You make, of course, the assumption that the conversation has been accurately recorded and transcribed.

Recording without consent is of course illegal. That apart, unless the mother is gifted in shorthand, I assume she had the phone on loudspeaker with some journalist merrily scribing away as they spoke.

It is natural for mothers to lash out when in grief. Most, however, don't try and score political points at the same time, and even fewer do it for potential financial gain, in a pre-determined, pre-planned and calculating fashion.

Christina Schmidt set the benchmark - this woman falls short by a considerable margin.

You missed out grief whores

Yes, it certainly should have been.

I wonder what the mothers of others soldiers lost on operations make of her attention seeking ways.

They'll be along shortly, as soon as the timetable for the Outrage Bus is finalised.

Is it not illegal to record a private phone call without informing the other party of that fact?
Exploitation for the suns own agenda springs to mind, personaly I would want to keep my own grief private unless a provable injustice had occured which could affect others.

Bus is VOR.

Personally I believe he should have had it checked by an aide, yes it was and is a good gesture but in this case attention to detail could have saved him a lot of hassle.

For the mother her loss is one of the worst and I cannot even think how distraught I would be if my child had been killed. However having the Scum on speed dial to highlight this instead of dealing with it by writing back and pointing out the errors would have given her greater kudos in the long run.

The Scum is a shite paper out to exploit who it can when it can and will achieve any means to do so, even if it means fabricating the truth or taking advantage of a bereaved parent of a soldier who has died to score political points.

The one thing we are missing here is a lad has died serving his country, his family are grieving and BOTH sides are attempting to score points by using that grief. To me that is the sad thing about the whole episode.

I imagine the rest of them told the Scum to do one, or at least their VO did it for them before the press could get their hooks in.

I wonder what her son would've thought about this? I've made it quite clear to my parents that my intention is to get onto a front line deployment and I'd go knowing full well what the risks are.

I sure as heck wouldn't mant my death being used as some kind of political / scummy red top tool.

Last edited by hermand on Tue Nov 10, 2009 8:57 am; edited 2 times in total

I replied to that one yesterday on another thread

www.arrse.co.uk/Forums...rt=20.html

Ding Ding!

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Easy mistake to make isn't it......???

No she didn't. All she did was lose any remaining dignity she may have had over the death of her son.

It would be interesting to know how much money she has been paid by The Sun to be so grief stricken, yet unusually au fait with Chinook Mk IIIs and CASEVACs. I've been in the Army for 14 years and my mother couldn't tell you what Cap-badge I was!

Well said.

Christina Schmid did too

On that note the MK3 comment did come from her husband. Her sons being 5th generation military she probably does know more than most.

Although i am not in disagreement with you, it does seem she was guided.

Got it in one. If he'd simply apologised for having shocking handwriting and admitted to being personally very distressed whenever writing one of these letters he would have a) put an end to it and b) gained some sympathy.

He couldn't help himself and reverted to deceit and obfuscation.

....which takes us nicely back to the origin of the outrage.

You must feel very privileged to have been present during this conversation.

My Bold.

Don't agree with you on that mate. She just lost her boy. She can say what she wants IMHO

It's The Sun at fault here. For cynically using a Mothers grief to try and shift some papers. Throbbers to the core.