09/05/2006
A question
A question for you today, faithful reader. Should you wish to reply, then please do so below using the comment function.
The United States says Iran wants to build a nuclear bomb. Iran says it's doesn't. The question - which of them is lying?
Yours etc.,
Spinoff.
13:23 Posted in News | Permalink | Comments (3) | Email this
08/05/2006
Power corrupting
A disconnection has occurred; a disconnection born of deep confusion and a grasping love of power. It is happening at the top of the Labour Party and sodding up the government's ability to govern.
Governments are there to run the country. However, the current Blair government is a machine currently given over entirely to trying to run itself. It's efforts are going in entirely the wrong direction; it seves itself, not the population.
An excellent example was the recent re-shuffle; a political move designed entirely to surround the PM with loyalists - not people necessarily best qualified for their positions, note - but those most obedient, least likely to question.
Hence Jacky "nuts to bomb Iran" Straw flies unceremoniously out of the cabinet window, while Trish "best year ever" Hewitt stays lodged firmly in her seat.
It matters not one jot that Straw spent years developing a close and beneficial relationship with Condi Rice. It doesn't matter that we're right in the middle of UN procedures and discussions about Iran, (the UN Security Council meets today) and that continuity in processes like these is vital.
No; that's not important. Much more important is that Tony's worried Jack's too close to Gordon. Much more important. More important than our effective contribution to the Iran debate. Yes. So Jacky? Boot - out he goes.
Neither does it matter that Patricia Hewitt, a woman with all the interpersonal skills of a brick, has succeeded in rubbing the entire NHS up the wrong way.
It doesn't matter that she made a hash of dealing with nurses, that she couldn't face up to the truth of what's going on in the NHS, and that she insisted on telling NHS staff things they knew were simply untrue.
Much more important than this, of course, is that she does everything Tony Blair tells her. Much more important. So she stays.
John Reid is certainly an able man, but is it at all advisable to replace the MoD's top bod half way through a war? And is it advisable to shove him into a whopper of a department which is now generally regarded as being up the spout? "I say John, put down the Iraq war; here's the Home Office - WHUMP!" No. Of course it's bloody not.
In short, the PM is surrounding himself with loyalists in an attempt to cling to power. Because he is so concerned with power rather than government the country will suffer.
Not only will the speculation about when he's going to shove off continue, but the rump government he has now collected about him will become even more defensive, even more disaster-prone, ever-more eager to please, automaton, nonsense-speaking and alien.
So we can expect to see a river of very sketchy "reforms" flowing from the ministries in a febrile attempt to please. It's all about the boss. He's worried about his legacy, you see - worried about being ousted.
It's just a shame he doesn't seem very worried about us.
Yours etc.,
Spinoff.
13:46 Posted in News | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
03/05/2006
US and them
Tomorrow, Angela Merkel is meeting George W Bush at the White House. They will be talking about many things. High up the agenda, if not at the top of it, will be Iran.
Bush wants sanctions, but will have problems getting them in place. He needs unilateral support, but China and Russia have already said they wont join in.
European states have also said they wont acquiesce to sanctions until all other routes have been tried, including the UN and face to face talks.
"We are very clear that we need to see some change in Iranian behaviour," said a top US official when asked about the possibility of direct talks with Iran.
In this comment - showing as it does that in fact it is the US, not Iran, that is unwilling to negotiate - lies a great and terrible irony.
Because in this intransigence, the US takes yet another step towards becoming the kind of country its own leaders so publicly deplore.
Yours etc.,
Spinoff.
15:54 Posted in News | Permalink | Comments (6) | Email this
Time to go
Prescott, Hewitt, Clarke, Kelly and Jowell are all very much cooked, cash-for-peerages has slopped on top of the lot of them like a hideous corruption sauce, add to that a twist of Blunkett, a sprinkling of Mandelson a dash of Alistair Campbell, a generous slab of war, garnish with one dead weapons inspector and serve. Cold.
The waiter looks familiar. Something about the ears and the large, crooked teeth. He licks his lips, "hmmmm - doesn't this lot look appetising?" he says, offering a slice. We wonder to ourselves 'is this man sane?'
There is but one course of action open to the PM, one stock attitude to strike as massive, all-encompasing disaster bursts its way through the hull of the Labour ship, and Blair has to take it. This attitude? Denial. There is no other plan, no other way.
The government has been so expert at manipulating media over the last nine years that it simply isn't equipped to deal with a negative onslaught. Now, the media agenda has run away; run wild. It's out of control, baffling, out of hand. The answer? Well, if we can't control it, we won't accept it. Conclusion - nothing's wrong. One reality for Mr Blair, one for the rest of the world.
Blair was so expert at manipulating the world view as portrayed via his estimable media machine that in the end he chose that manipulated world over the real one. Why else would Patricia Hewitt announce to a room full of baying NHS staff, all of them staring down the barrel of the redundancy gun, that "this has been the NHS's best year ever"? Why else, other than that she is part of a culture that simply cannot see out into the country it is meant to be governing?
The Major government went down because it became swiftly apparent that no, no we don't like those people in charge any more. They tell us things about our country and our lives that simply aren't true. They're odd; they look out through the peephole of their weird political box and see stuff in the outside world that simply isn't there. The current regime has now got to that stage too.
The Blair government has, in the last week, thudded fast into the sea bed. It's over. But now we have to wait. There is one last duty to perform. The Labour party, and on May 5th a large part of the UK, has to ram home the one root point that, when finally understood, will send Blair from number 10.
That one, final point? Your government no longer represents an acceptable vision of the UK, and it is itself therefore no longer acceptable. It must go, Mr Blair, because I'm afraid that people just don't like you any more.
Time's up.
Yours etc.,
Spinoff
12:35 Posted in News | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this