Friday, May 26, 2006

Save our Sauce



A couple of responses to some comments made on earlier posts; made either underneath the post itself or by other means

Re. Brian Haw

‘Brian Haw is mentally ill’

Quite possibly so.

And yes, before it was reduced from 40m across to nearer 3m across by police in the small hours, his little peace camp was arguably an eyesore. Though, in my opinion, a couple of the artworks there were pretty good. Plus, pictures of babies mutilated by war are never going to look all that appealing, however tidy you keep their immediate environment.

And yes, there was a time when I too would have looked at someone like Brian Haw and said ‘who’s looking after your seven kids whilst you’re sitting on your arse in Parliament Square preaching to the rest of the world how we should behave’.

However

Life is rarely like the movies. Well, aside from my glamorous, high-octane existence obviously. Flesh and blood heroes or icons are rarely, if ever, perfect. Martin Luther King cheated on his wife, Gandhi was a sanctimonious little tit, Princess Diana spent enough on frocks to feed a small African nation, and Bono is an utter, utter wanker...

A very rich one though, admittedly

Back in April 2002 Tony Blair explained to us idiots out there…

"I pass protesters every day at Downing Street, and believe me, you name it, they protest against it. I may not like what they call me but I thank God they can. That's called freedom"

That would be the freedom his government legislated against by way of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005

...except Blair’s government is so inept that the legislation, phrased with Haw in mind, wasn't retrospective and therefore couldn’t be applied to Haw. And the government then had to go through the courts having to say that it really was meant to be retrospective. And now Haw has appealed. And, in the meantime, our police have turned over Haw’s camp on the pretext that it represented a security risk

A health hazard maybe but the jumping off point for a potential terrorist attack on our sweet precious freedoms?

Bollocks

So how is it that a 'mental' person is able to demonstrate that our government is led by repressive and incompetent hypocrites; more than willing to play the terrorism card to cover up their own failings?

If a mental person is capable of that what does it say about them?

-

I strolled over to Westminster Square on Wednesday to check out the new slimline version of Haw’s camp and also to see how the police would deal with a Haw supporters protest timed to coincide with Blair’s motorcade, taking Blair to answer weekly Parliamentary Questions.

As it happened, Blair pussied out and opted to get into the Commons via the underground Bat Cave style passageway. So, everyone else ended up standing around for an hour; scratching their nuts, occasionally blowing their whistles and gently mocking the police who were presumably thinking that they didn’t join up for this kind of nonsense.

My trip wasn’t a complete wash-out though as I was well-impressed by a parallel protest demanding that production of HP (Houses of Parliament) Sauce stayed in Britain.

Maybe they’re the ones who scared off Blair rather than Haw’s lot

-

Re. A comment someone made to me elsewhere about apparent inconsistencies in two links I quoted about Flight 93

One of the links I quoted made the point that there was no evidence that plastic knives or box-cutters were used to take over all four flight on 9/11

But another link that I quoted, the one that raised the point that cell phones don’t work in aircraft travelling above 10,000ft, does refer to box-cutters in the context of calls made from Flight 93.

There is an apparent contradiction here

Apparently

That’s down to sloppy writing in the article that mentions box-cutters. One of the supposed calls made from Flight 93 certainly did mention that one of the aircrew was knifed but, to my knowledge, the caller did not explain how or with what.

Now I originally raised this as an issue because this entire box-cutter thing is an example of material used in the Flight 93 movie and other mainstream accounts of 9/11 that are repeated as matters of fact when they’re not.

But, fuck it, I’ll swap out that Flight 93 anomaly and replace it with another instead. I can afford to be generous…

  • The fact that cellphones don’t work in airliners flying at 30,000ft
  • The fact that debris from the flight was scattered over 8 miles
  • That eyewitness accounts sound awfully like it (or something) was shot down
  • ***New*** Does this really look like an airliner has just crashed here…

-

I'm always up for any correction of these or any other statements I make. After all, I wouldn't want to be believing any fairy tales would I?

--

Oh, and whilst I’m clarifying/ revising statements and facts made in previous posts, when I said 50 police raided Brian Haw’s peace camp at 2.30am the other night I’d got the number dead wrong.

It was 78

So if you want to improve levels of policing in your local area you know what to do

-

I say, I say, I say. What do you call a government that employs 78 policemen to deal with one slightly mental person?

I don't know. What do you call a government that employs 78 policemen to deal with one slightly mental person?


--- feel free to add your own answer here ---


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

That would be a 'cross party' vote to change the law, made by prats we voted for. Too easy to blame 'them', when 'we' put them where they are mate.

Demos are fine, provided you realize they change nothing (99.9% of the time). They serve a good function in letting off steam, anger and frustration (getting away from the kids!), but very very else in a democracy.

I know loads of people would like to make BH into some later day saint, 'so selfless' etc etc (they probably buy U2 CDs or thought they could change the world by buying a ticket last year as well). Well, as you point out things in 'real life' aren't as pat, or neat as that.

Scruffy pieces of cardboard don't shake a government, the place you do that is at the voting booth and vote the arseholes back into unemployment where they deserve to be.

Nice post btw

andy

Anonymous said...

You cannot comprehend anyone feeling so strongly about anything that they would camp out for years in protest. I have met Brian Haw. He has all his wits about him and certainly doesn't come across as ill in any way. But the only way some people can understand the strength of his anger is by labelling it as "mental". Is there anything that would make YOU feel angry enough to do anything other than sneer?

Stef said...

I've heard plenty of people describe Haw in disparaging terms like 'mental', 'obsessive', 'a bit of a crackpot', stuff like that.

Pretty much anybody who holds views outside of the norm will receive that kind of treatment

But, if their message is sound, it doesn't matter.

I hear supposedly rational people get away with talking the most insane poop every time I turn on the television

and if my crude attempts at using the word 'mental' in an ironic way have passed anyone by, mea culpa

A while ago I wrote somewhere something along the lines of

'If protesting changed anything they'd ban it'

Someone replied to me

'Well they have'

Quite

Anonymous said...

18 years of tories for a start ;)