Coulson, Murdoch, News of the World – a threat to our democracy?

I plan to say something more substantial on this worrying topic, based on the terrifying revelations in Channel Four’s recent Dispatches programme, but meanwhile, Question Time had some highly relevant exchanges on the matter.

I noted the irony that Max Mosley – whose political opinions I respect – took on the News of the World and won over his private life, in marked contrast to poor Tommy and Gail Sheridan, who took them on and won what looks like being a Pyrrhic victory, and a very short-lived one at that. Whatever the truth of the Sheridan affair, he appears not to have helped himself or his loyal wife by the way he handled it.

Whatever he did or didn’t do, my sympathies lie with him and Gail, not with the News of the World.

His political career is in ruins, and that small, but sometimes worthy and idealistic segment of the voice of working people is wrecked along with him. With friends like Tommy had, who needs enemies?

But there always appears to be that Achilles Heel in extreme left politics. It’s sad …

Apropos Mosley and Sheridan, I am reminded of the remark of an American boss of mine once when someone commented on the sexual pecadilloes of a colleague - "Well, Pete, the best guys always have trouble keeping their pecker in their pants ...". He probably reprised that opinion when President Bill Clinton was having some little local difficulties.

Baroness Warsi is just not up to the job - says Charles “She’ll be sacked in a year’s time…”

Bye bye, Baroness - Charles Kennedy's prediction. “She’s just not up to the job …”

Please let it be soon ...  If I have to listen to that unstoppable torrent of words for much longer, I don't think I could stand it. Even David Dimbleby had trouble shutting her up on Question Time last night.

How many members did you say the Tories had, Sayeeda? Still don't know? How strange! Funny, the Labour Party in Scotland has suffered the same confusion, even amnesia.

Baroness Warsi in trouble over electoral fraud

I like political interviews that turn into a train wreck, such as the Eric Joyce/Gordon Brewer one of some time ago – a classic of its kind, but probably unique. (Falkirk voters re-elected him at the general election: perhaps they don’t watch politics on television or read the newspapers. The bold Eric is now a candidate for the Shadow Cabinet.)

Today, it was Baroness Warsi’s turn, with Jon Sopel, not my favourite interviewer, but here commendably tenacious.

The Baroness was plucked from obscurity by David Cameron because she was a North of England working class women of Asian origin with right-wing views and a Tory supporter, God’s gift to a Tory Party desperate to play down its party-0f-the-rich-and-privileged, racist, jingoistic, militaristic image.

The Baroness, who is now probably modestly well-off and privileged, inexplicably decided to give an interview to Mehdi Hasan of the New Statesman on electoral fraud in northern, predominantly Asian constituencies.

 This is not putting your head into the lion’s mouth, it is going in arse first.

Warsi and Mehdi Hasan New Statesman

Her normal interview style of flattening her critics with a non-stop torrent of words failed her spectacularly here, because Jon Sopel is notably economical in his style, and the sweating Baroness descended into frantic gabbling.

Judge for yourself.

The poisoned, profitable fruits of war and death

Why did Blair go to war?

 Why did Bush go to war?

Why has war become the operating principle of the modern state again, after the revulsion at the slaughter of the Great War - the war to end all wars - and the exhaustion after what may have been the only just war of the 20th century – World War Two ? 

Because it is hugely profitable to the warmongers - it enhances political reputations and increase the status of politicians and it enriches all sorts of companies and individuals. War is the route to incalculable wealth for some.

And wars are again like the old imperial wars of 19th century Britain - they can be fought away from home, with the native soil and commercial infrastructure virtually untouched. All the people have to bear is their impoverishment, and some must bear the deaths of their children, their fathers, their mothers, their brothers and sisters, their loved ones.

(The horror and profound shock of 9/11 for Americans was that this unspoken principle had been violated, and war had come to the heart of America. Even the long trauma of Vietnam had never touched American soil, despite the magnitude of the slaughter on foreign fields.)

The whole apparatus of modern PR and communications is now used to gain the public’s tacit acceptance of war - their dead loved ones are hailed as heroes, the acceptably injured are paraded for the cameras and the gruesomely maimed and disfigured are hidden away.

And the old men can turn out in their berets and medals for the sad, sad passage of the young dead through the streets, finding a false analogy with the just war they once fought, so long, long ago.

The BBC and the commercial television channels are shamefully complicit in this process, with only the occasional brave documentary revealing the true horror.

The priests, prelates and ministers of religion celebrate the lives and mourn the deaths in their ancient liturgies, yet all too rarely condemn unequivocally this ultimate crime against humanity. Some, in an obscene perversion of beliefs and creeds, actively advocate the crusade or the jihad. Religion and war continue to be the inseparable twins they have been throughout history, carried on the endless river of blood and drawing sustenance from it.

Maggie started the lethal process for Britain with the Falklands war, reaping huge political benefit, and her acolyte and admirer, Blair, catapulted himself on to the world stage through wars, and continues to profit obscenely from the poisoned fruits of the Four Horsemen.

Geoff Hoon and his ilk only scavenge the substantial crumbs from the feast of death – the real criminals are untouchable. In the last few days, some of them advocated turning Iran “into a sheet of glass” through nuclear strikes.

Scotland doesn’t have to be a part of this, and we will very shortly have our chance to demonstrate this at a general election, and later in a referendum. Vote for life – for humanity.