Peeing in the wind

Dum de dum de dum …

de dum …

So…

Still no news about the investigation into the shooting of that bloke in Stockwell tube station last July then

Your heart really has to go out to the people at the IPCC. Finding the optimum way to present their, ummm, conclusions has got to be a real bastard. In particular, finding someone who will carry the can without spilling their guts is going to be really challenging.

No real worries though. The media will play along. It’s good at that sort of thing.

Mind you, at least there is some form of enquiry into that killing. Which is more than you can say about the bombings on 7th July. Tony Blair announced just before Christmas that an enquiry into 7/7 would be prohibitively expensive. Instead, government ministers will instead publish a ‘definitive account of what happened in a written narrative’.

Given our government’s illustrious track record for truth telling quite a few people, including some 7/7 victims, are not exactly enthralled by the prospect. Presumably the definitive account will begin with the line ‘Once upon a time’ or something similar.

Hats off to Rachel from North London for taking umbrage with the announcement and starting a petition calling for an enquiry though a nagging voice in my head tells me that it’s a waste of time.

Kudos too to John Tulloch for speaking out against Blair capitalising on people’s deaths. Some of his thought on the subject have been reported in the press today and, in my humble opinion, he’s pretty much spot on when it comes to the culture of fear and the douche bags behind it.

Respect is also due to Bridget Dunne who has grabbed hold of the fact that the train the supposed 7/7 bombers took to London that day didn’t actually run. She, and others, have tried to get this information into the mainstream media with a conspicuous lack of success. Amongst many other things, she actually took time to complain about a particularly nauseating slab of propaganda broadcast by the BBC under the banner of a science documentary after the bombings last year.

Of course none of this will come to anything in the present climate. If the mainstream media steadfastly refuses to pick up and run with the stories about outstanding questions about the events of 7/7 or the government’s reasons for not holding an enquiry, anyone speaking out is just peeing in the wind. Bless them for trying though.

And it’s not just media resistance or the failure of political opposition at work here, it’s Joe Public himself. Time and again he’s presented with two implied scenarios to explain the behaviour of our government…

It’s either wicked or stupid

And, time and again, Joe Public chooses stupid. It’s more comforting.

The line ‘a tragic failure of intelligence’ is starting to wear a little thin with a few of us out here in Pleb Land.

Obviously, not everyone chooses to believe they live in a world where every unfortunate or loathsome act by government is simply the result of a blunder by essentially well meaning people but enough people buy into that. Just enough

And if the balance ever starts to tip away from government, well, there’s always the prospect of another suicide attack, the 21st century equivalent of the now desperately unfashionable Lone Gunman, just around the corner isn’t there?

(category: political stuff)