I went to the newsagent (right?) and went to turn to Page 3 of The Scum (right?) – only to check for a serious editorial (right?) – only it weren’t The Scum I were looking at… it were The Mirror (right?!!):
UPDATE (20 Jan) – Ah, now *that’s* more like it.
This is only a private view; it is not meant to prompt action… yet.
Australian Broadcasting Corporation – Swiss paper claims proof of secret US torture camps: A newspaper in Switzerland has published what it believes is the first concrete proof that the US is operating secret interrogation camps for terrorist suspects in Eastern Europe. The SonntagsBlick newspaper obtained a fax sent by the Egyptian Government to its embassy in London, which apparently reveals that Egypt is aware of Iraqis and Afghans being questioned at a camp in Romania.
The SonntagsBlick report is here. Below the fold is a translation into English
The reaction from their government? Typical:
SwissInfo – Cabinet condemns CIA leak: The cabinet has strongly criticised the publication of a secret document on alleged CIA prisons in eastern Europe. It said the publication of the classified document in the mass-circulation Sunday newspaper, SonntagsBlick, had damaged the credibility of the country.
This man was arrested and taken into police custody on August 1st 2005 during a protest in Parliament Square, London. No one present at that protest has reported seeing him or hearing from him since he was bundled into a police van and taken away. Police now claim to have no knowledge or record of this man, or of his arrest.
Okay, gang. Let’s, like, split up and search for clues.
I’ll provide links as they come in. In the meantime, I have a question…
When will Sergeant Tim Nunn be fired, fined, or prosecuted for lying under oath?
Independent – Labour peers will try to extend terror detention limit to 60 days: Pro-Government peers are planning to rewrite the Terrorism Bill to let police hold suspects without charge for up to 60 days. They claim that the 28-day limit set by MPs is too short, but critics say they are engaged in political manoeuvring… Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale, a Labour peer and former intelligence officer, said: “It’s our duty, as well as our right, to ask the Commons to think again. They never debated the proposal that there should be a limit of up to 60 days – and it’s ‘up to 60 days’, not ’60 days’, just as it was ‘up to 90 days’.”
Closely followed by; “What about 49 days? No-one debated 49 days, did they?” FFS…
Witness the kiss of death:
BBC – Kelly ‘will keep education job’: Ms Kelly has come under fire over the decision to allow a registered sex offender to work as a PE teacher…. But the prime minister’s official spokesman said the education secretary had Mr Blair’s full support.
More (and I do mean more):
Guardian – Kelly admits more sex offenders in school jobs: Ruth Kelly yesterday admitted that there had been more cases where ministers gave approval for registered sex offenders to work in schools and ordered a review of each decision.
UPDATE – New pic and linkage at B3ta.
UPDATE – It’s the theme that will not die. I’ll be lining up for a job with the Daily Mail next.
I’m running a little experiment by auctioning a month’s worth of advertising on Bloggerheads. Just in case you’re interested.
(Placement is on individual posts – i.e. not on the front page – and you’re looking at about 30,000 impressions from 20,000 unique visitors.)
The UK Today – Showing a little Respect: I could spend time pulling the whole thing to pieces, but in all honesty that would be a waste of both your time and mine. New Labour, and Blair in particular, has shown time and again a complete inability to deliver on the fundamental issues facing society, and Respect is just another case in point.
It’s the sheer arrogance that gives me cause for concern… cheerily, this point and the core problem as I see it is covered by Justin in his autopsy of this dead duck (the first of many to reach our shores):
Chicken Yoghurt – Reject Action Plan: In his “Prime Minister’s Foreword” to the document, Blair says: “If we are to achieve the vision of the Britain that we all want, then there is no room for cynicism.” The trouble of is, after nearly nine years of dossiers, initiatives, war, evasion, obfuscation and downright lies, cynicism must be hard wired into the psyches of half of the newspaper reading public.
There’s also this view, expressed by Tony Blair on Radio 4 yesterday:
“We have got to get past the idea that the so-called civil liberties of that minority come ahead of the civil liberties of the vast majority of decent people.” – Tony Blair
“So-called civil liberties”… a phrase that’s already aptly described here as ‘proto-fascistic’.
“Decent people”… well, that’s the kind of rhetoric I’d expect from the most right-wing of Tories, but I’m not telling you anything new here, so I’ll move on….
While building this special ‘Respect’ page I had to opportunity to look through the META Tags of the Labour website. They appear below:
meta name=”description” content=”The official British Labour Party website – get the latest news on the Party and find out how you can get involved.”
meta name=”keywords” content=”Labour Party uk government tony blair prime minister students STUDENTS vote britain Uk politics parliament Britain partnership in power LABOUR PARTY labor Government Prime Minister Tony Blair Charles Clarke political news budget forethought members ALC nhs environment Scottish Labour Party constituency MP MEP councillor Gordon Brown environment Politics education New Deal jobs economy crime John Prescott Membership association of Labour councillors pension Young Labour TONY BLAIR MEMBER Welsh Labour Party LABOR BRITAIN local elections CONFERENCE GOVERNMENT EDUCATION NHS health schools UK POLICY FORETHOUGHT election ELECTION Crime Economy The Labour Party, Britain forward, not back”
meta name=”abstract” content=”The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few. Where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe. And where we live together, freely, in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect.”
The very long and unformatted keyword list I present primarily for your amusement. The real point of interest is the passage that I’ve highlighted in bold:
“The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party.”
Minus the socialism and chipping away daily at our democracy… a good thing that this has – quite correctly – been classified as an ‘abstract’ view. Moving on…
Independent – Our failing schools: one in eight children gets sub-standard education
Poor schooling equals a poor start (there’s a nice sound-bite for you). Blair’s solution is to tack on a new school program to ‘teach’ children about decent behaviour instead of dealing with one of the core problems.
Even with the best schooling (and point-by-point lectures on behaving like a ‘decent’ person), those who are poor of pocket soon fall behind, due to a variety of consequences from lack of proper diet to lack of resources and – in some areas – close-to-total exclusion (this is where the aforementioned ‘decent’ people shut you out because you’re poor and you smell).
This is what drives anti-social behaviour. Even some of the sensible stuff tucked away in this gimmick-ridden package takes a ‘top down’ approach, when the most positive thing that could come from the top is a good example.
Sadly, the nearest thing we got to respect from Blair was a short-lived period of contrition following a slapping at the last election… closely followed by new laws designed to stop people questioning his authority.
Perhaps this is the real reason behind his anti-graffiti initiative. If anyone’s going to be overly-sensitive about the writing on the wall…
Click here for the alternative ‘respect’ campaign.
UPDATE – How amusing. Search for ‘tony blair respect’ in Google today and the top search result is that post election moment… but the 2nd-to-top search result is this pre-election moment. Both reveal the level of respect that Blair has for us.
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