The Hutton Report

And: how dodgy is Murdoch's anti-BBC agenda here?

Interesting side point, The BBC is reported on Slashdot to have bought Google ad words related to kelly and hutton. Although this appears not to be true, no combination of significant words has brought up a BBC sponsored link. However I wonder which lazy hack will repeat the story until it must be true.

Blair will therefore be in a position analagous to a guilty man who is let off for lack of sufficient evidence and then trumpets his innocence and the clearing of his name. This is the fault of the media, who should all along have been much more sceptical about the rationale for holding this enquiry and the likelihood of it arriving at any kind of truth. The media's need to find (or create) "important" news events means that they have given the verdict of this shabby, pointless enquiry an apparent validity that it doesn't deserve. The anti-Blair press especially need to examine the way they have connived at his "exculpation".

Whether Hoon should go is a different matter. I can't see that he has done much wrong, except toe the party line. People who want to see him go probably want to see him go because he's an obnoxious, oleaginous creep rather than because they think he's guilty of anything.

Of course, we're expecting him to have any kind of moral rectitude for him to recognise himself in those statements, or recall saying them. I think we both know he's demonstated he has none.

The leak does matter because it's another Murdochian assault on the BBC.

I still think he'll be quietly shuffled off to the sidelines, though.

Hoon should have gone when the revelations about kit came out, he only hung on we thought so that he could resign today. That still could happen.

The leak is arguably the most significant part now (and if the Sun report is true, Michael Howard should concentrate on nothing else when questioning the PM). To believe Downing Street's protestations of innocence is to believe that somebody who comes out badly from the report has leaked it to someone who has roundly criticised them since the Inquiry began.

Howard is obv pissed off that he doesn't get to leap in with priviliged knowledge.

Oh, well if the news editor of The Sun says so then it must be true.

Enrique - it was TK that got the leaked extracts by telephone and though he obv. didn't reveal his source, he volunteered that it was someone who had nothing to lose or gain from the report's findings. I suppose he could have been lying, yes.

The desire of the PM to have a strong dossier may have subconsciously influenced John Scarlett and the Joint Intelligence Committee to produce a strongly worded document.

Uh-huh.

On the 45-minute claim: Gilligan's report did not distinguish between long-range battlefield and strategic weapons.

Neither did the government's own warnings: very deliberatey we ended up with BIG NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST IF WE DON'T INVADE headlines.

Gilligan's allegation that government probably knew its 45-minute claim was wrong was unfounded - even if the claim is proved to be wrong in the future.

This is tricksy indeed -- probably fair, but also not: the government lied its ass off, used old Ph.D. theses... why give them the time of day?

Nick, I accept your point, I suppose after yesterday the look forward articles would have been all very "Blair survived yesterday, will he survive to day" type stuff.

http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,7493,1128825,00.html

http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/report/index.htm

xpost

If you want an report into the war then lobby your MP.

Now Blair doing jig of contrition before resuming jig of victory.

If this had been a court case about who was responsible for Kelly's death, do you think the motivations of all the principal suspects and the surrounding context would have been judged inadmissible?

You cannot understand this picture, these events, without understanding that the BBC and Kelly acted the way they did because of a profound conviction that the war was wrong -- just as profound as Blair's conviction that it was right. Without that framing, the events are the senseless and malicious acts of deranged, incompetent and malicious individuals.

But who are these 'deranged, incompetent and malicious individuals'? Gilligan, Kelly, Greg Dyke... Their conviction was that people should not die in a pointless war. They had the majority of the British public on their side. It is not just they who are insulted today, it is the British public itself. We are all in one of the scales, and Blair is in the other, yet our collective weight still does not tip the measure. I think people will recoil at the obvious injustice, and deliver Blair a stiff electoral kicking.

The BBC inserting information they know full well to be false is still wrong even if you agree with the point they are trying to make, Momus. Heaven knows, I opposed the war as much as many people here, but something about the way the BBC handled the Gilligan affair leaves a nasty taste in my mouth - its very much a case of "one rule for them, another rule for us" which bothers me so much about the British media and I'd hoped that the BBC was above all that.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/indonesian/surat/030824_kelly.shtml

So that's all clear then...

In legalese I suppose not. But he was substantially, morally right -- the 45min claim was bullshit, and was inserted on the grounds of political expediency rather than on any basis of intelligence.

Matt DC -- I know what you mean, but this is a grossly uneven battle and yes short cuts have to be taken.

the worst bit is that the Hutton 'vindication' of Blair and the loud calls for apologies will be used to drown out any requests for the evidence of the claims in the gov report. ie: "err, about those weapons of mass destruction..."

*It would have been completely consitent with my radio listening habits to end this sentence here.

I don't think Gilligan was fabricating, I do think he was 'sexing up'.

A quick search of the PCC site revealed right at the top of the list for The Sun:

Complainant name: Liverpool City Council
Clause noted: 1
Paper: The Sun
Complaint:Liverpool City Council complained that a comment column had inaccurately referred to a decision it had allegedly taken to ban hot cross buns because they might offend non-Christians. In fact, no such decision was taken and no ban exists at all.

Reasons:
The newspaper publish a correction and apology.

Right.

Interesting no one has mentioned that the central finding of the report was that Kelly was ultimately responsible for the hole he got into, that led to his suicide. Hutton's conclusion was that he just made a lot of bad decisions and ended up feeling he had no way out. The leaking of his name was not deemed important enough to be the event that drove him to do it. That's the only way in which the leak is important anyway. It was going to come out sooner or later. The issue was whether the way it came out had pushed Kelly over the edge.

Seen from the widest possible perspective, this represents an important battle in the conflict between power and conscience. The Machiavellian philosophy emanating from Bush and the neocons -- whatever we want to do is right, and we're going to do it because we can, on the flimsiest of pretexts -- made Tony Blair knuckle under (though he spun it as 'conscience') and go to war. If he had to suck cock, he's damned if the BBC won't do the same thing. And now they may have to.

We can only hope that the cock itself -- the Bush administration -- will be castrated in the fall by the American people.

xpost

Yes, Gilligan was guilty of putting words in an unnamed source's mouth. It's bad journalism. I don't condone it. But it goes on all the time in other stories (try being in anyway close to a story that the press report on - it's usually riddled with errors of lesser or greater import). The general press and public buzz around the time was that the government overegged the threat that Iraq posed. Blair and Campbell leapt on this particular factual inaccuracy because they knew they were right about it. As others have said upthread, it hardly proves that their wasn't spin put on the general case for war. We expect that of governments these days, but for B&C to be bleating on this afternoon about how hurt they were by the suggestion that they'd play with soldiers' lives by sexing up their case, well bollocks. I'm not falling for that guilt trip oratory shit.

So it's not really an inquest, it's not an inquiry into the rights and wrongs of the war, it's not even a full investigation into whether the government trusted the intelligence they published. It's just a glorified libel judgement. Why should I be interested?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3434661.stm

Because Hutton's statement seems to have ignored this aspect too. Which is baffling to me also, given the amount of time that was spent during the hearings on this. Everyone was expecting Hutton to say something about this.

How independent and free a hand was there in this Inquiry? It was set up with the acquiescence of the Government. Can anyone put the dots together as to why they accepted the terms of this inquiry, and up until now, have not accepted an Inquiry of a larger basis - i.e. why we were taken into the Iraq war? The Kelly suicide was of course a tragedy, yet why is it the central issue for people...? Above and beyond matters of a national significance...

The Govt.'s bullishness now appears grotesque; acting as if they have been *fully* exonerated c.f. Iraq, when they patently have not been.

I very much agree with Momus that this is going to appear very suspicious to a good lot of people. While I don't feel there should be a *default* position of cynicism about politicians per se, it is clear that Hutton wouldn't have been set up if it was going to incriminate the Government. Actually, the hearings did shed a lot of light on some very dubious actions by the Govt.; yet, the conclusion seems bizarrely to ignore any of this. It seems like a whitewash to me, and a good lot of others, looking at responses on the BBC News website...

'On March 30, 1994 as Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, [Hutton] dismissed Private Lee Clegg's appeal against his controversial murder conviction. On March 21, 2002 Hutton was one of four Law Lords to reject David Shayler's application to use a 'public interest' defence as defined in section 1 of the Official Secrets Act at his trial.'

Andrew Marr on the BBC just now (paraphrase): 'It's remarkable that Hutton doesn't mention anywhere that the majority of the BBC's reporting of the war was balanced and accurate, and that if there were doubts in the intelligence community about the veracity of the dossier, it was very much in the public interest to look at that.'

i can easily imagine a scenario in which blair & co. would have been equally pilloried by doing that - they would have been seen as trying to suppress/hide an inconvenient inside opinion - bringing him out into the open was to both avoid that and because he 'refuted' the BBC's implications/assertions of intentionally lying to the public by saying Gilligan had fucked up (the fact that some evidence at the inquiry suggests that the govt. was at least happy to be selective and allow misinterpretation of intelligence does indeed seem to be discarded)
so i am somewhat puzzled that hutton in this area appears quite happy to explore/allow for wider concepts of governance and public faith/perception to play a part in his evaluation - as if he thinks 'oh well the govt. was quite reasonable to do what it did because a govt. must not be seen to be covering up' !

i don't think anyone comes out of this well - the govt. did indeed mislead - remember hoon's disgusting complacency about not correcting the press misinterpretation of the 45min claim, if nothing else - but if i'm to be able to believe the BBC i don't want it distorting small details in pursuit of a 'bigger truth' - the entire process shows it can be small details that reveal big lies

But Howard miscalculated immensely with his pre-empting tactic a week or two back; why on earth did the man think that Hutton would severely implicate Blair? I know... one did presume more balance and a blame would have been attached to the Blair administration. But... the inquiry was set up with TB's blessing, for goodness' sake! Howard is a much stupider politician than I had presumed he was. Charlie Kennedy comes across increasingly as more wise and *to the point*, in his calls for a genuine enquiry into the basis for war, and his avoidance of specifically accusing Blair. The LibDems are clearly a far more relevant opposition than the hapless Tories... that is an initial political outcome I feel. Kennedy seems inherently more in tune with the public's feelings than does Howard. Howard is clearly an opportunist of the worst sort; clearly not bothered about exposing failures in the case for war unless it helps he himself politically.

One hopes to see balance and maturity in the Government and other parties (Kennedy again is a voice of sanity). There's clearly no way that the Govt can presume to change our public broadcasting settlement, when frankly the BBC largely does such a fine job. And, the Govt is hardly in the clear; not in my eyes or in that many others I presume.

This was an inquest into a man's death. I don't understand why people are saying "but why are they focussing on Kelly and not the government?" It's because Kelly was the one who topped himself. Isn't a man entitled to a proper inquest into his death?

People should never have tried to make this something it wasn't. It never was an inquiry into the existence or not of WMD in Iraq. There should be a proper investigation into this question, but the prime opportunity has been lost. I fear that those who should have been pushing for that investigation were instead off fishing for red herrings.

Sure, it's great to be a team and all work together. Any organisation benefits from that. But what if the new management is mad? What if they suddenly force everyone to choose between the truth and some sort of insane fiction?

The fact that he prosecuted an illegal war is neither here nor there.

FWIW The report is utterly neutral on just-pretext and states several times in its introduction that it is not a report into that issue.

The sections involving Kelly directly are downright chilling.

What qualified Hutton to be the investigator, anyway?

If you think this report will be "responsible for the death of investigative journalism on this issue" (I presume by that you mean the whole Iraq shebang not just Kelly) you're very misguided. It won't exactly be water off the backs of everyone involved, especially the BBC, but I doubt it will change anything except the editorial structure and thoroughness of the BBC and the Today programme in particular. It's a reminder that no matter how justified the cause, you can't go around being as sloppy as Gilligan was or how sloppy his editors were in taking his reportage on good faith, especially when we're talking about such a serious issue.

The parallels you can draw between Bush's flimsy pretexts and belief without proof vis a vis bombing the living shit out of Iraq and the BBC / Gilligan / Wherever you want to throw the Blame Bomb's presumption that it must've been a malicious leak by Campbell are quite striking.

Climate of fear, people, climate of fear.

The long term implications are hard to speculate on. Pretty much everyone involved, including Kelly himself, take some flak. If it means that journo's of Gilligans strata who seem to be able to report without decent editorial review have to be accountable then I'm all in favour. Investigative journalism could actually come out the better for it.

Whitewash
http://www.guardian.co.uk/hutton/story/0,13822,1133932,00.html

Judge and Journalist
http://www.guardian.co.uk/hutton/story/0,13822,1133966,00.html

'We're faced with the wretched spectacle of the BBC chairman resigning while Alastair Campbell crows from the summit of his dungill. Does this verdict, my lord, serve the real interest of truth?" asked the rightwing Daily Mail.'

In a comment piece for the leftwing Daily Mirror tabloid, journalist Paul Routledge accused Hutton of an "establishment whitewash" which "stinks to high heaven". Hutton's judgement "makes me feel physically sick, like a victim of a crime who knows that justice will never be done", said Routledge.

-of course his name would have come out eventually, but why couldn't it have been handed over to the enquireries and kept secret until the official reports came out? that way at least the facts (as well as they can be established) would be known. His name was used as a political trump card against the BBC. Justifying that by "it would come out eventually" is like advocating murder because everyone will die in the end anyway.

Ah. Right.

Hutton was set up to elucidate truth. It seems to me to have done this in a pretty balanced way. Just because the BBC were "on our side" doesn't give them a right to make things up. If this encourages a little more honesty in journalism, if it tightens up the BBC's editorial procedures, then it can only be a good thing.

I hope the BBC quickly recovers it's backbone and starts fighting it's case, rather than rolling over for neutering. In the main its reporting appears to be independant, fair and balanced, much more so than any other media outlet in this country (apart from possibly ITN) and long may it remain so.

campbell did the very odd (as in something you rarely see) thing of lumping all the BBC journos together, saying that newsnight had an agenda to gloss over the report because it made the beeb look bad, whereas usually there is this kind of suspension of disbelief thing, "the today programme/greg dyke/kilroy did something silly, but it's nothing to do with us" impartiality type thing...

Esther Rantzen used to do that too.

Isn't your assessment troubled by any of the following points by Jonathan Freedland?

'The Hutton report had no confusing ambiguities or detours. It all thrust in the same, clear direction: the government was right and the BBC was wrong.

[...]

Observers who had sat through every hour of the Hutton inquiry, reading and hearing the same evidence as his lordship, were left scratching their heads at his final thinking.

For one thing, Lord Hutton seemed to have turned a deaf ear to crucial facts and testimony. Transcripts of interviews that the BBC Newsnight journalist Susan Watts had recorded with Dr Kelly corroborated much of what Gilligan claimed, not least the scientist's statement that the 45-minute claim was "got out of all proportion". But Lord Hutton appears to have put those transcripts out of his mind, preferring to assume that Dr Kelly could not have said what Gilligan claimed he had.

The judge further chose to believe there was no "underhand strategy" to name Dr Kelly, gliding over Mr Campbell's diary entries in which he confessed his desperation to get the scientist's name out. Lord Hutton concluded there was no leaking, even though newspaper reports from last summer show someone must have been pointing reporters very directly towards Dr Kelly.

He ruled there had been no meddling with the substance of the September dossier, just some beefing up of language, even though one expert witness, Dr Brian Jones, testified that, when it comes to intelligence, wording is substance.

On each element of the case before him, Lord Hutton gave the government the benefit of the doubt, opting for the interpretation that most favoured it, never countenancing the gloss that might benefit the BBC. Perhaps the clearest example was Lord Hutton's very judge-like deconstruction of the "slang expression" sexed up. One meaning could be inserting items that are untrue, he said; another could simply be strengthening language. Under the latter definition, Hutton conceded, Gilligan's story would be true. So his lordship decided the other meaning must apply.

The judge also seemed to have a bad case of Wandering Remit Syndrome. The late insertion of the notorious 45-minute claim was within the scope of his inquiry; but whether that claim related to battlefield or strategic weapons was not, even though the reliability of the claim might well turn on precisely that question. Repeatedly, territory that might discomfit the government was declared out of bounds; areas awkward for the BBC were very much in.'

Downing Street cannot have deliberately misled, even if using single source evidence which subsequently turned out to be incorrect (in every fact), because they claimed they believed it was true (in their definition of the facts).

Gilligan is censured for the use of single source evidence which subsequently turned out to be incorrect (as Hutton has concluded, in saying there was no 'sexing up' by his definition), because he believed it was true (Gilligan's definition).

In other words, Huttons conclusions must, in fact, clear Gilligan of wrongdoing, because he places the emphasis on what the individual's belief in rightness is.

On the topic overall though, Paul Kay has testified last night that he understands the Bush administration 'sexed up' the evidence. Is Downing Street claiming we had additional intelligence (if so, meaning Hutton's 'single source' statement was wrong, and they misled the inquiry)? (Let's not forget, Jack Straw claimed we had 'different' intelligence than the forged Niger letter to link Iraq to trying to find nuclear material in Niger, and both Colin Powell and Bush referred the the 'British September Dossier' in a way that implied different UK intelligence.)

It's not so confusing if one just calls it a 'double standard'!

(Actually that becomes two questions, who do we expect and who do we think actually does. Which boils down into the residue salt of cynicism far too quickly).

Susan Watts heard the same claims as Gilligan, but they both heard the claims from Kelly. There was still only one source.

Campbell wanted Kelly's name out. Of course he did; it would have made his life easier. This doesn't mean he leaked Kelly's name. Judges clearly require more proof than journalists.

Freedland doesn't like the fact that judges aren't supposed to fill in the gaps in stories with speculation, like journalists are supposed to. Well thank God they're not. Think of the Huntley case and how many gaps our helpful tabloid journalists filled in so that we could see how evil Maxine Carr really was. Luckily for her the Law has higher standards of proof. Journalists exaggerate and make things up all the time. We know they do. That doesn't mean they are right to do so, or that we should defend their rights to do it.

So, yeah, what Pete said.

Murdoch's creaming it. As iot the Mail. Gilligan's a cunt. Dyke did what he could be expected to do - he said 'if this isn't fucking right, we'd better withdraw it'. He exercised control by asking the Head of news - the chain of command worked, but the chain of command wanted to trust its journalists, and those jounros let it down.

Then again, as much I think Gilligan a cunt, i've always been suspicious of 'defence correspondants'; especially those who write articles in the Daily Mail. Which is another way of saying i think Gilligan's a cunt.

Greg's email to BBC colleagues already leaked by Popbitch weasels:

Dear (colleague)
This is the hardest e-mail I’ve ever written.
In a few minutes I’ll be announcing to the outside world that I’m leaving after four years as Director General. I don’t want to go and I’ll miss everyone here hugely.

However the management of the BBC was heavily criticised in the Hutton Report and as the Director General I am responsible for the management so it’s right I take responsibility for what happened.

I accept that the BBC made errors of judgement and I’ve sadly come to the conclusion that it will be hard to draw a line under this whole affair while I am still here. We need closure. We need closure to protect the future of the BBC, not for you or me but for the benefit of everyone out there. It might sound pompous but I believe the BBC really matters.

Throughout this affair my sole aim as Director General of the BBC has been to defend our editorial independence and to act in the public interest.

In four years we’ve achieved a lot between us. I believe we’ve changed the place fundamentally and I hope that those changes will last beyond me. The BBC has always been a great organisation but I hope that, over the last four years, I’ve helped to make it a more human place where everyone who works here feels appreciated. If that’s anywhere near true I leave contented, if sad.

Thank you all for the help and support you’ve given me. This might sound a bit schmaltzy but I really will miss you all. I’ve enjoyed the last four years more than any other time in my working life.

I attach the statement which will be released soon.
Yours,
Greg

Fuck me, if people in this country don't start to wake up and realise the steady erosion of their rights and freedoms that is occuring under this government then, then, then, then things will stay like they are. Maybe even get worse. I'm going to vote Tory at the next election. So there.

are the DG and chair jobs direct appointments or does it go through the CMS select committee? i mean i'm assuming there's proper interviews and all, but who has the final say?

yeah, so far. But don't be surprised if a few more commit seppuku bedfore the sun sets.

As for selection procedure, I'm not sure but I suspect there is some cloak of democratic selection process which shrouds the partisan reality.

This could all be complete bollocks, of course.

Mark Byford, a one-time candidate to be a director general of the BBC. He lost out to Greg Dyke, despite being the favoured candidate of both the outgoing director general, Sir John Birt, and his right-hand man, Will Wyatt, who revealed in his memoirs this year that the head of BBC World Service, Sam Younger, was cynically removed from his job to make way for Mr Byford, who was considered "one job short of a DG-ship".

Aged 45, Mr Byford may well get another crack at the top job. But he won't have been too pleased by Will Wyatt's description of him in his forthcoming autobiography, The Fun Factory: "Obedient, too prosaic, long-winded, needs to lighten up."

Yes. He sounds perfect.

In other words, Hutton thinks that impartiality = not being liberal, and that being liberal undermines public confidence much more than the idea that a dictator not be called to account for his actions. You don't have to be super-cynical to put Blair in Pinochet's shoes here.

The irony is that the old codger has just dealt a sturdy blow to exactly that public confidence.

Aw FFS I remember that Pinochet kerfuffle. Amnesty relies on lots of legal-minded/trained folks giving volunteer time/pro-bono consulting and is NOT a partisan political organisation.

Meanwhile, across the pond, Kay and Powell are saying 'Actually, we were wrong about all that stuff.'

British politics has become a grotesque Punch and Judy show. A ridiculous and violent sideshow.

Fiona Millar has a 'lifestyle' column in Guardian Weekend. One hopes she's on the 30p word rate but one highly doubts it.

Rule one of management, if someone accuses your staff of doing something, check it out properly, don't just assume your staff are in the right. There's a reason the word assumption starts with ass.

There's a reason the word assumption starts with ass

Pete, self-flagellate NOW for unironic use of office chunderspeak.

Problem is, sometimes I really am terrible manager-type-person in real life.

But back to Hutton. Who will the departure of Greg Dyke hurt the most
a) The BBC
b) The government who will need to be seen to be appointing a fair replacement
c) Phil Cornwell.

So we shake up the intelligence services and we shake up the press. We shake them up with the shaky motive that we want them to agree with our political decisions. We give them a thorough procedural going-over, we change their structures. And is this new broom really going to improve spying, reporting? Do we just beat the messenger until he tells us what we want to hear?

If we want management mantas, how about this one: PPP. The political precedes the procedural. It's not in the small details. It's in the big decisions.

A: It's a trick question - none of the above. The answer is in fact, Greg Dyke.

This supposes that Blair actually gives a flying fuck whether he is seen as fair or not. Is it outrageous to suggest that he couldn't actually care less?

Blair wanted a tory to succeed BB as speaker so as to increase his majority by one.

(Plus, if the Governors had ordered an internal enquiry into Gilligan in the first place this whole thing could well have blown over: their refusal to question their own reporter was a definite fault.)

The R4 PM wake for the fallen comrades is sickening, fascinating, you can here the seething anger below Eddie Mair's voice.

Er, steady on there old boy. Worse than Thatcher? Or Eden?

comrades, see dyke's megaphone speech to the troops before he went back into BH to pack up his stuff.

Momus is correct to take the threat of all this very seriously. But perhaps 'threat' is the wrong word. It has already happened.

We are in dire straits. A terrible, terrible world. I am running out of words to comprehend it.

TONY BLAIR today refused to accept the apologies from the BBC over the Hutton report and insisted that further "heads must roll". Speaking in the wake of acting chairman Lord Ryder's "unreserved apology," Downing Street made it clear Mr Blair was not prepared to let the matter rest.
Mr Blair’s spokesman said: "We still want a clear and unambiguous sign from the BBC that they are sorry for broadcasting a false allegation."
The spokesman said the resignations of chairman Gavyn Davies and director general Greg Dyke went some way to making amends but insisted that the BBC go further.
"When there is talk of heads rolling, that is just what we expect to see physical evidence of. This is no time for figures of speech,” the spokesman added.

In other news, BBC staff have walked out around the country in protest at Greg Dyke leaving, couldn't see that happening under Birt.

I know its a beeb report and earlier, but I think it draws a line under it.

The fuss over this is pulling the wool over our eyes. Now the debate isn't even about the existence of Iraq's weapons, it's about whether or not it was right to say how long it would take to deploy them.

These weapons which, of course, were never deployed once during the war.

THE GOALPOSTS HAVE BEEN MOVED.

I spent last night watching Bill Hicks bootlegs. The 'Infamous Loses It Show', if anyone's interested. Man, that dude is sorely needed.

It's a shame, though, cos I reckon Dyke was just being trusting of Gilligan, or had more pressing things to think about like whether to run Changing Rooms against Property Ladder, and forgot in the heat of the moment that Gilligan was a cock who couldn't be trusted and would stick to his guns even if it meant bringing down the Corporation.

Campbell's attitude predated this particular incident, to things that the BBC hasn't been proven wrong about. And in fact, when the broadcast first went out, he didn't even complain about the 45 min thing, going instead for the 'single source' aspect of it.

* The BBC actually gets more radical and critical as a result of this humiliation.
* This bucks us out of the complacent desire to see all public debate reduced to a back-stabbing/-slapping joust between Jeremy Paxman and some government minister in a studio in Shepherd's Bush.
* A huge amount of negative karma is generated and Blair never wins anything again. (I know, things are pretty bad when karma is all you have on your side.)
* Kerry wins in November on a strongly anti-Bush ticket and Blair is unable to spin quickly enough.
* Blair decides to quit while he's ahead.
* This changes the British public's mind about ceding power to Europe. Anything to get representation!
* Avian flu wipes out humanity and all this looks very small indeed.

ILX, passim

The public audience; they showed a good deal of intelligence, and a sort of righteous anger at this clear whitewash that is heartening. The support for the BBC - even Letwin gave a great little tribute - was just the sort of response that's needed. One only hopes the wider public feels similarly... in a large polling turnout, 82% of viewers thought that Dyke should not have resigned, which I hope is similar across the board.

I share the despair that the Pinefox feels about the whole situation; but clearly, analysis is going into this situation now, after yesterday's startled surprise, within which the Govt ingloriously crowed as if they were back to before Bush wanted to start this war! A justified backlash is happening; people can see through it. Hutton has possibly done his job *too* well for Blair's liking... it draws people's minds to the clear white gaps which form a chasm in these "findings".

The Govt simply will not be able to install puppets in place of Davies and Dyke... there's no way this can happen now politically. Signs point towards all but Murdoch and his followers wanting the BBC to retain its public service credentials and continue to deliver high quality journalism.

Immediately after the Inquiry Blair appeared on the steps of Number Ten Downing Street dressed in the purple robes of a Roman Emperor and, leading a blind toothless lion on a gold chain, hog-called his constituents to come and get their appointments. The constituents rushed up grunting and squealing like the hogs they were.

Men who had gone grey and toothless in the faithful service of their country were summarily dismissed in the grossest terms - like "You're fired you old fuck. Get your piles outa here." - and in many cases thrown bodily out of their offices. Hoodlums and riffraf of the vilest caliber filled the highest offices of the land.

When the Supreme Court overruled some of the legislation perpetrated by this vile rout, Blair forced that august body, one after the other, on threat of immediate reduction to the rank of Parliamentary Lavatory Attendants, to submit to intercourse with a purple-assed baboon; so that venerable, honored men surrendered themselves to the embraces of a lecherous snarling simian, while Alastair Campbell, Blair and his strumpet wife, and the veteran brown-nose Lord Hutton, smoking a communal hookah of hashish, watched the lamentable sight with cackles of obscene laughter. Judge Blackstrap succumbed to a rectal hemorrhage on the spot, but Blair only laughed and said coarsely, "Plenty more where that came from."

Hutton, unable to control himself, rolled on the floor in sycophantic convulsions, saying over and over "You're killin' me, Chief. You're killin' me."

Judge Hockactonsvol has both ears bitten off by the simian, and when Chief Judge Howard P. Herringbone asked to be excused, pleading his piles, Blair told him brutally, "Best thing for piles is a baboon's prick up the ass. Right Hutton?"

"Right Chief. I use no other. You heard what the man said. Drop your moth-eaten ass over that chair and show the visiting simian some Southern hospitality."

Blair then appointed the baboon to replace Judge Blackstrap, "diseased."

"I'll have to remember that one boss," said Campbell, breaking into loud guffaws.

So henceforth the proceedings of the Court were carried on with a screeching simian shitting and pissing and masturbating on the table and not infrequently leaping on one of the Judges and tearing him to shreds.

"He is entering a vote of dissent," Blair would say with an evil chuckle. The vacancies so created were invariably filled by simians, so that, in the course of time, the Supreme Court came to consist of nine purple-assed baboons; and Blair, claiming to be the only one able to interpret their decisions, thus gained control of the highest tribunal in the land.

He then set himself to throw off the restraints imposed by Parliament and the House of Lords. He loosed innumerable crabs and other vermin in both houses. He had a corps of trained idiots who would rush in at a given signal and shit on the floor, and hecklers equipped with a brass band and fire hoses. He instituted continues repairs. An army of workman trooped through the Houses, slapping the legislators in the face with boards, spilling hot tar down their necks, dropping tools on their feet, undermining them with air hammers; and finally he caused a steam shovel to be set up on the floors, so that the recalcitrant legislators were either buried alive or drowned when the Houses flooded from the broken water mains. The survivors attempted to carry on in the street, but were arrested for loitering and were sent to the workhouse like common bums. After release they were barred from office on the grounds of their police records.

Then Blair gave himself over to such vile and unrestrained conduct as is shameful to speak of. He instituted a series of contests designed to promulgate the lowest acts and instincts of which the human species is capable. There was a Most Unsavory Act Contest, a Cheapest Trick Contest, Molest a Child Week, Turn In Your Best Friend Week - professional stool pigeons disqualified - and the coveted title of All-Around Vilest Man of the Year. Sample entries: The junky who stole an opium suppository out of his grandmother's ass; the ship captain who put on women's clothes and rushed into the first lifeboat; the vice-squad cop who framed people, planting an artificial prick in their fly.

Blair was convulsed with such hate for the species as it is, that he wished to degrade it beyond recognition. He could endure only the extremes of human behavior. The average, the middle-aged (he viewed middle age as a condition with no relation to chronological age), the middle-class, the bureaucrat filled him with loathing. One of his first acts was to burn every record in London; thousands of bureaucrats threw themselves into the flames.

"I'll make the cocksuckers glad to mutate," he would say, looking off into space as if seeking new frontiers of depravity.

(A detournement of William Burroughs' text Roosevelt After Inauguration by Quentin Crisp II)

We'll see what happens.

When Murdoch and co say that the BBC should be stripped of special status and license fee and made to fight in the marketplace, do they mean it should no longer be held to account, but merely indulged?

Doubtless they don't.

I could not hear what the man was saying on that broadcast that you have just talked about.

(Pam's always vaguely amused by my anger at stuff like this - "What else did you expect? It's Fox.")

An only possibly interesting fact is that the images on their own were not obviously offensive.

I disagree about the Daily Mail and the Sun, though. I think they would print something with those desperately hateful and totally-uninformed sentiments in a heartbeat, minus a few things the lawyers made them take out.

Finally I have to think that this guy is an almost psychotically unhappy person inside.

"check"

"Rivers of blood as high as a horse's shoulder?"

"check!"

"Fox News staff in da house?"

"check!!!!"

"Call in the angels"

the Book of Revelations can't come true soon enough for assbaskets like this. I hope you sit on your fucking lapel pin, bitchnose

xpost yeah that was bad.

stevem you have just persuaded me to go to bed.

"On each element of the case before him, Lord Hutton gave the government the benefit of the doubt, opting for the interpretation that most favoured it, never countenancing the gloss that might benefit the BBC. Perhaps the clearest example was Lord Hutton's very judge-like deconstruction of the "slang expression" sexed up. One meaning could be inserting items that are untrue, he said; another could simply be strengthening language. Under the latter definition, Hutton conceded, Gilligan's story would be true. So his lordship decided the other meaning must apply."

I share your worries about the whitewash, but don't you see that Gilligan's sloppiness gave Hutton the licence to interpret the meaning of "sexed up" the way he did? The listeners were being told at the same time that the document was sexed up and that the government "probably" had known that the 45-minute deployment information was not true. The implication was clearly that the sexing up consisted at least in part of lying. It was later found out that the detail in question had been added late because the information had come in late, and not because a fictional element was needed to bolster the dossier. So even though the term "sexing up" usually means only to streghtn existing facts, in this case it obviously implied extended embellishment with untruths.

The sad thing about this is that it means that the government is excused the blatant sexing-up concocted between Campbell, on behalf of the government, and John Scarlett. And black becomes white. It was the sexing up which took us to war. It wasn't the 45-minute capability in itself, but the removal of the word "may" from the dossier and its replacement with such terms as "capable of", and the replacement of "WMD programmes" with "WMD", that clinched the deal in the public's eyes and made 55% of them poll in favour on the eve of the war.

Perhaps I should attack a train *tonight*?

No shit it's an easy choice! Au revoir, freedom fries - hello, pomme frites!

new labour are some sick fucks.

Is it me, or are they managing to keep this fairly quiet? Page 6 of The Independent.