Friday, August 19, 2005

Mo Mowlam has died. First Robin Cook, now her. No official cause of death has been released yet, but I would suspect that part of the reason might be that she didn't hate people enough, as that can be the only reason vile Norman Tebbit is still alive and still spouting crap about people. Look at that picture, haven't we seen him in Dawn of the Dead, or am I just mixing that up with Thatcher's early eighties cabinet?

People seem to be worryingly quick to demand Met police commissioner Sir Ian Blair (no relation) resigns over the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, despite the fact that many questions remain, the most obvious one being: "How much did the team that shot him lie about him?", what with leaked information showing he wasn't wearing a heavy jacket with wires coming out of it and he didn't jump the ticket barrier. And the Met have immediately started looking for who leaked the information to the press on Wednesday, whereas they took five days to start the investigation into the shooting of de Menezes because they didn't want it to compromise their investigation into the bombings on the tube. Obviously a month later they've fortunately got some spare time to look for a whistleblower.

But anyway, the point is that we have to wait for the complaints inquiry. When Sir Ian made his first statements about the shooting of de Menezes he did say that what he said was based on what he believed at the time and it's the media as much as Sir Ian that shares the blame if the story wasn't set right afterwards. If the inquiry reveals a cover-up then a full public inquiry should be held and if it's revealed that the Met has failed in it's duty to the public that's when there should be calls for him to resign.

But at the same time, the scraping sound of ranks being closed at the Met can be heard across London. Last time that police shot an innocent person not only were there reports leaked to the media to make it seem that he was some sort of insane gun-toting maniac which then turned out to be completely wrong but the police were most indignant about people thinking it was wrong that they should be able to kill people with impunity. As we've seen already in the last four years, The War Against Terror means never having to do anything to prove you're sorry.

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