Where are You Ed?

Listening to - Possessed - Balenescu Quartet

Now I am thinking of changing the walls at the weekend. I could use wallpaper but that is too fiddly. There is paint but what I think I really want is WHITEWASH!

Around Christmas, two newspapers decided that they had a small portion of the 'truth' about Diana - Princess of Wales' death. So we had one paper with the headline "Diana was NOT pregnant" next to "Diana WAS pregnant". Now that is sloppy journalism. However, it is like the problem with the law that states that if it cannot be decided which parent murdered a child then neither can be found guilty. (I think that this is changing in law). My point however, is that a small rogue accusation which looks increasingly less untrue has led to what I personally feel is unduly harsh criticism of the BBC. Obviously, the point of the Hutton report was to investigate the facts of the death of Dr Kelly and not the whole question of the accuracy of intelligence that led the Government to believe that Saddam had WMD. However, is there not now a wider question of how good that intelligence actually was. Who should we get to carry out that investigation? Of course such things are never investigated.

Maybe I just do not like change. WMD is still the most meaningless phrase. The argument now is that we have got rid of a bad man and I suppose if the so-called rogue states, do now start thinking that they may be next, then something has come of all this. However, there are still plenty of 'bad men' out there and we still do nothing against them. Some very established countries with no hint of being part of an 'axis' of anything have terrible regimes which deserve overthrow just as much as Saddam did (and I have to agree that he did deserve it ). As usual you see that this is degenerating into a soupy mess of indecision but the world is not black-and-white. There was much merriment in this office this story about the Salesman who pretended to be an MI5 agent and told students that they were on IRA hit lists because of their association with him. Now the response here was they were stupid. If you actually think about it, con-men make their living from being plausible. I know that many people are more gullible than me (just as plenty of people are less gullible than me) but I could never say that I would not be taken in by that sort of con.