The lesson is: Dont join up and serve.
Oh yes it is.At any one time there are many investigations going on against the Army (today in the papers I saw Northern Ireland 1971/2 (todays Belfast Telegraph page 1 online) and Iraq 2003+ (Guardian page 1 and Daily Telegraph page 1).
However a strange thing is happening=its always, always the lower social orders they are sticking it on at present - always the rough speaking fighters. No one above NCO rank ever seems to get clobbered (at the moment).
Its a big mistake for the future of recruitment, of course. I wouldn't recommend anyone to go within a million miles of a signing-up form in any service, (at any level actually), because of this new threat. Any intelligent kid will glance the papers, reason that one out and avoid the military as a bad career.
Also another reason why no-one should be allowed to join up anything below the age of 18. (And without having an independent advisor available to counter the MOD spin when anyone does go in to sign up might be another thing to bolt on).
And in a nutshell, I think a lot of power-people have a real disdain for the military and certainly don't mind putting the boot in.
And a final parting shot - this is just the start of it. They've picked on the dimmest people first (the poor bloody infantry) for a reason. Believe me it will go up the food chain eventually, because that's the way wars and the killing have gone, are going. In the future it will be the ROV controller, the drone operators, the Tornado crews button-pressers who will be dragged in to any number of spurious, obscure claims. Think not? Don't bet on it. Put it this way I don't see any number of politicians falling down the aisles to bring in any protective legislation to servicemen - show me where they are, someone?
This is modern Britain. Its entirely split, its totally divided and its utterly uncaring because that's the way we have made it.