And blogging whilst they're at it
Appledore Shipbuilders in North Devon is under threat of closure. Receivers were appointed today. For the last few days, the work force has been occupying the yard in a so-called work-in. These are the lot who were demonstrating at the Labour conference yesterday. (Given that the MOD was apparently considering splitting an order for offshore patrol craft between Vosper Thornycroft in Portsmouth and Appledore - one hopes they may be swayed to make a gesture for party unity..) This is now a featured blog. Good luck.
Blogging a noisy and socialistic view on politics, security, and whatever may take my fancy. "All the world now is in the Ranting humour" - Samuel Sheppard, 1647
Tuesday, September 30, 2003
Monday, September 29, 2003
Data Reveal Inaccuracies in Portrayal of Iraqis
Data Reveal Inaccuracies in Portrayal of Iraqis (washingtonpost.com)
Sorry for the Washpost burst, but I feel I should share with you the fact that 55% of Baghdadis have a good impression of France and only 29% have of the US.
Well, it is the cradle of civilisation.
Sorry for the Washpost burst, but I feel I should share with you the fact that 55% of Baghdadis have a good impression of France and only 29% have of the US.
Well, it is the cradle of civilisation.
...But they won't give up
Iraq, 9/11 Still Linked By Cheney (washingtonpost.com)
No, "Dead" Dick Cheney won't admit it - he still keeps talking about mystery meetings between Mohammed Atta and Iraqis in Prague even after the CIA, the FBI and Czech intelligence have admitted they had the wrong man. It's a curious feature of the world, but one we see all the time, that a policy or belief is at its most dangerous and offensive after it has been discredited. Once it was believed. Then experts and radical weirdos began to speak out. Now, the world finally accepts it. But this is when the quasi-religious phase, the phase of absurdity, kicks in: those involved now find it necessary to make regular public declarations of belief and to demand it from others. It may only be a matter of time or procedure before change is achieved, but such things tend to be enforced and proselytised more strongly than ever before in this period. Examples - the Stability and (no) Growth Pact - Romano Prodi thinks it should be called the Stupidity Pact, every reputable economist laughs at it, France and Germany ignore it; but the commissioner responsible still finds it necessary to rant about vast fines. The Iraq Survey Group - there's another. Dead ideas are very bad for you, generally - the Conservatives have never got over the idea of somehow having another, little European Union where Britain would be Top Nation and nobody would have to obey any treaties (but the free trade privileges would still be upheld). Although this has been well dead ever since the Nordics joined the EU, the ghost still walks. People like David Heathcoat-Amory nurse Napoleonic fantasies of an anti-Europe Europe of Britain - wait for it - Sweden and Denmark! as well as...er....some of the new members (who have all committed to membership in the EU and the Euro). And this is why Iain Duncan Smith is going to stand up on a platform at the "Rally for a Referendum" next to an obscure Danish woman whose recent pronouncements include "Muslims have a taste for mass rape" (what - even the women?). Great stuff.
No, "Dead" Dick Cheney won't admit it - he still keeps talking about mystery meetings between Mohammed Atta and Iraqis in Prague even after the CIA, the FBI and Czech intelligence have admitted they had the wrong man. It's a curious feature of the world, but one we see all the time, that a policy or belief is at its most dangerous and offensive after it has been discredited. Once it was believed. Then experts and radical weirdos began to speak out. Now, the world finally accepts it. But this is when the quasi-religious phase, the phase of absurdity, kicks in: those involved now find it necessary to make regular public declarations of belief and to demand it from others. It may only be a matter of time or procedure before change is achieved, but such things tend to be enforced and proselytised more strongly than ever before in this period. Examples - the Stability and (no) Growth Pact - Romano Prodi thinks it should be called the Stupidity Pact, every reputable economist laughs at it, France and Germany ignore it; but the commissioner responsible still finds it necessary to rant about vast fines. The Iraq Survey Group - there's another. Dead ideas are very bad for you, generally - the Conservatives have never got over the idea of somehow having another, little European Union where Britain would be Top Nation and nobody would have to obey any treaties (but the free trade privileges would still be upheld). Although this has been well dead ever since the Nordics joined the EU, the ghost still walks. People like David Heathcoat-Amory nurse Napoleonic fantasies of an anti-Europe Europe of Britain - wait for it - Sweden and Denmark! as well as...er....some of the new members (who have all committed to membership in the EU and the Euro). And this is why Iain Duncan Smith is going to stand up on a platform at the "Rally for a Referendum" next to an obscure Danish woman whose recent pronouncements include "Muslims have a taste for mass rape" (what - even the women?). Great stuff.
And the Iraq story keeps rotting - Washington Post
Bush Aides Say They'll Cooperate With Probe Into Intelligence Leak (washingtonpost.com)
"Wilson said that in the week after the Novak column appeared, several journalists told him that the White House was trying to call attention to his wife, apparently hoping to undermine his credibility by implying he had received the Niger assignment only because his wife had suggested the mission and recommended him for the job.
"Each of the reporters quoted the White House official as using some variation on, 'The real story isn't the 16 words. The real story is Wilson and his wife,' " Wilson said. "The time frame led me to deduce that the White House was continuing to try to push this story."
Well - it couldn't happen in Britain, could it? Could Joseph Wilson, the former ambassador who debunked the stories about uranium from Niger, be Bush's Dr.K?
"Wilson said that in the week after the Novak column appeared, several journalists told him that the White House was trying to call attention to his wife, apparently hoping to undermine his credibility by implying he had received the Niger assignment only because his wife had suggested the mission and recommended him for the job.
"Each of the reporters quoted the White House official as using some variation on, 'The real story isn't the 16 words. The real story is Wilson and his wife,' " Wilson said. "The time frame led me to deduce that the White House was continuing to try to push this story."
Well - it couldn't happen in Britain, could it? Could Joseph Wilson, the former ambassador who debunked the stories about uranium from Niger, be Bush's Dr.K?
STUFT Stuffed: dodginess of ships chartered for Iraq
Link to report
It is reported that many of the ships chartered by the MoD to transport the Army to Kuwait for the war against Iraq were very dodgy indeed - up to and including the one that was detained by coastguards before it could leave on grounds of safety. This is very un-fantastic news: the military have always used chartered transports, going back beyond the Spanish Armada, and there is a word for it - stuft, or Ships Taken Up From Trade.
For the Falklands, the navy had to mobilise a huge concourse of merchant shipping ranging from the liners Canberra and QE2, vast container ships like the ill-fated Atlantic Conveyor and oil tankers down to trawlers. The P&O ro-ro ferry MV Elk carried so much ammunition that the effect of a direct hit on her in San Carlos would have been "comparable to a nuclear warhead" in the opinion of the amphibious warfare chief of the time, Commodore Michael Clapp. On the way, the civilian sailors of the merchantmen had to work out how to replenish at sea, unload into landing craft and survive under air attack - Conveyor was refuelled south of Ascension Island by the Fleet tanker Tidepool, a ship almost as huge, with the civilian vessel acting as guide. One has to wonder how well - say - MV Johnny, a Greek owned but Maltese flagged vessel detained by the authorities whilst loading for Iraq for a total of 27 safety breaches would have got on. But as usual, the government found nothing at all wrong with hiring a ship on the coastguards' blacklist and even less wrong with breaching its declared policy of opposing more flagging-out. (Did they tell John Prescott?)
It is reported that many of the ships chartered by the MoD to transport the Army to Kuwait for the war against Iraq were very dodgy indeed - up to and including the one that was detained by coastguards before it could leave on grounds of safety. This is very un-fantastic news: the military have always used chartered transports, going back beyond the Spanish Armada, and there is a word for it - stuft, or Ships Taken Up From Trade.
For the Falklands, the navy had to mobilise a huge concourse of merchant shipping ranging from the liners Canberra and QE2, vast container ships like the ill-fated Atlantic Conveyor and oil tankers down to trawlers. The P&O ro-ro ferry MV Elk carried so much ammunition that the effect of a direct hit on her in San Carlos would have been "comparable to a nuclear warhead" in the opinion of the amphibious warfare chief of the time, Commodore Michael Clapp. On the way, the civilian sailors of the merchantmen had to work out how to replenish at sea, unload into landing craft and survive under air attack - Conveyor was refuelled south of Ascension Island by the Fleet tanker Tidepool, a ship almost as huge, with the civilian vessel acting as guide. One has to wonder how well - say - MV Johnny, a Greek owned but Maltese flagged vessel detained by the authorities whilst loading for Iraq for a total of 27 safety breaches would have got on. But as usual, the government found nothing at all wrong with hiring a ship on the coastguards' blacklist and even less wrong with breaching its declared policy of opposing more flagging-out. (Did they tell John Prescott?)
RIP Bar Room Philosophy
One of our partner blogs, the first ever to link to the Ranter, this fine institution has ceased to be. Meanwhile, problems continue with our RSS service. The Confined Space feed still won't update, and our own feed returns meaningless error messages.
Sunday, September 28, 2003
Chechen prime minister 'poisoned'
BBC NEWS Chechen prime minister 'poisoned'
It's still not getting any better. What will happen during the "elections" is anyone's guess. Or fear
It's still not getting any better. What will happen during the "elections" is anyone's guess. Or fear
Saturday, September 27, 2003
Edward Said - and how I fell out with WindsOfChange.Net
It is with disappointment that I have to say that one of the first blogs this one linked too, WindsOfChange.net, is now persona non grata. It was an impressively professional outfit, but their recent and deeply unpleasant attack on Edward Said on the occasion of his death warrants the end of blogging relations.
"Columbia professor Edward Said is dead of leukemia, all praise be to Allah. He was 67. I'd commemorate appropriately by going outside to ululate and fire a Kalashnikov in the air" Link
Well - why? From the tone of Joe Katzman's post, the documents referred to, and the various comments, it was clearly because he said the Palestinians had rights. And it's frankly alarming that anyone writing about him could decide that Arabs are basically barbarians - ululating (like Hollywood Indians) and letting off guns - without apparently feeling any sense of discord with respect to his work on Western perceptions of the East. Nothing could back him up better than outrageous rubbish like this, from one of the blogs WOC referred to:
"Patai's point was that the Sandhurst educated Hussein did not understand that Nassar's straight faced though flowery declarations were not statements of fact, but statements of what he would have liked the facts to have been. Hussein actually believed Nasser was telling "the truth". Had Hussein had a "normal" Arab education, he would have understood that Nassar's statements were not something to be acted upon.
....
After it became too apparent for denial that the Egyptian air force had been destroyed, it became imperative that it should not have been the Israeli defence forces that had inflicted the blow. Nassar and Hussein calmly discussed by telephone, inconveniently tapped by the CIA, how they would blame this on (non-existent) British and American intervention on behalf of the Israelis, a plot Lyndon Johnson branded "the big lie".
Compared to Nassar's inducing King Hussein to put his forces at risk on the basis of assertions that turned out not to be factual, "Comical Ali's" antics were not comical at all, and not so interpreted by those viewing them through the lens of traditional Arab culture and the meaning it gives to assertive declarations.
And when all is said and done, Edward Said, courtesy of the Irish Times, demonstrates for us that these cultural traits survive a transposition to a professorship at Columbia University. He is no doubt in full earnest in declaring his assertions to be logical and truthful.
Whether we would choose to rely on them as facts is another matter."
So - all Arabs are liars. Got that?
And it just gets better. From Mr. Katzman himself:
". But there is a line for me across which I don't feel constrained by social conventions re: the dead - and Said crossed it.
Chomsky is also someone's college professor relative, and you could say the same of Sendero Luminoso's leader Guzman. So "College professor dad" is not by itself an imprimatur of harmlessness or virtue.
Nor is meeting someone and finding them to be nice. Many Jews commented, in all seriousness and after the Holocaust, on the fact that Adolf Eichmann was a "nice guy" in person. It means nothing.
Now, having established those principles there is a big difference within the comparison set. Guzman and Eichmann killed people, or ordered their deaths. Chomsky and Said do not, confining their activities to trying to prevent others from defending themselves. That is still a moral distinction of significance, and should be acknowledged."
Really? An impressive and gracious concession, having found it necessary to compare Said with Eichmann in the first place.
"That said, in terms of their effect on the ground the distinction between being the prime excuse maker, denier, and apologist vs. an active terrorist or agent of genocide is somewhat blurred. The one enables the other, and thereby inherits some of the other's moral taint"
Go! Just go! No more!
"Columbia professor Edward Said is dead of leukemia, all praise be to Allah. He was 67. I'd commemorate appropriately by going outside to ululate and fire a Kalashnikov in the air" Link
Well - why? From the tone of Joe Katzman's post, the documents referred to, and the various comments, it was clearly because he said the Palestinians had rights. And it's frankly alarming that anyone writing about him could decide that Arabs are basically barbarians - ululating (like Hollywood Indians) and letting off guns - without apparently feeling any sense of discord with respect to his work on Western perceptions of the East. Nothing could back him up better than outrageous rubbish like this, from one of the blogs WOC referred to:
"Patai's point was that the Sandhurst educated Hussein did not understand that Nassar's straight faced though flowery declarations were not statements of fact, but statements of what he would have liked the facts to have been. Hussein actually believed Nasser was telling "the truth". Had Hussein had a "normal" Arab education, he would have understood that Nassar's statements were not something to be acted upon.
....
After it became too apparent for denial that the Egyptian air force had been destroyed, it became imperative that it should not have been the Israeli defence forces that had inflicted the blow. Nassar and Hussein calmly discussed by telephone, inconveniently tapped by the CIA, how they would blame this on (non-existent) British and American intervention on behalf of the Israelis, a plot Lyndon Johnson branded "the big lie".
Compared to Nassar's inducing King Hussein to put his forces at risk on the basis of assertions that turned out not to be factual, "Comical Ali's" antics were not comical at all, and not so interpreted by those viewing them through the lens of traditional Arab culture and the meaning it gives to assertive declarations.
And when all is said and done, Edward Said, courtesy of the Irish Times, demonstrates for us that these cultural traits survive a transposition to a professorship at Columbia University. He is no doubt in full earnest in declaring his assertions to be logical and truthful.
Whether we would choose to rely on them as facts is another matter."
So - all Arabs are liars. Got that?
And it just gets better. From Mr. Katzman himself:
". But there is a line for me across which I don't feel constrained by social conventions re: the dead - and Said crossed it.
Chomsky is also someone's college professor relative, and you could say the same of Sendero Luminoso's leader Guzman. So "College professor dad" is not by itself an imprimatur of harmlessness or virtue.
Nor is meeting someone and finding them to be nice. Many Jews commented, in all seriousness and after the Holocaust, on the fact that Adolf Eichmann was a "nice guy" in person. It means nothing.
Now, having established those principles there is a big difference within the comparison set. Guzman and Eichmann killed people, or ordered their deaths. Chomsky and Said do not, confining their activities to trying to prevent others from defending themselves. That is still a moral distinction of significance, and should be acknowledged."
Really? An impressive and gracious concession, having found it necessary to compare Said with Eichmann in the first place.
"That said, in terms of their effect on the ground the distinction between being the prime excuse maker, denier, and apologist vs. an active terrorist or agent of genocide is somewhat blurred. The one enables the other, and thereby inherits some of the other's moral taint"
Go! Just go! No more!
Thursday, September 25, 2003
No weapons of mass destruction; war all a mistake!
So, the Iraq Survey Group's report says they have found nothing at all in Iraq. What a shocker! This body was, of course, the super-super wondersquad far beter than any wimpy eurosexual surrender-monkey UN inspectors who would tear aside the veil of excuses and deceit and....something like that anyway. And they appear to agree with Hans Blix's conclusions - Iraq certainly showed an interest in WMD, and had possessed them in the past, but had no actual arms. It's worth pointing out just how crushing the leak is - it's not just the headline, 45 mins to doomsday, stockpiles of smallpox-sarin-and-just-maybe-nukes stuff that they say is rubbish. It's the whole lot - the 3,000 tonnes of precursor chemicals? Er...no. The plan to make a Czech L29 jet trainer into a germ spraying drone? Not a sausage. (And anyway, that was always dodgy - surely, a fast jet of unknown provenance would be detected if aimed at a city? And if it was used on the battlefield, such a craft would be very vulnerable to ground fire, being unable to manoeuvre.)
Before the government cranks up its bullshit machine, let's consider the excuses they are likely to use. Firstly, they will likely say that the leak is from "only an interim report". True, but most of the ISG has now left Iraq. Elvis has left the building and there won't be any more music. The only differences between this one and the final version will come from editing. Far be it from me to suggest that it will be sexed up. Secondly, there's that wonderful crack about "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". It's not logically possible to prove absence. How do you prove there is no elephant next to you? The ISG weren't sent to find absence, they were sent to find weapons. What is much more important is the utter lack of any evidence of presence. Thirdly, and Jack Straw has already begun this, they will claim that old UN reports "prove" there were weapons. The absurdity of this after all the belittling of UNMOVIC is clear. And this is like believing there is a dog in your garden because the government told you - after searching the garden and finding no dog, not even a dog turd or dog pawprints. The last option will be to claim that the ISG report means the opposite of what it says. This has already begun. The ISG have apparently found documents concerning weapons. This is not good enough! Iraq used to have chemical arms,and tried to make biological and nuclear ones. It is vanishingly, piss-antly obvious, dull, and insignificant that their archives contain papers on this. Equally pathetic is the line that Iraq "could have made" the weapons. So could we. So could Canada or Switzerland or Japan or Brazil - in fact any country with a decent university science faculty and a fair-ish industrial base.
There they are. Don't swallow them. Demonstrate on Saturday in Hyde Park.
Before the government cranks up its bullshit machine, let's consider the excuses they are likely to use. Firstly, they will likely say that the leak is from "only an interim report". True, but most of the ISG has now left Iraq. Elvis has left the building and there won't be any more music. The only differences between this one and the final version will come from editing. Far be it from me to suggest that it will be sexed up. Secondly, there's that wonderful crack about "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". It's not logically possible to prove absence. How do you prove there is no elephant next to you? The ISG weren't sent to find absence, they were sent to find weapons. What is much more important is the utter lack of any evidence of presence. Thirdly, and Jack Straw has already begun this, they will claim that old UN reports "prove" there were weapons. The absurdity of this after all the belittling of UNMOVIC is clear. And this is like believing there is a dog in your garden because the government told you - after searching the garden and finding no dog, not even a dog turd or dog pawprints. The last option will be to claim that the ISG report means the opposite of what it says. This has already begun. The ISG have apparently found documents concerning weapons. This is not good enough! Iraq used to have chemical arms,and tried to make biological and nuclear ones. It is vanishingly, piss-antly obvious, dull, and insignificant that their archives contain papers on this. Equally pathetic is the line that Iraq "could have made" the weapons. So could we. So could Canada or Switzerland or Japan or Brazil - in fact any country with a decent university science faculty and a fair-ish industrial base.
There they are. Don't swallow them. Demonstrate on Saturday in Hyde Park.
Wednesday, September 24, 2003
Admin: Archives down
For your information, the archives have gone missing. I will sort this at the first opportunity. Sorry.
Amusing Hutton facts and Op. IRAQI FREEDOM II
So - the smoking gun is here. It would appear that Jonathan Powell, the No.10 chief of staff, sent an email asking for a statement that Saddam Hussein would only use gas if his regime was under threat to be taken out of the dossier because "it backs up the argument that there is no threat and we will only create one if we attack him". To sum up, so far the inquiry has clearly proven that:
a) the dossier was altered to make it more propagandistically useful
b) Kelly did know about it and had seen both versions
c) senior members of the defence intelligence staff were angry about the stuff put in the dossier
d) Alastair Campbell was involved in the process and asked for anything else that would strengthen the dossier to be sent up
e)that No.10 Downing Street was behind this strengthening
Or to put it slightly differently - "the dossier was transformed by No.10 Downing Street to make it more sexy..." So what's left to argue about? All I'll say is this: remember to turn out for Operation IRAQI FREEDOM II, the national demonstration in London this Saturday. We were right all along.
a) the dossier was altered to make it more propagandistically useful
b) Kelly did know about it and had seen both versions
c) senior members of the defence intelligence staff were angry about the stuff put in the dossier
d) Alastair Campbell was involved in the process and asked for anything else that would strengthen the dossier to be sent up
e)that No.10 Downing Street was behind this strengthening
Or to put it slightly differently - "the dossier was transformed by No.10 Downing Street to make it more sexy..." So what's left to argue about? All I'll say is this: remember to turn out for Operation IRAQI FREEDOM II, the national demonstration in London this Saturday. We were right all along.
Tuesday, September 23, 2003
How the ISC caught Straw and didn't realise
In the Intelligence and Security Committee's otherwise weak and scared report tho other day, there was a minor gem of truth. In the past on this blog, I made the point that the Hutton Inquiry had demonstrated that Jack Straw's excuse to the Foreign Affairs Committee was dishonest. Straw, you might dimly recall, made the lawyerish argument that "deployed" only meant "made available to units" and that the 45 minutes claim was "unremarkable" because "an order to use them would not be given unless they were available". The Hutton papers, however, made it clear that they did indeed mean "fired". And the ISC details state that specifically "some weapons could be fired within 20-45 minutes of an order to do so". So Jack Straw was lying to the FAC. But no-one appears to have noticed. Sadly the performance of both committees suggests that neither group would have been particularly willing to catch a minister fibbing.
Concerning the Home Office (again)
It strikes me, with reference to the ID issue, that this proposal keeps coming back for reasons of bureaucratic ecology. The Home Office's business is control, and any new function or technology or policy that adds to the size and expense of the control business will be loved there - organisations seek first of all their own expansion, as Mr. Parkinson put it.
Monday, September 22, 2003
YOUR PAPERS PLEASE! and how the Home Office's mind works
So - it's almost here. David Blunkett is apparently pressing to get a Bill creating national identity cards in the Queen's Speech. And - after all the babble about "entitlement cards" that wouldn't be called ID cards so as to be more cuddly, voluntary schemes and the like - he wants them to be compulsory, universal and requestable by the police. (What was less unpleasant about a card whose sole purpose was to show that you weren't an Evil Bogus Foreigner and therefore could be treated in hospital without offence to the Mail, anyway?) According to today's Guardian, the cards would not be "compulsory in the sense that you would have to carry them in the street" but you could be ordered to produce one. Which makes so much sense.
But why this grey and grim insistence on IDs? One thing about this issue that may please Mr. B is that it never seems to go away - I can barely remember a time when the government wasn't mulling over the idea. Perhaps he is hoping that everyone will be so tired and bored that we won't notice. Howard, Straw, Blunkett - all the last three home secretaries went over the issue of identity cards at tiresome length. This is a common feature of the Home Office, though - it does not invent new policies, it only recycles. The same things come up over and over again. Cutting state support for refugees who haven't registered as soon as a bureaucrat thinks was possible? Yeah, been there before. Watered-down ID cards? Many times. Real ID cards? Yadda, yadda, yadda. "Britishness"? "Citizenship"? Remember John Patten and Michael Howard and their touching belief that more Union Jacks in schools would keep the little buggers from going criminal? My law-enforcement expert (or to be clearer, my dad) is of the view that the only Home Secretary to do anything original with the police since Robert Peel was Roy Jenkins (more cars, personal radios, the beginning of computerisation, breath tests and speed traps). This is not new and not good. After all, let's have a look at why Blunkett wants to number us. His most recent statements on this were on a TV show yesterday - ain't parliamentary democracy great? - when he was asked how many illegal immigrants were in Britain. This is obviously a question with no answer - how do you count people who by definition avoid being counted?
But Blunkers, having conceded this, went on to deliver a paean to identity cards. Apparently he wants to "regain trust on asylum and immigration, and one of those trusts is knowing who is here". One of those trusts? Eh?
Apart from moaning about the English, note that it's not supposed to be about driving refugees away - but about regaining trust. Making the public think that the Home Office is in control - that is to say, doing something in order to be seen doing something. Great. And what a noble cause. Not attempting to convict criminals or detect terrorists, but denying refugees food money more efficiently. For this high goal, we are all to be charged £40 a shot (and you can bet your eyes that this stealth-tax opportunity will not go unnoticed at the Treasury) and individually numbered. What opportunities this will give to the police racists' club. Where once you had to find an excuse to stop and search a black person, now all you need do to amuse yourself on a long shift is to ask a few for their papers (please). This is worrying, and for wider reasons too. Rather like Blair's old back-of-a-napkin job concerning on the spot fines, it will be a breach of the best British policing traditions, an opportunity for corruption, and another move away from investigative policing by consent towards national-security policing of a population assumed hostile.
Mind you, though - one thing it will be is yet another addition to Blair's stack of toxic policies. If it's "suicide to retreat" from foundation hospitals (which both the people who understand them dislike and everyone else hates), tuition fees/top-up fees (which everyone hates), the occupation of Iraq (do you see a pattern emerging?) - then surely this is another suicide project far too vital to abandon! Straight against the wind, right into the seas, heading dead straight for the rocks. Nelson could turn a blind eye - but only because he was right. This lot look more and more like Sir Clowdesley Shovell, who ran his whole fleet onto the Isles of Scilly and got murdered by the locals.
But why this grey and grim insistence on IDs? One thing about this issue that may please Mr. B is that it never seems to go away - I can barely remember a time when the government wasn't mulling over the idea. Perhaps he is hoping that everyone will be so tired and bored that we won't notice. Howard, Straw, Blunkett - all the last three home secretaries went over the issue of identity cards at tiresome length. This is a common feature of the Home Office, though - it does not invent new policies, it only recycles. The same things come up over and over again. Cutting state support for refugees who haven't registered as soon as a bureaucrat thinks was possible? Yeah, been there before. Watered-down ID cards? Many times. Real ID cards? Yadda, yadda, yadda. "Britishness"? "Citizenship"? Remember John Patten and Michael Howard and their touching belief that more Union Jacks in schools would keep the little buggers from going criminal? My law-enforcement expert (or to be clearer, my dad) is of the view that the only Home Secretary to do anything original with the police since Robert Peel was Roy Jenkins (more cars, personal radios, the beginning of computerisation, breath tests and speed traps). This is not new and not good. After all, let's have a look at why Blunkett wants to number us. His most recent statements on this were on a TV show yesterday - ain't parliamentary democracy great? - when he was asked how many illegal immigrants were in Britain. This is obviously a question with no answer - how do you count people who by definition avoid being counted?
But Blunkers, having conceded this, went on to deliver a paean to identity cards. Apparently he wants to "regain trust on asylum and immigration, and one of those trusts is knowing who is here". One of those trusts? Eh?
Apart from moaning about the English, note that it's not supposed to be about driving refugees away - but about regaining trust. Making the public think that the Home Office is in control - that is to say, doing something in order to be seen doing something. Great. And what a noble cause. Not attempting to convict criminals or detect terrorists, but denying refugees food money more efficiently. For this high goal, we are all to be charged £40 a shot (and you can bet your eyes that this stealth-tax opportunity will not go unnoticed at the Treasury) and individually numbered. What opportunities this will give to the police racists' club. Where once you had to find an excuse to stop and search a black person, now all you need do to amuse yourself on a long shift is to ask a few for their papers (please). This is worrying, and for wider reasons too. Rather like Blair's old back-of-a-napkin job concerning on the spot fines, it will be a breach of the best British policing traditions, an opportunity for corruption, and another move away from investigative policing by consent towards national-security policing of a population assumed hostile.
Mind you, though - one thing it will be is yet another addition to Blair's stack of toxic policies. If it's "suicide to retreat" from foundation hospitals (which both the people who understand them dislike and everyone else hates), tuition fees/top-up fees (which everyone hates), the occupation of Iraq (do you see a pattern emerging?) - then surely this is another suicide project far too vital to abandon! Straight against the wind, right into the seas, heading dead straight for the rocks. Nelson could turn a blind eye - but only because he was right. This lot look more and more like Sir Clowdesley Shovell, who ran his whole fleet onto the Isles of Scilly and got murdered by the locals.
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