Tessa Jowell can do no wrong

Today we begin what will hopefully be an ongoing series entitled ‘Short and Snappy Tales of Career Death’….

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin…

Boom. The End.

Did you enjoy that, children?

:o)








Posted in Tony 'King Blair | 1 Comment

Remember these words…

“Class A drug users should be forced into residential drug programmes and removed from society until they clean up their act. If they fall back into their old habits when they return to the general community then we should have a three strikes and you’re out rule, culminating in very long sentences.” – The Sun, Tuesday 28 February 2006








Posted in Rupert 'The Evil One' Murdoch | 3 Comments

Father figures

BBC – Drugs arrest for George Michael

1. Both the Sun and the Mirror have gone with the inspired headline; ‘Careless Spliffer’… clearly this has something to do with the phenomena of Simultaneous Discovery.

2. Tabloid editors never take drugs. Never ever ever. And if they did, they would almost certainly use them responsibly. They would not, for instance, go on a violent coked-up rampage in London.

3. Murdoch’s paper’s in particular do not have an axe to grind: His 2002 single Shoot The Dog – with a slur about the 9/11 atrocity – sickened many fans. It portrayed Tony Blair as George Bush’s yapping poodle and the two leading statesmen as gay lovers.

4. Disappointingly, today’s Page 3 girl doesn’t spare so much as a single ‘tut’ for George. Instead, Krystle (23, from Manchester) backs new school discipline measures and says: “It’s great parents are to be hauled in for detention. Discipline shouldn’t just be up to teachers.”

Or the police, for that matter. No, for true justice we must turn to the tabloids.








Posted in Page 3 - News in Briefs, Rupert 'The Evil One' Murdoch | 6 Comments

Is this a carrot I see before me?

Independent – Blueprint to give power to the people

Guardian – Brown backs votes at 16 in radical shakeup of politics

Accountability before promises of reform, please.








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Tony Blair’s approach to torture

Observer – Using terror to fight terror: The first English-speaking prisoners to be freed from Guantanamo, they told of abusive interrogation sessions, of worthless false ‘confessions’ and frequent beatings by an ‘immediate reaction force’ of guards. In the days after the story’s publication, government agencies on both sides of the Atlantic did what they could to neutralise its influence. In the US, Pentagon spokesmen told reporters that the Tipton Three’s claims were simply untrue. According to Steve Rodriguez, Guantanamo’s chief interrogator, he and his staff had gathered intelligence so valuable that, ‘We have been able as a result of information gained here to take operational actions, even military campaigns.’ As the New York Times dutifully recorded, he emphatically denied ‘the specific allegations of mistreatment made by prisoners recently returned to Britain’. Less than three months later, internal US administration memos confirmed that the treatment described by the three men corresponded exactly to official Pentagon policy. In London, the spin machine chose Trevor Kavanagh, then political editor of The Sun. Sourcing his claims to the London US embassy, he wrote that two of the three Tipton men had trained to be killers at an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan in 2000 – ignoring the fact that MI5 had already proved that they did not leave Britain at any time that year. Kavanagh quoted an anonymous cabinet minister: ‘God knows why we are bringing these people back to Britain. The best thing that could happen is that they fell out of the plane somewhere over the Atlantic.’

Short version: Forget the foreigners and foreign nationals; Mr Liberty only campaigned for the Brits to be released… and when they were released he sought to downplay revelations of torture by briefing against them. What a guy.








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The queen of denial can kiss my asp

Tony Blair – I don’t destroy liberties, I protect them: There is a charge, crafted by parts of the right wing and now taken up by parts of the left, that New Labour is authoritarian, in particular, that I am. We are intent on savaging British liberties, locking up those who dissent and we abhor parliamentary or other accountability.

It’s a vast right-wing conspiracy?

Oi! That’s my line!

Compare and contrast with; New law protects the right to protest.

More here… Perfect.co.uk – Liberty? You have no idea how lucky you are

UPDATE – Mr Liberty’s bleat receives a thorough and well-deserved fisking over at BlairWatch








Posted in Tony 'King Blair | 1 Comment

Dublin riots – as reported by bloggers

Slugger O’Toole has an excellent round-up of eyewitness accounts, and is bound to follow with some excellent analysis.








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This will please you greatly

Brokeback to the future








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David Yelland would like a job

David Yelland is an expert on tabloids, and he would like a job back in the tabloids… where he can once again swim as he pleases in that familiar and shallow puddle of yesteryear.

Oh, go on… pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease?

(Minions of Murdoch, please take note; this is your fate… if you’re lucky.)








Posted in Rupert 'The Evil One' Murdoch | Comments Off on David Yelland would like a job

When will they arrest Steve Coogan, I wonder?

ComingSoon.net – Winterbottom & Coogan Reunite for Murder: Director Michael Winterbottom revealed this week that his company Revolution has optioned Murder in Samarkand, the memoirs of Craig Murray, the former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan. Comedian Steve Coogan is in the frame to play Murray, who was sacked in 2004 after drawing attention to torture and human rights abuses in Uzbekistan.

UPDATE – How long do you think it will be before The Downing Street Echo starts asking the question; “When did Steve Coogan stop being funny?”… before coming to the ‘obvious’ conclusion that it was when he ‘lost’ his direction by finding one?








Posted in It's War! It's Legal! It's Lovely! | Comments Off on When will they arrest Steve Coogan, I wonder?