Public Interest.co.uk

First post of the year and it's a podcast too. Me and Al chew the fat about the credit crunch, Vince Cable, Ron Paul, and George Galloway. I think I come across as even more jaundiced than usual, but what the hell. It's the first one since September 2007. Enjoy!

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Happy New Year!

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Time for another post - I like to do them every now and again, just to delude myself that I haven't abandoned this altogether. Don't know why, exactly. I suppose I like doing other stuff more. That doesn't mean I won't come back to it again, with renewed vigour, though there is absolutely no evidence at all, and quite a lot to the contrary, that that will happen. Curiously, I still read blogs, and am quite happen to comment on them occasionally. Just not my one.

Still, have a good Christmas. You know you want to.

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Dan Kennedy, in the Guardian:

"Saddam was a bloodthirsty tyrant, and on some level the world is better off without him".

That is so meaningless on so many levels.

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Polly:

"Suddenly only the power of government can save us".

Well well well. You take a rain check for a month or two but nothing changes. That is, the world might change, but Polly doesn't. I think I'd get seriously worried if she actually changed her mind on something. That's the day I'll become a socialist.

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What with a collapsing pound, a government in chaos, opposition mps being arrested by the filth, babies being slaughtered by the underclass while the social workers scratch their heads in bemused wonder, and mass unemployment on the horizon, no wonder the liberaloids have a spring in their step. No wonder they're getting all dewy-eyed about seventies throwback Denis Healey. No wonder they approve of lying.

"Very occasionally, there is only one answer in politics: the really stonking lie".

opines the Guardian.

"Labour in government in the 1960s and 70s was brutally exposed to two such moments. One related to sterling's fragile health, the other to the willingness of politicians of the left to use - rather than merely stockpile - nuclear weapons. Part of the success of Denis Healey, both as defence secretary and chancellor, lay in his extraordinary ability to convey an impression that was frequently in direct contradiction of the truth".

So that's why they loved Mr. Blair so much. And maybe it's why they turned on the one-eyed Scotsman. He just isn't so convincing at all this lying mallarkey.

"In the corridors of the Treasury the fate of the pound might be discussed in the worried tones of surgeons gathered round the operating table. But on the public platform the chancellor would round on its detractors with bruising confidence. As defence secretary he was the politician who - if the prime minister had been obliterated in a nuclear strike - would be standing by in the bunker to give the command for the nuclear counterattack".

That helped us all sleep well in our beds, didn't it?

"It was vital both to Britain's foreign policy and Labour's electoral future that Moscow and the Daily Mail believed he would give the order".

And the Telegraph, and the Mirror, and the Times... but of course, it's the Mail that carries the can here.

"But under the beguiling interrogation of Professor Peter Hennessy on BBC Radio 4 last night, Lord Healey finally confessed. The old Anzio beachmaster, who had seen at first hand the bloody results of tactical miscalculation, revealed that he would never have given a command that would have left 20 million Russians dead. But, he said: "You had to make people think you would use [the bomb] even when you wouldn't."

And that's it. We're supposed to admire this dishonest, bushy-eyed charlatan. The Soviets have killed off Jim Callaghan, Healey's got several million pounds worth of military hardware at his disposal - paid for the by the British tax payer - and he wouldn't use it. And never would.
What a splendid newspaper. We're all idiots who read the Mail, so we have to be handled with delicate care. And what's the odd, million pound lie between friends? Just so long as there are schools and hospitals, I suppose.

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I'm not sure that I'd buy either the Indy or the Sindy for a quid, but those guys at the Mail must have more money than sense.

Still, the ramifications are intriguing, especially if they do the sensible thing and make Richard Littlejohn editor. He could start by calling them all into his office and demanding changes: Robert Fisk could do a column on cellulite, the Yazzmonster could write about Fern Britton, and Johann Hari could write something interesting.

Go on. It's only a quid.

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