D-DAY......LANDINGS

Well........Today's the 65th anniversary of the D-day landings.....This is the last time "Normandy Veterans Association" will be making an official pilgrimage to the landing beaches.....Most of the Vets are well into their 80's and the trip is a great "wrench" for a lot of them but what should be a time of honour and reflection for them is turning into a political circus with Sarkozy as the ring master.

Peter Hodge, Honorary General Secretary of the NVA, which is holding its last ever official commemorations this year, said that veterans had become a "political football" in recent weeks amid recriminations over the organisation for the anniversary.

"Successive governments always seem to lose the idea of what this is about, they seem to get the idea that this is a jamboree rather than a pilgrimage," he said.

"As soon as politicians get involved what happens in that our veterans and their families get shoved back and back and back.

"The whole sense of this is that the veterans are not important - it's the show, the extra security, the roads being shut, people being barred from where they wish to go and would have been able to go."

The area around the American military cemetery in Colleville will be locked down on Saturday while President Obama is present while signs on motorways across the wider region warn of major roads being closed forcing those attending to find back routes through villages.

What brought matters to a head was the fact that the Queen is not attending......Which many Vets see as a great insult because at least she actually served during WWII as a driver, which is more then can be said of all the scrounging dignity's there just for a "jolly" or in "Le Gnats" case, there for a good bit of "arse licking"!!!!

The area around the American military cemetery in Colleville will be locked down on Saturday while President Obama is present while signs on motorways across the wider region warn of major roads being closed forcing those attending to find back routes through villages.

Mr Hodge said that while veterans welcomed the decision for the Prince of Wales to attend it would inevitably lead to disruption and plans that had been carefully drawn up over many months, at a time when no dignitaries were expected, would be altered.

"As soon as the senior people get involved there is a security clampdown. The people who suffer are the people who ought to be there, who have a right to be there, not all the ministers and all the people on a jolly."

Veterans visiting Pegasus Bridge - the first place in Nazi-occupied France to be liberated, just after midnight on June 6 1944 - said that they did not want to see politics overshadow the commemorations.

There will mobilised several platoons of gendarmes which will practically cordon off Normandy (7,000 official guests are expected, including Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks).....CAN YOU BELIEVE IT!!!!!!!

This is a time for reflection not a freebe for "arse-lickers" and their hangers-on......The public opinion in France of "Le Gnat" is already at a low.....This hijacking of an event, that changed the course of France and Europe, will stink it even lower but do the "arse-lickers care?? Do they Hell......REMEMBER THE FALLEN!!!!!!

New French TV Series About The Occupation

A French TV channel, France 3, have taken the bold step to launch a new series about the occupation of France in WWII that focuses on the way normal French citizens handled the occupation of their village......Instead of the politically stance of heroes, victims and villians, this series will be about the way a village handles everyday life whilst it is occupied by Germans....Up until recently this has be a taboo subject in France and the general perception of of glamorous Resistance members, evil collaborators, and families hunkered round radio-sets listening to General Charles De Gaulle on the BBC, has been avoided in "Un village Francais", instead this will depict the confused reality of adjusting to foreign military rule.

This series is set in a fictional village called Villeneuve in the Jura mountains of eastern France, the series begins with the arrival of German troops in June 1940. It starts on Thursday and six episodes go out this month – taking events up to November 1940 – and a further six in the autumn.

Evidently it has cost France 3, a state-owned television channel, £500,000 per episode, an unusually large amount in France, and has high hopes of continuing the series through to 2013 with each annual season following the changing mood of the occupation as the years progress......It should prove to be a very interesting series.