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
27/04/2006
Idiocy abounds
This year the Government will spend £80bn on the NHS, the equivalent of £1,333 for every person in the UK.
Seeing as Labour currently seems hell bent on buggering everything up completely including the NHS, is the answer perhaps simply to give everyone in the country £1,333 and let them make their own arrangements?
It's hard to imagine this could make things any worse.
"Free Money For All," that's what I say. Get that one on the side of the battle bus and you'd clear up on 4th May and fix the NHS all in one go.
Yours etc.,
Spinoff.
10:55 Posted in News | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this