Charmion
When I was a young soldier, back in the dawn of time, weapons were carried with the action forward and the safety latch in the On position. Sort of the opposite of "cocked"."
The meaning of "cocked" is true for both senses: in a shotgun, it's broken so it's visibly unloaded, in any other weapon it's got the hammer/firing pin back, and in principle with one up the spout. It can be cocked with safety on, and cocked with safety off.
Your young soldier wasn't fully trained, and clearly never was in a position where you were realistically expecting to need to use your weapon instantly. Teribus, I think, has been, and probably OldDude, and I, once. Your weapons-handling if you're noduff in it is a tad different, and not what's taught in Basic. We'd do that moving up, but after the start line there's another and better way. It's knowing your weapon backwards, so you can do a Queen Anne's Salute because you know in your sleep the exact spot that weapon's going to spin around - and with mine, it was a tad different because I use a long stock. It's a pretty twiddle, but it's not the prettiness which is at question: it's the control, spinning a rifle with a bayonet on the end and never losing control of it even though you're not holdng it. What surprised me is it doesn't leave you: twenty-five years after I last handled one weapon, my boss, a Belgian Colonel, unexpectedly chucked one at me, I caught it at the centre of balance instinctively and continued the movement to clear it, without thinking. For that second, it was me and I was it. Zen and the art of the Combat Rifleman.
The thing about Teribus is that he's becoming an old man and it hurts him, he wants the world as it was and cannot bear the reality that it is as it is, he's in denial. He's now 70 near enough, and those days are a fond memory. I'm ten years younger, and there was a huge change in between, which he can see has caught up and he hates it. It doesn't mean we're more or less patriotic than him, it's that our image of Patria is not so focused on a heirarchy. We see the Nation as a whole, where the politicians are the servants of the electorate and not its masters, however much they might think they are. That's what just happened to Andrew Mitchell and David Mellor, they got it wrong. It's also what's just happened to Ed Miliband, crowing over them without realising that because he's putting himself in a position over them, he's putting himself in a position over their victims. That damned Lord Snooty Primrose Hill sneering accent of his doesn't help, but it's what's beneath the hood people pick up on. Maggie dropped her voice an octave, but it's too late for Ed to do the same: I've just been playing with Audacity on his voice, the Normalised setting reduces the nasal sneer and puts tonal warmth in which isn't there. It's subtle, and what I get at the end is still very recognisable. It irons out some of the high-frequency overtones, but I don't think he can do that himself.
It's why Frank Field is being pushed: he's a mensch, someone who can out-Farrage Farrage. The closest equivalent in the modern Tory Party would be David Davies. Real people who can ask the population to follow them. Technocracy should be its servant, in the Tory Party it's become master. You cannot drive all the time, sometimes you must give, and not when the population can see the bribe. The Labour problem is that all it can do is give, and so we're in a position of not having a coherent ground which shares the pot wisely.
Another viewpoint is that might is authority: this is why the Iron Kitten is the most likely heir to DC. But that kind of power remains subject to a plebiscite, for all that they had an interesting little experiment in fiving the mandate at five years. A plebiscite, it's where Mitchell got it wrong: the plebs are who he works for.

And just as Teribus is from the past, so is the current Parliamentary system: Tory vs Labour. Are we going to be happy with the SNP holding the balance of power? The funny thing in such a scenario is that they must be their own worst enemies, holding power only by denying themselves their deepest wish. A Pyrrhic Victory indeed, worthy only of a Scottish masochist.

Another interesting view on today's news is the Black Friday riots. It would seem that the population is prepared to fight for its entitlements, right or wrong. This could be a very interesting six months.