PM Gordon Brown flew into Helmand Province, Afghanistan today and sparked an unholy row with an army Quartermaster at Camp Bastion.
An initially jovial Mr Brown stepped from his helicopter in the Camp Bastion compound and shook hands with senior army officers, and then requested a flak jacket, or some body armour, or whatever it is that our brave lads out there wear to stop insurgent's sniper bullets.
Because Helmand can be a bloody dangerous place, don't you know.
When Quartermaster Guy Blunt informed the Prime Minister that there was no spare body armour available the mood suddenly changed. The PM demanded that the Quartermaster fetch him some body armour and be blinking quick about it. He was told once again that there was no body armour available, as it was all being used.
The PM visibly scowled at this news, and told the Quartermaster that he't he'd better get his blooming act together and sort it out.
Attempting to defuse what was becoming a rapidly deteriorating situation, a Staff Sergeant, acting on his own initiative proffered an IDD to the PM, saying that it was all they could come up with at such short notice.
(IDD = Improvised Defensive Device - An ordinary vest with stuff stitched to it, such as old newspapers, crushed cans, compressed cardboard, pan lids etc in the unlikely hope that it might stop a bullet, or shrapnel.)
The PM was visibly unimpressed and threatened to give the Staff Sergeant a 'thick ear' in an uncharacteristic outburst of bad temperedness, before once again demanding some proper body armour.
Quartermaster Guy Blunt then explained that there was no proper body armour available because Mr Brown's government was too tight-fisted to buy enough sets for everybody, adding that there were lads out on patrol with no body armour because Mr Brown's government was spending all the money rescuing banker's bonus payments, providing yet another new identity for a convicted child killer, and paying for 'asylum seekers' to sit on their arses doing nothing in British hotels.
At which point, Mr Brown announced that he was going to get something done about this because it was an outrage. He then ordered that he be returned to Westminster at once:
A) To sort out the lack of equipment outrage.
B) Because he was frightened.
More as we get it.
