If you don’t think PBASE is the place for politics – you’d better go look at someone else’s pictures because today I’m mad as hell at the news!
It’s funny, I always seem to go through a really belligerent, grumpy phase whenever I’ve been sick and am starting to get a bit better. That’s never been more apparent to me than today. As always, David has BBC News 24 running more or less all day on the TV in the sitting room. I’ve been flumped on the settee (again) too exhausted to do much and getting more and more angry about three stories. It’s a good job that I don’t usually hear too much news or I might spontaneously combust one of these days.
I’ve told you of my view of our politicians before today and it doesn’t get any better.
Firstly the news of Greg Dyke’s resignation from the BBC over the Hutton Enquiry findings has appalled me. A tragedy if ever I heard one – another decent, honest man, just doing his job now loses his livelihood (though thankfully not his life) over the government’s cover-up of the ‘weapons of mass destruction’ scam.
Dr David Kelly, a decent, honest man was so concerned that the government was making up stories to justify their military action over the WMD issue that he spoke to a BBC journalist about it. He has of course subsequently been proved right by events and as far as I can see the only man on the planet now still saying they were there is our esteemed leader Tony Blair, even George dubya seems to have ‘revised’ his stance on that particular subject.
I expect David Kelly believed that the BBC was an organisation with integrity and that his anonymity would be safe. I also believe people leak stuff like this because they want to see bad things stopped but are unable to speak up publicly because of their position. David Kelly’s wife and family are now without their patriarch because the Government dragged his name through the dirt….and why? Because they were afraid of him telling the truth as far as I can see.
I think that’s enough of a tragedy and a disgrace without the resignation of Greg Dyke. To me, Dyke was a great leader of the BBC. It was clear his staff thought him to be a man of integrity and honour and he did nothing wrong. Well unless you count employing a journalist (whose job surely is to investigate and broadcast stories that he believes to be in the public interest) who investigated and broadcast a story that he believed to be in the public interest. Let’s not forget that David Kelly sought out Andrew Gilligan because he was so concerned – this is a man who had lived and breathed in the murky world of WMD for many years and was regarded as the expert’s expert. He must have seen so many bad things and if he thought this was worse than what he’d seen before? Now if you ask me, if he was that concerned then I’m glad the BBC reported those misgivings. The BBC must never be allowed to become a puppet for whatever political party is in power at the time.
Only bright spot for me in all of this is Dyke’s quote about feeling like ‘a mixture between a politician and Madonna’….oh and the fact that no longer constrained by his job he can write a book telling us EXACTLY how shabbily our Government have behaved. My opinion is they still have the blood of David Kelly on their hands. Go, Greg – don’t leave a single thing about our scummy politicians unsaid.
My second news gripe of the day is the story about the cannibal in Germany who used the internet to advertise for a victim who he was completely upfront with and told ‘prospective applicants’ he would kill and eat his victim. How can that be allowed to happen in a civilised world? What kind of sickness makes people do that and how are they not stopped by society when they are so completely open about their predilections? And his sentence? Eight years? Out in 4-4 ½? Great – I can’t wait for him to be back on the streets, can you?
Finally, bird flu – sorry folks – I told you I was on a rant today and you have got this far so bear with me a little longer! I have this afternoon watched scenes from Thailand of people piling hundreds of small chicks, not more than weeks old into sacks where they suffocate one another and die. I know that chickens have personalities and feel pain. How inhumane is that? If those poor critters were not kept in such dreadful conditions then the spread of these diseases wouldn’t happen. I’m not trying to impose my vegetarianism on others – each to his or her own as far as I’m concerned. I’m simply saying next time you go in a supermarket, check where the meat you buy has come from. If it’s not come from a known humane source, leave it there and chose a pack that has. If people won’t buy meat reared in these horrible conditions then the people who do it will have to change their practices.
It’s not all doom and gloom in my world today though, on the lighter side, I saw a wonderful story about a British Giant house rabbit who saved her ‘Dad’s’ life when he was tucked up next to her on the sofa watching TV and slipped into a diabetic coma – she raced into the kitchen to her ‘mum’ and raised the alarm. Now how’s that for cool. Ra ra to the rabbit I say!
