[tomtom]

The question is, is this actually bad publicity for UKIP?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30467897

God knows, but if he worked in the media he'd be toast.

[DaveC]

Up to 50 hostages bring held in a Sydney coffee shop. Possibly / probably Islamic extremists. It's in pretty much all your media as well as ours. A scary development for Australia.

[JackAus]

Yeah pretty nuts. Happened at about 10am this morning. Airport shut, Opera House evacuated and on lockdown, Harbour Bridge was closed for most of the day. Flat mate was hanging off the side of the building next door and was politley asked to get the fuck off the ropes....

[Sloper]

Looks like a good resolution to the seige.

now back on domestic matters.

Internal Labour document poorly drafted and incoherent, JCFOAB how are they going to cope when the election campaign actually kicks off!

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/dec/15/miliband-labour-immigration-document

[Joepicalli]

So it seems that we did collude in extraordinary rendition and torture and that Straw, Hoon and Miliband (D) lied to the House.

Well I never.

That will make conversation around the Straw dinner table interesting this Christmas 'so Daddy what DID you do in the war against terrorism?'

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/dec/12/british-agents-odd-case-cia-torture-lord-west

In what universe did anyone with half a brain not know that we were colluding with a bunch of scary, rightwing, evangelical capitalo-christians who believed they were doing God's Work; and that anything they were doing was therefore justified?
 Blair lied, Straw lied, everybody lied. But let's not get party political about this: all of the major parties backed the whole Iraq/ Afghanistan package, and the fallout from it was always something that was going to need to be "managed" by Parliament.
No grown-up ever believed that Sadam had a 45 minute biological weapon missile capacity.
No adult could possibly have thought John Reid wasn't lying through his teeth when he said the British Army's deployment to Afghanistan was not combat deployment (Oh how I laugh as I remember myself screaming "You lying cunt" at the radio, at the time).
There was always going to be a day of reckoning with regard to the west deeply compromising itself by engaging in illegal wars and torture. And everybody knows that that is what we did.
Parliament will cover its own and the lying and squirming will allow the non-parties and the loonies (Brand, UKIP etc.) to shout "Establishment" and "Cover Up" and "Broken Politics" and "Other Soundbite".
Oooooh it make me mad it does.

[Will Hunt]

JCFOAB

Could you please put me out of my misery and explain what this means?!

[Sloper]

It means I can' type, it should be JFCOAB.

I hope that helps 

[Sloper]

So it seems that we did collude in extraordinary rendition and torture and that Straw, Hoon and Miliband (D) lied to the House.

Well I never.

That will make conversation around the Straw dinner table interesting this Christmas 'so Daddy what DID you do in the war against terrorism?'

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/dec/12/british-agents-odd-case-cia-torture-lord-west

In what universe did anyone with half a brain not know that we were colluding with a bunch of scary, rightwing, evangelical capitalo-christians who believed they were doing God's Work; and that anything they were doing was therefore justified?
 Blair lied, Straw lied, everybody lied. But let's not get party political about this: all of the major parties backed the whole Iraq/ Afghanistan package, and the fallout from it was always something that was going to need to be "managed" by Parliament.
No grown-up ever believed that Sadam had a 45 minute biological weapon missile capacity.
No adult could possibly have thought John Reid wasn't lying through his teeth when he said the British Army's deployment to Afghanistan was not combat deployment (Oh how I laugh as I remember myself screaming "You lying cunt" at the radio, at the time).
There was always going to be a day of reckoning with regard to the west deeply compromising itself by engaging in illegal wars and torture. And everybody knows that that is what we did.
Parliament will cover its own and the lying and squirming will allow the non-parties and the loonies (Brand, UKIP etc.) to shout "Establishment" and "Cover Up" and "Broken Politics" and "Other Soundbite".
Oooooh it make me mad it does.

Joe, some of what you say is spot on, but let's face it Blair had his share of Christian nutters in Cabinet too, Ruth Kelly was from memory a fully paid up member of Opus Dei and I don't think she was the only one.

But when you say let's not get party political about it, you're talking shite. 

Party politics is about what you do with power when the policy is within your gift: one of the reasons Brown has got such little flak over his response to the near meltdown in the banking system is that the events were not in his control and the solution not wholly within his gift (compare this with the stick he's got over abolishing the role of the BoE and the failed triparite regime he imposed on day one when taking office).

Labour were in office, had control over the evidence (maliciously and malignantly as we know) and as such the decision to go war was in essence their fiat: compare this with the situation in 1991 or in 1982.

The decisions to go along with the extraordinary rendition was a party political choice, the decision to lie about it was a party political choice just as the imposition of the community charge or poll tax on the Scots first was a party political choice.

Politics requires actions to have reactions, whether equal and opposite, commensurate or disproportionate; to try and suggest otherwise demeans politics and democracy as if there are no consequences then politics no longer matters and we've seen what dreadful things can happen when the art of the possible is lost and we move on to the continuation of politics by other means.

[Stubbs]

Sloper with regards to Iraq/Afghanistan, lying re WMD, Rendition, torture, could you have seen a Conservative govt taking different actions?

[Oldmanmatt]

There is nothing new or party political about any of it.
It has happened before, it will happen again.

[lagerstarfish]

It means I can' type, it should be JFCOAB.

I hope that helps 

jesus fin christ on a bicycle ?

[tomtom]

Jiggling fish corpses on a baguette?

[Sloper]

Sloper with regards to Iraq/Afghanistan, lying re WMD, Rendition, torture, could you have seen a Conservative govt taking different actions?

Yes, with regard to the lies, the rendition and torture yes, you only have to look at the speeches made by the like of David Davis and many others.

When 'we' were under regular actual attack by the IRA in the 1980s when Willie Whitelaw was asked by the police for more anti-terror laws he told them to go away and use the ones that they already had, compare that with Blair's approach.

I think that the Tories would have gone into Afghanistan, Iraq I think not.

The it doesn't matter what Labour did the Tories would have done the same / been worse doesn't really wash either as an excuse for Labour or in reality.

[Sloper]

There is nothing new or party political about any of it.
It has happened before, it will happen again.

Yes it has happened before, Kenya 1956, Northern Ireland 1970s and it may happen again in the future, but to say it isn't party political is bunkum.

You might as well say that the government response to the miners strike in 198-5 would have been the same if Labour were in office.

[Oldmanmatt]

Slopers, if even half the rumors that went around our circles in the late 80's early 90's were true; that is way off. Have you forgotten Gibraltar?

[Sloper]

No, but 'death on the rock' was a fictional account of the operation, what is not in doubt (it was accepted by the IRA at the time) is that those that were shot were members of an active service unit of the IRA on a mission.

The choice to engage or not would have been delegated down to those on the ground, there would have been no O group to say engage and no ministerial or quasi ministerial involvement.

Could the extraordinary renditions happen without effectively the state knowing? No.

SO Gibraltar was  quite different from the actions of allowing extraordinary rendition to states where it was known torture was routinely used.

[Jaspersharpe]

JCFOAB

Could you please put me out of my misery and explain what this means?!

It's Jaded Conservative Fuckwit Orates Absolute Bollocks.

[lagerstarfish]

next you'll be trying to tell me that "who dares wins" was a fictional account of dealing with the evil menace that is CND

[tomtom]

I heard that we need a trident replacement to deal with a threat called Spectre...

[Joepicalli]

This is beginning to get a bit ranty. None of us know what would have happened if the tories had been in. I actually was broadly in agreement with Sloper's post. Of course we must try to use the Law to bring Blair, Straw, Reid, Milliband (D) etc to justice. My real fear is that Parliament, Whitehall (The Establishment) will minimise the fallout of any attempt to get to the truth this will inturn lead to further erosion of confidence in our democracy in general. For example I cannot think of any way I could be convinced that the investigation into the "dodgy dossier" and the subsequent death of Dr Kelly was not a whitewash. And frankly I don't feel good about that. It tilts me towards the conspiracy theorist end of the political spectrum and I don't have a cellar for "prepping" in. 

[Joepicalli]

And if I did it would be full of wine.

[tomtom]

Falklands, miners strike - all examples of probably govt cover ups of all sorts of nasties... But it won't get out until most of those are involved have died - because parliament and possibly our democratic system would have been stirred up/chaos etc...

[slackline]

When 'we' were under regular actual attack by the IRA in the 1980s when Willie Whitelaw was asked by the police for more anti-terror laws he told them to go away and use the ones that they already had, compare that with Blair's approach.

Teresa May 

[Sloper]

This is beginning to get a bit ranty. None of us know what would have happened if the tories had been in. I actually was broadly in agreement with Sloper's post. Of course we must try to use the Law to bring Blair, Straw, Reid, Milliband (D) etc to justice. My real fear is that Parliament, Whitehall (The Establishment) will minimise the fallout of any attempt to get to the truth this will inturn lead to further erosion of confidence in our democracy in general. For example I cannot think of any way I could be convinced that the investigation into the "dodgy dossier" and the subsequent death of Dr Kelly was not a whitewash. And frankly I don't feel good about that. It tilts me towards the conspiracy theorist end of the political spectrum and I don't have a cellar for "prepping" in.

The evidence is overwhelmingly in favour of the death of Dr Kelly being suicide.  Try reading Vodoo Histories, from memory it covers this very well.

[Joepicalli]

Oh Sloper, I'm sure he killed himself. That doesn't mean others weren't culpable. Was his reaction to being outed foreseeable by those who did it? Like I've already said the effects of spin and dirty tricks are corrosive.