January 28, 2004

• Yeah... Pretty much what you said. I guess this means that Tony Blair's in the clear then. For a while. Damn.
• of course being a yank i have been distracted by your slime volleyball link. but how the heck do you play it?
• oh! figured it out. that IS fun, isn't it? and, of course, as always, please accept an american's apologies for having dragged britain into this whole iraq mess.
• Hutton smacks down the BBC and Gilligan. But didn't they tell the truth, even if the didn't have evidence? Steve Bell.
• I think our Government was willing enough, SideDish. British troops have been involved in military action every year since Victorian times. There's nothing we like more than a good war.
• The most disturbing thing is the glee with which the papers are reporting the news of the BBC criticisms. Show me a newspaper which only runs stories when they have multiple sources confirming the facts. Hypocrites.
• True, very true, BigCalm. A friend of mine from BBC News put it nicely; Gilligan's story was "the most accurate untrue report ever broadcast". And most journalists knew this - while there may only have been one specific source (or no source at all) for that story, what Gilligan said was pretty much the word on the street, reasonably common knowledge amongst the majority of political journos. I don't really mind about the criticism of BBC News management structures - the glee with which it's being reported elsewhere is probably only matched by the glee within the BBC, which loves nothing better than to beat itself up - but I'm very concerend at the impression Hutton gave that the Government was completely in the clear over lying/misleading/being economical with the truth about WMD and intelligence. Especially after he specifically stated that such judgements didn't, in his opinion, fall within his remit. It may have been the government, it may have been the intelligence community, or most likely it was a series of complex and subtle machinations at the points where the distinctions between the two blurred. But somebody got it terribly wrong - intentionally or not - and there were two million of us mincing around London on a cold day early last year who knew that they had. So... why did we go to war? You know, I think we need some kind of inquiry... :-) vbfg sums up my anger (at Hutton's double standards) pretty nicely over at The Place More Blue.
• That slime volleyball link was quite obviously inserted into the first draft of flashboy's post by Alastair Campbell, in a flagrant attempt to "sex up" this discussion. I feel simultaneously dirty and entertained.
• That's not f***ing true, quidnunc you s***, and I'll be f***ed if I'm going to b****y well stand here and take that sort of b******s from someone with a blantant anti-slime agenda. F***! Right, I'm off to write some f***ing soft-porn stories. I am flashboy, I am, oh yes I really am. Are you questioning my integrity? B*****d.
• The BBC needs to unleash its secret weapon: have Doctor Who go back in time to prevent Dr. Kelly's suicide... (Of course, if the Doctor could really do that kind of thing, then the American version of 'Coupling' would never have happened...)
• And it's okay flashboy, you can use the word "bloody" without the *s... at least here in the U.S.ofA. I'm still a little confused by the b******s. Shouldn't that be b******t?
• The first casualty. Hang on, wasn't he supposed to be one of "Tony's cronies"? Bollocks, wendell. Bollocks. It's probably Ally Campbell's favourite word (and indeed his favourite mode of discourse).
• Oops ... looking over my notes, it seems what I meant to say was "slime volleyball gets me all sexed up". ... actually, at first I was just going to write "what flashboy said" and then you said it even better. And it was fucking cold that day, wasn't it?
• Froze my fucking bollocks off, mate :-) (Not literally, I hasten to add.)
• gilligan's story
• BBC political editor Andrew Marr said Mr Davies would soon be telling the corporation's governors of his decision. This, on the BBC website. Byuh?
• Blaise - a little satirical dig at how little attention the governors paid to BBC News, maybe? Elsewhere, Marr hits one of the nails on the head: In the end what it comes down to is a judgement by Lord Hutton - who he believes, whose motives he trusts most and in that, again and again, he comes down on the side of politicians and officials, who by and large he believes and whose story, whose narrative he accepts and he comes down against Andrew Gilligan, and journalism, I have to say generally, and against the BBC.
• Instapundit is doing the happy dance at his site. BBC CHAIRMAN GAVYN DAVIES TO RESIGN: That's the story on the wires, though I can't find it on the web just yet. (Thanks to the journalist readers who sent it!). I told you they should have listened to the bloggers. . . .
• Didn't Instapundit find the WMDs? Or save the world from Iraqi terrorists or something? Wanker.
• Here's a video of Lord Hutton giving his ruling.
• That slime game is too damn hard. Where is the outrage?
• Atrios posted his thoughts on the Hutton Report. But, the report was such a ridiculous whitewash that it oddly ends up condemning Blair. A "naughty naughty BBC" combined with a "yes, mistakes we're made, but these things happen" with respect to Blair would have preserved the status quo and no one could have found too much fault with it. But, Hutton has tried to play us all for fools and destroyed his own reputation in the process.
• Hutton has scrutinised the BBC, now let's have a full judicial inquiry into media accuracy in the UK - starting with the Sun. I like this idea.
• A pat on the back for Nick Cohen, who predicted the outcome of the Hutton report five months ago, and got it spot-on. (Here's Cohen's reaction to the Hutton report.)
• Fox news seem pleased with the result.
• Thanks, dng, for that astonishing link. Fox News accusing the BBC of bias: I don't know whether to laugh or cry. The BBC has its faults, but God, when you think of the alternative ..
• So Fox wasn't exagerating anything in its accounts of WMD? They couldn't even resist exagerating in the response to Gilligan and the BBC. I'll listen more when the black as pitch pot stops dissing the pale grey kettle.
• From the makers of The Daily Mail Headline Generator... Alastair Campbell's Wheel Of Retribution
• Only one source for this at the moment. But if it is true that the results of David Kelly's post mortem are to be sealed for 70 years that pretty much settles it; it wasn't a suicide.
• What kind of...? Well, this case does have the earmarks of shenanigans.