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April 28, 2005
Gender?
Channel 4 put the Bliar story up for grabs again. I still find it difficult to believe that it will have enough of an impact to affect the polls; people seem to believe that sometimes little porkies are necessary in the affairs of state.
However it really does lead to serious question marks over Lord Peter Goldsmith.
Peter is clearly a clever bloke, having gained a double first at Gonville and Caius college, Cambridge around 35 years ago, but when there is even a hint that a deputy high court judge has opinions malleable enough to be guided by a politician it's time to call a halt. Peter needs to step down after the election and tell all; he has no credibility left, or at least not enough for his current postion.
What is now clear is that Biar took the country to war for the wrong reasons. Bad intelligence, bad legal advice, and a false sense of his own importance. This last is excellently shown in this letter from the Telegraph today. Nevil Johnson, Emeritus Fellow, Nuffield College, Oxford, wrote, inter alia: -
While defending his decision on the Iraq war and protesting that he would never apologise for the action he took, he remarked in relation to Saddam Hussein: "I decided to remove him." But this is nonsense. Neither Mr Blair nor this country had the means of removing Saddam.
What Mr Blair actually decided to do was give support to a decision by President George W. Bush to bring about regime change by removing Saddam. There are grounds on which Mr Blair's stance might be justified, especially in terms of Realpolitik and the abiding geo-political interests of this country. But this is not a case that Mr Blair now chooses to deploy.
Instead, he indulges in posturing and fantasising about what he has done.
I couldn't have put it better myself, and indeed, didn't.
You may have been wondering "why the title of today's article?", but I think you can see it coming together now. If not, here's a question for you: -
What do you call someone who get's the right answers for the wrong reasons, who is excessively concerned about their own appearance, and in no way feels embarassed to have a homosexual man as a close friend?
Answer: - Female.
The bottom line here is we're going to have the first cross dressing prime minister in our history. Well, that's progress for you I guess.
Deep 'oles
Still indicating a landslide; majorities of up to 148 seats are being predicted. This might be true but there are a lot of caveats being expressed about the marginals. It seems to be believed that ZNL is 'leaking' these stories to the press to make sure their supporters are scared enough to vote. Why a leak? Well, it's the old forbidden fruit trick. If the fourth estate believes that they've been clever to get hold of the story they'll print it, if it's in a press release, and clearly propaganda, they won't, or if they do say they think it's propaganda.
And of course, all this might be double bluff, so what's the truth?
The table below was generated by Mori, in a poll comissioned by the GMB. The GMB doesn't now like to be called the General and Municipal Boilermakers, still less refer to its origin in 1889 as Gas Workers and General Union, but be that as it may, they are still firmly behind ZNL. So essentially ZNL is asking for this information.
|
|
All |
Labour supporters |
Labour loyalists |
Disaffected
Labour |
Disaffected Labour:
Now support Lib Dems |
|
|
(n=1,973) |
(624) |
(484) |
(All — 256) |
(96) |
|
Conservative |
15% |
6 |
4 |
11 |
4 |
|
Labour |
17% |
39 |
41 |
10 |
9 |
|
Lib Dem |
19% |
14 |
13 |
30 |
55 |
|
Some other party |
3% |
2 |
1 |
2 |
1 |
|
None of these |
10% |
10 |
10 |
8 |
6 |
|
Don't know |
35% |
30 |
30 |
39 |
25 |