Tuesday, April 21, 2009 

The plague has nothing on Blair.

Via Liberal Conspiracy, I come across the thoughts of the Independent's John Rentoul, one of the very few Blair-fanciers left on the face of the planet:

Just to prove my utter devotion to the finest peace-time prime minister, I confess my reaction when I read that the Tony Blair Faith Foundation Facebook page had been defaced with, among others, this comment:

"Tony Blair was about as good for Britain as the bubonic plague."

My recollection of medieval economic history is that the bubonic plague was good for Britain. By reducing the population, it increased wealth per head in a relatively stable society and forced it to improve agricultural productivity.

It was not just good for Britain, it was the basis of the economic pre-revolution that laid the foundations for this country to become the leading economic and military power of the world.

Just as, in a few centuries, Blair's creation of academy schools will again.

It's an interesting point. The analogy isn't quite apposite, as during Blair's tenure we didn't have to bury the diseased bodies of our brethren in mass graves, although we did have to do that to the bodies of millions of livestock, which rather than improving agricultural productivity instead decimated our farmers when vaccination against foot and mouth was another option which was rejected. No, Blair instead decided that the Iraqis, having already had recent experience with burying thousands of bodies were the best people to get back in the mood of the middle ages, and you have to admit, Blair succeeded on that score beyond even his wildest dreams.

You can't really argue with Rentoul's logic in any case. That he completely sidesteps the intended meaning of the barb, and then regardless decides to suggest that the plague was in fact good for Britain, if not so wonderful for the entire villages which were decimated, almost makes it seem as if he secretly accepts that Blair wasn't the greatest thing since sliced bread. Instead, as David Blunkett said, we can't seem to appreciate a prophet in our country; it'll only be in 200 years, when you and I will have long since turned to dust, that Blair will be truly feted. That unpleasantness in Iraq will be thoroughly overshadowed by Blair's fabulous constitutional reforms and the introduction of academy schools, turning out an entire nation equipped with the skills to function as call centre operators. Perhaps in 2209, when these septic isles are no longer known as the United Kingdom but instead Offshore Telephony Solutions #1 and #2, they'll truly admire the sage that we refused to acknowledge.

Labels: , , , ,

Share |

Saturday, March 01, 2008 

Harry's lovely war.

Whatever your views on Prince Harry and his exploits in Afghanistan, one thing that can be agreed upon is that it has been a journalistic travesty. Not that the media signed up to the MoD's secrecy plan in the first place, as once all the tabloids were agreed, the rest of the press and the BBC could hardly break ranks, such would have been the outrage that would have dropped on their heads. That was probably the right decision in the circumstances, but the failure of everyone else across the planet to find out until they discovered that an Australian supermarket trashy tabloid had printed it back in the early days of January, and then the pathetic soft-pedal given to Harry and the Ministry of Defence was anything but a triumph.

It seems then if you want the latest gossip, you shouldn't head to the loathsome Matt Drudge, who spent his time during the Clinton years digging up every false scandal ever to emerge, or to Guido, who despite his numerous contacts in the media that knew about Harry's posting didn't get as much as a sniff about it, but to New Idea instead. Where it got the story from is anyone's guess, but back on January the 7th it revealed that Harry had gone with his regiment on a covert mission to Afghanistan, where he had already seen action. Apparently it didn't have a clue about the embargo in this country, but it must surely be the scoop of the year; and no one batted an eyelid. Indigo Red goes even further back, and finds discussion in first the Canadian press that he was training in the country for deployment, then articles in *shock* the UK press doing much the same, which might well have triggered the embargo, deal, or whatever it was. There might well have been D-Notices involved for those who thought of daring to go it alone, even though they too are just instructions, not guidelines that must be followed.

If that wasn't humiliating enough for the most tenacious press in the world™, then anyone with the slightest interest in hearing something other than the MoD's no doubt weeks in the polishing releases and the most pathetic questioning, or rather unquestioning of any soldier ever would have been left feeling short-changed. There wasn't so much as a word about Afghanistan itself, how badly the mission is in actuality going, or whether the other soldiers are enjoying it as much as Harry so evidently was, despite the nonsense that he was an ordinary soldier quite clearly being molly-cuddled with one of the safest jobs in the entire country, but there were instead plenty of wonderful photographs and staged videos for the press to savour. Watch as royal family member fires bloody big gun at nothing in particular! Marvel as he talks about targeting Terry Taliban! Laugh as he fails to ride motorbike dumped in the middle of nowhere!

When the death of his mother led to the biggest reverse ferret in press history, a woman they had previously dismissed and ridiculed day after day suddenly becoming the people's princess, you would have placed money on that being the biggest volt-face to ever happen. How typical that one of her own has broken that record! Gone is the boozing and carousing prince, getting sozzled on our money, a disgrace to the country referred to at least twice by the Sun as "dirty", and now here's Harry the Hero, the Sun's poster of the soldier prince going up across the country, while it solemnly intones that he's found his vocation and that everything must be sacrificed to ensure he can continue doing the job he so obviously loves.

You would of course expect that from the "popular" press, but even the broads fell into line. The Guardian, which itself devoted two pages yesterday to Harry's colonial exploits, outlines how the Times and Telegraph gave his mission seven and five pages respectively. Only the Independent dared to spoil the party by giving over a parsimonious single page to the secret hero. Even that coverage was sycophantic in the extreme, relating how Harry had retrained as a "forward air controller", reiterating how he was sitting in front of "Kill TV" or "Taliban TV" directing American F15 jets to their targets. None of them ever felt the need to question whether this is the best way to fight the war, or that human rights organisations estimate that over 230 civilians were killed in air strikes in Afghanistan in 2006, leading Hamid Karzai to plead in tears for the coalition forces to stop being so cavalier with the lives of those on ground. That might have been unpatriotic, or been construed as suggesting that Harry had killed civilians while blasting the 30 Taliban the Sun claimed he had eviscerated. They didn't point out when Harry said this was about "as normal as I'm ever going to get" that there is nothing ordinary about making life or death decisions through a computer monitor. We viciously attack suicide bombers or other terrorists for their cowardly nature, and are often right, but there is very little difference between that and the end result of dropping 500lb bombs from however many feet in the air onto houses which may or may not be full of Terry Taliban, directed from somewhere far removed via a screen. Even more startling was Harry's remark in one of the interviews that "he doesn't like England much", which in any other circumstances involving anyone else would have resulted in a quick media crucifixion for impugning on the name of the country the same press outlets often bemoan, but this was from the newly crowned hero we can all salute and be proud of. The less said about the craven BBC's coverage, voiced by that "bloody awful man" Nicholas Witchell in the most reverent of tones usually reserved for a state funeral the better.

The question has to be just how much was spent on this whole ridiculous fandango. How many man hours at the MoD went into working just how to get him in and then out if necessary in such absolute secrecy? Which PR firm did the sterling job of collating all the propaganda to be screened and printed on his return, or was that the MoD's work as well, involving the Press Association? Just how many individuals had to be directly bribed or bought off in some other way to keep silent? Was he really at any point in any sort of danger whatsoever, because it certainly doesn't look like it at first glance? Is this all to please the prince who threatened to leave the army after he wasn't sent to Iraq, or was it a stunt the MoD went along with because it instantly recognised its value in the propaganda war?

We should be fair to Harry. Unlike our leaders and their families on both sides of the Atlantic, at least he's been potentially prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice for his country. If anything, he's the most senior figure from a family in sort of power to go to the front line in either Iraq or Afghanistan, and for that alone he deserves respect. All of this could however have been done without any sort of the pandemonium that prevented him from going to Iraq and then ended his stay in Afghanistan. Looking at the photographs of him in his full kit, body armour and helmet, no one would have the slightest clue that he was the third in line to the throne unless they were personally told. This was always the idiocy of announcing in the first place that he was going to be deployed: the MoD should have just sent him, told no one and not bothered with any deals with the media. They should have treated him like his comrades do: as an ordinary soldier, as that is after all what he is. It's to give too much credit to both the Taliban and the insurgents in Iraq to say that as soon as he was sent out they'd be searching for him because of the value of taking his life. If the Taliban had killed him during this trip, they wouldn't have known any better until the MoD themselves had admitted so. It's just as daft reporting today that extremists are already after him, about the only person they could find to denounce him being Anjem Choudary, the moron from al-Muhajiroun. The Scum babbles about threats being made against him by al-Qaida, with a message on "the terror group's website" about it. They must have set up their own page especially for the occasion, as al-Qaida has never had anything even approaching an "official" website since alneda.com was shut down in 2002.

You could put all of this down to "churnalism" or Flat Earth News, ninja turtle syndrome or otherwise, but that might be actually giving the coverage over the last few days some sort of label, explanation or excuse that it truly doesn't warrant. The exploits of one very important soldier have probably been given more exposure that the rest of the army's achievements and complaints have in the last couple of years. Soldier going to war/coming back from war isn't a story, unless they've come back in a body bag. The MoD might be celebrating a wonderful success in PR terms, but somehow you get the feeling that the unfortunates on the ground themselves, with another British soldier dying today in Iraq for no reason or point whatsoever, will not be thanking Harry for obscuring the futility of their current deployments.

Labels: , , , , , ,

Share |

Monday, July 09, 2007 

The liar years.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls! Welcome to the greatest journalistic spectacle of the year! Gasp as the cynical hacks fellate Alastair Campbell's limp cock! Marvel at their technique in licking his shit-speckled asshole! Swoon as they abandon all their critical faculties and instead delight in their collective indiscretion! Vomit as the biggest liar of them all earns wads of cash from his sordid little book!

Yep, the scramble to speed-read Campbell's heavily expurgated diaries is underway. Despite Campbell admitting to being highly censorious when it comes both to Blair's own foul language and to the eternal conflict with Gordon Brown, they're still desperately hoping there's going to be something in there that they'll be able to claim as a sort of exclusive come tomorrow morning. So far, thanks to both Campbell releasing some of the more juicy bits and to skimming through the thousands of self-indulgent words, we've learned that:


Quite why anyone is taking a single word of it seriously is a conundrum in itself. Here we have the most congenital liar that's ever pulled on a pair of trousers describing his wiping of Blair's bottom on a daily basis. As any psychologist will tell you, a pathological liar not only lies to everyone around him, they lie the most to themselves. Like when Michael Howard confronted him recently on Newsnight, he can't just accept that he is single-handedly responsible for the destruction of any remaining faith there was in politicians in this country, he actually still believes, like Blair, that everything he did was not just justified, but the right thing to do.

Hence Campbell somehow thinking that he deserves sympathy for his own depression as a result of Dr David Kelly's suicide, and amazingly, some even fall for it. Both Stuart Prebble, tasked with converting this mass of verbiage into three hour-long television documentaries and Michael White, chief Grauniad Blair sycophant describe him as "vulnerable". It's a shame that someone who did apparently have moments of self-doubt, instead of going along with such thoughts and wondering whether the fact that he was day after day misleading numerous people, and with the dossiers, potentially condemning thousands of civilians to death, kept going and even now thinks that he was right to do so. Indeed, he even still believes it was right to go to war, despite the intelligence he had a part in sexing up being proved so catastrophically inaccurate.

For all his efforts in protecting Blair, shamelessly manipulating the media and reacting to the slightest negative headline, all we're going to remember of Campbell in decades to come are those scenes of him in front of the intelligence and security committee, repeatedly hitting the table with his finger, demanding that the BBC apologise for the allegations made by Andrew Gilligan, all with the air of a man who knew that the end was drawing close but was going to do everything he could to try to stop the inevitable. The extracts from his diary revealed at the Hutton inquiry showed he wanted to "fuck Gilligan", and he succeeded.

With the release of his diaries, we ought to be turning a corner, but Campbell and Blair's shadow is still cast over British politics. We're still trapped in Iraq, the only people ever to resign over the disaster being those with the principles to do so beforehand and those who were forced to do so over a whitewashed report; the public has never been so cynical about politicians; the axis between the Murdoch press and Downing Street remains sacrosanct; and Brown, rather than being able to concentrate on policy, is having to dedicate precious time to proving just how spin is a thing of the past, and how different the relationship with the media is going to be. The bastard ought to be an outcast: instead, as he's always planned, the hundreds of pages are going to ensure he'll have a very pleasant retirement. They say cheats never prosper, but liars it seems will inherit the earth.

Related post:
Chicken Yoghurt - A period of silence would be welcome

Labels: , , ,

Share |

Wednesday, June 27, 2007 

Scum-watch: "Prophets are rarely honoured in their own land".

Gorgeous, pouting Rebekah meets the President. "So when do you get your tits out?," asks the leader of the free world.

Even in Blair's most hopeful moments and dreams about his eventual departure, he surely couldn't have even come close to expecting the send-off which the Sun's bestowing on him. Sycophancy doesn't even begin to cover it; this is brown-nosing on a level where both Murdoch and Wade have inserted their heads so far up his backside that they'll be able to tell what he had for lunch.


Wade herself plays an even bigger role than usual.
She was lucky enough to conduct the interview with President Bush herself - and she has both a photograph with him and a signed mocked-up Scum for her scrapbook, both reproduced for reasons known only to herself. The interview itself isn't exactly Paxman-esque - it's more of the roll over and play dead, David Frost variety, or in this case, roll over and Dubya will find a bone left over from one of Blair's visits as a reward. We discover that Tony is more articulate than Bush - who would have known? - and that Blair isn't a poodle, he's bigger than that; a border collie, heeding every whistle made by his master, perhaps?

Wade does succeed in getting one quite brilliant quote from Bush however, which really does sum up their "special relationship":

Somehow our relationship has been seen as Bush saying to Blair ‘Jump’ and Blair saying, ‘How high?’ But that’s just not the way it works. It’s a relationship where we say we’re both going to jump together.

Well, exactly. The Iraq war was a suicidal act that only two men completely certain in their own righteousness would still be defending 4 years and so many lives later. It's only a shame that their jumping together was not literally carried out while flying over Iraq, without parachutes.


Oh, but that's just the beginning to the Scum's Blair tribute.
They've devoted a whole special section to him, with dedications from such luminaries as Bob Geldof, Bono and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and from some local people who've benefited from the minimum wage. Considering the Scum's usual stance on potentially inflationary measures, it'd be interesting to note exactly what their position on it originally was. Just to try and keep things balanced, the ex-political editor Trevor Kavanagh sort of sticks the boot in on some of his domestic record, but it's the equivalent of the paper accidentally sticking its toe in Blair's eye while they 69, the gulping and licking carrying on as if it hadn't happened.

It's the leader that's completely and utterly craven:

TONY Blair is one of those rare politicians who make their own weather.

And this remarkable Prime Minister will take away a little sunshine when he drives out of Downing Street for the last time today.


Ah yes, we're going from the sunny warmonger to the dour man who did nothing to stop him. Two cheeks of the same arse.

This country is more tolerant and at ease with itself than at any time in its post-war history.

No thanks to the Scum and its incessant Muslim-bashing, immigrant hatred, gypsy baiting and asylum seeker demonising, not to mention the homophobia which was much more present during the late 90s and has only recently dropped in ferocity.

We’ve enjoyed unprecedented prosperity and social stability.

Well, quite, Blair has done nothing to harm Murdoch and done much to help him further his strangehold over the British media. It's only been in the dying days that his attempt to acquire ITV has ran into something approaching trouble.
Here come the things they've disagreed upon before the lavish praise is turned on once again:

Despite recriminations over Iraq, immigration and rising crime, he can rightly claim that as a remarkable achievement.

Mr Blair himself will admit to disappointments — especially over the billions spent on the unreformed NHS and other public services.

The Sun has been critical over plenty of issues, from welfare reform and MRSA superbugs to pensions and the sell-out on Europe.


All of which ought to point just how far Blair has taken Labour to the right, not the left as his hagiographers like to claim. The Sun has never been Blairite; it's still an unreformed Thatcherite paper, and Blair was never going to be good enough for them on the above, but he's still been performed adequately enough and the Tories badly enough for Murdoch to prefer his Thatcherism-lite over theirs.


But that is only one side of the balance sheet.

Tony Blair has plenty to be proud of in his years at the helm — and not just a record three election victories for Labour.

He has transformed the political landscape and forced the Tories to up their game.

He was right on Northern Ireland. He showed immense courage over Kosovo, over Sierra Leone and over Afghanistan.

He was right to support America to the hilt after 9/11.

And despite all the problems in Iraq he was absolutely right to identify fanatical Islam as this century’s greatest threat to global stability.


He's transformed the political landscape by taking a centre-right position which left the Tories with nowhere to go, and with Cameron now if anything to the left of many Blairite policies. As for fanatical Islam being this century's greatest threat to stability, nothing could be further from the truth. The real threat is from global warning, not a rag tag mob of radical Islamists often more involved in their own internal struggles than in attacking the west.

As our international ambassador, Mr Blair has enhanced Britain’s role as a respected voice on the world stage.

Two words. You know them.

But for Iraq it is entirely possible that Tony Blair could have won a fourth term in power.

But prophets are rarely honoured in their own land.


See, he's no longer just a vicar, he's now a prophet. Perhaps once his conversion to Catholicism is complete he can start on the path to sainthood?

Sometimes it takes a friendly outsider to appreciate the qualities we at home ignore or take for granted.

In an exclusive interview for The Sun, President George Bush explains why Tony Blair is America’s staunchest ally.

In a genuine tribute, he says the PM is the man he’d pick to go into the jungle with.

“History will judge him kindly,” he adds.

This newspaper is happy to agree with the verdict from the White House.


If we consider how Anthony Eden is remembered for Suez and little else, and
that conflict only cost the lives of 56 British servicemen and around 900 overall, then the omens don't look particularly good for Blair, with good reason. 153 dead British soldiers, over 3,500 Americans and somewhere in the region of between 200,000 and up to 1 million Iraqis, the median being 650,000. Blair isn't just covered in blood, he's drowning in it. If history doesn't judge him harshly for his distortions, lies and for what "he believed was right", then history is just as worthless as the Sun.

Labels: , , , , ,

Share |

About

  • This is septicisle
profile

Links

Powered by Blogger
and Blogger Templates