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Dr. David Kelly

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12:56 / 28.01.04

Blair has even raised the idea that closer scruitiny for the BBC could play a part in charter renewal...

13:11 / 28.01.04

Bastard bastard bastard bastard

14:09 / 28.01.04

They've not come out of the top-up fees mess exactly unscathed. What will be interesting will be to see if Hutton helps to provide the government with a means of pretending last night's vote didn't happen. That certainly seems to be the case at the moment.

14:14 / 28.01.04

If anything, this may weaken the Tories. After all, Howard has done pretty badly here. True, Hutton was pretty explicit in clearing our Tony of all charges, but it is also clear that the Hutton enquiry was a distraction from the wider questions about the war. By focusing too much on Blair's duplicity over Kelly, Howard is left with nowhere to go.

And he really should have seen that coming.

As for the fees issue, wasn't that a Blair/Brown punchup?

14:43 / 28.01.04

In part, but that one's not over by a long way. I think there's a good chance that Brown actually damaged himself quite badly yesterday. Guess we'll have to wait for all this to calm down before we find out, though.

I don't know if you've been watching the footage, Lurid, but Howard appears to be on self-destruct. He's not so much refused to apologise for or take back the comments he made about Blair lying to the Commons, but instead seems to be refusing to acknowledge that he ever made those comments in the first place. And with Howard's past public shows of failing to answer direct questions, that's got to get everyone remembering what a slimey little shit he is.

The rumour now is that the Chairman of the BBC's Board of Governors is going to resign, but that's as far as the BBC's concessions are going to go. Some fairly nebulous stuff about examining procedures from Dyke.

Isn't the BBC News 24 screen design awful?

unheimlich manoeuvre

20:15 / 28.01.04

Whitewash.

how has the government done it? an ulster unionist law lord sitting in judgement of the government is hardly the unbiased perspective that this enquiry requires.

what i am interested in is if there is a media backlash against these new guidelines that are due to be imposed on BBC reporters. sky news was great in allowing george galloway to have his say. although the anchorwoman still felt the need to discredit him at the end of his interview. rod little, a former editor of the today programme, was excellent earlier on the same show. jon snow was diligent in ruffling margaret beckett. perhaps the straitjacking of the BBC will force the (nominally) Independent Television News to pursue the kernel of the truth.

or maybe i'm to optimistic.

...

where are the WMD's?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

21:12 / 28.01.04

I'm wearing my pissed-off face here. And I'm also amazed that Gavyn "I used to work for Goldman Sachs" Davies has proved to have some principles. (He's just resigned.)

I acally think the top-up vote's put Brown in a better position- Blair is now visibly indebted to him after his last-minute rallying of support.

22:20 / 28.01.04

But it's the very fact that it seems to have been last minute that's potentially damaging - sort of, if he had the power to make the rebels back down, why didn't he use it earlier. It's not that he's flexing his muscles, it's that he's flexing his muscles so very publicly. Again. You do find yourself wishing he'd either piss or get off the pot.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

05:21 / 29.01.04

Newsnight last night was interesting. What's hopeful is that most people who aren't either Government or from the Murdoch press seem to think that the Government escaping free from criticism was unrealistic and that Hutton decided that anything criticising the Government fell outside his terms of reference. We need that independent review of the lead up to the Iraq war.

09:46 / 29.01.04

I love Davies' pointed comments about "not choosing your own referee", a very clever little jab at Bliar.

11:57 / 29.01.04

Did you read Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian today? He is quite damning about it - suggests it was a whitewash.

14:42 / 29.01.04

Link to the Freedland article

I found the one part interesting:

We are not meant to think this way. We are meant to trust and accept the wisdom from on high. But that is becoming harder to do. For Britons remember Lord Denning's conclusions on the Profumo affair in 1963 and his belief that "people of much eminence" could not possibly have misbehaved. Many remember Widgery's similar whitewash job on the Bloody Sunday case. Or the judge in the Archer trial who believed the "fragrance" of wife Mary made it unimaginable that Jeffrey would have used a prostitute.

Should we be surprised by the report, given the results of other inquiries? Was there any reason to hope that Blair and company would be damned by the report?

18:24 / 29.01.04

Do your bit to help out Auntie:

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

22:53 / 29.01.04

Fuck. Greg Dyke's gone as well.

06:44 / 30.01.04

I'm glad you guys are here because I have actually been too fucking pissed off to read the papers over the last few days. Something that's been happening more and more since the war. Cynicism becoming disengagement.

Anywa, apologies if this has been said upthread, but I read an interesting article by Michael Hesletine after just after the inquiry was announced, he said that Blair jumped at this opportunity to have this inquiy as then it's unlikely we will have to have one into the whole reason the war took place in the first place.

The damage this kind of thing does to the political culture of the country is huge. No wonder people can't be bothered to vote.

10:04 / 30.01.04

So the BBC has been beheaded because it dared to suggest that the government sexed up WMD claims.

BBC world class public service broadcasting is now left to the rabid wolves of Sky, Fox, CNN and other neocon-Zionist cheerleaders who loath it for everything it stands for.

What a terrible day for free speech!

And to think that one of the proudest traditions of Britain could well be destroyed by a Labour Prime Minister.

How low in the moral gutter will this liar and murderer sink? Has he no shame at all?

Please please, someone, ANYONE, rub this scum out!

10:20 / 30.01.04

I think Mark Steele summed up the failings of the Hutton inquiry best in yesterday's Independent: "It's been like an investigation into Fred West that ignored the murders and issued a 378-page report on the shortcomings of the patio."

The growing view seems to be that the Hutton report is so unbalanced that it lacks credibility and only serves to heighten the sense that there is something inherently dodgy about New Labour. Hence three opinion polls in the past 24 hours finding most people think the report's a whitewash and more wanted Blair to resign than Dyke.

10:54 / 30.01.04

Cheers for that info Quireboy, makes me feel that I'm not alone in my perception. The thing that horrifes me about all this is that if they are prepared to lie and twist the truth in such a blatant manner on issues under such heavy public scrunity, then what about the rest of the activities of government? What about all the back room politics and small fry we don't know about but that will impact on our lives? Going offtopic a bit but things like the goverment's desire to push GM foods WHEN THE MAJORITY OF THE POPULATION OF THE COUNTRY THEY PURPORT TO REPRESENT DOESN'T WANT IT, just seems to me like another huge example of a government that's lost any sense of accountability.

AAARRGGHH...

10:58 / 30.01.04

hurm. yes being a thoroughly british type there's little to me as revolting as the sight of bliar's ginger spin-doctor revelling in the mist of obfuscation he maneuvered some weak ulster-union toad into drawing around him.

and if the government or the murdoch press keep hammering at it i think they'll see people turning away from them. don't people just like the bbc a fuckload more than labour and the shitrag sun put together? know i do.

the uppity buggers in the bbc won't be happy about the humiliation they've been put. couple that with the fact that anyone not interested in a westminster career knows the hutton report was dogshit covered in whitewash and i think the government may have fucked itself worse than at any point before. if the girlz and boyz who play every day at the bbc want the government to go, they'll make the public get rid of them.

i mean y'know, maybe

11:23 / 30.01.04

Khaologan23ris,

"if the girlz and boyz who play every day at the bbc want the government to go, they'll make the public get rid of them."

Then we get the other conservative party who hate the BBC even more. Howard will also want a pro-Israeli BBC when/if he takes over.

12:24 / 30.01.04

well yes we'll always have a shite government. personlly i think the only thing we might have to look forward is the schadenfreude when the entire nation tell blair that they think he's a cunt.

anyway reckon labour still have the next election [the tories are still all about proving to everyone what psychos they are, privatise universities and reclassify cannabis to its old grade indeed.], but hoping the libdems might make enough headway to become an effective, if not quite 'her majesty's', opposition. they need a leader who doesn't look like a baby though.

21:22 / 30.01.04

See- everybody says the BBC has come out of this very badly. But am I alone in thinking that they've lost little public support? I dont see the BBC as a less credible source than it was before, but I still dont trust nor like the government, and Blair's gloating was particuarly unappealling.

I dont think the Lib Dems will make the opposition for another 3 elections or so. But I like them, and I like Charles Kennedy. He's my MP. He's nice, and stands outside WH Smith and chats to everyone. Who in gods name would trust/like bloody michael howard, or the next leader the tories choose in another couple of months more than lib dems? Seems all very strange to me.

When is the next election? Next year, is it?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

22:24 / 30.01.04

A lot of public opinion does seem to be with the Beeb- after all, we've known it all our lives, whereas we've only known Mr Tony a few years. I actually think the gvernment have fucked up quite badly with the Hutton report- they should have at the very least accepted some criticism for somethingm, however minor, precisely in order to deflect criticisms that the whole thing's just been a whitewash.

And now Gilligan's gone, too. Fuck you, Tony. Fuck you.

22:55 / 30.01.04

At least I still have my beloved Andrew Marr. I'm so glad he didnt say any of it- where would the beeb be without him? (over iraq war)-"This is like a game of bluff. Except it's not a game; and they're not bluffing."

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

07:47 / 31.01.04

On a side note, it appears this may be one of those occasions where the "checks and balances" that "we" all, deep down, hope work, are put to the test.

All the elements are in place- a government that doesn't listen to the people it's supposed to represent... which has totally devastated its opposition to the point where it may as well no longer exist (this is why I want Clarke to be able to score points off Blair- not cos I like him, but because at least it means Blair has to have some accountability)... a Home Secretary who is, to say the least, some kind of fucking Nazi robot from space!!!... and now the threat to the media.

Personally, I don't think it's about to be a slide into some kind of Stalinism... I still have faith in those elusive checks and balances. But it's interesting to see how far Mr Tony fancies testing them...

(Quiet note to France... yes, I know I've had my problems with you in the past. But on the off-chance that the nest few years see us become a total bastard of a state with no hope of recovery... nuke us. Please. Before we spread across the Channel again.)

23:30 / 14.02.04

Dismantling the BBC?

Britain's government is considering a plan to break up the BBC and remove its independent status in the wake of a bitter row with the state-funded broadcaster over the Iraq war, a report said. Government papers detailing possible changes to the BBC's structure proposed breaking it into separate regional entities for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, The Sunday Times said.

The documents, which the newspaper said had been drawn up by "senior civil servants", also suggested that the job of ensuring the BBC's impartiality could be taken away from the corporation's board of governors. Plans being considered include giving a government media watchdog greater control over the BBC's output, closing BBC outlets which are not considered "public service" and even forcing the corporation to share some of its licence fee revenue with other broadcasters.

18:41 / 20.02.04

BBC dismantling always gets put forward by Governments - possibility is, this time, that they may go for it. That said, there's a theory now that the BBC is safer than it was, as even Teflon Tony wouldn't move against it for fear of being seen as a bully.

Also, remember the Sunday Times - the quoted source - is owned by Murdoch, who has a bery real interest in the BBC getting screwed over.

Oh, and by the way, it may have appeared, fronm previous posts I had made in this thread, that I thought Hoon and others would have to go after the public had seen the evidence set out during the Hutton inquiry that proved they were incompetent liars.

However, this is not the case. I hired a senior law lord to lok at my posts, and he says he can see no suggestion in any of them this is what I actually thought, indeed as a man of honour I must have thought the opposite. Just thought I'd clear that up. My stage show is on in the Autumn...

Our Lady Has Left the Building

14:54 / 11.08.04

No WMD, no information to back up the dodgy dossier assertions and now no source for the leak of the Hutton Report to The Sun. Admirable consistency...

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