How Warwickshire helped give Britain the fireworks bug

Great to be interviewed by Richard Williams of BBC CWR about my new book 'A History of Fireworks from their Origins to the Present Day' (Reaktion Books). We talked about Elizabeth I's love of fireworks, about two major displays she went to at Warwick (pictured) and Kenilworth Castles, how the Warwick one got out of hand and killed a couple of people in the town, about Britain's first firework display, about when fireworks first started to be used to celebrate 5 November and much more. The interview is in two parts. Part 1 is about 1 hr 18 mins in, and Part 2 about 2 hrs 19 mins in

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0jy2h4v

So Farewell then, 'Question of Sport'. My part in its downfall

So after 53 years, Question of  Sport is being axed by the BBC because of the squeeze the Conservatives government has applied to the corporation's finances while it let inflation rip.

Back in 1969 or 70, I took part in the pilot programme that led to what was then A Question of Sport  being commissioned. At the time I was working as a radio outside broadcasts producer in the BBC's North Region, based in Manchester. Out of the blue, I got a phone call asking if I could go to what were then the corporation's television studios in the city at a converted church in Dickenson Road (pictured), which was also the birthplace of Top of the Pops.

The programme was presented by David Vine, and among my fellow panellists was the distinguished football reporter Dennis Lowe.

I remember getting a question about a piece of film featuring a runner, who I correctly identified as the great Czech athlete Emil Zatopek and also correctly said that at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki he had won the 5,000 metres, the 10,000 metres and the Marathon in his first ever run over the distance. No one, incidentally, has ever managed to repeat his treble.

In spite of my stunning performance I was never invited to take part in one of the many transmitted programmes, with the producers unaccountably preferring panellists such as Henry Cooper, Brendan Foster, Fred Trueman, Emlyn Hughes and Princess Anne.

Nightmare in Brexitland: The Crown returns! But here's the scene you won't see

Take your seats for the new series of The Crown. But here's the scene you won't be seeing. Its contents were exclusively revealed in this blog on 13 September 2020. Now read on:

Boris Johnson's 115th Dream
Boris and Carrie are sitting watching television. 

 ‘Oh great! The Crown!’

‘Oh yes. World-beating! But wait a minute, Carrie. That caption says May 3, 2021. None of this has happened yet. How can they know about it?’

‘Shh. I’m trying to watch the programme.’

‘Oh God! I don’t look like that. Surely they could have found somebody better looking! And he’s nearly bald!  Where’s the phone. I’m going to get on to that new head honcho we put in – Davey Somebody – and make him take this off.’

 ‘Boris! It’s not the BBC, it’s Netflix. Now shut up and listen.’

‘Oh. I was expecting to see the Queen.’

A hint of a mirthless smile flickers beneath an impressive moustache. ‘I’m afraid Her Majesty is otherwise engaged. She asked me to see you on her behalf.’

‘Hold on!  I recognise you. You’re Tommy Lascelles. You were in the last series or the one before. You can’t meet me, because you’re dead.’

Unlike his interlocutor, the urbane functionary is not in the least nonplussed. ‘Don’t believe everything you read on Wikipedia, Mr Johnson. It sometimes…….exaggerates.’

‘You mean “prime minister”’

‘Mr Johnson.’ The mirthless smile was back.

‘Well, the point is that once parliament has passed this ‘Unilateral Cancellation of EU Trade Agreement Bill’, I’ll need HMQ to give the Royal Assent pronto, so we can implement the populi voluntatem without delay and all that.’

‘And, of course, if you ask Her Majesty to take that action, she will have to comply.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Which is precisely why you will not do it.’

‘What do you mean, Lascelles? You can’t obstruct the will of the people.’

‘I have here a few papers for your perusal.’ (The phrase: ‘Restricted. Top Secret. Not for Fatman’s eyes’ is fleetingly visible on one.)

‘Oh. I’ll take them back to number 10. Dom reads that kind of stuff for me.’

‘The papers will not be leaving this room, and, Mr Cummings is (Lascelles consults his watch) as of now, ‘a guest of Her Majesty’, as I think they say in the films. Apparently something about his time in Russia?’

‘There’s no point trying to frighten me about leaking stuff to the press. The ephemerides are all in my pocket and the BBC daren’t sneeze without my say so.’

The immaculately turned out royal servant produces a newspaper and eases it across the table. ‘If the papers I showed you a moment ago are too voluminous, perhaps you might cast your eye over this?’

“‘Bang Up Boris’ call. Gove poised for No 10.” What’s this?

‘The front page of tomorrow morning’s (Lascelles raises his eyebrows and utters the next word as though wiping something nasty off the sole of his Berluti Oxford) Sun. I managed to persuade them to tone it down from ‘string up’ to ‘bang up’.’

‘That bastard Gove! It’s a fake, Rupert would never do this to me.’

‘If you examine the papers I suggested you should read, you will see that some (the pause is followed by the same tone of voice used for ‘Sun’) gentlemen who had hoped to profit from certain actions of yours felt they had not received the degree of forewarning you promised, and so have not profited as much as they had anticipated.’

‘Can I get my mobile?’

‘As you know, these audiences are strictly mobile-free.’

‘Then I need to get back to Number 10 right now.’

‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible. Some kind of security alert. The police say there’s a suspected criminal in the building. However (it’s that mirthless smile again) should you wish to avail yourself of a generous offer from President Putin, you may leave now and take asylum in Krasnoyarsk.’

‘What the hell is that?’

‘A place in Siberia. The president has provided special transport from here to the airport, and your flight leaves in a couple of hours. Aeroflot. I’m afraid he couldn’t get business class.’

‘You can’t do this. I’m the prime minister! I’m the prime minister!’

‘Oh Boris, do shut up! That’s the third time this week. Anyway it’s eleven o’ clock. Time for even you to get up. What are these dreams you keep having? Is it always the same one?

Brexitwatch: how the BBC should be interviewing Brexit-ers

I have just sent this complaint, which also includes helpful suggestions, to the BBC:

"It is immensely frustrating to hear Brexit apologists run rings around BBC interviewers day after day with lies, evasions and obfuscations. It is the duty of your interviewers to take a far tougher line.

So if a Brexit-er tells you that Yellowhammer is out of date, a Remainer plot, that everything is now sorted, that the government is preparing for no-deal, etc, etc, the next question should be:
‘So do you guarantee that Brexit will not cause any shortage of medicines, foods or fuel or a hard border in Ireland?’ If the Brexit-er equivocates, they need to be pressed hard: ‘So what might there be shortages of? How long could these shortages last?' etc

If they say: ‘well I can’t tell you exactly’, the next question should be: ‘shouldn’t you know exactly how serious the shortages are going to be before you inflict them on our country?’

If the Brexit-er re-iterates that no-deal is nothing to fear and that everything will be fine, the next question should be: ‘so do you guarantee that you will resign if there are shortages of medicines, food or fuel or a hard border in Ireland?’

BBC interviewing on Brexit so far has let the country down. The UK is now facing its worst crisis since World War Two. If the BBC lets us down again, its reputation will never recover."

Brexitwatch: BBC fails to address my complaint

In my post for April 19, I put up the letter I sent to the BBC complaining about its failure to challenge the constant lies trotted out by pro-Brexit speakers. I particulary wanted to know why BBC interviewers never ask:

1. Why should we have to obey the result of a referendum that was won by lying, cheating and criminality?

2. Why should we have to obey the result of a referendum in which voters were promised a Brexit that is not being and cannot be delivered?

3. Why are we pretending we have to obey the result of a referendum that was explicitly non-binding and advisory?

I received a reply which did not address any of these points: 

Dear Mr Withington

Thank you for contacting the BBC.

I understand you feel BBC News has shown a consistent bias in favour of Brexit and failed to properly question the assertions of those who are in favour of Brexit.

Naturally we regret when any member of our audience is unhappy with any aspect of what we do. We have received a wide range of feedback about our coverage of this story across our news programmes and bulletins. Keeping in mind pressures on licence fee resources, this response seeks to address the key points raised. That said, we apologise in advance if your complaint has not been specifically addressed here.

We aim to cover the ongoing Brexit negotiations with due impartiality. This means we carry a wide range of views about the European Union from across the political spectrum on our output.

We approach the story with the required level of impartiality, with input from various commentators and experts. 'Feedback' on BBC Radio 4 has addressed the issue of complaints about how we cover the story. Our Chief Political Adviser and the controller of the BBC's daily news programming joined Today presenter Nick Robinson, to discuss the common complaints from all sides. You may be interested in the sections at 3mins and 13mins especially:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09z688x

As with any story we cover, BBC News does not have an opinion on the European Union, or on the UK’s position within it. Instead we try to explain the different and sometimes complex issues affecting our audience during Brexit. Our aim is to give them the information they need in order to follow the process clearly.

We appreciate your concerns and hope this helps to explain how we approach our reporting of this subject. Nonetheless, I understand this is something you feel strongly about and I’ve included your points on our audience feedback report that is sent to senior management and programme makers each morning and ensures that your complaint has been seen by the right people quickly. This helps inform their decisions about current and future output.

We appreciate you taking the time to register your views on this matter as it is greatly helpful in informing future decisions at the BBC.

Thanks again for getting in touch.

Kind regards

John Hamill

BBC Complaints Team

I have now complained about this response as follows:

I made a very specific complaint about how interviews with Brexit supporters are conducted on BBC programmes, and about how interviewers appear to constantly suppress crucial facts. I asked you whether this was because they were ignorant or because they were instructed not to raise certain issues inconvenient for the Brexit case. I also asked you if there was an instruction, from whom did it come.

You did not address any of these points, and instead delivered a standard, generic response claiming: 'we try to be fair'. The key points are below. I would be grateful if this time you address them.

Day after day, Brexit supporters are allowed to spout that the UK has to leave the EU because 'people voted for it'. (Most of them have by now given up any pretence that Brexit has any benefits.)

I used to work for the BBC as well as other broadcasting organisations, and I would have been asking these interviewees:

1. Why should we have to obey the result of a referendum that was won by lying, cheating and criminality?

2. Why should we have to obey the result of a referendum in which voters were promised a Brexit that is not being and cannot be delivered?

3. Why are we pretending we have to obey the result of a referendum that was explicitly non-binding and advisory?

I have heard many, many Brexiters being interviewed on your programmes, but I have NEVER heard one of your interviewers putting these points. Why is that? Is it because they are ignorant of the facts or is it because an edict has come from on high forbidding them from raising these inconvenient facts. If it is the latter, from whom does it come?

Brexitwatch: another complaint to the BBC

The BBC's performance has been so lamentable that I could complain every day about the way pro-Brexit interviewees are allowed to spout their lies on programme after programme without even a token challenge.

But I've finally lost patience, and written to them again:

Last night a journalist was killed in N Ireland as Brexit undermines the peace process, and unfortunately the BBC has played its part in this sorry state of affairs by failing to expose systematic lying by pro-Brexit speakers on its news and current affairs programmes.

Day after day, they are allowed to spout that the UK has to leave the EU because 'people voted for it'. (Most of them have by now given up any pretence that Brexit has any benefits.)

I used to work for the BBC as well as other broadcasting organisations, and I would have been asking these interviewees:

1. Why should we have to obey the result of a referendum that was won by lying, cheating and criminality?

2. Why should we have to obey the result of a referendum in which voters were promised a Brexit that is not being and cannot be delivered?

3. Why are we pretending we have to obey the result of a referendum that was explicitly non-binding and advisory?

I have heard many, many Brexiters being interviewed on your programmes, but I have NEVER heard one of your interviewers putting these points. Why is that? Is it because they are ignorant of the facts or is it because an edict has come from on high forbidding them from raising these inconvenient facts. If it is the latter, from whom does it come?

Brexitwatch: don't let the BBC mount a pro-Brexit stitch-up

On December 9, the BBC is planning to mount a 'debate' on Brexit between.....two Brexiters! Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn.

If you want a fair debate with equal representation for anti-Brexiters, complain to the BBC here - http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/

This is what I have sent:

For years I have had to endure BBC interviewers failing to challenge pro-Brexit spokespeople when they have used your programmes to spread lies and untruths.

Now I understand you are planning to silence anti-Brexit voices altogether by mounting a 'debate' on Brexit between two committed Brexiters - Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn. All the opinion polls indicate that more people support Remain than Leave and even if you made the assumption that they exaggerated the Remain lead, at the very least you would have to conclude that opinion was evenly divided.

MPs are about to make one of the most crucial decisions in our history, and it would be a dereliction of the BBC's duty to present a debate that does not give equal prominence to both sides.

The BBC has so far failed the nation over Brexit. It would be inexcusable to mount the kind of propaganda for Brexit that you are proposing.

How to live to 100: my television interview with Maxine Mawhinney

I really enjoyed being interviewed by former BBC News presenter Maxine Mawhinney for her new series, 'The Moment', about my new book, Secrets of the Centenarians.

We talked about what it's like to live to 100, why 100 year olds are the fastest growing section of the population, why there are about 5 centenarian women for every one man, which of us are most likely to survive to our 100th birthday, and whether there are any ways of making sure you get there. 

Do have a look. Here's the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzCgRcn1oUs

Brexitwatch: BBC pro-Brexit bias - the BBC's response to my complaint

In my post of March 30, I put up a complaint I had sent to the BBC about pro-Brexit bias.

Below is the BBC's reply:

Dear Mr Withington

Thank you for contacting us in relation to the BBC Radio 4 broadcast of 'Today' on 30 March.

I understand you have concerns of pro-Brexit bias relating to a number of segments during this broadcast. I have reviewed these sections of the programme for you.

I understand that you feel that Nick Robinson's piece in the lead up to 8:00am contained inaccuracies and implied those who wished to remain were trying to undermine the EU Referendum. It is important to note that this was part of a day of programming on 29 March which saw Radio 4, with one year to go until the UK is scheduled to leave the European Union, broadcast a number of specialist programmes under the theme UK at the crossroads.

Nick Robinson had provided an analytical piece, exploring the question of 'What happens if the government fails at the Westminster Parliamentary hurdle.' In this report he discusses that "there is; as of yet, no agreement amongst Remainers on how to maximise their chance of beating the government, some favour a vote on a customs union, others on a second referendum or as they prefer to present it, a people's vote on a deal the Prime Minister does".

All staff; including Nick Robinson, working for the BBC, though clearly entitled to hold personal opinions and beliefs, are acutely aware that their views should never in any way influence their work for the BBC, nor should they be apparent to our audience. It is important to recognise however that a fundamental part of the role of our correspondents is to offer analysis, using their experience and knowledge, but this is not indicative of bias.

I also note your concerns relating to an interview which took place later that morning with Dr Liam Fox. On this date a range of contributors including Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox and Tony Blair were invited on to the programme to discuss numerous topics relating to Brexit over the next 365 days.

During this interview Mishal asks Liam Fox a range on questions looking ahead to 30th March 2019 and what trade will look like for the UK and also explores how this will impact citizens living in the UK. They also explore the subject of a deal between the UK and the EU and what would happen if Parliament failed to vote in it's favour. As the interview wraps up Mishal questions Liam Fox on the subject of employment in places such as Nifco and whether the UK could compete outside of the EU.

In a fast-flowing interview situation, it may not always be possible for an interviewer to cross-check every statement and claim that is made by a guest, we're sorry this spoiled the interview for you. We always seek to ensure that the interviewer's particular question is answered by the guest first and foremost.

The key point here is that we aim to cover the ongoing Brexit negotiations with due impartiality. This means we carry a wide range of views about the European Union from across the political spectrum on our output. We regularly hear from those who are in favour of leaving the EU and those who wished to remain. As with any story we cover, the BBC does not have an opinion on the European Union, or on the UK’s position within it. Instead we try to explain the different and sometimes complex issues affecting our audience during Brexit. Our aim is to give them the information they need in order to follow the process clearly.

Due impartiality isn’t necessarily always achieved in one single report or programme, so we would ask that you take account of how we cover a topic over time.

We do value your feedback about this. All complaints are sent to senior management and the team at Today and I’ve included your points in our overnight report. These reports are among the most widely read sources of feedback in the BBC and ensures that your concerns have been seen by the right people quickly. This helps inform their decisions about current and future content.

Thank you once again for getting in touch.

Kind regards

Donal Rainey

BBC Complaints Team

Brexitwatch: a letter to the BBC

I am tired of the constant pro-Brexit bias and the inaccuracies about leaving the EU that I keep seeing and hearing on the BBC, a broadcaster I used to admire. This is what I have written to them. Please feel free to borrow, adapt etc if you feel the same.

This is the link for complaints 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/contact_us/making_a_complaint.html

I have held my tongue since the EU referendum, but I can do so no longer.

For decades I have defended the BBC and the licence fee, but, in view of the Corporation’s blatant pro-Brexit bias, I no longer feel I can.

During about 30 minutes on the ‘Today’ programme of March 29 on Radio 4, there were a series of examples of this. First shortly before 0800 Nick Robinson said that Remainers were demanding a ‘Second Referendum’ on the Brexit terms. This is completely inaccurate. There has not yet been a referendum on the Brexit terms, so any referendum on them would plainly be the first. To describe it as a ‘second referendum’ is likely, by accident or design, to undermine support for it by implying falsely that it is a re-run of or an attempt to subvert a referendum that has already been held.

Then, around 0815, Brexit supporter Liam Fox was allowed to claim without challenge that the UK economy had been doing well since the Brexit vote. This is completely untrue. The government’s own figures show the UK’s was the only major economy in the world to slow down last year, the fall in the pound that the Brexit vote caused has made us all poorer, real wages are still declining etc, etc. Why did your interviewer fail to put these points to Dr Fox?

Sadly, this is not an isolated instance. While pro-EU interviewees are usually given a hard time, Brexiters are allowed to spout their untruths without challenge. When a handful of Brexit campaigners set up a stunt the BBC covers it. When tens of thousands march against Brexit across the country, the BBC ignores it.

 The EU referendum was advisory and non-binding on MPs. The BBC constantly ignores this etc. etc.

Storms - naming, are they getting worse + storms in history and literature

Links here to my interview with Nick Piercey of BBC Radio Oxford (in two parts)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Dx9Ii87-pM&t=24s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5QRHcxe1n4&t=115s

Cornwall's stormy history - BBC interview

Here's an interview I did for BBC Radio Cornwall with Debbie McCrory on Monday about my new book: 'Storm: Nature and Culture' (Reaktion Books)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOornZKVbIM

Or you can listen to it on this BBC link (it starts about 01 33 00)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04czmwh#play

The curious case of the Tory minister, the dominatrix and the silent tabloids

Before he was a minister, John Whittingdale admits he had a relationship with a professional dominatrix, though he says he did not know her occupation. Normally this would be pure gold for the prurient UK tabloids. You know the kind of thing: 'Politician's shame! Full, disgusting details. Pages 2,3,4,5,6,7 etc.'

On this occasion, the tabloids took another view: 'Move along. Nothing to see here'. The explanation they offer is that they had an attack of high-mindedness. Mr Whittingdale was a single man. It was no business of anyone else who he chose to have an affair with.

Deplorably, there are some cynics who have taken a rather different view of the tabloids' motives. You see, Mr Whittingdale is no ordinary minister. He is in charge of regulation of the press and broadcasting. And from the tabloids' point of view, he has been playing a blinder. Soft-pedalling on the tightening of press regulation the Tories had promised in the wake of the Milly Dowler phone hacking scandal, and constantly sticking the boot into the BBC who the tabloids hate and fear.

For those trying to decide which explanation is right, the latest Private Eye has unearthed some interesting lines. If the tabloids really were converted to the 'people have the right to a private life' notion, it came pretty late in the day. Because three of them put a lot of effort into confirming the story before deciding not to publish. Astonishingly some people have floated the preposterous idea that the newspapers might have thought it valuable to have a journalistic Sword of Damocles hanging over Mr Whittingdale's head, just in case.

Thanks to the breaking of the story by a little-known website, any such sword has now been blunted, and funnily enough this morning the Mail on Sunday launched a fierce attack on Mr Whittingdale, accusing him of breaches of national security in his relationship with the dominatrix, and saying the Prime Minister should now be considering whether he is suitable for office.

Who killed who in Rwanda?

Twenty years after the genocide in Rwanda in which up to a million people were murdered in 100 days, the Rwandan government wants to prosecute the BBC over a television programme which challenges the accepted view of what happened.

The conventional wisdom is that Hutu extremists massacred mainly Tutsis as well as some Hutu moderates. The programme, Rwanda: the Untold Story, includes contributions from an academic who argues that there were only about 500,000 Tutsis in the country, and that 300,000 survived, so most of the victims must have been Hutus.

Prof Allan Stam paints a picture of a general breakdown in law and order, and says most of the victims may have been Hutus. When he presented his findings, the government rejected them, and he was asked to leave the country.

The genocide was sparked by the mysterious shooting down of the president's private jet. The programme includes allegations that Rwanda's current president, Paul Kagame, a Tutsi, was behind the attack, but he has always denied such allegations, and blamed Hutu extremists.

Japan earthquake - nuclear fears

As reports come in of thousands of bodies being washed up on the north-eastern shore of Honshu – Japan’s main island – following the earthquake and tsunami, concern is now growing about the danger of radiation from the Fukushima nuclear power station.

Two reactors have been damaged by explosions, and a third has its cooling system out of action. The government is saying there is no cause for alarm, but more than 20 people are being treated for the effects of radiation, and tens of thousands have been evacuated, while the US military has pulled its people back from the area.

The decision to build nuclear power stations in an area so prone to earthquakes was heavily criticised. Atomic energy and secrecy tend to go hand in hand, so everyone is hoping the Japanese authorities are being more open than the Soviet apparatchiks at Chernobyl in 1986, where a ‘safety experiment’ produced the world’s worst nuclear accident.

At first they tried to hush the whole thing up, and it was only when a Swedish monitoring station detected unusual levels of radiation that the Russians began to admit the truth. Twenty-five years after the explosion, people are still dying from its effects, and some estimates put the number of additional cancers that it will cause as high as 200,000.

* Yesterday I was interviewed about the earthquake on BBC Radio Berkshire. This is the link:- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_tLViNtSlU

Japanese earthquakes

We have seen some astonishing television pictures of a raging tsunami, but we still have no real idea of how many people may have been killed in Friday’s earthquake in Japan. The town of Rikuzentakada is almost completely underwater, while at the port of Minamisanriku, around 10,000 people are missing, though the authorities did manage to evacuate about 7,500.

Japan is no stranger to earthquakes. Back in 1703, Tokyo – then known as Edo – was devastated in a quake that killed an estimated 150,000 people, and there was a similar death toll in the one that struck the city just before noon on September 1, 1923.

Tokyo has always been a city of close-packed houses in narrow alleys, and in 1923 they were mainly built of wood and paper. Many families were cooking on open stoves, and when these fell over, they started fires all over the city, which then combined into furious conflagrations, which claimed more victims than the earthquake itself.

When the rebuilding began, there were suggestions that Japan’s capital should be moved to a new safer site, but people decided they wanted to go on living where they always had.

*I was interviewed about the earthquake on the BBC’s Three Counties Radio, and you can hear the interview via this link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWbgV42j4Uc

Financial disasters 3 - the banking crisis

Earlier this month, the BBC’s business correspondent, Robert Peston, revealed that the new Basel rules designed to prevent a repeat of the banking crisis have been watered down into ineffectiveness. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2010/08/basel_allows_banks_to_play_the.html.

That’s a shame. In London’s Disasters, I tell the story of the crisis, and of how the bail-out of Britain’s banks had cost £850 billion by December 2009. That’s about £14,000 for every man, woman and child in the country.

I mentioned in my blog of Aug 13^th that those responsible for the South Sea Bubble in the 18^th century had their estates confiscated. (They got off lightly. One MP wanted them to be tied up in sacks and thrown into the Thames.)

No such problems for those responsible for the banking crisis. We all know the story of Sir Fred Goodwin’s pension, and of how in February 2010, RBS announced that even though it had lost £3.6 billion in 2009, it wanted to pay out £1.3 billion in bonuses. (See also my blog of Jan 20, Feb 10 13, 16, 18, 2009.)

*More coverage of the book from the Wandsworth Guardian:-http://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/local/wandsworthnews/8331276.Wandsworth_s_past_disasters_revealed/

and Docklands 24 http://www.docklands24.co.uk/content/docklands/news/story.aspx?brand=Docklands&category=news&tBrand=docklands&tCategory=znews&itemid=WeED17%20Aug%202010%2015%3A35%3A37%3A037

Lockerbie - let's have the right inquiry

I worry more and more about the BBC’s supposed flagship 10 o’ clock Television News. Last week it consumed more than half the programme in an extraordinarily repetitive, virtually information-free report on the hunt for Raoul Moat.

Last night it devoted seven minutes to American outrage over the release eleven months ago of Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing. You will remember that al-Megrahi was freed from his Scottish prison on compassionate grounds, after being diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer.

Two BBC reporters told us how cross the Americans were that al-Megrahi had had the temerity to not die, that the new UK government now considered the release a “mistake”, how the Americans were accusing their favourite villain, BP, of having engineered the release etc, etc. Neither reporter seemed aware that there are very serious doubts about al-Megrahi’s guilt, shared by the families of some of the UK victims. (These doubts appear not to be much thought about in America where questioning the guilt of Arabs is not really part of the culture.)

Jim Swire, whose daughter was killed in the attack, has condemned the US’s “mass hysteria” and its cynical attempt to use al-Megrahi as another means of taking “revenge” on BP. The Scottish government are standing firm and have coolly pointed out that the prisoner was released under due process of Scots law, after taking into account the testimony of independent medical experts.

The Americans want an inquiry into al-Megrahi’s release, but Scottish MSP Christine Grahame has a better idea. Why doesn’t the US stop blocking a full independent inquiry into who really bombed Flight 103? Then we might finally get the truth. The new British Prime Minister, David Cameron, is in Washington next week. He has promised to be less subservient to the Americans than Labour were. The next few days may reveal whether he will keep his word.
(See also my blogs of 27 July, 16 and 22 Aug, and 19 Sept, 2009)

Iraq - Labour's last chance

Sir John Chilcot’s Iraq inquiry opens today. It ought not to be the thing uppermost in his mind, but he probably represents the last chance for Labour to re-establish itself as a fundamentally decent and honest party that foolishly allowed some bad apples to dominate it. That can happen if the inquiry is searching, open, independent and fearless, and if those responsible for the Iraq disaster are held to account. If Sir John serves up another bucket of whitewash, the conclusion of the British people is likely to be that the whole party is irredeemably corrupted.

There are some hopeful signs – Labour’s attempt to hush the whole thing up by conducting the inquiry in secret has been thwarted, but overall the indications are not good. Sir John Chilcot is an establishment man to his fingertips, and has a track record of letting Tony Blair and his cronies off the hook as an underling on the Butler inquiry. The inquiry panel has been packed with Blair apologists, and Labour has specifically told Sir John that he is not supposed to “establish civil or criminal liability”.

All a bit odd isn’t it? When Baby P was killed, Labour was only too happy to apportion blame and sack those responsible. Why should it be different when we are dealing with the much greater disaster of Iraq?

So far the only people to lose their jobs over Iraq have been the chairman and director-general of the BBC, and the BBC reporter who dared to tell the truth. And Labour wrings its hands, claiming not to understand why people are so cynical about it.

Iraq - the cover-up continues

Labour may have bankrupted the country, but there’s still one commodity for which it will always find plenty of money – whitewash. Labour ordered a huge new consignment yesterday as Gordon Brown launched his “inquiry” into the Iraq War. It will be run by an underling from the Butler Inquiry. It will be held in secret and its explicit brief will be to ensure that no one is blamed for what is certainly the biggest British foreign policy disaster in more than half a century, and may be treason and/or a war crime.

You must have misread my blog of June 6th, Gordon. I said that it was essential that the inquiry was “full, public and independent”.

In history, we often find that the cover-up is more damaging than the original deed. Remember Watergate. The act itself is often committed in haste and hot blood by a small group. The cover-up tends to be a cold, calculating enterprise carried out over weeks, months and years, by a much bigger body of conspirators – in this case, the entire Labour Party.

More than six years after the disaster of Iraq, the only people who have lost their jobs are the Chairman and Director-General of the BBC, and the BBC reporter who dared to tell the truth. And Labour MP’s keep wringing their hands and agonising over why people have no respect for politicians! The party’s determination to ensure that those responsible for Iraq are not called to account is a cancer that will destroy Labour unless it is cut out, but it is hard to see this discredited bunch having the guts or the integrity to do the deed.