Saturday, July 15, 2006

Balls-Ups Stitch-Ups and Cover-Ups


This has been a most peculiar week when it comes to news stories about issues that I’m personally concerned about.

In the space of a few days we’ve seen:

And that’s just a selection of highlights

The sheer volume of balls-ups, stitch ups and cover-ups going on right now is truly awesome.

An imaginative person could even conclude that some important people have lost the plot whilst other important people are coming up with some new plots behind the scenes.

The exchange of leaks between the IPCC and CPS over the Stockwell Shooting is particularly woeful. The IPCC/ CPS have, for reasons unknown, patently been sitting on the report for as long as possible and only getting off their arses to preempt the anniversary of the shooting next week. A key finding of the report was leaked ahead of its publication, followed tout suite by a leak from the CPS saying that the recommendation will not be followed up. All of this coming ahead of any hard, attributable statements or information.

This is an example of news and public expectation management at its slimiest. And, at the end of all of this, we will still not really know what happened that day.

Answers to simple questions such as…

And the biggie…

  • Why did the police execute a ‘suspected suicide bomber’ when he clearly wasn’t carrying a bomb?

… have not been answered and more than likely never will

People calling for an independent inquiry into 7/7 please take note

Still, it wasn’t all doom, gloom and unpunished public executions last week

Lord Levy’s arrest was bloody funny for a start.

Of course, it would have been even funnier if they’d kept him locked up for 28 days without charge.

And David Blunkett blew the irony meter off the scale when he said the police should be "thorough rather than theatrical".

Yup, there were no theatrical arrests when David Blunkett was in charge of the police, no sirree

The cash for peerages thing does seem a little overblown though. Everyone knows that this has gone on since the year dot and, being a big Capita fan myself, cash for public contracts seems to be an altogether more serious potential issue that no one seems willing to run with.

Still, I am mindful of the fact that Al Capone was finally locked up for tax evasion rather than wholesale murder. So maybe history will repeat itself and Blair will finally come a cropper over something as mundane and relatively trivial as cash for peerages rather than that, er, 'unfortunate' war thing.

And then we’ll get another globalist-owned front man who people will take another ten years to rumble. By which time maybe we’ll all be taking out mortgages to pay our utility bills and privately contracted firearms specialists will be selectively executing anyone found not carrying their national loyalty card.

The other big giggle of the week was the deportation of the ‘NatWest 3’. They’ve received plenty of sympathetic media coverage including videos of heart-warming family scenes in David Bermingham's household; presumably designed to convince us dumb fucks out there that he’s human like us and not an investment banker. (Hint for Bermingham’s PR person – next time, try to skip the scenes showing just how bloody enormous his house and grounds are)

I cried so much whilst reading this Bermingham human interest piece in particular that I almost fainted from dehydration.

The House of Commons has expressed its outrage at the deportation, as has Liberty Director Shami Chakrabarti; you know the photogenic one who’s on TV a lot, who’s quite selective about which civil rights issues she speaks out on.

Yes, all of a sudden, all sorts of public figures and organisations have discovered that shipping off British citizens to uncertain fates in other countries is a pretty ropey thing to do

Well spotted

And once more the irony meter gets blown off the scale

Still, given the rather short life expectancy of key Enron witnesses maybe a few years in a US jail with nothing but a cellmate called Bubba and a bottle of vegetable oil is the best place for the NatWest 3 – after all, better sore than sorry.

OK, the acid test of one’s beliefs occurs when you are called to defend your beliefs, even if that means supporting people you dislike. The extradition treaty with America that enabled the deportation of the NatWest 3 is clearly unfair and shouldn’t be enforced.

Hypocrisy, however, does have its attractions

Fuck ‘em


2 comments:

ziz said...

"Liberty Director Shami Chakrabarti; you know the photogenic one who’s on TV a lot, who’s quite selective about which civil rights issues she speaks out on."

I have asked her to ask the contacts she has in the Gubment to ask if the rendered had diplomatic passports or other such documentation, if anybody asked for it, checked it.

She appears to be a bit busy street walking outside the Royal Courts of Justice to deal with it.

As to Mr B's modest Home Counties spread your remark has made me spill coffee on my keyboard again.

I particularly liked the breakast scene...one imagines the dialogue year or two ago.

Mrs B "What will you do at the office today dear?"

Mr B "Well I thought a couple of chaps and I might buy this entity from our employers and then flog it on and make a cool £3.9Mn between us .. and then after lunch ....."

Children "Whoooopeee no wonder Grandad calls Daddy a Merchant Banker"

Shahid said...

Last two lines of your post had me crying with laughter,