Cabinet minister: Iraq was wrong

Deputy PM hopeful, Harriet Harman, plays the Iraq card: –

“How would you re-unite the Labour Party after Iraq?” That was one of the many searching questions from Party members in Sheffield to us 6 deputy leadership candidates.  Here’s what I answered

• I would not have voted for the invasion of Iraq if I had know there were no weapons of mass destruction.  We were wrong on that – there were no WMDs.  We have to admit that.
• after the troops return we should have an enquiry which looks not just at the decision to go in but also the planning for the immediate post-invasion period
• we should encourage a debate in Britain about our relationship with the US.  I regard them as important allies – but we must always do what is in our interests and is in the interest of peace and security in the world.
• we should never forget the tragic loss of life in Iraq – our service men and women and Iraqi civilians.  But nor should we forget the lives saved by UK armed intervention in Sierra Leone, Kosovo and lives saved through our Aid programme for the developing world.

Should help her cause. I wonder, will they all play this hand, and what would this mean for Gordon? After all, didn’t Gordie throw his lot in with Blair ages ago?

Spam fritter

Just been checking the spam bin. I vapourised one promising a “black gay sex story…”

Not sure if there is much of a market for black gay sex stories, but anyone interested in the URL, drop me a line and I’ll pop it the return email.

😉

Pirates!

Just about to sit down to watch Pirates of the Caribbean 3.

There is a 15min intermission half-way through. If it’s rubbish, then I’m going for a sleep in the car during the second half.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Plug | Obsolete: The undead princess.

septicisle has a great post on the mawkish media obsession with Princess Diana: –

Princess Diana is dead, just in case you’d forgotten. She’s been dead for close to ten years. In life, she was chased by newspapers trying to sell their sordid wares. In death, she’s chased by newspapers trying to sell their sordid wares. Oddly, the very same newspapers which day after day filled their pages with paparazzi photographs of the woman, apart from suffering a few pangs of guilt in the immediate aftermath of the accident in the Paris tunnel, with the Daily Mail famously announcing that it would never again buy snatched shots, only to break its own declaration within a matter of weeks, have since then felt the need to act as her personal shield; she can’t defend herself, so they will instead. Again, this was a surprising role reversal, considering that the Glenda Slaggs’ had loved to rip Diana to shreds over whatever they saw fit, leading after her end to the biggest reverse ferret in newspaper history. No longer was she a silly bulimic girl who had betrayed the royal family, now she was the greatest Briton who had ever lived, whose beauty, principles and dignity were second to none.

Read more over at Obsolete…

septicisle is absolutely on the money. The days of news reporting in many of our daily newspapers are long gone. They don’t do news; they merely feed off celebrity, bigotry, and pseudo-scientific gobbledygook. If you were to actually take notice of the tabloid newspapers, you would believe that hoards of asylum seekers roam our nation’s streets feeding on our babies, that Victoria Beckham has reason to exist, that chopsticks cause bowel cancer, and that Wi-Fi is to blame for global warming.

Reality Check: Diana died a decade ago. I didn’t give a shit about her when she was alive, so I’m damned if I’m going to give a flying fuck about the woman now she’s little more than a rotting cadaver. I know it’s harsh, but I simply don’t care. The Express/Mail obsession with Diana is maudlin and self-serving. The editors that sanction this shit should never be allowed to call themselves journalists.

Oh, and what really pisses me off is that twats like Oliver Kamm have the temerity to say that the blogosphere is parasitical. It makes my teeth itch.