Wednesday, September 30, 2009 

Scum-watch: Don't know what you've got till it's gone.

They must have known it was coming, but the defection of the Sun back to the Tories after 12 years of "supporting" Labour has still quite clearly shook Labour. While the paper's representatives claim that it was yesterday's speech that finally confirmed they could no longer support the party, it's been obvious that the switch has been coming ever since last year's Conservative conference, when it gave David Cameron the sort of positive coverage he must have dreamed of. Since then the paper has been overwhelmingly anti-Labour without necessarily being anti-Brown. Some of the signs have been slight: calling Cameron "prime minister" when he was invited onto the paper's recently launched piss-poor online radio show was one, but the demand for an immediate general election earlier in the year was far less guarded.

The final nail in Brown's coffin was more than likely David Cameron's decision during his speech on quangos to focus almost solely on Ofcom, the regulator which is currently investigating whether Sky has an unfair stranglehold on the pay-TV market. With Cameron's culture secretary making menacing noises towards the BBC, which the Murdochs have all but declared war on due to the fact that their news websites simply can't compete with the far superior corporation offerings, it's clear that the Murdochs can now trust Cameron not to hurt their businesses just as they once trusted Tony Blair not to. That's the first condition of Murdochian support filled; the second is that you're going to win, and few are willing to bet anything other than a Conservative victory come next year.

It's still curious then that the paper has come out so decisively for the Tories when there is still plenty of time for anything to happen. The paper, after all, didn't swap sides until March in 97, when the Labour victory was already in the bag. As unlikely as it currently seems that there could yet be a fourth Labour term, it's not the first time that Murdoch's papers have got it wrong recently: the New York Post endorsed McCain last year. As a comfort, it's unlikely to warm the hearts of the Labour leadership.

More likely to do so is that the Sun is no longer the behemoth that it once was. While gaining the support of the Sun has always been second to gaining the support of Rupert Murdoch, the other major reason why Blair and Alastair Campbell entered into the original pact with the devil was, as Campbell said himself, he was never going to allow the Labour leader's head to be in a light-bulb on the front page on voting day again. While actual support for a political party from a newspaper on voting day has little to no impact whatsoever on the votes cast, it was the constant demonisation, undermining and ridicule which Kinnock was subject to, especially in the tabloid press, that helped to ensure he never became prime minister. The key difference today is that the Sun is no longer the attack dog it once was; while the paper ostensibly supported the Tories up until March 97, Kelvin MacKenzie famously told John Major after Black Wednesday that he had a bucket of shit and that the next morning he was going to pour it all over his head. MacKenzie might still be a columnist, and the likes of Bob Ainsworth might now be the person having a bucket of shit thrown over him repeatedly, but unlike back in 97, the media has now diversified to such an extent that the paper doesn't have the hold it once did. If anything, the paper has overplayed both its hand and its influence: it is still feared and respected mainly because of its former reputation rather than because of what it currently is.

One of the many repeated myths spouted today by those who deal in clichés is that the Sun follows its readers rather than getting its readers to follow it. Perhaps at times they get surprised by the strength of reaction, but this is a newspaper that wraps itself in what it thinks its readers want as defence against criticism, as a reassurance that it's what they want, and finally to tell them that because they're saying they want it, then it must be true. If anything the Sun is probably one of those newspapers which has the least loyal readership: the circulation of the broads, while falling, has not changed hugely since the advent of the internet; the tabloids, with the exception of the Mail and the Daily Star, have seen theirs fall massively. At one point the Sun dropped below the 3 million sales mark, triggering an almost panic-stricken price cut. Even with its lower circulation, the Daily Mail now almost certainly sets the agenda far more often than the Sun does.

This didn't of course stop the love affair between Blair and the paper, which remained to the advantage of both. For Blair, always determined to annoy the left of his party while reaching out to the cherished middle Britain, it served a double purpose. For the paper, it meant exclusives of even the most banal significance: Piers Morgan in his diaries was furious on a number of occasions about the access which the Sun got while the Mirror was shut out, most famously when someone (probably Cherie herself) told Rebekah Wade that the Blairs were having another baby, a story which Morgan believed was to be a Mirror exclusive. It meant obscene cooperation between the two, including policy stitch-ups involving asylum seekers. While New Labour and the Sun's politics may not look close at first examination, both shared, indeed share a contempt for civil liberties and an unaccountable lust for social authoritarianism, even if Blair could never come close to putting the paper's demands into action. On foreign policy, the two were inseparable: the Sun has always believed that might is right, and the fact that Blair dressed up his wars in the language of "liberal interventionism" only made them even more attractive.

Arguably, there have only been two occasions when Labour genuinely needed the support of the Murdoch press. Without the unstinting loyalty of all Murdoch's organs between the Iraq war and up to the end of the Hutton inquiry, there was still a possibility that Blair could have been forced out. In 2005 the paper all but abandoned the party except over Blair's wars. The real reason why remains Murdoch's certainty that the war was going to lead to oil at $20 a barrel, something that has not even come close to reality. The other occasion, is, well, now. Just when the party needs support, it loses it. This was the especially brutal part of the Sun's sudden but long in coming decision, knowing full well that it was not just kicking someone while they were down, it was the equivalent of a desecration of a corpse. Any hope that there might be the slightest boost from Brown's speech has been neutralised. David Cameron really must be delighted with the outcome, and again, this only highlights exactly why he's installed Andy Coulson as his very own Alastair Campbell.

As for the Sun's actual supposed reasons and dossier of "Labour failure", they're mostly so flimsy as to be not even worth bothering with. The dossier puts together often completely irrelevant data, and when it doesn't, it naturally cherry picks the information it relies on. On justice the paper absurdly highlights the cost of legal aid, as if the giving those who can't afford it access to briefs was a bad thing. It highlights the rise in alcohol tax receipts since 97 without pointing out this might be something to do with err, the rise in tax on it and not just increased sales. It compares the spending on police with the rise in deaths by stabbings, without mentioning that last year saw the lowest number of murders since the 80s. It also uses the 2007 figures rather than the 2008 ones, which saw a fall from 270 fatal stabbings to 252. Their data even directly contradicts some of the claims made in the leader, such as here:
But they FAILED on law and order, their mantra "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" becoming a national joke. Knife murders are soaring.

Their dossier shows that knife murders between 2006 and 2007 soared by, err, 1. In 2005 they were down to 219, then leapt in 2006 to 269, only two more than there were in 2002. As pointed out above, fatal stabbings were down to 252 in 2008, hence proving the editorial completely wrong. The weapon used should be irrelevant: it's that there are murders, not that one particular weapon is used. The idiocy continues:

Smirking criminals routinely walk free in the name of political correctness, while decent people live in a virtual police state of snooping cameras and petty officials empowered to spy and to punish.

The idea that criminals walk free in the name of political correctness is so ludicrous as to be not worth dealing with, while if there is a virtual police state, it was the Sun that helped create it. When has it ever opposed more CCTV cameras or more state powers? Answer: never.

Most disgracefully of all, Labour FAILED our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, leaving them to die through chronic under-funding and the shambolic leadership of dismal Defence Secretaries like Bob Ainsworth.

Again, their dossier shows that spending on defence has risen year on year. The real people who failed our troops in Iraq were those who demanded they be sent in in the first place, but the Sun has never pointed its finger at itself. It wasn't those fighting them that left them to die, but then it also clearly wasn't Baby P's parents that killed him. It was instead the system:

Billions blown employing a useless layer of public service middle-managers like those who condemned Baby P to die.

Everything about this leader is backward looking, trying to turn the country back to halcyon days which never existed. Murdoch, despite his Australian-American citizenship, is a nationalist wherever his newspapers are. Loyal in China, neo-conservative in America and anti-Europe here, he somehow imagines that if only we were to spend more on defence and give the troops what they "need", they'd instantly "win". This doesn't of course apply to anyone else, but this is the kind of outlook we're dealing with. The leader concludes with:

If elected, Cameron must use the same energy and determination with which he reinvigorated the Tory Party to breathe new life into Britain.

That means genuine, radical change to encourage self-improvers, not wasting time on internal party wrangling or pandering to the forces of political correctness. It also means an honesty and transparency of Government that we have not seen for years.

We are still a great people and, put to the test, will respond to the challenges we face.

The Sun believes - and prays - that the Conservative leadership can put the great back into Great Britain.

Sub-Churchillian jingoism which turns the stomach. This is the relationship which Labour is crying and angry about losing today, to such an extent that it seems to have almost made Gordon Brown walk out on an interview. Labour never needed the Sun, but now it doesn't know what it had.

Labels: , , , , , , ,

Share |

9/30/2009 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Farce, then tragedy.

Last year, when Sarah Brown, clearly nervous, stood up in front of the Labour conference and introduced her husband's address, what was clearly an attempt to deflect criticism was viewed sympathetically, mainly as it was still by no means certain that he would be in the job for much longer after it. As it turned out, the speech, probably now best remembered for his put down of both Cameron and Miliband by saying it was "no time for a novice" was just about good enough to secure his leadership, at least until the disastrous local and European election results earlier this year where another major wobble took place.

This year, Sarah Brown's appearance before Brown's speech, far from performing the role it was meant to, simply exaggerated the extended tragedy which has been his reign. What other response could there possibly be to her description of Gordon as "her hero"? Again, she was intended to act as a prophylactic, protecting him from scathing criticism. You can get away with doing this once; do it twice and you start to look cowardly, and this from the man trying to ram books about "courage" down our necks.

You can though understand why they wanted history to repeat. If last year's speech by Brown did just enough, then this year's didn't even come close. You can't deny that Brown delivered it with plenty of brio, hardly falling into the stereotype of someone so depressed and flailing that he needs to be on archaic, strong medication, but it was the content that so bitterly let him down. To call it a speech would, like Nick Clegg's effort last week, probably be insulting the medium itself. There was no theme, no connection. One of the first things you're taught when it comes to writing essays is that they must have an introduction, a middle and a conclusion, something which applies equally to public speaking. The latest innovation it seems when it comes to speeches by political leaders is to throw such outdated notions out of the window: no one other than wonks is going to listen to or read the things in full anyway, so you might as well just talk about one thing after the other, regardless of any connection between them until you've finished. Brown goes from the economy to attacking the Conservatives to the greatness of those ubiquitous "hard-working families" to the public services to back to attacking the Conservatives again, all of it wholly unconvincing.

This conference, if it is about anything, seems to be a collective gnashing of teeth that they have ever saw fit to defenestrate Tony Blair. Yesterday we saw the party finally falling in love with Mandelson, the nearest it now has to the great man himself. Brown, knowing that the last thing he can be is Blair, instead decided to emulate his policies. All those things we thought we'd seen the last of, such as the pointless counter-productive populism on "anti-social behaviour" are suddenly back as if they never went away. Sure, there were a few bones here thrown in an attempt to buy off those who had hoped that Brown would lead the party left-wards, the most obvious and also best example being the great believer in free markets suddenly deciding that the "right wing fundamentalism that says you just leave everything to the market and says that free markets should not just be free but values free" was wrong, but no one believes for a second that Brown intends to act on what he says in this area. Most disturbing was what some have already monikered as "gulags for slags", the shared housing for pregnant 16 and 17-year-olds, rather than putting them up in a council flat. Not only does this buy into a myth, that all you need to do is get pregnant while a teenager and you'll be set up for a life, but that also accidentally becoming pregnant when you're over the age of consent but not yet 18 is something that you should be punished for, not to mention considered to be too stupid or feckless to be able to look after the child either on your own or with the help of your own family without the state barging in. This sense of false victimhood and resentment against those "who will talk about their rights, but never accept their responsibilities" permeated an entire section of the speech. This just illustrates how successful the tabloids have been as painting Labour as friends only of immigrants and single mothers, and how the incredible idea that it's now the white middle classes who are the most discriminated against has become mainstream.

If the idea of "gulags for slags" is chilling, in much the same way was Brown's declaration that "whenever and wherever there is antisocial behaviour, we will be there to fight it." It's worth remembering that the main indicator for so-called antisocial behaviour is not shouting at people on the street or the kind of low-level thuggery over an extended period which the Pilkingtons suffered, but teenagers daring to congregate together in public, doing nothing other than talking to each other. In some senses we've regressed past the Victorian dictum that children should be seen and not heard; now we don't want them even to be seen. Yet this war on childhood in general is, we are told, incredibly popular in focus groups, hence why it's back on the agenda. It doesn't matter that if you focus grouped bringing back capital punishment or permanently chipping sex offenders you'd also doubtless get an immensely favourable response, if a representative sample of the hoi polloi wants it, they'll get it. Or rather, they'll be told they're getting it, as that seems to be just as good as getting it.

On everything other than bringing back the Blair agenda, it was the tiniest most pathetic gestures which were the order of the day. ID cards won't then be made compulsory over the next parliament; MPs guilty of gross misconduct will be able to be recalled; and there'll be a commitment in the manifesto for a referendum on the alternative vote, the most piss-poor non-proportional system of voting other than first past the post. There was no vision here, no adjustment to the world as it is now is, just a repetition of past glories which the electorate are supposed to bask in and so reach the conclusion that the Conservatives would only mess it all up. This was exactly the stance they took in 1997: New Labour, New Danger, you can only be sure with the Conservatives. They were already doomed, but it doomed them even further. In line with that year, tomorrow the Sun declares that Labour has blown it, just as it switched support from the Tories back then. Marx it seems had it backwards: in this instance history is repeating itself, but as tragedy after farce.

Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

Share |

9/30/2009 12:30:00 AM | | | links to this post

Monday, September 28, 2009 

The spirit as weak as the flesh in Brighton

Far be it from me, an inhabitant of a concrete hell which culture seems to have passed by, to suggest that this nation's seaside towns tend to be inclement at best and downright depressing at worst during the autumn and winter months, but perhaps the weather in Brighton, especially at night, is in tune with the Labour party's collective mood. This is, after all, according to no less a person than Alistair Darling, a party that seems to have lost the will to live, which no longer has the fire in its belly, and for which everyone from the top to the bottom, has a responsibility.

This theme, that the party is sleepwalking to a defeat next year which could finish it as an electoral force, has become so familiar that it's almost beginning to border on the cliche, and it's one which this blog has not exactly challenged. It is one however that the opinion polls are hardly contradicting, the latest showing Labour equal pegging with the Liberal Democrats on a shockingly low 23%. It's still worth remembering that Labour took 27% of the vote in 1983, the year incidentally in which both Blair and Brown were elected to parliament. The "longest suicide note in history", although one which deserves reappraisal, delivered a higher percentage of support than Labour would currently receive. Only those most in loathe with the last 12 years would suggest that's all that the party currently deserves.

No one seriously expects that Labour will be fighting with the Liberal Democrats for third largest party status in 12 months time. The threat is however that the party could be reduced to its long established bases of support, but even these, on an extremely pessimistic reading of the runes, seem to be in trouble. Wales, the historic bedrock of Labour support, seems to be within the grasp of the Conservatives. According to a Financial Times poll last week, the Tories have a 4 point lead in the north, while in Scotland the party is instead struggling with a Scottish National Party that despite the al-Megrahi backlash only seems to be growing stronger. This is coupled with as Dave Osler has identified, the party's loss of a generation. Amazing and frightening as it seems, those children and only just teenagers who were marching against the Iraq war alongside those of us who had only just gained the right to vote in 2003 will next year themselves be taking part in their first general election, and if they fight off the apathy, it seems doubtful they'll be putting an x in the box alongside the Labour candidate, nor will they in the years to come. Just as we promised ourselves we would never vote for the Tories, so they will have promised never to vote Labour. This poses a challenge which no one in either the Conservatives or Labour has even began to consider, let alone broach.

Looking at the hall in Brighton, many of the seats empty, even during Alistair Darling's speech (although that perhaps might be half the reason), the clapping lukewarm at best, it's hard not to infer that many don't have the stomach to even turn up, like at a Christmas party for a company that's shutting down in the new year. Then again, when the best that Darling could pull out of his hat was a "Fiscal Responsibility Act", designed to put in legal terms how the government intends to reduce the deficit, you do wonder whether involuntary euthanasia wouldn't be kinder for all involved. It really does sum New Labour up: its mania for legislation where none is necessary, that it is so shorn of trust that it has to do so to make sure that the public believes what it says while also no doubt being an attempt to tie the Tories' hands should they want to put certain areas of spending off limits.

Just when you think that things can't get any more absurd, up pops the former Prince of Darkness, who could now more appropriately be known as the Grand Wizard of Sunlight. Mandelson does not have a natural charisma, but what he does have, along with the self-regard, is the ability to reassure, which is what his role was today. In a way, his speech was about precisely nothing, even though he did announce an extension to the car scrappage scheme, but rather about enthusing those resigned with the unannounced theme of the conference, fighting back. Mandelson might have made the most ultimate of comebacks, but even his bounce back ability is hardly likely to infect the party as a whole. He has though made Brown's task tomorrow even more difficult. Brown's speech of 2003, his "Real Labour" opus, is now little more than the tiniest of memories. To go by the leaks, that Brown intends to go on the attack on crime and promises that most piss-weak of political battles, a live debate or debates with Cameron prior to the election, it seems that even Brown and his speech writers have given up the ghost. No longer is even the spirit willing, seeming to be just as weak as the flesh.

Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Share |

9/28/2009 09:43:00 PM | | | links to this post

Saturday, September 26, 2009 

Weekend links.

A fairly slow weekend considering the start of the Labour conference and the news concerning Iran. The Daily (Maybe) has some thoughts on the latter while Harpymarx examines Labour's descent into the sewer. Paul Linford is still wondering what their conference leaves the Lib Dems standing for, 5CC notes the month long plight of London assembly BNPer Richard Barnbrook for lying about murders, Justin remembers John Prescott as the feminist he has always strived to be, Dave Osler reflects on lessons from Northern Ireland, Paulie is perhaps a little too hopeful that the Tory reign won't last for long, Tom Freeman sees what passes for truth in broadcasting, Claude reviews the last Dispatches and the Third Estate does Chris Harman's Zombie Capitalism.

In the papers, or at least their sites, Matthew Parris thinks he knows why the Lib Dem "mansion tax" would be doomed to failure or revolt, Marina Hyde knows that the special relationship is only so to us, both Andrew Grice and Steve Richards preview the week coming in Brighton, Peter Oborne says the Lady Scotland debacle shows that Labour is incapable of cleaning up politics, and A.N. Wilson (yes, him) writes an actually humane piece on euthanasia. Polly Toynbee also drafts Gordon Brown's resignation speech for him, which the Heresiarch responds to.

As for the worst tabloid article, the only real contender this week is the usual, Amanda Platell, and by her standards she's not that bad this week. Just her bitchiness about what Miriam Clegg(?) was wearing, as well as someone nonsense about the BBC "banning" the word "gipsy" (surely gypsy, the word the tabloids avoid because of its protection under the Race Relations Act?):

Cleggs's divine wife Miriam arrived at conference in a masculine, sheer, white shirt and floppy black braces that kept slipping off her slim shoulders. Fashion faux pas or a blatant appeal to the lucrative lesbian vote?

Platell would of course know all about the "lucrative lesbian vote".

Labels: , ,

Share |

9/26/2009 10:24:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, September 25, 2009 

Patrick Mercer has some questions to answer.

The response of Patrick Mercer to Tim Ireland's publishing of an email showing that his office was still working with Glen Jenvey almost two months after the "TERROR TARGET SUGAR" story was shown to be entirely his own work is a classic example of a politician in a hole not knowing when to stop digging. After previously stating to the Guardian that his office had never worked with him, about as blatant a lie as it was possible to come up with, he's now arguing semantics over exactly what "working with his office" entailed.

Tim has now posted 10 questions for Mercer, ones which he seems unlikely to get an answer to:

1. Sometimes Jenvey's information checked out, and sometimes it didn't. Did you 'check out' the SUGAR IS TERROR REVENGE TARGET story of 7 January 2009 by looking at the evidence before The Sun published?

2. Did you 'check out' the SUGAR IS TERROR REVENGE TARGET story of 7 January 2009 by looking at the evidence published at Bloggerheads.com (after The Sun had published)?

3. Regardless of the perceived reliability of that evidence, did you then and do you now hold the view expressed by The Sun to the PCC that "sending polite letters" is "obviously a euphemism" for something far more sinister if/when published on Ummah.com (on the basis that it is a "fanatics website")?

4. At what stage (and on which date) did you first realise that Jenvey had indeed fabricated the evidence used by The Sun to allege the presence of extremism at Ummah.com, and the active targeting of named celebrities?

5. What was it that finally caused your office to part company with Jenvey? Was it the above discovery, you becoming personally aware of Glen Jenvey's false claim that his accuser was a convicted paedophile, or something else?

6. Was there ever any stage after you regarded your professional relationship to be over that your office continued working with Glen Jenvey (i.e. in a manner akin to the recently-released email to The People newspaper), but without your knowledge?

7. What disciplinary action (if any) was taken against the staff members who (maybe) worked with Jenvey against your wishes, (perhaps) did not show you relevant 'Sugar' evidence or (definitely) did not alert you to Jenvey's false accusations of paedophilia? What corrective measures (if any) were made to your procedures to avoid a similar compromising breakdown of communication?

8. You appear to be claiming that the quote used by The Sun in their letter to the PCC is now at least two years old. How old was it when The Sun used it (on 27 January 2009)?

9. Did The Sun check with you before using that quote in their letter to the PCC?

10. While they do conflict, you have released public statements about the severing of your relationship with Glen Jenvey. However, there is no statement on record about you severing links with another former associate and amateur 'terror expert' Dominic Wightman, and he appears to be suggesting that still support him. If you no longer have a professional/working relationship with Dominic Wightman, on what date did you sever links with him, and why was this decision taken?


All while this has been going on Tim has been the victim of a smear campaign, first by Jenvey himself, and now by Dominic Wightman, as well as by others who have been touting his home address around Twitter. You might well want to let your own MP know about what some high profile Tories have been involved in.

Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

Share |

9/25/2009 09:55:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, September 24, 2009 

A very underwhelming conference.

As conferences go, the Liberal Democrats' visit to Bournemouth was not exactly a resounding success. To be sure, as Martin Kettle suggests, anything that brings the party to wider public attention, however fleeting, helps. When 60% don't know who Nick Clegg is, according to a Newsnight poll, a figure which probably suits him down to the ground, you have to hope instead that it's your policies rather than your personality that makes the waves.

It was those policies, naturally, which came just as unstuck as both Clegg and Vince Cable did over the week. It's understandable when we're still either eight or nine months away from the election and when the political theme of the moment is how to get the deficit down with the smallest amount of pain, but surely Clegg and co realised that talking of "savage cuts" to the Guardian wasn't going to go down well? To then increase the pain by taking the sacred cow of abolishing tuition fees and downgrading it to an "aspiration" was surely asking for trouble, or as much trouble as the staid bunch of yellowshirts can manage, which, predictably, was a letter to the self-same Graun.

The standard defence of this rather amicable difference of opinion within the party is that the Liberals are the only remaining of the main three parties which actually decides its policies at conference democratically. This doesn't however explain the bewildering failure of either Clegg or Cable to inform Julia Goldsworthy of the new "mansion tax" policy, despite it firmly being her turf, nor does it then help us to understand why the party didn't know how it was actually meant to work. This wouldn't perhaps be unusual when it comes to either the government or the opposition, responding to a headline with a policy drawn up on the back of the proverbial cigarette packet or dinner napkin, with the details to follow later, but this was the party that usually has it all worked out in advance.

Part of the reason seems to be down to Clegg and Cable thinking that they can run the party as their own fiefdom, buoyed by their overwhelming popularity. You can hardly blame dear old Vince for some of the hype going to his head, but Clegg has hardly done anything to justify such delusions of grandeur. Last year Clegg's closing speech was underwhelming; this year it was completely dismal. To call it a speech might even be awarding it an adjective it doesn't deserve, as Clegg seemed to take the very worst tendencies which overwhelmed the utterances of Tony Blair, such as beginning a new paragraph when he was only starting the next sentence as well as the vacuity of the seemingly endless statements of facts and pseudo-beliefs, and combining it with the personal feel that David Cameron attempts to emulate and dismally fails to. Hence Nick wants to be prime minister, not like the Tories because they believe that they're entitled to it as their time has come again, but because he's on our side, not the side of the "others". When it comes to platitudes made to seem inspiring, wanting to be on the side of the weak rather than the strong is not exactly stirring stuff.

When attacking Labour, especially accusing them of betraying the best hopes of a generation, there was some power in amongst the placidness, but it was few and far between. Easily the worst combination, already being much mocked, was Clegg's espousal of a "progressive austerity". When Cameron and Osborne talk of austerity, it sticks in the craw because you know that not once in their entire lives have they had to experience anything approaching "austerity", yet they delight and seem almost excited at imposing it upon the country. Clegg somehow imagines that by cloaking this austerity in the verbiage of wonky ideology that we won't notice that he in fact seems to be telling us that he was to makes things, err, progressively worse. It's perhaps not the greatest example, but an Alastair Campbell would have seen that nonsense on stilts in the text and sliced it out in a second. Clegg instead just ended up looking like a flatulent prat.

This has less to do with the Liberal Democrats not being a serious alternative, and more to do with the electoral reality which makes them look not a serious alternative. Yet this week should have helped to cement the deal with those flirting with the party, while those paying attention will have likely only been further confused. We used to know what the Lib Dems stood for, just as we used to know what Labour and the Conservatives stand for; no longer. They remain the best, most viable alternative to the apparent foregone conclusion which is a Conservative electoral victory, but they seem to be going out of their way to lose votes rather than win them.

Labels: , , , , ,

Share |

9/24/2009 10:03:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, September 23, 2009 

Scum-watch: Going "soft" on perverts.

If there was ever a chance that Dominic Mohan would be less overbearing compared to his predecessor when it comes to the protection of children, then that's gone out the window with today's "exclusive" claim that a "[Q]uarter of pervs go free", as alluded to on the front page. The actual article, by Brian Flynn, has to be one of the least illuminating and most lazy examples of supposed investigative journalism in quite some time:

THE Sun can today reveal how Britain's soft justice system allows hundreds of child sex fiends to escape court action.

In a special investigation, we found more than a quarter of child abusers are let off with a caution by cops.

The shock figures emerged in responses by 33 police forces to Freedom of Information demands by The Sun.

This then is a method which has been previously pioneered by the mid-market tabloids, where they submit FoI requests to the country's police forces, not all of which reply, with an article to write already in mind. Both the Express and the Mail have used this to supposedly show how many "foreigners" are either committing murders or rapes in this country, and has been dealt with in the past by 5CC. Those requests though have been much narrower in scope to this one, and also far better defined and explained. The Sun's request, presumably, as it is never properly outlined, is for the numbers of individuals who have been charged and cautioned with "sexual and physical abuse offences against kids", their best description, not mine. This understandably covers a whole multitude of sins, some, but which by no means all, are covered in this document explaining the changes which came in under the Sexual Offences Act 2003.

To start off with, only 33 forces have responded when there are 44 in total, so the statistics are by no means complete. Here though are the shock figures:

In total, 8,043 people who committed sexual and physical abuse offences against kids were charged in the year to April, while 2,764 were given a caution.

Just to illustrate that these 2,764 given a caution hardly cover the most serious offences, the paper then gives the only breakdown in actual offences in the entire piece:

Even beasts who rape under-age children can get just a ticking off. The statistics included 20 who raped girls under 16 and eight who attacked young boys.

So only 28 who admitted to rape were given a caution. For someone to only be given a caution for such a serious crime, especially against a child, there has to be significant mitigating circumstances. One of these is explained in the above document on the Sexual Offences Act 2003: since the act was passed, anyone under 12, regardless of whether they consented to sex or not, is considered to have been raped if they take part in any sexual activity involving penetration. This still applies even if the person they have sex with is 13 or below the age of consent themselves. Since it's hardly in the public interest to prosecute to the full extent of the law young children for such serious offences, a caution will often be the best option. The changes in the law were additionally not meant to be used when, for example, a 15-year-old consents to sex with a 17-year-old, unless there was abuse or exploitation involved, but this is not always the case, hence a caution will again sometimes be given. Other examples of where a caution will be considered the better option will be where the offence involved a member of the family of the victim, which the SOA expanded to include step-family members and others. The Sun also adds its own explanations as to why a caution rather than a prosecution will sometimes be best option:

Legal sources said reasons for the caution option include victims not wanting to go through a court process, perhaps if the attacker was a family member.

Evidence could also be flimsy, meaning a fiend could get off whereas under a caution guilt is assured. But one source said: "It must always be a last option."


Well, precisely, and the Sun has provided no evidence whatsoever that suggests this isn't the case. All it has done is present some out of context figures with no information whatsoever as to what offences have actually been committed, which would help us to ascertain whether a caution is a reasonable end result to the offence or not. It's also provided no comparison figures as to whether the number of cautions has actually gone up or down year on year, which would further help to show whether or not this is a change in policy and genuine further evidence of it being a mockery of Labour "being tough on crime". In short, it's a typical piece of tabloid journalism, so flimsy that as soon as you look at it in any detail you notice that it's coming apart at the seams. It's an example of doing the very bare minimum as an attempt to prove an already held hypothesis.

This is without even considering the Sun's leader column on the subject:

SHOCKING figures show one in four proven child abusers - including child rapists -- get off with a caution. That means almost 3,000 known paedophiles are on the loose - many of them likely to re-offend.

The Sun presents nothing whatsoever that justifies calling those given a caution paedophiles, and it also hasn't the slightest basis for claiming that "many of them" are likely to re-offend. This is just base scaremongering using the terms which are most likely to cause fear in both children and adults.

Raping girls under 16 - or even gang-raping a boy - goes virtually unpunished.

Except the article shows that only 28 cases of rape out of a total of 10,807 offences were concluded with a caution - we can't even tell how many cases of rape were prosecuted as the Sun doesn't provide us with those figures. That's hardly going virtually unpunished. The Sun does however have an explanation:
But there is a culture of idle incompetence at the very top - with both politicians and police chiefs. The message from on high is: Jails are full so turn a blind eye.

This is abject nonsense. The jails being full has very little to no influence whatsoever on the CPS deciding who to prosecute and who to not. The courts and judges may indeed be influenced by lack of space when it comes to passing sentence, but the CPS simply decides on the merits and circumstances of the case. The possibility of prison doesn't enter into it.

This stunning failure of justice is a crime in itself.

And innocent children pay the price.


As will innocent children and adults who believe the fearmongering which the Sun fails to even begin to back up.

Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Share |

9/23/2009 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Well, that's that then.

A to scale approximation of the apology compared to the original story.

Another week, another "apology" from the Sun over their disastrous in retrospect "TERROR TARGET SUGAR" story:

OUR story on January 7 about a 'hit list' of top British Jews on the website Ummah.com was based on claims by Glen Jenvey who last week confessed to duping several newspapers and Tory MP Patrick Mercer by fabricating stories about Islamic fundamentalism.Following Mr Jenvey's confession, we apologise to Ummah.com for the article which we now accept was inaccurate.

In the pantheon of apologies, this is hardly the most contrite or convincing of ones. It also gives next to no context: what in the article was inaccurate about Ummah.com? The nearest suggestion we get is that Islamic fundamentalism was involved. Anyone wanting to know more would have to search or go to the Press Complaints Commission's site to find out what the actual complaint was about:

A representative of www.ummah.com complained that an article had inaccurately suggested that the website was a forum for Islamic extremists. The story was based largely on the views of a ‘terror expert' named Glen Jenvey who expressed serious concerns about the website. The piece quoted a number of comments posted on ummah.com and suggested that extremists were seeking to ‘target' well-known British Jews. The complainant said that Mr Jenvey's claims were unfounded and that there was, in fact, some evidence that he himself had posted the quoted comments in order to create the story.

Resolution:

The PCC's investigation, launched in January 2009, had to be placed on hold for a period of time because of a concurrent, related legal action. However, on 13 September, Glen Jenvey confessed publicly that he had, indeed, posted the comments on ummah.com which became the basis for the Sun's story. He admitted having deceived various media outlets, individuals and organisations. Mr Jenvey's confession was reported by the Sun on 15 September. In light of this development, the PCC re-opened its enquiries into the complaint from the representative of ummah.com. The complaint was resolved on 23 September when the Sun published the following apology under the heading ‘Ummah.com':

OUR story on January 7 about a ‘hit list' of top British Jews on the website Ummah.com was based on claims by Glen Jenvey who last week confessed to duping several newspapers and Tory MP Patrick Mercer by fabricating stories about Islamic fundamentalism. Following Mr Jenvey's confession, we apologise to Ummah.com for the article which we now accept was inaccurate.

The apology also appeared on the Sun's website.


In a way it's a shame that Ummah.com has accepted the Sun's apology, as the PCC will now consider the matter closed. Not accepting it and forcing the PCC to adjudicate and therefore comment further on the Sun's complete abandonment of normal journalistic practice, with the resulting adjudication then needing to be published in full by the paper would have been preferable, but it's understandable that Ummah.com didn't want to take it any further. One of the arguments that Graham Dudman used in his original letter to the PCC which completely defended the story was that Ummah.com in fact was, by anyone's standards, a "fanatics website", with a few select out of context quotes chosen to back up his allegation. Knowing the lack of backbone which the PCC repeatedly displays, they could well of taken this as a mitigating factor, even though the story turned out to be a tissue of lies and that all of Glen Jenvey's supposed credentials, which Dudman lists, were worthless.

The whole incident is though instructive of how the tabloids deal with such complaints. Even when an article which appeared on the front page and made such startling accusations and claims is shown to have been completely inaccurate, the only thing the paper has had to do in any form of reparation is publish the pathetic "clarification" at the top of this post, which was printed in the paper itself on page 12. Any casual reader would think that the Sun was the victim of Jenvey as much as Ummah.com was, when this could not be further from the actuality.

It remains to be seen where Alan Sugar's legal action against the paper will take us, although considering that they have now accepted that the "article was inaccurate", a settlement seems to be the most likely result. As for the others involved at the periphery, such as Conservative MP Patrick Mercer, Tim has just revealed information which shows despite Mercer's subsequent denials, his office had worked and was still working with Jenvey over a month and a half after the Sun's story was shown to most likely be Jenvey's own invention, this time attempting to get his handiwork into the People. The fallout from a front page tabloid newspaper story in early January seems likely to continue for some time yet.

Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Share |

9/23/2009 10:48:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, September 22, 2009 

Self-defence.

According to Mark Hughes, this is Craig Bellamy acting in "self-defence":


Arsene Wenger often gets criticised for being suspiciously myopic when it comes to incidents involving his players, but at least he doesn't see something completely different to what everyone else does.

Labels: , , ,

Share |

9/22/2009 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, September 21, 2009 

The more things change, the more they stay the same, Liberal Democrat style.

It's a theme or cliché I've depended upon in the past, but sometimes the more things change the more they stay the same. A year ago some optimistic sorts thought that the banking crisis might lead to either the downfall of capitalism entirely or at least a softening of its edges; instead we've decided that socialism for the rich is here to stay, while the public sector and poor taking the pain is the order of the day. Likewise, some thought it was a historic opportunity for the left, the long-awaited crash which so many had predicted; instead the right is in the ascendant everywhere, with the exception perhaps of America where "change" came and went rather swiftly. Earlier in the year with the expenses scandal a few talked and hoped of a "new politics"; instead we're entering conference season and even though the theme of across the board cuts might be new, everything else is as tattered and torn always.

Hence I looked back at what I wrote last year about the Liberal Democrat conference. With a few slight edits and changes I could post it back up and I doubt anyone would be the wiser, not least because no one reads this toss anyway. The main difference is that Nick Clegg seems to want to establish his own motif of the times; he thinks, bless him, that this is a "liberal moment", although whether that's liberal with a lowercase or capital is not clear. A look at the polls suggests that this is in fact a begrudging Conservative with a capital C moment, with Cameron and pals now enjoying a 17-point lead over Labour. Last year I wrote that the Lib Dems were flat-lining at under 20% in the polls, and lo and behold, the Lib Dems are still flat-lining at under 20% in the polls a year later.

Politics, probably even more than life itself, isn't fair. If it was, then surely the Liberals would be doing better. Even if this isn't a "liberal moment", Vince Cable still shines as brightly as he did a year ago, and Clegg himself, while still hardly Charlie Kennedy, is making a much better fist as leader than previously. While the other parties bicker about what is to be cut, and don't even begin to broach the even more toxic topic of what taxes are going to have to rise, Cable and Clegg have set out to be both radical and upfront, something you would never accuse either Brown or Cameron of being. That doesn't however necessarily make them right, or even popular within their own party: while Clegg waxes lyrical to the Graun about how "savage" cuts are going to be necessary, the party's base is the one which is most resistant out of the three to those very cuts, instead preferring tax rises.

This not knowing the party's own support, or even directly attempting to alienate it seems puzzling at best. Ask someone with a little politics knowledge what the Lib Dems' three main policies are or were, and they'd probably tell you a 50p in the pound tax on those earning over £100,000 a year, the abolition of tuition fees and opposition to the Iraq war. The first is now long gone, the second is to be "delayed", and the party doesn't seem to know what to do over Afghanistan. Clegg's article with Paddy Ashdown in last week's Graun on the subject was a worthy effort, but "just a little more time and a desperately needed change in strategy" is hardly a vote winner. While locally the Liberal Democrats can trade on being themselves, nationally they are overly dependent, in England at least, on student populations which were more than easy to rally on both fees and Iraq. With the party now unclear on just what it will do on the former and equally opaque on foreign policy, they might have to trade on the fact that they're simply a better prospect than either Labour or the Tories, not the worst reason to vote for them, but not exactly a intellectual position.

The result seems to be that they're trying to please everyone, with the predictable result that everyone is instead slightly annoyed. Why after all should public sector workers have to suffer a pay freeze because of the failures of the private sector (the armed forces will apparently be exempt, interestingly, while they claim that only the pay total will be frozen, meaning that they'll be some redistribution presumably)? Why, just because the private sector is abandoning final salary pension schemes because they're only interested in the short-term, share prices and dividends (while the bosses of course still sit pretty) should the public sector have to follow suit? The idea that everyone should have to share the pain is repugnant. Then there's, much unlike the Liberal Democrats generally, the apparently not thought through at all "mansion tax", which although superficially attractive will undoubtedly breed resentment just as inheritance tax does, and also doubtless further prompt those who can to abandon their pads here and become non-doms rather than pay up. If the Lib Dems have in the past served as a place where policies are first thought up and then stolen by either Labour or the Tories, this one seems destined to be left well alone.

The main criticism which can be levelled against the Lib Dems in general though is that they seem to have no overall view of society as a whole. This seems to be less to do with woolly liberalism and more to do with how the party has concentrated for so long, first on tax and spend and Iraq, to now economics in general, with home affairs and the "spiritual" health of the nation taking a back seat as well as how they've been "embarrassed" in the past about conference debates on reducing the age at which you can buy pornography. For better or worse, we know that the Tories supposedly believe that society is broken, even though their solutions would probably atomise it even further. As far as I can recall the Lib Dems have made little to no response or criticism of this view, even when they are by far the best placed to do so. The Liberator, as noted by John Harris, summarises this beautifully:

"What is missing is a distinctive vision of the good society. This is a prerequisite for any successful political strategy. And it is imperative at an historic turning point such as now."

In fairness, such a vision is notoriously difficult to perfect. Thatcher managed it, even if she didn't create one or believe in it. Blair managed it. Brown has failed to, while Cameron is making an attempt. If Clegg and the Liberal Democrats could start to define one and then proselytise it effectively, they might able to paper over all the over cracks in their facade. They still remain the party which deserves to be given a chance, even as the spectre of a hung parliament begins to fade.

Labels: , , , , ,

Share |

9/21/2009 10:02:00 PM | | | links to this post

Saturday, September 19, 2009 

Weekend links.

Back to the usual hodge-podge format this week. Lenin recalls the massacres of Sabra and Shatila, Dave Semple and Shiraz Socialist comment on the TUC's passing of a motion supporting certain actions against Israel, Bob Piper is fed up at getting Iain Dale's magazine through his door every month, Jamie also doubts whether the Tories will be better when it comes to civil liberties, Next Left defends Daniel Hannan while Dave Semple (again) distrusts the motives of Hannan and Douglas Carswell. Finally, Third Estate argues against capital punishment whilst also dismissing its opponents.

In the papers, or at least their sites, both Matthew Parris and Peter Oborne are a bit presumptuous regarding the rise and fall and then rise again of George Osborne, while in a Lib Dem special considering it's their conference, David Howarth claims only they will safeguard civil liberties, Polly Toynbee thinks it could be their moment if they go for Labour's jugular, and Andrew Grice says only well-defined policies can win them support, which I don't think has made much difference in the past. John Kampfner calls for the left to reclaim civil liberties, as if the genuine left (or at least the libertarian left) hasn't always opposed Labour's authoritarianism, while Mark Thompson himself makes an excellent riposte to James Murdoch's speech of a few weeks' ago, and about damn time the BBC defended itself. Lastly, I was amazed to think I was going to agree with Tim Worstall on something other than civil liberties or drug legalisation in his piece on pursuing the great possible happiness, until his remedy is a flat tax of 30% on incomes above £15,000, which just happens to be the policy pursued by err, UKIP.

The Mark Thompson speech and article is probably why the Sun has gone to war over the incredibly consequential scheduling of Strictly Come Dancing and The X-Factor at the same time, which the BBC simply must have done deliberately to ruin the biggest TV night of the week, as we move onto the worst tabloid piece contenders. We aren't treated to Simon Cowell's thoughts on the matter online, but it's strange no one is suggesting the obvious: record one and then watch it after the other's finished, or watch Strictly on the iPlayer later. Simples, right? Not in Murdoch land, where it is verboten to point out that BSkyB (prop. R Murdoch) owns a 17.9% share in err, ITV, not to mention News International's interest in seeing the BBC cut down to a husk which can then be abolished entirely later once support has fully dripped away. This is also happening at the same time as BT and Virgin are counter-attacking Sky over their "unfair pricing" and "manipulation" of the distribution of sports and movie channels. Sky defending its monopoly while demanding that the BBC's online activities be cut down to size so News International's piss-poor websites can make a profit? No hypocrisy there.

That isn't the worst though, as that instead comes in the Sun proper, with a simply delightful article on Vikki Thorne, the police officer sentenced to a despicable 15 months in prison because she spent her time while not on the beat moving to a quite different one as an escort, in a Daily Mail type report on how a respectable middle class girl should have known better. Quite how the judge justified the sentence on public interest grounds, let alone knowing full well what she is doubtless in for as ex-filth inside is naturally not considered, but every other aspect of her time is. There's also this clearly invented quote:

A close friend told The Sun last night: "It was a clear-cut case of greed coupled with a seedier side of Vikki's personality, which had obviously been lurking under the surface.

"You don't get rich working for the police and suddenly a TV programme showed her the way to do just that."


Yes, I'm certain that a close friend said that. The sort of article which doesn't make you feel dirty because of the topic being discussed, but because of the sheer relish (sex mad, yeah, I bet she was) with which the hack tells it, without even an ounce of sympathy.

Labels: , ,

Share |

9/19/2009 10:07:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, September 18, 2009 

A response to the Heresiarch on the Conservatives and liberty.

(Apologies for the crap blogging of the last couple of days. Hopefully will be better next week.)

Left as a comment on the Heresiarch's post, but felt was reasonable enough to dedicate a post to as well:

I think you're being far too credulous. You're talking almost rapturously about a party that only recently was advocating a "21st century clip round the ear", i.e. the police "confiscating" mobile phones or bikes off teenagers summarily, almost exactly like the very worst proposals made under Blair. A party that thought David Davis at best an eccentric when he resigned, and at worst a lunatic. And just what exactly was the Conservative response to the police riot at the G20 protests? There wasn't one, mainly because when it's the police beating up crusties, hippies, greens and lefties the Tories couldn't care less and even cheer it on.

A lot of people seem to make the mistake that the current strain of authoritarianism began in 1997. It didn't. It can instead be linked back almost certainly to the murder of James Bulger, and while Labour made the most out of it, the Tories were no slouches either, as Michael Howard's record as Home Sec testifies. It was after all he who first proposed ID cards, even if they're nothing like the ones we may soon have to get used to.

I don't deny that on some things the Tories may well be better, and I expect they'll keep to their promises on the various databases, mainly because they'll be one of the easiest things to cut and shut down. I don't believe for a second though that as soon as the Sun starts screaming about the latest moral panic that they'll ignore it or argue against instant measures which must be introduced right now; after all, why bother getting an ex-tabloid editor as your spin doctor if you're not intending to govern with a firm eye on the tabloids? It might not quite be New Labour MKII but it probably won't be far off . That "principled opposition" to extending detention without charge will be forgotten in an instant if we get another 7/7 or worse. And as for that "British" bill of rights, well, it either won't thankfully happen or we'll have the HRA repealed and one of the very few excellent pieces of Labour legislation will be gone. Then there's the apparent Tory intention to further politicise the police, likely to make things even worse, not better, and Kit Malthouse's claim that the Mayor's the real one in charge of Scotland Yard is probably just the start.

All that said, there are some Tory policies which show promise - such as the recent green paper on prisons, which if implemented could do a lot of good, but I'm not exactly going to be holding my breath. To be not as beyond redemption as Labour isn't going to be difficult; to actually be better might well be.

Labels: , , , , , , ,

Share |

9/18/2009 09:36:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, September 17, 2009 

Surrender and cowardice on welfare.

You can't really help but read this and weep, as well as also knowing this was exactly the sort of response Laurie Penny was always going to get from James Purnell:

At some point during the meeting, I got tired of the equivocation. So I decided to tell him the truth and see if I couldn't make him listen. Very quietly, and mindful of how ridiculous I might sound, I said* -

"Look, James. You know and I know that the damage has already been done. There are hundreds of thousands of young people and people with disabilities out there whose lives have been entirely scuppered by a batting team of the recession and your damn stupid benefit policies. Sure, you're trying to guarantee jobs for one in ten of them now - but that's not enough, and we both know that. I'm not here to shout at you or to tell you how angry I am with you, and I'm not here to point out the massive hypocrisy in your personal behaviour over the expenses scandal -there wouldn't be a lot of point in that. I'm here to ask you, please, to listen.

"People are hurting, right now; people like my partner and my former housemates are in desperate situations and they are hurting. You're a highly ambitious, brilliant politician. There's not a small chance that by the time you're leader of the Labour Party or Prime Minister of Britain [note: neither Purnell nor his aide moved to correct me at this point] we will still be hurting, still be desperate, and some of us might still be unemployed. I want you to remember, please, that you owe us a voice. I want you to remember that our votes count, too, and that we are people just as much as people who are lucky enough to be employed. It's too late for some of us now; but we're good, bright young men and women who just want to earn our way, and our votes count as much as anyone's. So when you're powerful again, please remember us, and remember that you owe us. And that's all I have to say."

At which point, Purnell said, "Thank you. That seems like a good point on which to end the meeting".

It's probably instructive that it's the likes of Iain Duncan Smith's Centre for Social Justice that are now making the running when it comes to welfare reform, such has been the intellectual cowardice and surrender shown by those on the left. Smith's report is undoubtedly wrong-headed and hardly practical with its suggestion that you can somehow turn 51 benefits into just two, but it genuinely does seem to believe in help without dangling a tiny carrot while also wielding a dirty great big stick. We've all laughed at the Conservatives pretending that they're the "new progressives", a term which is so devalued to be worthless in any case, but wouldn't it be the biggest irony of all if actually turned out to be true?

Labels: , , , ,

Share |

9/17/2009 10:23:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, September 16, 2009 

Falling for Columbine.

When a jury manages to see through a court case that lasted for two weeks within 45 minutes, it's only natural to wonder whether it should have ever been brought. When it involves two teenagers who had previously never been in trouble with the police and their being kept on remand in a young offender's institution and Strangeways respectively for 6 months, it becomes a necessity.

Both Ross McKnight (the son of a police officer, no less) and Matthew Swift were found not guilty of conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to cause explosions, their plans for a supposed massacre at a school in Manchester as well as the bombing of a shopping centre on the 10th anniversary of the Columbine massacre ripped to shreds both by the defence, McKnight's father, who seemed to have sealed the verdict when he talked of his son's many "harebrained" schemes and finally by the jury. What really seems to have gone on here is nothing more than teenage angst and alienation being taken slightly too far up the scale. The rants the pair wrote in diaries are hardly out of the ordinary: the only real surprise might be that they didn't post them on a social networking site or somewhere else where they were even more easily accessible. The other slight indication that this went any further than just two friends messing around and engaging in fantasies was that they had "plans" of the school, although whether these were just simple sketches of outlines which they made themselves or genuine plans we don't seem to know.

It's easy to make presumptions, but you can't help but feel that if they hadn't mentioned Columbine or supposedly fetishised the two murderers who carried out that most notorious of school shootings, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, or were meant to have planned to carry it out on the anniversary of their assault, that this "plot" wouldn't have got anywhere near the court system. There is indeed perhaps some cause for concern in this area: it's quite true that some teenagers, especially those who feel themselves outsiders or not accepted by their peers, not to mention those who are bullied, can engage in the kind of fantasies which these two boys were meant to have, and while such feelings of striking out at those that have harmed them are natural and are very rarely acted upon, they do need to be nipped in the bud. Some of those at the very extreme end of this type of thinking do indeed idolise the likes of Harris and Klebold; Seung-Hui Cho in his claim of responsibility for the Virigina Tech massacre referred to both as martyrs, and there is a strain of thinking surrounding such spree-killers that all such attacks are in fact copy-cat crimes, a view that I'm partial to. The vast majority though who dream or fantasise about doing violence to their tormentors never do; hell, I can even remember at one point during my early teenage years writing a list of those that I'd kill if I had the chance. As far as I'm aware I never carried through on my written promise.

Undoubtedly the female friend that reported McKnight's drunken referral to the supposed attack was right to let the authorities know of her concerns. That was though surely as far as it should have gone. Dave Osler compares the case to that of the "lyrical terrorist", Samina Malik, but if anything a far wider comparison to terrorism is equally applicable. Just as in cases like that involving Dhiren Barot, neither McKnight or Swift had the guns or explosives necessary to carry out their plans, nor the funds to get hold of them but they did have ideas or nous which suggested they could have done. As it happens, Barot's ideas were even more fantastical than the teenage pair's were, whether it involved destroying builders by filling limos with gas canisters, a plan thoroughly debunked by the Glasgow airport idiots, exploding a bomb on the Underground which would somehow penetrate the tunnel and cause the Thames to flood in, or constructing a dirty bomb out of smoke alarms by placing the americium he harvested from them in a coke can. He however was sentenced to 30 years in prison, more on the fact that he had been trained and probably had connections with al-Qaida, even if his ideas were even more harebrained that McKnight's. Interesting here is that Swift had a copy of the Anarchist Cookbook, a book which another teenager was previously prosecuted for possessing, despite it being freely available, as well as also a gun which could fire ball bearings. You can bet that if someone with links to extremist Islam had either that they would have also been indicted on similar charges.

The terrorist trials where the prosecution have tried and almost always convinced juries that that extremists were only days or weeks away from mass murder or horrific casualties are perhaps the significant precursor to both the police and the Crown Prosecution Service imagining that they could do much the same in this instance. It does though have to be asked, did they genuinely believe their own case, or rather did those unlucky enough to prosecute it believe it? It certainly doesn't seem, for instance, that the headmaster of the school believed it. There is of course a very fine line between caution and a potential tragedy, but in this instance what just seems to have been very normal teenage ennui could have been criminalised, and if they weren't bitter and depressed prior to their time on remand, McKnight and Swift very well may be now.

Labels: , , , , , ,

Share |

9/16/2009 09:44:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, September 15, 2009 

Some closure to the Glen Jenvey/TERROR TARGET SUGAR saga.

An indication of just what a disgraceful and shameless newspaper the Sun really is can be seen in their non-apology/clarification for the "TERROR TARGET SUGAR"/Glen Jenvey story which has been posted on their website today. Finally stirred into action by Jenvey's appearance on the Donal MacIntyre show on Radio 5 Live on Sunday, they have naturally passed all of the blame straight onto his already quaking shoulders:

A PHONEY terrorism "expert" has confessed to duping newspapers and a senior politician.

Glen Jenvey has admitted making up stories about Islamic fundamentalism, including a faked list of prominent Jewish "targets", which included Lord Alan Sugar.

He revealed his scheming in an interview with BBC reporter Tom Mangold, aired on Sunday's edition of Donal MacIntyre's Radio Five Live show.

Jenvey told how he fabricated the list of Jewish targets by posing as a fundamentalist on an extremist website where he urged others to suggest names.

He then leaked the made-up list to a trusted news agency, used by The Sun, and online forum Ummah.com was wrongly accused of being used to prepare a backlash against UK Jews.

Jenvey - who had been described as "an extremely capable and knowledgeable analyst" by Tory MP Patrick Mercer - said: "I'm fully responsible for the story. The Sun was deceived.

"The Sun did not know that I was behind the postings.

"I would like to apologise to all the British Jews who we scared and I'd like to apologise to The Sun newspaper."

Jenvey was not of course fully responsible for the story; he hardly forced the Sun to publish what had been supplied to them by the South West News Service, whom he had initially provided the story to (and also presumably paid him through). The fact remains that there was no story here, even with Jenvey's posts on the Ummah.com thread as abuislam. It was a thread, as the initial post pointed out, to use entirely peaceful methods (writing letters) to supporters of Israel. You can criticise the fact they chose to specifically targets Jews, when being Jewish and supporting Israel does not always go hand in hand, as well as some of the more "colourful" language used by some of the posters in the thread, but there was still no story here, even when "abuislam", now exposed as Glen Jenvey, suggested doorstep protests, which while unpleasant, are not illegal and which was not going to mean "terrorists" or "Islamic extremists" descending on the doorstep of Alan Sugar, David Miliband or Mark Ronson.

This story is an example of the Sun's fundamental contempt for the very standards of journalism. Any reputable news organisation which still somehow imagined that there was a story here would have checked, checked and then checked the "facts" again. They would have made certain that abuislam was not one and the same as the person providing them with the story, especially considering the way that abuislam was quite clearly acting as an agent provocateur in the thread, "bumping" it repeatedly, and resurrecting it finally three days after the last post. They would have checked whether there was any realistic prospect of one person's suggestion on a forum being put into action, and contacted those named and both alerted them and asked whether they had been sent either letters or had protesters outside their houses. They would have further checked Glen Jenvey's credentials, not just relying on the word of a Conservative MP. Then, and only then, would they perhaps have published the story, and even then it was hardly deserving of front page status, or the ludicrous claim that Alan Sugar was to be a "TERROR TARGET".

The real story here though is that Jenvey, after his association/collaboration with other "amateur" 'terror experts' such as Dominic Wightman (aka Whiteman) had been supplying the tabloids with either false or hugely exaggerated stories of terrorist threats, with the help of the Tory MP Patrick Mercer. The Sun had worked with Jenvey before, and not caring whether his claims were accurate or not, had no reason or inclination to doubt him this time round. It just so happens that Jenvey had become lazy and left this time a trail which Tim Ireland picked up (and, I must add, which I myself started off on), and who has only been grudgingly credited by the BBC.

Even then the paper could have quickly accepted that its story was ridiculously sensationalist and that this time round they had been had. Instead, the Sun's managing editor Graham Dudman sent a letter to the Press Complaints Commission on the 27th of January which defended every aspect of the story. Tim Ireland will hopefully be revealing the text of the letter in full later in the week, but having seen a copy, I can whet appetites by saying that some of his arguments are truly jaw-dropping.

It's still not clear what action, if indeed any the PCC is going to take against the paper over the story. Indeed, it might well agree with the paper that Jenvey was fully responsible, going by its past record, and that today's non-apology is sufficient. It's also unclear just what Alan Sugar's lawyers will make of Jenvey's confession, considering his decision to sue the paper over the story. What clearly should happen however is that for a front page story of such prominence, which was so categorically wrong in almost every aspect, and may well have scared some prominent Jews, as well as smearing the Ummah.com forum, there should be at the very least a front page apology. It has to remembered this story came at a time of high tension surrounding the Israeli attack on Gaza, with angry well-attended demonstrations taking place almost every weekend during the conflict, with more than potential to substantially harm community relations further. It was also yet again a Sun story on Muslims which portrayed them in at best a very bad light, straight out of the school which led to the £30,000 payment to the bus driver Arunas Raulynaitis for claiming he ordered passengers off so he could pray, and of the non-existent "Windsor Muslim yobs" who had supposedly attacked a house which soldiers had looked at with a view to moving in. I don't think I can really add to what I wrote at the time of the former:

It goes without saying that such unsubstantiated journalism threatens community relations and is often used by extremists, even after such reports have been proved false, to stir up hate. Reporting such topics requires great care, care which the Sun has neither the time nor the inclination to use.

Nor has it the courage, the honesty or the humility to admit when it gets a story so drastically wrong.

(Update: edited in line with the Sun - Tabloid Lies cross-post.)

Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Share |

9/15/2009 11:31:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

List-o-rama.

Just noticed, thanks to Socialist Unity, that as well as my entry on inventor of blogging Iain Dale's list of left-wing blogs, I've also rather strangely made 30th on the Labour list, what with my being a card-carrying member and all. It also doesn't make a whole lot of sense: I make 30th on the Labour list and 60th on the left-wing list, yet Though Cowards Flinch, which came above me on the left-wing list (38th), only scrapes into the Labour list at 100.

I'm sure there's some reasonable explanation, and as before, you can't really complain when you don't vote. Dale's mechanisms for voting though are not exactly transparent, and you do have to wonder whether there's any point whatsoever to carrying the entire charade on.

Labels: ,

Share |

9/15/2009 09:47:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, September 14, 2009 

The unions, cuts, and Mandelson.

For organisations which once upon a time had their own newspaper correspondents, the trade unions increasingly resemble Christmas decorations: let out once a year and allowed to slightly sparkle for a few days, then packed away and forgotten about until the holiday comes around again. It's a shame, because what was once a debate that Labour were trying to define as "investment versus cuts" has become the word they dare not speak but which means cuts versus, as Peter Mandelson said today, in one of the more accurate statements from his speech at the LSE, "foaming at the mouth excitement" at scaling back the state.

Few outside left-wing circles will agree with Brendan Barber's delivery of his message at the TUC, but the arguments he makes are far more compelling. Already it's being moved to the back of our minds that this crash was caused by the failure of the private sector, not the public sector, yet it's the public sector which is now going to bear the brunt for the bailing out of the banks' rapacious business model. True, it can be argued that the public sector also failed in properly regulating the private sector, yet that's no excuse for the entirety of the punishment being inflicted upon the state. If the crash had affected the way that the top 100 companies do business, then there also might be an argument for recognising their changes in practices, yet today's Guardian survey of executive pay shows that while everyone else has been cutting back, they've awarded themselves a basic salary rise of 10%.

Barber notes that amid all the optimism of something approaching a recovery, this completely ignores that people are still losing their jobs, and doubtless will for some time yet to come. This is hardly the time to already be planning how many of those in reasonably "secure" jobs will be losing them in the near future. This isn't to pretend that cuts can't be made, or that tax rises alone will have to fill the gap: it's quite apparent that cuts are coming, starting preferably in those areas which Labour are thinking of broaching, such as tax credits for the already comfortably off and the end of universal benefits such as the winter fuel allowance. Trident and ID cards could both be easily scrapped, as could the NHS IT programme and many other IT schemes costing billions, although how much the former would bring in is still unclear, not to mention the ridiculous ISA vetting quango. The putting together of £50bn shopping lists of cuts though is verging on the obscene; tough choices are going to have to be made, but also key is that private is going to have to pay its share as well as the public.

Into this breach enters Peter Mandelson, former prince of darkness, now ostensible leader of Labour. That no longer seems to be hyperbole: his speech today at the LSE to the impeccably Blairite "Progress" faction was one which Tony Blair would have given without a second's thought, and indeed, could have been a Blair speech. It contained the same mixture of brilliance and obfuscatory nonsense which they had, if not the verb-less sentences which epitomised them. Why then was Gordon Brown not giving this speech which quite clearly either a chancellor or a prime minister should have given, rather than just a mere business secretary? The answer would probably be that Brown's real keynote address is tomorrow at the TUC, or at the fast approaching Labour conference, but it also seems to be because it was so out of step with Brown's former device of investment vs cuts as alluded to above. The one other major difference with the speech is that Blair wouldn't have been comfortable with even referring to himself or to his party as "social democrats", as Mandelson did repeatedly and pointedly. Just one abashedly dubious paragraph is this:

We reject the argument of those on the right who argue that the state is an obstacle to human freedom and who espouse a vision of the good society based on a smaller state, shrinking public services and essential support delivered somehow through the voluntary sector with top-ups and opt-outs for the wealthy few.

Except that New Labour hasn't rejected this argument: in both the NHS and the JobCentre system it has introduced both voluntary and private sector contractors to deliver "essential support", with no evidence whatsoever that it has saved money, in fact, when it comes to the independent treatment centres, quite the opposite. As ever, the devil is in the details: if it was true, then Mandelson would be onto something and it would be something to crow about, yet the emperor has no clothes.

Much of the rest is taken up with the return of the mantra of "reform", without Mandelson noting that the permanent revolution which was going on in the NHS up until after the departure of Patricia Hewitt from health secretary was one of the most unpopular things the government had done to the public services. It might have delivered the government's key targets, although how much they are worth is harder to quantify, but as a way to demoralise your workers it was an even greater success. Mandelson is sharpest, as always, when attacking rather than defending, but the very idea that the Tories will spend less and expect less is ridiculous: this is the party that believes that less is more. The left might still have in some quarters the better arguments, but the Labour's greatest failure is that it can no longer persuade anyone to listen.

Labels: , , , ,

Share |

9/14/2009 07:31:00 PM | | | links to this post

Sunday, September 13, 2009 

Glen Jenvey on Donal MacIntyre.

The latest twist in the Glen Jenvey saga is his appearance today on Donal MacIntyre's show on 5 Live, where he again admits to being abuislam, which you can listen to here. Not too much credit given to Tim or indeed the whole Sun Lies team, but then the MSM is loth to give the blogosphere any kudos at all.

Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Share |

9/13/2009 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

Saturday, September 12, 2009 

Weekend links.

A few distinct themes this week.

The English "Defence League" demonstrations: Lenin is predictably praiseworthy of the response to them, Sunny thinks that they do no one any good.

Labour's travails and politics in general: Don Paskini notes factionalism raising its ugly head again, Paul Linford thinks the weather has failed to change despite the improvements in the economy, Dave Osler wonders whether Jon Cruddas can reinvent social democracy, Peter Oborne warns against David Cameron being all things to all people, which Sunder Katwala picks up on for its claims that there will be 30% cuts as soon as the Tories get in, Polly Toynbee argues that the Tory mania for cuts will backfire and Andrew Grice queries what Labour has to lose by getting rid of Gordo.

The new quango vetting almost everyone to make sure they're not a paedophile: Craig Murray says we're all sex offenders now, Matthew Parris thinks much the same and Anthony Seldon makes the case for trust, not more checks.

Miscellaneous: Tim Ireland is interviewed by a troll, Jim D argues against the "Stalinist" attempt to lie about the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, Christina Patterson says society isn't broken, just self-centred, Tom Freeman notes the emergence of 9/12ers, the Heresiarch celebrates two years of blogging, Claude sees Melanie Phillips is being openly endorsed by the BNP, Third Estate steps into the Caster Semenya furore, Splintered Sunrise reviews BBC 4's following of Lindsay Honey, better known as Ben Dover, jihadica wonders about the significance of "11" to al-Qaida and Peter Beaumont defends unembedded reporters after the botched rescue of Stephen Farrell.

As for the worst tabloid article, after a few weeks of next to no contenders, we have a complete surfeit of candidates. First has to be the Sun's attempts to make a scandal out of absolutely anything involving Haringey and the "Baby P bunglers", as it is mortified that a child was placed in the same home as "liquid bomber" Abdulla Ahmed Ali. It doesn't seem to matter that it wasn't placed with him but the family he was living with and that the other people in the house had no connection whatsoever to his extremism, and just to make matters worse, it brings up the completely unproved claims that they might have taken children on the planes with them as a further distraction. Nothing in Ali's notes even begins to suggest that he was going to.

Any other week that might have won, but we have not one, not two but three articles from the Daily Mail which are arguably worse. First there's Sue Reid, with the hardly new claims that Osama bin Laden might be, gulp, dead. This could be worthy of a piece if she had anything new to bring to the party, but instead of relying on the comments of politicians, including the Pakistani president that bin Laden is dead, she instead sources David Ray Griffin, a key member of the 9/11 Truth Movement, without of course mentioning this rather salient fact. Next is A.N Wilson, who wonders what kind of country we've become when everyone is treated as a potential paedophile. This is of course the same A.N Wilson who just a few weeks back openly endorsed the sterilisation of the underclass. It's always fascinating that the likes of Wilson are horrified at the nanny state falling on their honest, hard-working middle class heads but are fully supportive of it when it can be put to such "good" as sterilisation.

Finally we have the automatically qualifying each week Amanda Platell. According to her, the children which Lesley Ward suggested suffered from Dickensian levels of poverty aren't the result of such deprivation but in fact bad parenting. It doesn't seem to occur to her that perhaps poverty and bad parenting go together, but then seeing she claims that the welfare state is so generous that it's actually often better to be on the dole than in work it's not surprising that such thoughts are beyond her. It's not that though but her views on why Speech Debelle really won the Mercury prize that show just what sort of person she is:

But even so, it's hard not to feel that her victory owes more to our obsession with victimhood than with any musical skills.

Debelle used to be a pot-smoking, homeless girl living in hostels with drug addicts and alcoholics, whose absentee father had nine kids by seven mothers.

She was suspended from school 11 times and suffers from clinical depression.

We are told that music helped turn her life around. Really?

Or did the music business simply seize on her hard-luck story as an easy sell?

At least Amy Winehouse had genuine talent.


It doesn't matter that up until this week Debelle had only sold 3,000 copies of her album and that she's on a distinctly indie label, the fact that someone making such an awful racket as Debelle won simply must be because of our obsession with victimhood. There is only word to describe Ms Platell, and it begins with c.

Labels: , ,

Share |

9/12/2009 10:38:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, September 11, 2009 

Al-Qaida is dead. Long live al-Qaida.

Al-Qaida faces recruitment crisis, claims the Graun.  One has to wonder if this isn't just to do with all the associated problems currently facing them in Pakistan, with the army apparently ready or getting ready to move into Waziristan, but rather because Ayman al-Zawahiri is an increasingly derided figure within jihadi circles while bin Laden may as well be dead, even if he isn't, such is his current input.

As well as that to contend with, it's the simple truth that al-Qaida in Pakistan is on the back foot.  Young idealistic fighters aren't attracted to lost causes, hence why Iraq has also now dropped down the list of places that most wished to travel and fight in.  Afghanistan suddenly looks attractive again, while probably the biggest success now is al-Shabaab in Somalia, a triumph for which American interference, in the form of the Ethiopian invasion to overthrow the Islamic Courts Union in Mogadishu a couple of years back can be squarely linked to.  Al-Qaida in the Islamic Mahgreb, formerly the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat is also apparently proposing.  The key here also is that these are nationalist struggles, not global ones.  They might fight with the intention one day of going global, but nationalism rather than globalism can still motivate the locals far more than the utopian idealism of a global caliphate can.

Finally, there's also the fact that this could, despite so much academic concern, just be a fad, somewhat like the left-wing terrorism of the 70s and 80s in Europe was.  There's also the fact that 9/11 is now to those who were only say, 10 at the time and are now entering adulthood, almost ancient history.  Bin Laden?  Who's he?  There will be others, surely, to take his place, like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi already has to an extent in jihadist idealism, but bin Laden himself is not getting any younger.  New heroes emerge as the old ones decay.  The real thing to fear might well be the next generation of Islamic extremists, just as deadly in their ambition as Zarqawi, and with even less qualms about things like shedding blood, definitely including that of fellow Muslims.  The old al-Qaida might be withering away, but a new one or a successor will surely take its place.

Labels: , , , , , ,

Share |

9/11/2009 09:35:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, September 10, 2009 

The prime mentalist is back.

Have you missed the glitz and glamour of politics over the summer?  The spirited debates, the back and forth, the agreeing to disagree, the rapier wit of the finest of their profession, crushing their opponents with humour whilst also making serious substantial points?  Or have we just all been waiting for Peter Mandelson to get in trouble again for going on someone's yacht?

The old cliche or witticism, depending on your view, is that politics is show-business for ugly people.  The difference surely is that while show-business might be viewed as a game, politics is the ultimate one.  The two do now though overlap more and more: Bono gets up on his soapbox while Gordon Brown rings Piers Morgan and Simon Cowell to make sure that Susan Boyle is "OK".  Politics has always shared the bitchiness which is inherent in celebrity culture, and smearing is old as the delusions which both grandeur and power bring.  Margaret Thatcher was a mad old bat; John Major tucked his shirt into his underpants and was the ever gray man; Tony Blair was a liar and messianic, both of which more than had an iota of truth in them; and now Gordon Brown, formerly accused of being autistic and of various mental disorders, is said to be taking one of the MAOI class of anti-depressants.

According to who?  Supposedly, as always, these rumours have been circling Westminster, and it takes one "brave" individual to finally give voice to them, of course much easier in these days when you can say whatever you like about anyone on this glorious interweb and someone will inevitably believe it regardless of any evidence.  That person was John Ward, who has his legion of sources and naturally the psychoanalysis to back it up.  Since he first posted on it, it's been picked up by "The Mole", Simon Heffer, Matthew Norman, who should really know better, and now finally by Guido, who demands to know who will ask Gordo about his drug addiction, since if it's on the internet it simply must be true.  John Harris' piece in today's Graun also seems to be an indirect response to it, but is far too kind to come out and play with the rumours.

It's tempting to not give any credence whatsoever to these stories and to ignore them completely, but seeing I'm writing this mess I've obviously decided otherwise.  It's also equally easy to point out that even if true, Brown is hardly the first politician, let alone prime minister to suffer from mental health problems, and that others have dealt superbly with their demons whilst in high office.  There's also the fact that if you weren't under severe strain while prime minister, especially considering the far from benign conditions which Brown has faced over the last year, if not two years, then there's probably something wrong with you anyway.  There is however also an argument to be made that if true, then the public deserves to know, even if fraught with difficulties.  It's only too obvious from the comments of most, including Guido, that there is still severe prejudice and a fundamental lack of understanding when it comes to mental illness, as ably illustrated by his continued use of Brown as a clown with a legend which includes the word "bonkers".  Arguably, there was a case when David Blunkett was still home secretary and suffering from something approaching severe depression as a result of his relationship with Kimberley Fortier that he could have be "unfit" to hold such a high post of office.  Yet equally clearly it's apparent that the only person who should be able to make such decisions and offer such advice would be an actual psychiatrist; if Brown is taking MAOIs, then he doubtless has been prescribed them by one.  If he considered that Brown could not continue in his job as a result of his illness, then he would have told him so, just as that doctor would have told anyone else that they should consider taking time off in the same circumstances.  This doesn't seem to be the case.

There is however also a case to be made that this is politics of the very worst kind.  It wasn't so long ago that newspapers were outraged, disgusted and so deeply deeply shocked by the smears which err, they printed, from private emails between Damian McBride and Derek Draper.  These were rumours, as many accepted, which had been swirling around Westminster.  Nonetheless, it was a disaster for Brown, there were allegations that Brown had to have known, as well as other ministers in close proximity to McBride, which individuals later had to apologise for after legal action was taken.  Only on Monday did Guido deliver to McBride a writ from Nadine Dorries for comments which were allegedly made about her in the emails.  Four days later and the exact same person is indulging in what are almost certainly also libellous claims were they to be proved to be unfounded.  If I were McBride and Draper's legal advisers I would suggest that they argue that Dorries doesn't have a reputation to be libelled, but whatever you think of Brown's tenure as prime minister, a case can at least be made that he does.

All this comes just as there actually is genuine politics to be discussed for a change, and after a month in which the Conservatives have been common consent been piss-poor, not helped by Daniel Hannan or by their "Broken Britain" week, highlighted by Chris Grayling's claim that some parts of the country were as bad as the Wire.  The economy seems to be improving, there is no real plot against Brown, despite what Martin Kettle thinks, and the left finally seems to be realising that there's still something to fight for.  Instead we're back to the sewer.

Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Share |

9/10/2009 10:39:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, September 09, 2009 

The sense of impending doom returns.

Did you notice anything missing over the past few months?  That slight feeling of dread which you could constantly feel in the marrow of your bones?  That cloud of doom which had hung over the country ever since 7/7, being whipped up at least once a year by either further supposed disruptions of supposed plots or by newspapers demanding that we wrap ourselves in the flag in the face of such unmitigated horror as two idiots succeeding in only setting themselves on fire.

For a while this year, since the Manchester raids turned out to be the latest example of "security sources" briefing their poisonous hyperbole to an ever compliant media, we've actually had something approaching a thaw, helped along both by the actual reduction in the supposed threat level from severe to substantial, and also MI5's own acknowledgement that there are now less "active" plots than there were previously.  Considering the claims that there was up to 30 active plots and 2,000 individuals dedicated, presumably, to the militant variety of radical Islam, this was a sudden turn around and still remains so.  In line with this, we've had less blatant scaremongering, including from the worst offender, the Sun.  The recession and expenses scandal have of course helped also.

It was perhaps to be expected then that when the verdicts were finally returned in the retrial of the "liquid doom" plotters, with this time round the three ringleaders all being convicted of conspiracy to murder on airplanes that the headless chicken act would return once again.  Yesterday we warned to be alert that al-Qaida would try to bomb aircraft again, as clearly they don't learn from both their successes and mistakes, while today the Sun has attempted to do something approaching investigative journalism by discovering that, shock horror, those convicted of terrorism offences or offences related are being released from prison when they've served their sentences.

OK, perhaps that's a little unfair to the Sun, but not by much.  As per usual though, the story doesn't live up to its billing:

FORTY convicted Islamic terrorists are back on the streets after being released from jail, a Sun investigation has revealed.

"Islamic terrorists" as a description is being used rather loosely here.  Almost all the "big names", which is another loose description, have not been released yet, as we'll come to.  In fact, the biggest name that has already been released is Abu Bakr Mansha, a quite clearly deadly individual.  When arrested, Mansha had a blank firing pistol, which someone had been attempting to convert to fire live ammunition, a balaclava, a Sun newspaper article on a soldier who had won the military cross, and the soldier's former home address, as well as the expected radical material.  Mansha though also happens to have an IQ of 69, and allegedly gave the "intelligence" which led to the Forest Gate raid.   Truly someone to worry about.

The others already released are in much the same category, and so dangerous that the Sun doesn't actually name them.  According to the paper, at least three of those convicted in connection with the 21/7 attacks have been released.  This would be surprising for the fact that as far as I'm aware, the shortest sentence passed was six years and nine months, which even with the deductions made for current overcrowding and for time spent on remand would seem to have been released early, although the sentences could have been reduced on appeal.  None of these individuals were charged with directly helping with the bombings; they provided sanctuary or helped after they had failed, while others were either relatives or wives that helped.  The vast majority of these are unlikely to be "fanatics" but helped out of friendship or even because they were under pressure to.  The organisers of the Danish embassy protests have also been released, unsurprisingly, given that however disgraceful the views expressed, there was no action behind the words, and considering that they seem to be from the usual suspects who are all mouth and no trousers.  Others include those involved on the periphery of the Birmingham beheading plot, on similar charges to the 21/7 accomplices of not disclosing what they knew even if they weren't involved, while one was convicted of having the "Encyclopaedia Jihad".  Two had helped the ringleader, who has not been released, with supplying equipment to fighters in Pakistan, but again that doesn't specifically involve any sort of violent threat in this country.  Those involved with an Islamic school in Sussex have also been released, such an important set of convictions that there seems to be very little on it anywhere.  That doesn't begin to add up to 40 but we'll let the Sun off.

How about those soon to be released then?  We'll, there's Sohail Qureshi, not to be confused with the Canadian "terror suspect".  Qureshi was arrested when attempting to travel to Pakistan, and had night vision equipment, medical supplies and £9,000 in cash in his bag.  Material was found where he talked of hopefully "kill[ing] many", and presumably hoped to join fighters in Afghanistan.  Sentenced to four and a half years, with time on remand and reductions, he's meant to be released next month, which will still mean he's served 3 years.  The judge said his offences were at the "lower end of the scale", and while undoubtedly he could be a threat, with careful supervision and the confiscation of his passport there doesn't seem to be any reason why he shouldn't be released.  Much the same is the case with the next person mentioned, "[H]ulking thug Andrew Rowe", who Peter Clarke, that former king of hyperbole as anti-terrorist chief at the Met, called a "global terrorist".  In reality the evidence against him amounted to the usual radical material, supposed code referring to attacks and a guide on how to fire mortars.  Oh, and don't forget the socks bearing traces of high explosive.  How dangerous he truly was or is is anyone's guess, as he was under careful police supervision prior to his conviction.

Next up is the other "shoe bomber", Saajid Badat, who had meant to carry out an attack on a plane at the same time as Richard Reid, but pulled out at the last minute, also cutting himself off from his handler in Pakistan.  Considering that he failed to go through with the attack and also seems to have been about to settle down when he was arrested, the threat he poses seems low to negligible.  Finally, we have Kazi Nurur Rahman, who had links to the fertiliser bomb plotters, and probably the most serious risk as a result.  He was however entrapped by the police and security services, and there was no evidence whatsoever that he actually had the money to buy the weapons beyond the 3 Uzis which he agreed to purchase.  Again though, there is no reason why he shouldn't be able to be handled by MAPPA.

There are other problems with the Sun's story beyond the actual facts.  Does anyone really believe that a "senior security source" genuinely told the Sun this?:

If this was the United States, a great many of these people coming out soon would have been sentenced to 99 years and locked away for the rest of their lives.

But in this country much weaker sentences have been handed down and a large percentage of them have received reductions from the Appeal Court.

As a result, we are faced with an extremely worrying situation. We have got to hope these people come out without violent extremist views. But the likelihood of that is slim.

This simply isn't true in any case: Jose Padilla for example, convicted of charges similar to some of those here, received 17 years and four months. The wife of one of the 21/7 bombers received 15 years just for the help she provided.

Then of course we have the views of the contacted politicians, including the egregious Chris Grayling:

IT'S time to get tough on the extremists.

Yawn.

It's time we stopped these people from operating in our society. Yet the preachers of hate continue to preach.

Who? Where, Chris? The idea that it's still preachers of hate behind most of the radicalisation is years out of date.

It's also time we outlawed radical groups who propagate extremist views and in doing so incite violence against innocent people.

So you're going to ban the BNP and other neo-Nazis are you Chris? Good luck!  As for the Sun's editorial, it calls those released and soon to be released a "Terror army".  I don't think they're going to be challenging any of the more famous fighting units any time soon.

There were two other more important terrorism stories yesterday which didn't make the Sun's front page.  There was, oh, err, a huge fucking bomb discovered on the Northern Ireland border, twice the size of the one which caused the largest single loss of life during the Troubles in Omagh in 1998.  The Real IRA just aren't as sexy or as terrifying as the "terror army" though.  Or there was Neil Lewington, given an indeterminate sentence with a minimum of 6 years for carrying what were glorified Molotov cocktails with him, supposedly on the cusp of a "terror campaign".  He though was white and a neo-Nazi, even though he was actually more prepared and ready to carry out attacks than the liquid bomb plotters were, who hadn't constructed any devices while some didn't even have passports.  Terror though no longer just corresponds to individual nutters and old, boring causes: it's planes exploding one after another however implausible and however well covered they are by the security services.  If we're left meant to be fearing those who were stupid enough to get caught once, then we really are scared of the wrong people.

Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,

Share |

9/09/2009 11:42:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, September 08, 2009 

Mercury music prize hilarity.

Worst winner since M People.  A shame that Burial didn't release his album a yet later, as he would have surely won against the line-up this year.

Labels: , ,

Share |

9/08/2009 11:05:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Crying over spilt liquid part 94.

Congratulations are then in order to the Crown Prosecution Service for second time around managing to convince a jury that the three main ringleaders of the "liquid explosives plot" had indeed intended to target airplanes.  There was never much doubt that they had indeed been plotting an attack; the devil was in the detail of just what they were planning to target, and the case that it was to be transatlantic flights was flimsy at best, amounting it still seems to little more than the fact that when arrested Abdulla Ahmed Ali had a USB memory stick with flight times on it, as well as an e-mail, supposedly written in code to a handler in Pakistan where Ali made clear that all he had to do was "sort out opening timetable and bookings".

Not that you would have noticed from the celebrations from the authorities and also from the press that the "liquid doom" plot was indeed viable, but this second trial was also a miserable failure in as far as convincing a jury again that the underlings, including those who recorded "martyrdom videos" were guilty not only of conspiracy to murder on aircraft, but also conspiracy to murder persons unknown.  Only Umar Islam was convicted of the second charge, the jury hung on the first; the three others were cleared of the first charge while they were hung on the second, and lastly Donald Stewart-Whyte, who had only converted to Islam four months before his arrest, was cleared of any involvement in the plot.  This, it's worth remembering, is what the police are again calling "the strongest terrorism case ever presented to a court".  This strongest ever case has now been presented to a jury twice, and it's still only succeeded in convicting 3 individuals of conspiracy to murder on two separate charges, and one on a single charge.

Also interesting is that this time round everyone is openly accusing Rashid Rauf of being the plotters' main conduit to al-Qaida, which just shows how you can smear the dead, or rather, supposedly dead, of anything you like.  Suddenly Rauf is the new Khalid Sheikh Mohammed of international jihadist terrorism, not just helping the liquid plotters but also the 7/7 and 21/7 crews.  Rauf, of course, mysteriously disappeared from Pakistani custody while visiting a mosque, then equally mysteriously turned up, apparently dead, in a missile strike.  His family, quite reasonably considering that no body has been forthcoming, think that he's either still alive and his "death" is to cover up Pakistani embarrassment, or that Rauf has instead entered the American "black" system, or at least the parts which haven't been shut down, a view that I'm partial to, even if I dislike believing in a conspiracy theory.

It remains the fact that there was no need whatsoever to retry the main three convicted again today; the sentences that they would have received, which have been deferred and they will presumably now receive, likely to run concurrently with the sentences to be handed down for the new convictions, would have been substantial, likely to be in the 30 year range.  The real reason for doing so was two-fold: both to prove that there definitely had been a "liquid bomb" plot, regardless of whether or not it could actually have been carried out, and also to ensure that the government and security services were not embarrassed again for hyping up a plot out of all proportion, ala the ricin fiasco and the other plots which haven't even got past the arrest stage.  Hence tomorrow the Telegraph is running with the front page legend that up to 10,000 could have died, despite the fact that only four people have actually been convicted.  They keep claiming that up to 18 could have taken part in the attacks, but where are these supposed people and how can they even begin to suggest that was possible when they can't even convince a jury that those whom recorded videos were out to commit "mass-murder on an unimaginable" scale as John Reid so famously put it?

It would be even worse if the government were to use today's verdicts to rally support for the war in Afghanistan as Alan Johnson already seems to be doing.  The whole plot in fact illustrates the folly of what we are doing in that benighted country.  Not only does the exact foreign policy we continue to insist on enrage the likes of Abdulla Ahmed Ali and Assad Sarwar, if not radicalising them entirely then sowing the seeds which lead to them coming into contact with those of like minds who then poison them further, the policy is even further counter-productive because it's in the wrong country.  What's happening in Afghanistan is a civil war which we still seem to imagine is a global one; what's happening in Pakistan rather, is a civil war with global dimensions.  This isn't even to begin to suggest that what we're doing in Afghanistan we should start doing across the border, but it is about being honest both with ourselves and with them that the real problem is in the autonomous areas of the Pakistani state where they do still exist safe havens.  We need to help Pakistan without getting ourselves fully involved.  Tackling Salafist ideology involves not walking into exactly what it feeds upon: Western states acting like bulls in a china shop.  When we finally learn that we might not have to keep pretending that we're all doomed by 500ml bottles of soft drinks.

Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

Share |

9/08/2009 12:03:00 AM | | | links to this post

Saturday, September 05, 2009 

Weekend links.

No overall theme this week, so may as well just get straight into it.  Sunny comes up with some reasons why we shouldn't give up on Afghanistan, while Third Estate responds to his original post on CiF.  Lenin sees it as an opportunity to strike a blow against NATO, while Jamie was highly unconvinced by Brown's piss-poor speech yesterday. Flying Rodent writes on a controversial view of WW2, Dave Semple despairs of his local council, Dave Osler wonders whether reds can also be greens, Shiraz Socialist celebrates Keith Waterhouse, Neil Robertson responds on feminism and Islam, Hopi Sen clears up some misconceptions regarding the Labour leadership, Tom Freeman notes that we don't seem to be either falling behind or getting better at maths, the Heresiarch reflects on Philip Garrido's predilection for Dean Koontz, Daily Quail sees that the Daily Mail's newest idol thought that on the family the Taliban had the right idea and Splintered Sunrise reviews David Aaronovitch.

In the papers, or at least on their sites, Matthew Parris and Paul Flynn share their thoughts on Afghanistan, Janice Turner, the Independent leader, Loretta Loach and Harry Ferguson discuss Edlington (unfairly in some circumstances, as the boys were only there because that's where the foster family they were placed with lived), Alice Thomson, depressingly, explains why the X Factor could decide the next election, Andrew Grice thinks Brown's day of reckoning (again) is getting closer, Howard Jacobson somehow imagines that we showed al-Megrahi enough compassion in not hanging him, Geoffrey Wheatcroft also celebrates Keith Waterhouse, and Marina Hyde says we need something rougher than just a TV debate between the party leaders.

As for worst tabloid article, Amanda Platell seems to be absent, and so doesn't automatically gain the coveted prize.  Instead, the only real candidate is this ridiculous linking of the Chucky films to various murderers and killings in the Sun, which yet again wrongly suggests that James Bulger's killers had seen the third film in the series, when there was no evidence whatsoever that they had, something which is pointed out in the comments, which are also highly critical.

Labels: , ,

Share |

9/05/2009 09:07:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, September 04, 2009 

From Bulger to Edlington.

Probably one of the worst moments in this country's recent media history was the hysteria which followed the murder of James Bulger.  In one sense, it was to be completely expected: Bulger's death, at the hands of two 10-year-old boys, with the toddler snatched from his mother in a matter of minutes, was the most appalling, shocking and inexplicable of crimes.  It was also one of the rarest: although we have since gotten sadly used to slightly older teenage boys knifing and even shooting each other, not since Mary Bell had those so young committed a crime so grave.  It was one of those crimes which managed to affect the psyche of the nation, even if only temporarily: the Daily Star's headline the day after the identities of Jon Venables and Robert Thompson were revealed still remains to this day one of the most disgusting and despicable, quite possibly of all time: "How do you feel now, you little bastards?"  It was, in fairness, shouted by someone in the public gallery, and probably reflected a mood which many felt, yet it also just highlighted that many had completely forgotten that those in the dock were children, regardless of whether or not they understood or could comprehend what they had done.

The effects of Bulger's murder are still with us today, with politicians reacting in much the same fashion as the media did.  Labour played off of it appallingly, much as the Tories do today with their "broken society" meme, but the real damage was inflicted by Michael Howard, who declared that "prison works", a position which has been only built upon by Labour.  For better or worse though, considering the major controversy over how their sentence was imposed and served, both Venables and Thompson came out of a system which so often fails those older, and genuinely were reformed.  If they were "evil" or "monsters" when they went in, there is nothing to suggest that they still were or still are now that they're living under their new identities.  Some will baulk, understandably, at how those who murdered got might what might well be described as preferential treatment because of the seriousness of their crime, yet surely the ends in this instance justified the means.

How little we've, or rather the media have learned, is reflected in the coverage today of the case of the two brothers in Edlington who more by luck than apparent judgement failed to murder the two other little boys with whom they had been playing, in circumstances similar to that in which James Bulger was murdered.  The differences though are surely important: neither Venables or Thompson had anything close to the record that these two brothers apparently had, although there were some similarities, and also the key, most terrifying detail of the Bulger murder was that he was snatched from his mother by pure chance, something not the case here, and dragged along for hours, in front of numerous witnesses.  Nonetheless, much the same attitude pervades, as typified by the Sun's editorial.  These two brothers are, variously, "hell boys", "evil", "monsters", "dangerous predators" and guilty of "sickening bloodlust".  Not once are they actually described as what they are, despite everything they've done, which is children.  It reproduces a litany of those who failed, in various guises, as well as those who failed to protect the "innocent children" from these savages, but it doesn't even begin to suggest that maybe it was these two brothers who were failed more than anyone else.  That would take the blame away from them, or rather undermine the stated fact that they had "a measure of evil" beyond even the normal "feral" child.

You can of course argue endlessly over whether those who kill or attempt to kill are created by nature or by nuture.  A background similar to that which these two brothers had can be a signifier for such crimes, but equally it would be an insult to those who have struggled through such deprived backgrounds and came out of it without being damaged to suggest that explains it all.  Likewise, you can blame anything else you feel like: the Bulger murder led to attacks on both video games and "video nasties", even though there was no evidence whatsoever that either of the boys had actually watched "Child's Play 3" as the media came to claim he did.  The very mention of the "Chucky" films by a supposed "relative" makes me wonder about the veracity of her comments; it seems far too much of a coincidence that the exact same series of films featuring that same doll would be brought up again.  With that in mind, it is however interesting to note that the same source claims that the boys were dealt with harshly by their father, maybe far too harshly.  That rather undermines the Sun's refrain that "consistent discipline" is the only means by which to tame them, and even Iain Duncan Smith, a proponent of "tough love", made the point that the discipline they received may well have had the opposite effect.

The most distasteful part of the Sun's leader though is that "intimidation is long overdue", as the court in which the brothers plead guilty apparently "bent over backwards" to "show them kindness" by the judge and lawyers wearing suits rather than their usual garb.  This has far less to do with kindness and much more to do with ensuring that they understood properly what was going on, even during a relatively short session in which they plead guilty to lesser charges rather than the attempted murder which was initially proposed.  Intimidation would probably be the very last thing which they need, something already presumably provided by their father.  Then there's just the complete failure to perform a reality check, calling regimes in youth custody "disastrously lax".  These would be the same regimes which are currentlyusing force more than they ever have, leaving little surprise when they fail just as much as prisons at preventing re-offending and reforming as well as punishing.

The hope has to be that same almost made up on the spur of the moment detention regime which Venables and Thompson went through, which involved not young offender's institutions but secure units, held separately, with both going through therapy as well as other programmes is also at the very least attempted in this case, although the sentence the two will receive is doubtful to be as harsh as that which Bulger's killers got, and how they will handle the fact that the two are brothers is also likely to be difficult.  It is though also worth reflecting, as the chief executive of Barnardo's Martin Narey did, on how close angels are to demons.  His suggestion, meant to stir debate, that Baby Peter may well have grown up had he survived to be a feral yob, the kind which are dismissed and demonised without a thought, inflammatory as it was, was the exact thing that the Sun did here.  If evil is inherent, then nothing can be done to prevent it or cure it; if it isn't, and naive liberals such as myself will protest profusely that there is no such thing, then it can be.  These two might not become "pillars of the community" as the Sun puts it, but to abandon hope in children and to demonise them in such a way is to abandon hope in humanity itself.

Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

Share |

9/04/2009 11:49:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, September 03, 2009 

Joyced.

Eric Joyce's resignation as PPS to defence minister Bob Ainsworth is to say the least, intriguing.  Joyce is most certainly on the Blairite wing of Labour, and even under Brown until recently a major loyalist, and with little chance of influencing any sort of attempt to overthrow the prime minister, it seems his decision to go is based purely on his considerable discontent over the war in Afghanistan.

Judging by his previous tenacity in supporting and defending the war in Iraq, Joyce's apparent conversion to an almost anti-war stance on Afghanistan, as that is very close to what he outlines in his resignation letter, is an indictment of current policy.  Then again, anyone could have already pointed that out: the madness of the status quo, where troops apparently give their lives so that tens of ordinary Afghans can vote, sitting ducks acting as target practice for the fighters who disappear as soon as they launch their attacks, while back home the only justification given by a government that also seemingly doesn't believe in what it's doing, the complete joke which is that somehow what the soldiers are doing is preventing terrorism on British streets, is close to being truly offensive in its fatuity.

Joyce sets out, while clearly trying to be as non-threatening and as lightly critical as he can while questioning the entire current strategy, that the public is not so stupid as to believe or to much longer put up with the "terrorism" justification, that we are punching way above our weight in our current operations, and that we should be able to make clear that there has to be some sort of timetable outlining just how long our commitment is both able and willing to last.  All of this should be way beyond controversy, yet already we have the ludicrous sentiment from both Bob Ainsworth and the even more ridiculous Lord West that they don't recognise the picture which Joyce sets out (confused and disjointed was West described it).  This would be reminiscent of Nelson putting the telescope to his bad eye if he hadn't done so with the best of intentions.  The only part which it's difficult to agree with Joyce on is his criticism of the other NATO countries' contribution: who can possibly blame France, Germany and Italy for not wanting to spend a similar amount of both their blood and treasure to us on a war in which they can't even begin to claim as we do that it's preventing terrorism on their streets?

The reason why it doesn't seem right to truly coruscate Labour over the utter cowardice of their current lack of a policy is that it's a failure of leadership which is shared across all three of the major parties.  For all their protests and attacks on the government over Afghanistan, you could barely get a cigarette paper between both the Conservatives and Lib Dems' own ideas on what we should be doing.  All still think, at least in public, despite doubtless their private misgivings, that this is both a war that is worth fighting and one which can be "won", whatever their own idea is of a victory.  Again, perhaps this isn't entirely fair: the Americans, after all, have only just got around to the idea that they should be focusing on hearts and minds and not blowing everywhere where they think there might be a Talib to kingdom come, and to hell with the consequences when it turns out there was actually dozens of civilians in the same compound.

At the same time, it's also hard not to think there might be a touch of cynicism, even conspiracy here on the part of the government and also some of the more pliant sections of the media.  Last week the Sun launched its "Don't they know there's a bloody war on?" campaign, which while not being entirely fair on the government did make me wonder whether there was some collusion with the paper when Gordon Brown the next day turned up in Afghanistan.  Now, exactly a week on from the start of the campaign, Brown will tomorrow be giving the major speech on current policy which the paper demanded, undoubtedly organised weeks if not months in advance.  These could of course all be coincidences, or even the government responding remarkably quickly to a newspaper which it has always gone out of its way to woo, but it's also suggestive of past cooperation between the two.  For the paper which goes out of its way to claim to be the forces' first and last line of both defence and support, such collusion would be incredibly shoddy.  At the same time, it's also a government that cares more for its image, still, than it does for those fighting for it.  To be succinct, there has to be an exit strategy, and at the moment absolutely no one is offering one.

Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Share |

9/03/2009 11:58:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, September 02, 2009 

Yates in not trying very hard shocker.

If you needed confirmation that the Met's investigation into the News of the Screws wasn't as thorough as they claimed, and that the "re-investigation" into it after the Graun's allegations was even less so, you only had to see both John Yates and Chief Superintendent Philip Williams before the culture committee today. Apparently the transcript of messages on Gordon Taylor's voicemail, provided for Neville Thurlbeck, wasn't a "viable live inquiry", despite Taylor and his legal adviser subsequently successfully securing the largest privacy payout from News International in legal history in this country. Just to add insult to injury, Yates then went on to say that there was no evidence of Thurlbeck reading the message, or that it could even be another Neville, to which Adam Price acidly stated that they would find out how many Nevilles were working at the Screws at the time before publishing their report.

Price though does seem to have scored a direct hit with his bringing up of the story involving a message left on Harry's voicemail by his brother pretending to be Harry's then girlfriend, Chelsy Davy. Philip Williams stated that although the police had never been able to prove it, again raising the spectre of them not trying very hard, they had "solid reasons" for suspecting that their phones had been tapped into as well as those of the royal aides which led to the conviction of both Mulcaire and Goodman. The can of worms opened up by the Graun has by no means yet been dumped in the dustbin of history.

Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Share |

9/02/2009 09:53:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Rankers.

Little disappointed that in Iain Dale's latest attempt at ranking every blog in the known universe I've dropped from 18th last year to 60th this on the left wing list, but it's probably to be expected when I didn't so much as mention the vote (I didn't vote myself so can hardly complain), and also when most of your blogging buddies boycotted the whole thing. Also probably not too much to be upset about when Tom Harris, that well-known leftie tops the poll, and when Alastair Campbell, Luke Akehurst and Harry's Place all also make the top ten, but major thanks to all those who took the time to vote for this waste of space as always.

It has at least finally motivated me to update the blog roll to the right, so I've removed pretty much all the dead wood (I think), updated the links to those that have moved and also added a whole boatload of links to those that should have been on it ages ago. If for some reason I've inexplicably forgotten you or you want to be linked to, leave a comment and I'll sort it out at some point in the next century.

Labels:

Share |

9/02/2009 03:15:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, September 01, 2009 

The Maltese double cross part 4.

It would be tempting to dismiss the continuing posturing and political point-scoring over the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi as a late silly season skirmish between parties with nothing else to argue about. Yet this whole dispiriting farce in fact seems to be where politics in this country is going - away from actual policy to focusing on unprovable conspiracies, and also interfering directly with decisions that should be made not on ideological background but on the facts available before the person at the time.

Incredible though it might seem, nothing has actually changed since al-Megrahi was released on the 20th of August. Al-Megrahi is still terminally ill, although some have called into question the prognosis that he has only 3 months or less to live; the decision was still made wholly by the Scottish government, which the documents released today don't even begin to alter; and lastly, the decision was the right one, taken by Kenny MacAskill, and also one which was supported by the prison service and parole board. It remains a nonsense and half gesture that al-Megrahi should have been released to a hospice, as some have suggested, regardless of the probably exaggerated security costs mentioned by MacAskill. The best solution remains that al-Megrahi should have been granted compassionate release, but allowed to continue with his appeal against his conviction in the interests of justice.

Al-Megrahi's dropping of his appeal, which he didn't need to, remains the only real properly unanswered question surrounding the case, and should be the main bone of contention, along with MacAskill's visit to him, which many have deemed unnecessary. Whether al-Megrahi was told that he had to drop his appeal otherwise it would cause major problems with his release is unclear, but it seems likely that it was intimated to him or his lawyers in some way. Likewise, why MacAskill felt that he needed to meet the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing when he could have made his decision without doing so is also currently impenetrable, and is only likely to lead to conspiracy theories.

Instead we're being lead on a wild goose chase, where everyone seems to think that something isn't right, yet no one has found any definitive evidence to prove it. It's quite obvious that since Libya emerged from its pariah status that the UK state and the companies which are only at arms length from it have been salivating at the opportunities which the country promises, and it's equally obvious that Libya, as proven by the documents released today, was intent on getting al-Megrahi back at the earliest opportunity, with the likes of Jack Straw scrabbling around looking for a way for al-Megrahi to be eligible for return under the prisoner transfer agreement. Who knows quite why Jack Straw suddenly came round to the idea that despite previously saying al-Megrahi had to be excluded from the agreement that he could in fact be included in it, although we can probably guess. The government was never going to release anything that directly implicated it; you only have to look at the tenacity with which it is refusing to hand over documentation on Binyam Mohamed's treatment to see that. Instead Straw and the government will doubtless be mildly embarrassed at how easily his mind could be turned, as will Brown and Miliband at how they agreed that they didn't want to see al-Megrahi die in jail, a fairly benign thought to make clear, considering how it's distasteful in the extreme for anyone to die from cancer while in prison, even a mass-murderer, and also knowing how outraged Libya would be.

Yet if anything the documentation makes the Scottish parliament and the SNP look far better than they did originally. They clearly wanted al-Megrahi excluded from the prisoner transfer agreement (PDF), unless they were just going through the motions, something which the UK government decided wasn't going to happen. The machinations of Downing Street look shady; Salmond and MacAskill look pure.

Even if the dealings do look shady, David Cameron is calling for a public inquiry on the grounds of a hypothetical, and demanding to know what the prime minister thinks about a decision which he couldn't make and which is none of his business to interfere with. Cameron isn't the only one playing politics though, as we saw previously: every major party both in Scotland and Westminster with the exception of the SNP has disagreed with the decision, almost certainly in some instances purely because they can, rather than what they would have done were they to make the decision. Somewhere in all of this there is a dying man, denied the opportunity to clear his name, and over 280 families in similar circumstances, some equally uncertain of how their loved ones came to die, others outraged by the decision to release the man in anything other than a box. All are being ignored for as ever, short term political gain. This isn't going to win any elections, it isn't even going to make a difference in opinion polls; it's either, according to your view, bringing a good, humane decision into disrepute, or even further distracting attention from someone who has escaped justice. Politics is as usual struggling to pull itself out of the sewer.

Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,

Share |

9/01/2009 08:09:00 PM | | | links to this post

About

  • This is septicisle
profile

Links

Last posts

Archives

Email me
Syndicate this site (XML)
Powered by Blogger
and Blogger Templates