January 26th 2004 - February 1st 2004
Sunday Misc
Saturday Editorial
Friday Resignation
Thursday Simple question
Wednesday Quel cul t'as
Tuesday Dwindling
Monday Every. Time.
Sunday 1st February 2004
Most of my hats say: my God is an awesome God.
An armed forces minister explained last week that two Sea King helicopters had "lost situational awareness and collided."
This morning, I somewhat identify.
Triffid-like, the GM crops are advancing on the city: on my way to Vauxhall (to stand in a queue for the second night running this weekend, of which more later), I swear I heard an announcement that the Piccadilly line was partially closed for plant engineering work.
The Crown and Compasses? Well I guess calling it by its real name here can't do any harm compared to this. (Just don't go on a Sunday, ok? Tuesdays. Tuesdays would be cool. Tuesdays are the new Sundays.)
Rather old, but I only just stumbled across it: Telegraph says to Libertarians: Fuck off
I think I've more than paid my dues to the seriousness of the post-Hutton situation now. So am I allowed my really cheap joke about how you never thought you'd see the headline Dyke apologises? (Closely related: Hoon's sorry now)
My thanks to everybody (and I do mean everybody) who, ahem, Mailed me a link to this.
A tip of the hat to at least two people who, just for a moment, visualised the Waiter Found on Mars.
And a one-off apology to all those who've come up to me lately, accused me of being the voice behind the curtain at Blogadoon, waited a nano-second, and then said, "But it's really annoying the way you do that posting several-days-worth all-in-one-go thing!"
When I've worked out why I do it, I'll be sure to let you know.
Saturday 31st January 2004
Nice of 4,000 BBC employees to each pay a fiver and put their names to a full page newspaper ad defending Greg Dyke.
Even nicer to choose the Telegraph, rubbing salt in the wound of that paper's dizzying indecision as to who they hate more, Blair or the Beeb.
Next time maybe they could pay, say, seven quid a head and hire themselves a sub-editor?
Friday 30th January 2004
I spent much of yesterday reluctantly revising my opinions in the light of Lord Hutton's (narrowly-drawn) conclusion that Blair was not knowingly telling a lie when he told us that Iraq could deploy WMD in 45 minutes.
Which is not so much of a stretch, after all: we've known for a long time that our Prime Minister is driven as much by faith as he is by calculation. When the intelligence services offered him the chance to nail down his defence of war, there was no way he would stop to check if it was cast-iron (especially when, with a little judicious editing, he could polish it to look like stainless steel).
So let us accept, at least for the sake of argument, that Blair has not, in this case, been proven to be a liar.
I spent much of today mourning the loss of Greg Dyke at the hands of a dozen BBC governors whose names I don't even know: it seemed like the wrong body in the box to me. Lies may have been told, but Dyke was not a liar either.
Things brightened slightly this evening when I realised that Blair, thinking to construct an escape tunnel, has actually erected his own scaffold.
For consider: within the tightly constrained set of events considered by Hutton, the fault lies almost entirely with Gilligan's unsupported assertion (that the government "probably knew" their claim to be false).Following a furore, and an inquiry, Greg Dyke tenders his resignation: he accepts that the allegation was unfounded and he is, after all, the head of the command chain.
Sooner or later, we will accept that assertions that Iraq had WMD are unfounded. Furore. Inquiry. Followed by the logical conclusion, the nail in Blair's coffin, the resignation of the head of the command chain...
Thursday 29th January 2004
God knows I hold no brief to defend Andrew Gilligan (and one day, no doubt, we'll get the true skinny on just what it was that he left on Dominic Lawson's desk the day he quit the Sunday Telegraph).
I do feel considerably more inclined to pity Gavin Davies, whose instinctive drive to prove his political independence appears to have contributed considerably to the ratcheting-up of the furore that eventually lead to the death of David Kelly (himself an unlikely candidate for martyr status, given his career as a weapons scientist, and his unadmirable habit of taking it upon himself to mediate between the Ministry of Defence and the media).
But I have no real problem with accepting Lord Hutton's verdict that the Government were not, strictly speaking, guilty of directly dictating the contents of the dossier to the Joint Intelligence Committee.
Gilligan's supposition (however brief, however off-the-cuff) was the equivalent of accusing the Government of murder. Hutton's brief was to consider that specific accusation, and he has found it to be false.
That must not be allowed to blind us to the fact that there remains a myriad of other, as yet untested, accusations - most of which point, if not to murder, then at least to manslaughter.
The BBC, chastened, chastised, will no doubt find it difficult to pursue the numerous unanswered questions that remain. So it's down to the rest of us, however small our voices, to reiterate the fundamental demand:
WHERE ARE THE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION?
Wednesday 28th January 2004
A week or so ago, I was obscurely yet distinctly flattered to find the Inland Revenue chasing me to submit my tax return in a timely fashion, not via a massive poster campaign, nor by an individualised mailing, but with an actual phone call from a real human being.
(The fact that I had, as it happened, already posted said tax return, several weeks prior to the deadline, boosted my smug quotient no end.)
Imagine then the degree of miff of finding that one of my colleagues had also received a similar phone call.
While he was in Calcutta.
Tuesday 27th January 2004
I enjoyed the first part of Channel 4's series about gay parenting, not least because of some of the characters involved, up to and including the proud parent who loudly insisted on sound forward planning because otherwise he'd end up travelling economy.
(If you tuned in only at the opening credits you missed one of the other highlights: the continuity announcer with the pronounced geordie accent intoning "And now on Channel Fur, Mekking Bebbies the Geeh Weeh.")
Despite having spent a large slice of my life off-handedly helping to rear two wonderful children, I don't really think I'm one of nature's parents: my contribution runs more to unlatching their brain-pans every so often, dabbling my fingers inside, then sending them smartly back to their mother or father once they start to cry: always an uncle, never a dad.
But I warm to the idea of becoming an anonymous sperm donor, not least because I like the idea of being paid to dispose of a natural and recurring resource. Plus, so far as I can see, I have a pretty good set of genes here which will otherwise simply dwindle into the sand. (Which reminds me, I never did write up a full report of my holiday in Sitges.)
And, hey, anything that makes lesbians happy has to be good for the world, right?
So I checked out Man Not Included for further information. And there's good news, and bad news.
The good news is that there seems a healthy chance that I would pass their testing procedure. (You'll be rejected not only if you have ever "engaged in sex for money or drugs' but if you had sex in the past year with anybody else who has - which, given the degree of gratitude most of my comrades display when offered a bump, pretty much disqualifies everyone else I know.)
The bad news - and this really is a bummer - is that "the age limits are set at 45".
Back to dwindling into the sand, I guess.
Monday 26th January 2004
My ex (the (relatively) sane one, not the moral illiterate that preceded him) rang me this morning to say he was in town for the week.
As usual (both whilst in the relationship and out it), he woke me up - but I didn't mind that too much. (It was having to listen to the radio4's Farming Prices without benefit of a cup of tea that used to really irk me.)
Nevertheless, the second or third sentence out of my mouth this morning was "My God! You do this Every! Time!" (He'd fixed a day to go see his parents before calling me and the day he'd chosen was the one day that I have free this week.)
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