers rather than British companies and now the trade figures seem to bear this out.