Priti Patel & Bullying

So that Big Girls blouse Sir Philip Rutnam - the now totally unlamented ex Permanent Secretary of the Home Office thinks Priti Patel is a bully. How pathetic. I doubt the dripping wet Sir Philip even knows what bullying is. Well I do. I was taught by an expert, one Trained Soldier Evans, he was in charge of some twenty of us who were so unfortunate as to end up in a barrack room under his total control. 

We were the lowest of low. Potential Officer recruit guardsmen. Fair game for every NCO and Warrant Officer at the depot for the eight weeks of the course called The Brigade Squad. Trained Soldier Evans was responsible for us when we were in the barrack room. He was a psycho and enjoyed picking on the weakest member of the squad and by using the cunning arts of bullying get them to chuck it and leave.

Many had already succumbed by the time he got round to concentrating on me.  Most of his techniques were hardly subtle but he did have one nasty trick which was to try to turn the whole squad against me by punishing them for my supposed inadequacies. For example, the one treat we were allowed was a half hour sprint down to the NAAFI (canteen) for a quick pint of beer at around nine o'clock.  I can hear Evans now saying in his Welsh lilt -'No NAAFI break tonight as Fulford's boots are in bad order."

As I said Evans was a master of the art of bullying. Years later I asked a fellow member of the squad if he could let me have a copy of the squad photo as I had lost mine. He not only had it copied but framed as well and sent it to me. 'How much do |I owe you?' I asked.  'Nothing' he replied 'Every night I would say a silent prayer that you wouldn't give in and chuck it because I knew if you did I would be next'  Somehow I don't think Sir Philip would have lasted 24 hours in that barrack room.