(A guest post by Gus of 1820 fame.)
Amongst the acres of hagiography written about our departing Prime Minister a number of glaring inconsistencies leap out at this reader about the decade of deceit that is drawing to a close. Let’s look at some of the most glaringly obvious of these…
| Hearty congratulations to Troubled Diva, Mike Atkinson, who’s managed to put together ‘Shaggy Blog Stories’ in seven days in aid of Comic Relief.
The book collects amusing pieces from 100 bloggers. I’m in it but you shouldn’t let that put you off. You can read more about the book here. The book’s published via Lulu and you can buy copies at www.shaggyblogstories.co.uk. Go on. |
Camelot runs the SOCA
The lottery of crime-fighting
(A guest post by Gus of 1820 fame.)
Anyone who didn’t believe in karma should take a peek at what’s going on in the Antarctic Ocean. As Associated Press reports: “The crew of a Japanese whaling ship (the Nisshin Maru) stranded in Antarctic waters by a fire that killed one seaman were trying to repair its engines yesterday so that they could reach safety by their own power rather than accept a tow from Greenpeace.”
The news that the Nisshin Maru is the only ship in the whaling fleet able to process whale carcasses, and the season may have to be abandoned if the ship is inoperable will no doubt make your heart break. But there’s a more serious side, if the ship breaks up it will cause havoc to the delicately balanced eco-community of the region.
It’s another piece of great PR for Greenpeace, fresh from their legal triumph over Blair’s dodgy consultation process on new nuclear things, but the environmental campaigners are are facing their own challenges. Greenpeace’s brand of direct action and well managed media messages faces a new challenge from the most right-wing communists you’ll ever meet. In the latest spate of attacks on charitable status after the Smith Institute contoversy, Thomas Deichmann writing in Spiked! challenges Greenpeace’s charitable status arguing that they act ‘politically’.
Much has been written about David Cameron being a Blair manqué. The accusations of style over substance, the eye-catching initiatives, the willingness to alienate his party, the constant drive for modernisation, and the sleight of hand that leads one to believe that one day soon it will be necessary to count the spoons.
And here is some more evidence for the prosecution: grave robbing.
With the corpse of Billy Cox over his shoulder, Cameron declared the 15 year-old’s murder tells us…
…our society is badly broken and we need to make some big changes, starting now.
Needless to say, Blair – rightly – denounced the sickening hyperbole of it all:
This tragedy is not a metaphor for the state of British society, still less for the state of British youth today, the huge majority of whom are responsible and law-abiding young people.
If only he didn’t have previous form on the issue himself. Witness Blair’s wailing and gnashing of teeth over the still-warm cadaver of murdered toddler Jamie Bulger in 1993. The freakish murder he said was…
…the ugly manifestation of a society that is becoming unworthy of the name.
And the law and order arms race between Labour and the Conservatives was born. It goes without saying that we were no more up to our knees in murdered toddlers in 1993 than we are murdered teenagers in 2007.
Cameron might be a new dog but he knows the old tricks.
Update: Nick Robinson makes the same point.
Pickled Politics
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‘Even at my age, blackheads can be a problem,’ says Will Hutton.
Iain Dale and the Nick Boles question
Richard Gere and the race for London Mayor.
Yorkshire Ranter: Enron and Iraq
Berlusconi: The Pinochet Defence
