today, with little media attention, and little protest apart from a courageous banner drop in parliament grounds, MPs voted to continue the occupation of afghanistan, as is.

business as usual.

an hour and a half later than planned (due to the andy coulson media frenzy), this afternoon MPs had the chance to debate "afghanistan', and in particular whether the uk should continue to deploy troops there.

it is significantly the first time that MPs actually have had a chance to vote against the eight-year long war, although it is a backbench debate, actually sparked by a motion drawn by the 'backbench business committee'.

despite the obvious importance of the debate, both to british soldiers and their families, and to the enormous numbers of afghan civilians affected, not to mention injured or killed, by the continuing occupation, which lest we forget used 9/11 as its sole raison d'etre, only about half of our MPs bothered to attend.

the mainstream peace movement of britain didn't even turn up either, despite some publicity for a 'stop the war coalition' protest at noon.

but at the front of parliament, after scaling the fences and scaffolding yesterday afternoon, and staying on a tiny platform overnight, two peace protestors who actually did give a damn, remained on their vigil with large visible banners for peace and 'troops home'.

meanwhile, inside the house, while british opinion polls regularly put at 75% the support for ending the occupation of afghanistan, this translated in our motherfucker of parliaments into a 310 to 14 vote to continue deployment of uk armed forces in afghanistan.

even an amendment calling for "a more realistic strategy" only garnered 5 votes against 311.

what planet do these spineless politicians live on? let them go and fight in aghanistan if they are so gung-ho about it. it might really begin solving a few problems if the politicians themselves faced being maimed and killed.

i'm waiting for confirmation, but protestors, maria and seamus, were planning to visit the roof once more before giving up their vigil and handing themselves over to the police at end the end of the debate, earlier this evening.