John Reid's last hurrah

No one can ever accuse our chum "Dr" John Reid for going out with a whimper. Although he has spent the last year at the home office making absurd and sinister authoritarian proclamations along the lines of:

-"The Rule of Law should be scrapped."
-"Muslim Parents have to shop their children if they stay out late and grow beards."
-"I will sort out the Home office in 100 days" (where in fact he broke it in two after a year)

He has saved the best til last. He told a European summit that judges should stop following the law "to the letter" as it hampered the fight against terrorism. How exactly judges follow the law if it is not to the letter was not fully expanded on, but one can only assume that he means that they should follow the law to his letter, and stop making rulings that make him look like a tit. Obviously still smarting from his humiliating defeat in trying to send Lybian nationals back home to be tortured, "Dr" Reid decided that the law had to change so that judges would just do as they were told.

Yet again he came out with the potty logic that the European convention on human rights was outdated as we live in far more uncertain and dangerous times than when the ECHR drawn up. Of course we do. Europe in 1950 was a time of peace and harmony... there hadn't just been the most brutal devastating war that the world had ever seen, 60 million dead and the world in tatters... god no. The Europe of today is far more deadly now than it was at the end of WWII. Osama Bin Laden is a much graver threat to our way of life than those wannabe's Hitler & Stalin, so all those pesky civil liberties (that were entrenched to stop the Genocide of WWII ever happening again) have now got to be given up in order to make John Reid look like less of a dipstick.

Yes, "Dr" Reid knows how to end on a bang.

Reid all about it

The Home secreatry "Dr" John Reid has announced that he will throw himself on Tony Blair's funeral pyre, as he can't bear the thought of staying one more day in the Government wihtout his beloved master. A few other things might have hastened "Dr" Reid's announcement of resignation:

1) If he holds a senior cabinet post for more than a year he turns into a pumpkin. "Dr" Reid has held 9 cabinet posts in 10 years. As usual, just as it starts to become apparent that he has made a pigs ear out of whatever unfortunate department Blair has parachuted him into, he gets promoted to cause havock somehere else. Reid's trail of disaster includes: Northern Ireland, Health Service (made NHS trusts overbudget by millions), Defence (he said that British Troops would be able to leave Afghanistan without firing a shot), and of course the Home Office where he has continued the work done by David Blunkett and Charles Clarke in pulverising what's left of our civil liberties.

2) "Dr" Reid and Gordon Brown detest each other. No-one is quite sure why but it has been going on for 20 years and is certainly a factor in Reid's departure, given the impendiong coronation of Gordon. We reckon the feud could be over a woman, a drunken fight, or a fiver that Gordon lent "Dr" Reid that he has never given back.

3) "Dr" Reid suddenly had an epiphany, realised that he was a belligerent, authoritarian dipstick who had no right on gods earth being let near a poition of civic responsibility and has quit in shame and has gone to spend the rest of his life shouvelling mud in the shetland islands. OK a bit far fetched but it's nice image.

In any event it looks like he will soon be in need of gainful employment. Any suggestions please let us know and we'll pass them on when we next see him in court.

More on Taking Liberties on various Blogs

More nice things being written... though it's only a matter of time before the serious verbal abuse starts. Thanks to:

Andrew Ian Dodge

Chicken yoghurt - is there such a thing? Please send us a sample if possible.

Mr Eugenides

And a reactionary snob

Thanks one and all. There are some new previews coming up soon and we'll try and keep a few tickets aside for Bloggers if possible.

Film nearly finished - no really. We have 3 screenings on thursday so this crazy war will be over soon.

PS. Schools now banning playgrounds and break times to keep children safe.

Reasons to be fearful

Things I have learnt today:

US and Canadian customs have started using information from people’s Wikipedia pages to determine if whether or not they are terrorists:

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2469270.ece

The British government has once again decided to use it’s favourite method of undermining any investigation they don’t like – play the man and not the ball. In this case they seem to be attempting to oust the head of the OECD when he is investigating the halting of the BAE investigation.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/armstrade/story/0,,2064191,00.html

The papers have been full, once again, of politicians, civil servants and policemen saying that Al Quaida are planning more attacks. Now that John Reid has built himself a new department whose sole aim it is to look after security and policing I imagine that scaring the bejesus out of us will become a daily occurrence – how else will they be able to justify their budget?

I’m not disputing the security threat from terrorism; it’s just that I don’t feel I have to hear about it all the damn time. It’s like having a child bring home every doodle they’ve ever drawn in nursery school and demanding that it be given pride of place on the sitting room walls.

What, for example, do we do with the information from the Home Office that the threat level is Severe (why the capital S? Maybe it’s not a measure of the threat at all and the Home Office has just decided to name the threat Severe – next week the threat level will be Kevin)? Are we all supposed to hide under the bed until the mythical utopia arrives when people will stop wanting to kill each other and all live together in harmony? History tells us that’s about as likely to happen as my winning gold in the 100m at the next Olympics so I think I will just have to carry on as usual, and wait to see if it will magically move up to critical should the home office budget look to be in jeopardy.


Here are a spattering of the most recent reasons to be fearful:

From The head of Scotland Yard's counterterrorism command
http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,,2064947,00.html

From MI6

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1687360.ece

From John Reid

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6590111.stm

From Tony Blair

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6586883.stm

And, of course, John Reid again

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/about-us/news/john-reid-gmtv