Aaronovitch: The Good War

It's as if his incapacity to concede that the Iraq war was a spectacular error of judgement was due to a subconsciously macho approach to humility.

Human nature is amazing. And one of our most amazing features is, in many cases, our absolute incapacity of admitting our wrong.

On Iraq, I can see why Tony Blair would sooner chuck an egg at Prescott's face than admit he fucked up. It's quite obvious why it's in his own interest not to concede an inch on what led to the war and its aftermath. And the same applies to his former subordinates in the Labour Cabinet.

What's puzzling, however, is the way "commentators" a-la David Aaronovitch or Nick Cohen are perversely keeping their blinkers on. Like kids sitting at the back of the classroom sulkingly announcing that, no, they didn't snatch their classmates' packed lunch, even if they were caught red handed.

It's almost as if their incapacity to concede that they made a huge error of judgement was due to a subconsciously macho approach to humility. Like a blow to their male ego. Which in turn, is transforming their pro-war devotion into a possessed hosepipe spraying bullshit at random.

Aaronovitch is no longer just advocating that the war was a good idea. His piece in yesterday's Times marked a shift in his pig-headedness: "We're seven years after Saddam" , he wrote and the debate has not "shifted a millimetre".

His target? The continuing boring criticism of the way Blair went about it, the dubious legality, the botched preparations, the bad planning, the non-WMDs, the lies. The £5bn (and counting) cost, the international instability, the 4.5 million orphans. In his view, it's just "the same stock phrases, the same conventional wisdoms that now pass from brain to lip without encountering thought along the way".

Not only that. Aaronovitch thinks we're actively enjoying all that. Each time the evening news announces another car bomb going off in Baghdad we're popping champagne bottles and grin with delight.

In his view, those who dare question The Good War do so because "they want [the war scars] to stay wounded — they enjoy their wounds".

And then, the icing on the cake, he laments the fact that no-one talks about the Iraqis anymore. "They have become ghosts", he grieves.

Funny choice of phrase, "ghosts". Because while he snipes at the pedantic "seven years of Shortism" and praises The Many Outstanding Benefits of The Good War, Aaronovitch himself fails to mention the war casualties once.

Like ghosts, exactly. Because whether the war resulted in 150,000, 600,000 or one million dead, according to Aaronovitch, we should just stop going on about them.

Grilling? He didn't mention WMDs once!

The reason for war? Forget real and imminent threats: it was to scare the shit out of other rogue states, says Gordon Brown at the Chilcot inquiry. And he gets away with it.

Imagine a job interview where, instead of getting sweaty palms, you get to choose the panel and pick your mum, your favourite uncle and your best mate. Or a disciplinary at work chaired by your nan and your dopiest workmates.

No doubt the results would be hilarious. Perhaps not dissimilar from yesterday's show at the Chilcot inquiry.

The "grilling" session, as the press had been dubbed it to increase the sense of anticipation, consisted in Gordon Brown sitting in front of the very same people he himself had appointed.

But if that was "grilling", I dread to think what "gentle questioning" is.

Non-English speakers will often tell you that the British meaning of "sorry" is redundant because the word is used all the time. It's like a nervous twitch, a routine formula that soon loses its value.

Yesterday may have been a case in point. Gordon Brown made sure he could be seen and heard saying how "sorry" he is for the sad loss of life in Iraq.

But then he proceeded to stand 100% by everything his and Blair's government did in Iraq. He may have implied that the focus on "reconstruction" was not as thorough as it might have been, but then he was quick to specify that it was to do with those pesky Americans and if only he could have persuaded them.

So, sorry about what exactly? It really does sound lame.

According to Gordon Brown, everything about the Iraq affair was the "right" thing to do. Everything that Mr Blair did during this period, he did "properly".

Funding was never a problem either: if 345 quazillions had been requested to be spent on Iraq, Brown would have signed the cheque pronto no questions asked (incidentally, if only the panel had quoted Geoff Hoon and his permanent secretary. They probably forgot).

Also, it isn't true that the Prime Minister dodged any questions over WMDs and the justifications for war. Simply, there weren't any. Here we have an inquiry set up over a war waged on the basis of the most notorious acronym in history and Gordon Brown is allowed to get away with not mentioning it once.

He talked of "breached UN resolutions" and that "some countries were not prepared to take action under any circumstances".

He also said that the conflict had been "right" to prevent other "rogue states" flouting international law. Forget "real and present danger" from weapons of mass destruction, as the fools were told. The whole thing was just to show the Iranians and the North Koreans what a yellow card may look like.

No wonder Gordon Brown left with a smile on his face.

The birth defects of exported democracy

More evidence of war crimes committed in Iraq comes to light.

When George W Bush, Tony Blair and their courtiers were telling us about the many effects of the Iraq war (democracy, peace, no chemical weapons, stability and prosperity), they were also probably talking about this or this.

A recent BBC investigation confirmed what had long been suspected: the city of Falluja is reporting levels of birth defects that are "13 times higher than Europe".

The US are saying that they are "not aware of any official reports" of such kind.

Which sounds completely hollow - as it also took them one year to concede they had indeed used white phosphorous in the so-called "Battle of Falluja" of 2004 (see also this report).

Also, following previous denials, the UK Ministry of Defence openly admitted that the US had used modernised type of napalm called MK-77 in Iraq in at least 30 different circumstances (see the official MoD document here).

Also on the subject:
"Incendiary weapons: The big white lie";
"Recruitment campaign for free".

Tony Blair: Man of God.

The man is the master of evasion techniques, wriggling out of questions like a maggot on speed.

Tony Blair's appearance at the Chilcot inquiry reminded us of the guy's exceptionally slippery eel-like qualities.

Also, like Andrew Rawnsley remarked in yesterday's Observer, the former PM's job was made a lot easier by the "feeble" nature of the panel:

"Time and again, they approached an interesting subject area, stumbled around like people in the dark trying to find the light switch and then abandoned the quest without leaving themselves or anyone watching much the wiser about the most divisive war in the last century of our history".

I don't normally agree with Peter Hitchens, but he nailed it right on the head when he wrote:

"Mr Blair, questioned in a feeble and disorganised way, talked himself out of trouble by answering questions he hadn’t been asked and not answering the ones he was asked. His interrogators mostly didn’t notice this simple trick, which dishonest people instinctively use".

All we learnt is that, after years of reasons for going to war mutating faster than the Sars virus (in succession, WMDs, violation of UN resolutions, Al Quaeda, human rights and 'regime change'), we are now told that 9/11 was what really did it. In the words of Andrew Gilligan in the Telegraph:

"In a significant moment, Blair admitted that the danger from Iraq had not in fact changed at all in 2001 and 2002 - merely that his "perception" of it altered in the wake of 9/11".

The former PM said: "The crucial thing after 9/11 is that the calculus of risk changed... After September 11, if you were a regime engaged in WMD (weapons of mass destruction), you had to stop."

Yet, even if you agreed with this line of thought, it would only make sense if they'd held accountable each and every regime that was suspected of engaging in WMDs. You do it only with one and it's like trying to contain a bursting dam with a brolly.

And, in any case, hadn't the slippery christian said in the infamous Fern Britton interview that he'd have gone to war anyway regardless of WMDs?

Not to mention that no-one raised the simple straightforward objection that Iraq had jack to do with 9/11. If anything, a number of countries were far higher in the list of potential involvement. The hijiackers, for instance, were from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. No evidence whatsoever existed of any link between Iraq and Al Quaeda.

The panel also failed when Blair was asked why he had insisted on a second UN resolution if he now thinks that the first one was enough to legally justify the war. They allowed him to slip out of that contradiction without further prodding.

Fair enough suspicion. Fair enough emotions running high. Fair enough the desire to appear tough before so-called rogue states. But can you raise an entire country to the ground purely on that basis - in the 21st century? Can you be so geo-politically inept and blind to the extra oil you're going to pour on the flames? Can you play with so many people's lives just like that, when the motivations are so hit and miss?

It has been years now that Tony Blair has been getting away with lame justifications such as "God will be my judge on Iraq", "I did what I thought was right for the country", or " I believed in it. I believed in it then, I believe in it now".

But you ask any prime minister, president, führer or member of a junta and they'd probably say, through history, that they too believed in what they thought was right. And that is just shit.

John Major criticises Blair over Iraq

Another nail in the coffin for Tony's "good faith" argument.

Spot on John Major. Normally renowned for his discreet and measured tone, the former Tory PM was quite scathing when asked to remark on Tony Blair's handling of the Iraq affair.

Major made two points that are difficult to disagree with.

1) Especially when war is at stake, a PM has to be "utterly certain" before publicly saying something.

2) Regime change and toppling Saddam were not the arguments used to convince the country and, in any case, that would amount to an "inadequate argument" for war.

"There are many bad men around the world who run countries and we don't topple them, and indeed in earlier years we had actually supported Saddam Hussein when he was fighting against Iran", Major said.

Still on the subject of Iraq, widespread public anger is mounting over the Iraqi administration's decision to allow back in controversial US private security contractors Blackwater following pressure from Washington. The role of private firms in war zones has long been seen as one of the most disgraceful aspects of the whole Iraq 'affair'.

Decade reviewed (5): UK politics

From predictable and apathetic to volatile and polarised- how British politics changed in the last ten years.

Much has been written about the Nineties as the 'consensus decade', the 'end of history' and no major divide within Western politics, at least in the Anglo-Saxon world.

Indeed the Noughties began with one opinion column after another celebrating Middle England, New Labour's 'third way' and the alleged end of class division. More, many questioned whether the Tories' would ever stand a chance of winning again.

The decade started with New Labour displaying their democratic credentials by kicking Ken Livingstone out of the party in the run-up to London's first ever mayoral elections. But Livingstone stuck to his guns, stood as an independent, and secured Tony Blair's first significant humiliation of his career.

The lowest turnout in history at the 2001 general elections was evidence of galloping apathy and disillusion. With barely over half the country bothering to cast a ballot, Tony Blair celebrated his second landslide in a row and, when William Hague stepped down as Tory leader, not many seemed to care. in the leadership race that followed, Michael Portillo missed his chance of a lifetime and lost to lesser-known Iain Duncan Smith.

In the meantime, with the far right showing its ugly rear in the Oldham and Bradford race riots of summer 2001, the country's community relations took the first tangible battering of the decade.

The 9/11 attacks were the undisputed watershed. Affecting everything, from the way we look at national security, through the way we travel, to the notion of multiculturalism, it truly messed up the following few years. Still blown away by the attack, very few questioned Tony Blair's unadulterated support for George W Bush's foreign policy and the ensuing Afghanistan war enjoyed widespread support in both the US and Britain.

Things however, took a different turn in the run-up to the Iraq war. From Bush's "Axis of Evil" speech to the heated debate with France and Germany over the second UN resolution, many will remember the countdown on Hans Blix and his team of weapons inspector amongst claims that Saddam Hussein was '45 minutes' away from doing us over with WMDs.

Amongst the most memorable moments, the 1-million strong anti-war march on 15 February 2003, the biggest demonstration ever in British history. People from all sections of society, regardless of political allegiances, defied the freezing weather to voice their scepticism. Most remarkably, the issue stirred some serious passion amongst people who'd never before expressed an interest in politics.

And yet it was obvious that Tony Blair had obviously made his mind up. A month later, a nail-biting parliamentary vote saw the anti-war MPs narrowly defeated in spite of 112 Labour backbenchers rebelling. Robin Cook's resignation speech was the first ever to receive a standing ovation in the history of the House.

Starting a few days later, the Iraq war marked the beginning of Tony Blair's undoing. The government's handling of the (very) strange death of weapons inspector Dr David Kelly and the emerging truth that were no WMDs in Iraq tarnished Blair's reputation forever.

The firefighters' 2-year-long pay dispute (2002-04) came to an end with the adoption of the New Fire and Rescue Services Act, resulting in all ties severed between the Fire Brigade Union and the Labour Party.

In 2004, "Teflon Tony" survived another backbench revolt as he led his party through a spectacular u-turn on tuition fees. A push, a shove and a last-minute whip in the jaffas (i.e. minister Nick Brown defecting back into the government), pushed the price of a single year at one of the country's Universities up to £3,000 (plus booze).

In the meantime, Thatcher's ugliest legacy, the uber homophobic Section 28, was finally scrapped. Like with the repeal in Scotland a few years before, the Conservatives voted compact in favour of upholding discrimination but were resoundingly beaten.

In June the anti-Europe UKIP came third in the European elections. Former TV presenter Robert Kilroy Silk helped raise UKIP's profile but fell out with the leadership within months and branded the party "a joke".

In September, the pro-fox hunting Countryside Alliance clashed with the police on Parliament Square. Some protesters stormed into the House of Commons but failed to stop the government from passing (after years of wrangling) a watered-down Hunting Act.

In the meantime, the Tories elected yet another new leader. With Iain Duncan Smith oozing the charisma of a turnip, the Conservatives showed political acumen by handpicking draculesque Michael Howard, a cabinet member under both Thatcher and Major, a man with "something of the night about him", as their 'new' and 'fresh' leader.

And yet the 2005 general elections turned into another Tory failure. The biggest success came instead from the Liberal Democrats. Thanks to the leadership of Charles Kennedy and their opposition to both the Iraq gamble and tuition fees, they won their biggest share of MPs since 1929. Not enough, however, to stop New Labour from winning a record third election. Tony Blair celebrated by promising to serve a "full term".

The London bombings in July, the biggest terrorist attack in UK history, threatened to be another nail in the coffin for community relations, also reminding the country that, far from increasing security, the Iraq war actually brought terrorism home.

In August, former Foreign Sectretary and Iraq war critic Robin Cook died. The year ended with the Tories appointing -amazingly- their fourth leader of the decade, this time at least opting for a younger option: 39-year-old David Cameron. Also, the first same-sex civil partnership in the UK was celebrated in Belfast: one of New Labour's proudest achievements.

Less than two months later, LibDem leader Charles Kennedy confessed to having an alcohol problem and resigned -its party hasn't fully recovered yet. Also, anti-war MP George Galloway squandered his political capital by appearing on the 2006 edition of Celebrity Big Brother, while a swirl of speculations mounted over Gordon Brown's alleged "coup" to oust Tony Blair and the disgraceful cash-for-honours scandal which resulted in the arrest of Labour's chief fundraiser Lord Levy.

In the meantime, outrage over the Iraq war didn't relent. 2007 turned into the bloodiest year since the invasion and not many shed a tear when Tony Blair, fresh from signing the Trident renewal agreement, finally resigned in June after years of speculation.

Following the initial honeymoon period, new PM Gordon Brown hit a bum note when he dithered over an early election in October 2007. Nick Clegg became the third LibDem leader in two years and the bail out of Northern Rock heralded the worst economic crisis since WWII.

In May 2008 Boris Johnson replaced Ken Livingstone after eight years as London Mayor, confirming suspicions that the pendulum may be swinging towards the Conservatives for the first time in fifteen years.

Nosediving in the opinion polls, Labour found little consolation in the fact that a devastating MPs' expenses scandal hit all political parties. Moats, duck houses, fridge magnets and porn videos were all found amongst the list of stuff subsidised by the oblivious taxpayer. A series of high profile resignations hit the Brown government in June 2009, adding to the biting recession and relentless rise in unemployment.

The 2009 European vote signalled more bad news for Brown. Much was written about the far-right BNP securing two MEPs for the first time in history, a combination of incredibly low turnout and the vicious anti-immigration line adopted by a number of red tops.

Fears of a far-right revival increased in summer, when race riots took place in both Luton and Birmingham during demonstrations organised by a new group called the English Defence League.

In October, a heated debate surrounded the invitation of BNP leader Nick Griffin on BBC Question Time. However, his botched attempts at introducing fascist policies to a wider audience ended up into a major media own goal. In the meantime, the postal strike in Autumn drew comparisons with the 1984 miners' dispute.

The picture at the end of the decade is that of a much more polarised and volatile British politics. On one side, the economy is looking much worse than ten years ago, with unemployment over twice as bad, rampant family debt, businesses going bust and a rising wealth gap. Though the public remains widely suspicious of free market policies and the Conservatives, 13 years in power have obviously taken the sheen off New Labour.

Sceptical though they may be, most Conservative voters seem set to give Cameron the benefit of the doubt, while millions of traditional Labour supporters appear put off by a party that, through their tenure in power, outToried the Tories on too many occasions. The lack of a major option for the progressive vote may ultimately pave the way for the Tories' return to power.

It's interesting that the economic crisis appeared initially to be the perfect scenario for an overhaul of the brand of 'turbocapitalism' that ruled for three decades. However, with leftist parties widely failing to make hay of it, right-wing populism looks like the most likely beneficiary.

The forthcoming general elections will reveal whether the immigration debate that monopolised the second half of the decade will result in significant gains for the far-right and if Labour's haemorrhaging votes will benefit either the LibDems or the Green Party (the latter on course to secure their first MP in history).

Above all, 2010 will soon reveal whether Britain will be under Conservative rule again for the first time since the days of John Major.

Decade reviewed (3): world events

Some of the international events that marked the noughties.

10) Jacko's death, June 2009
After a whole decade of speculation and media obsession over his life (see ITV's 2003 documentary and the court case that followed), Michael Jackson's sudden heart attack became the perfect tabloid godsend, giving the Sun & co something else to write about, including ghost appearances and coroners mysteriously holding onto Jacko's brain.

9) Big Brother
Like it or not, the arrival of 'reality TV' changed mass culture for at least a generation, influencing a whole range of TV programmes and giving a new meaning to the notion of 'celebrity culture'. Popular all over the western world (certainly in Britain), it literally monopolised entertainment throughout the decade.

8) Tsunami, December 2004
With a massive human toll, like Hurrican Katrina in the US a few months later, it reminded the world that something's not quite right with the environment.

7) Climate change
Scientists report temperature rose by nearly 0.3 degrees during the 00s, with the 10 warmest years on record since 1997. Still people at the Daily Mail and the Express maintain it's been a very cold week and it's all a loonie leftie fabrication.

6) Beslan, 1-3 September 2004
One of the creepiest and cruellest terrorist attacks in history, it was textbook in the way it alienated international sympathy towards a cause - in this specific case Chechnya's independence. In 2002, a Chechen "suicide squad" had held almost 900 hostages in a Moscow theatre for four days. This time, the same group took more than 1,100 people (including 777 children) at a school in North Caucasus, Russia.

5) George W Bush in the White House, Nov 2000
One of those political watersheds that make history. When Bush (just about?) beat Al Gore, power was handed to the most reactionary and warmongering lobby in American history, including chaps like Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Cheney. Their disastrous handling of the economy, most confrontational foreign policy since 1961 and bible belters-inspired social policies had only one merit: that of later on handing the White House to the most progressive US President as the pendulum swang again in 2008.

4) The London bombings, 7 July 2005
As much as both 9/11 and the 2004 Madrid attacks prepared the country for a terrorist attack on home soil, this appalling atrocity still proved a massive shock. It claimed the lives of 52 innocent people on the London underground as well as a double-decker bus in Tavistock Square. Its impact on both community relations and national security has been literally devastating. Also shocking was the glaze-eyed way in which Tony Blair denied any connection with the Iraq war.

3) The Iraq War, 20 Mar 2003
George W Bush and Tony Blair's gamble quickly turned into the biggest political and military blunder since VietNam. The way the pro-war lobby went about it destroyed trust in politicians for a generation. The war unleashed massive international tension, triggered a terrifying humanitarian crisis (one example: there are 5 million orphans in Iraq as of Dec 2007) and killed hundreds of thousands of people, including almost 4,500 US troops and 176 British ones. It also cost the UK £4.5 billion.

2) Lehman Brothers bank collapse, 16 Sep 2008
When the fourth-largest investment bank in the United States filed for bankruptcy, the expression 'credit crunch' gave way to the worst economic crisis in 60 years. For evidence of casualties, look at all your mates or family who have been made redundant or take a walk down your high street where Woolworths, Zavvi, Borders and Threshers are all still lying desolately empty.

1) 11 Sep 2001
Unfortunately, 9/11 is already in the history books. Not only for the sheer scale of the most atrocious and calculating terrorist attack ever, but also for how it altered our perception of security forever. Also, it messed up international relations for god knows how long, paving the way for two wars and religious tension last seen worldwide decades ago. Unintended or not, number 3 and 4 on this list were both a consequence of 9/11.

To follow: culture in the Noughties.

Tony Blair dislikes dictators...

...But not all of them.

This week Tony Blair went on record as saying that regime change alone would have justified the war in Iraq.

Basically, Hans Blix and his fellow weapon inspectors may have rummaged around as frantically as they could. They were wasting their time.

Because, bottom line, Blair's undying love for democracy and freedom of speech as well as his deep dislike for tyrants like Saddam Hussein "and his two sons" meant "regime change" was the real justification for war. He would have invaded Iraq anyway. In fact, it was "a price worth paying" (by others, of course).

Blair's sincere love for democracy is also probably behind his trip to oil-rich Azerbaijan last week. He's so much against dictators and in favour of "regime change" that he pocketed £90,000 from the local masters in exchange for a 20-minute speech (working out as £75 a second).

And of course, Tony didn't say a single word about human right abuses in Azerbaijan, a country that -since gaining independence- has only been ruled with an iron fist and by two presidents only: in succession, Heydar Aliyev and Ilham Aliyev. Father and son.

The first time the dynasty conceded some elections, bowing down to international pressure, it turned into a shoo in with ridiculous percentages like 80%, against a backdrop of intimidation, and abuse, especially against journalists and bloggers. This report by Human Rights Watch called Crushing Dissent will give you an idea.

According to a 2009 report by Amnesty International, in Azerbaijan "freedom of expression continued to be heavily restricted. Opposition and independent journalists continued to face harassment, physical assault and intimidation on account of their journalistic activity". Also, "religious groups or confessions outside officially endorsed structures continued to be harassed".

But if questioned about it, Tony Blair will probably answer that "faith gave him strength" and that his 20-min speech in Azerbaijan was dictated by the importance of not leaving the local regime isolated from the international community.

And anyway, why should we care when there's the X-Factor final coming up?

Tony Blair admits Iraq war lies: what happens at Chilcot?

For people like Blair, it's no longer about serving your country — it's how can your country serve you and devil take the hindmost.

A guest post by Madam Miaow.

What sort of madness is it that makes a person insist in the face of facts, principles and public opposition, that they alone are right in taking an action that results in over a million civilian deaths, impoverishes us as a nation and rips up our moral fabric?

What sort of moral bankruptcy allows that person to take money from the very companies that made a fortune from the war they started?

What sort of society allows this to happen with no constraints or consequences?

Tony Blair has now admitted in the softest of interviews with BBC's Fern Britton — not Jeremy Paxman or any of the other heavyweights, note —that his decision to go to war in Iraq was nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), and everything to do with regime change.

Isn't this illegal under international law? How many service men and women died because of his faked-up reasons? I'm far from being alone in believing that Blair should now be tried as a war criminal. Blair did what he wanted like he was some third world potentate with divine right to rule with hardly any opposition from his own party to their eternal shame. (Honours, of course, to those few lone voices within the party who did put up a fight and deserve better company than the sheep.)

I never believed him for one moment about WMDs. To me and millions of others who opposed the war, it was a far-fetched cold-war paranoia about moustache-twirling, cat-stroking villains that served the neo-con agenda to grab oil and open up the nation's finance to foreign banks; banks such as JP Morgan charged with co-ordinating the plundering of Iraq and now paying Blair $2 million a year for services rendered.

He said in his typically self-pitying way: "There is no point in going in to a situation of conflict and not understanding there is going to be a price paid."

The trouble is, it's not you paying the price, is it, Tony? It's Iraqi civilians, British soldiers and our national finances. You, Tony, are very far from paying any price, having pocketed your loot.

His change of tack would indicate that the revelations heard so far in the Chilcot inquiry have had an effect on his morale and he's desperately slipping and sliding around to avoid being exposed as a lying, self-serving war criminal bereft of any moral compass save some cartoon Ivanhoe self-image in which he saves the world (TM Gordon Brown) and earns the undying gratitude of powerful men.

What happened to democracy? To British fair play? To the rule of law? For people like Blair, it's no longer about serving your country — it's how can your country serve you and devil take the hindmost.

UPDATE: A FEW FACTS
The Iraq war has cost the UK £6.5 billion.
"Secret MoD documents leaked to the Press now confirm that preparations for the war began as early as February 2002." Paul Routlege in The Mirror.
179 British service men and women have died in the conflict.
Over a million Iraqis have been killed.
Tony Blair is paid $2 million a year by JP Morgan, the bank at the centre of Iraq "restructuring".

More from this author on her excellent blog Madam Miaow says...

The Sun: 40 years of goo (PART TWO)

Our second instalment celebrating 40 years of tabloid 'laffs' turning Britain into a nation of mob-lynching paranoid hysterics.

November 1998: "Are we being run by a GAY MAFIA?" is the Sun's headline, the pinnacle of a vicious campaign aimed at 'outing' Cabinet ministers one after the other.

In February 2003, the red top decides to lash out at French President Jacques Chirac. "CHIRAC EST UN VER" (Chirac is a worm) is the rag's headline, along words such as "wriggly wobbler" and "ridiculous". His fault? Opposing the Iraq war, of course, which the Sun and Ruper Murdoch backed like drugged-up attack dogs.

But tact has never been one of the Sun's best qualities. As we saw yesterday, when the bullies decide it's time to go on the offensive, whoever incurs their wrath becomes fair game. And of course it's nothing poisonous, just a bit of 'fun' and a bit of 'teasing', right?

In 1996, Formula One driver Pedro Diniz's car burst into flames after a pit-stop. The Sun's take on the accident? The headline "DINIZ IN THE OVEN".

In 2003, after former boxer Frank Bruno was taken to a psychiatric hospital, the "cheeky" tabloid opted for a bit of geezery fun splashing its front page with the headline "BONKERS BRUNO LOCKED UP" alongside a story that labelled him "a nut".

Only the other day the Sun's bullies decided to pick on the family of government drugs adviser Professor David Nutt. His fault? Having a different opinion from that of the Sun. The punishment? A devastating hatchet job: an article carrying the headline "Off his nut", aiming at destroying Professor Nutt's son Steve with photos and quotes nicked from his Facebook page.

And if you think that's nasty, try the way they covered the killing of innocent Jean Charles de Menezes in 2005, "saluted" with the headline "ONE DOWN...THREE TO GO" on July 23. The Sun reported that de Menezes was wearing "a coat like you would wear in winter, a sort of padded jacket". Uber bollocks, as it later turned out.

Then, of course, there's the Wicker Man-style mob lynching rituals. Not many would remember the News of the World and Sun-led campaigns to name and shame paedophiles in 2000. Ignoring official warnings that this could backfire, the foaming-at-the-mouth tabloids decided to press ahead.

The result was that a totally innocent paediatrician was targeted in Wales. Returning home from work one evening, she found the word "paedo" spray-painted on her front door.

Local police explained that the mobs mixed up her job title with the word "paedophile", still though the outcome was that Sun-reading vigilantes ended up driving an innocent person out of home.

Similar incidents were later to be repeated, resulting in libel cases and public apologies, like in 2003, when the Sun "named and shamed" the wrong man as a sex offender.

Indeed the Sun seems to have quite a creepy obsession with "paedophilia". If you type in the word "paedophiles" into the Sun's own search engine, it returns 896 results plus 18 from the Scottish edition and 36 from the News of the World. That's 950 articles since December 2001: if a foreigner grabbed hold of a copy of the Sun you wouldn't blame them for thinking Britain's the capital of pederasts.

The Sun's hysterical ways were the reason for Karen Matthews' fake kidnapping of her daughter Sharon. With the tabloid offering a £50,000 reward, Karen and her accomplice's plan was to release Shannon, drive around the corner to 'discover her', then take her to a police station and claim the £50,000 reward.

And, of course, there's last year's Sun-sponsored witch-hunt in the aftermath of Baby P's death, where the tragic killing of an innocent child was used for an unprecedented campaign against a muddled target comprising social workers, single mothers and the welfare state. "BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS" was the notoriously berserk headline.

Happy birthday, Sun.

[Click here for "40 years of crap" PART ONE]

9/11: eight years on

Whatever you make of it, September 11 2001 was the day that altered the course of history.

On Sep 11, 2001 I was two weeks away from starting a new job, so I was still enjoying student-type parasitism at its worst.

I got up semi-comatose at around 1pm, staggered downstairs, put the kettle on and robotically got BBC News 24 in the background.

I was literally in the middle of making my cup of tea when some breaking news from New York came in: a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers. I immediately remembered that the same place had been targeted by Islamists back in 1993 so I sat down perplexed and started watching the shocking images of a burning skyscraper.

As my two housemates Dave and Antonis joined in from their bedrooms, I could not believe my senses when another plane crashed into the second tower. By then, dozens of camera crews had been placed, which meant that the impact and its aftermath were filmed practically from all angles.

And that's how the day that changed history began. We stayed glued to the telly, literally, as more news came in that several planes were unaccounted for, and -as further reports came in about the Pentagon and Pennsylvania- I still remember the shared sense of unease not knowing exactly when the attacks were going to end.

The catastrophic brand that stemmed from Hollywood in the late 1990s, Independence Day, Arlington Road and the like, was actually happening live on telly, heralding the end of one of the most stable decades in history (minus Rwanda and Yugoslavia, which aren't footnotes, so maybe not).

Then the first tower started collapsing. I vividly remember how we'd all remarked at how well the impact from both plane crashes had been withstood. Equally, it was shocking to see both towers collapsing on themselves, in very similar fashion, one 56 minutes after it was struck and the other after 75 minutes. I still remember the BBC correspondent running for his life as two of the most imposing buildings on earth were crumbling into a terrifying cloud of dust and toxic debris.

As time went, a staggering amount of unaswered questions gradually started to emerge. Conspiracy theories were being drawn aplenty, some quite factual (more of the kind of "the government knew and let it happen"), some completely loopy (and that's without counting David Icke's 'reptilian conspiracy') .

Either way, how did the towers collapse and why so quickly? More importantly, why did they collapse on themselves? Why did WTC7, not struck by any plane, collapse as well? Why did the BBC announced its collapse 26 minutes before it happened? Why are their non-explanations so lame? Why were the steel remains from WTC sold so speedily for recycling? What to make of those claims about secondary explosions heard in the wake of the crash? How could the hijackers' passports be spotted practically intact amidst the megatons of rubble?

We will never know. One thing that shouldn't be forgotten is that, for all the pondering that takes place in the aftermath, the events happened like a flash and in a random, uncontrolled and manic fashion. To expect a totally orderly and rational response as things go along is to forget the uniquely unpredictable nature of what went on.

Also, though certain governments have been involved in all kinds of murky stuff for years (from proxy wars to remote controlled coup d'etats), the main problem with the most bizarre conspiracy theories is that -to have all that artifically orchestrated- you'd have to involve thousands of people at all levels over a period of time and the chances of not a single one, not even someone's partner, letting a word slip in eight years are just impossible.

We all knew however, that the US government was going to lash out. I remember watching the scenes of Palestinians celebrating thinking that they'd just scored a PR own-goal of epic proportions.

Eight years on, and as we watch heartbreaking re-runs of the events, it's easy to forget that 9/11 meant primarily George W Bush's ratings going through the roof, allowing him to wage two wars in succession: Afghanistan and Iraq, both absolutely devastating.

In terms of our daily lives, things are no longer the same really. A creeping sense of insecurity has been with us since, further bolstered by the Islamist attacks in Madrid (2004) and London (2005). A man virtually unknown by many, a bearded jihadist called Osama bin Laden, became the 21st century bogeyman.

Flying as we'd known it is no longer with us. Controls became much stricter, at times draconian, the result of a world a hundred times more paranoid than before. Civil liberties, on both sides of the Atlantic, have been restricted on the back of the pervading sense of "us and them" and the "threat to our national security". Racists have been handed more knee-jerk material on a tray and the preconceptions and misconceptions about entire populations are thriving.

One can't help but think, however, that in curbing our freedoms and giving way to irrationality, we gave in exactly to the logic of terrorism.

Ten New Labour moments

A small selection of Blair and Brown's most repulsive political acts.

Referring to the new wave of City bonuses and Downing Street's reluctance to introduce regulation on hedge funds and private equity, John Harris wrote in the Guardian that this is "Labour's final betrayal".

'Final' though implies the existence of a long list. So we decided to wade through New Labour's monumental list of lies, mistakes, u-turns and nails in the coffin. Shortlisting twelve years of toxic decisions proved exceptionally complex. However, here's a small selection:

- The Iraq war. Blair's infamous 45-minute claim, the dodgy dossier, the farce of seeking a second UN resolution when a decision had long been taken, a country blown to smithereens, a million demonstrators shunned like a shred of arse paper. The Iraq fiasco will forever mark Tony Blair's legacy.

- Tuition fees. Whatever your views on the cost of Higher Education, the brazen about-face performed by Tony Blair and his subordinates was a textbook exercise in how to foster apathy. "We will not introduce top-up fees", said Labour's manifesto in 2001. Three years later, Blair tripled them.

- Private Finance Initiative. The mother of financial black holes whereby a hospital costing £87 million ends up, over time, draining the taxpayer of £400 million in order to line the pockets of private firms. Ten years on, the government is having to nationalise the losses. "Opaque and dishonest", is how Vince Cable branded it.

- Final Salary Pensions. Government leaflets gave a misleading impression of the security of final salary pension schemes, but 400 of them collapsed between 1997 and 2005, leaving 125,000 old people in financial ruin. The High Court found the Government responsible.

- The 10p tax rate fiasco. A massive slap in the face to low earners. A kick in the nuts to the tune of £232 a year for any childless person making under £18,500. Some claim this remarkable act of political ineptitude kickstarted Gordon Brown's downfall.

- "Ethical foreign policy". People say that New Labour's first term was their best. But look at how the hypocrites were showering mercenaries and dictators with arms, from Sierra Leone to Indonesia. Meanwhile, taxpayer-funded London's Arms Fair continues to be the largest in the world.

- The Walter Wolfgang moment. A frail 82-year-old WWII survivor was manhandled out of the 2005 Labour conference in Brighton and barred from re-entering courtesy of the Terrorism Act 2000. His crime? Having shouted "nonsense!" during Jack Straw's speech.

- The 2000 London Mayor elections. With Ken Livingstone a clear favourite amongst Londoners and party activists, Blair decided to stop him with some old USSR-style control freakery. First he set up a central commitee to veto candidates and then he shunned the promise of a one-member one-vote selection system. In Blair-land the vote of one MP was to be worth the same as 1,000 rank and file party members. Finally, Livingstone got kicked out of the party. New Labour still lost. One of Blair's biggest humiliations.

- Air traffic privatisation. Another textbook u-turn and further indication of New Labour 's strong beliefs. In 1996, the Labour conference said that "Our air is not for sale". Sure.

- The ID card scheme. £5.6bn to run this useless, gargantuan scheme. And the figure keeps going up. And the government tells you dole handouts are a burden on the economy.

- The Trident nuclear arsenal. Forget hollow talks of non-proliferation. Forget the politics of fear: how is a £20bn-plus (£16.8m per missile) nuclear fleet going to protect the population from suicide bombers on buses?

- The Bernie Ecclestone donation. £1m and Formula One was handed a reprieve from the tobacco ads ban. "I'm a pretty straight sort of guy", Blair famously said about it.

[READ PART TWO HERE]

Service Guarantees Citizenship : Life Imitates Art

Mark Reed on former soldiers winning priority access to benefits, housing and the NHS

Critics of Paul Verhoven's 1997 Starship Troopers call it gratuitiously violent, and well, stupid. It is, by the way, both those things, but not only that, Starship Troopers is a savagely literate satire of the climate of war. In it, mankind is cast as a fallen empire, the final scenes of the film echoing Hitler's last pinning of a medal onto an army of schoolchilden, the plot a flimsy parable that can be interpreted to represent the raising of Gaia against an abusive Homo Stupidus.

And whilst the film echoes, in a futuristic setting, an arrogant regime reaping what it sows, it also predicts our current times. In it, only those who have served in the military are 'citizens', and only citizens can vote or access anything other than basic services.

I thought Starship Troopers was a parody. But, as today's Independent reveals, it certainly isn't.

“Four million former servicemen and women are to be given veterans' cards to ensure they get priority treatment for NHS healthcare and housing, and discounts for services such as transport.” Why?

So that there is no ambiguity on the position here, the military is proposing a segregation of public services: so that the military are the haves, and the rest of us, the great unwashed, are the have nots.

Why should veterans get fast-tracked access to health services and financial benefits? Or perhaps, to make it clearer, why should people who haven't been in the military be subject to second-rate and delayed access to health care? Why should I – because I haven't piloted a helicopter gunship through Iraq – be denied the benefits of society? Why should soldiers be treated any differently?

Sure, soldiers are brave, but put me behind a gazillion pounds of technology and bullet proof armour, and I would feel brave.

The role of Government is to serve the public. If it isn't, then Whitehall needs to quit its jibber jabber, and stop lying. Tell us what it really thinks. So far, though, the Government's contemptious attitude to the general public is only revealed through sleight of hand and stealth.

Let us examine another line: “The Ministry of Defence plans to introduce the cards at the beginning of 2010, The Independent has learnt, in an attempt to begin repairing the damage done to the military covenant between nation and armed forces under New Labour.”

Fuck on a stick, New Labour really are that dumb.

If the MoD and New Labour wants to repair the damage it should reconsider.

Firstly, the system should face the consequence of its actions. And apologise for murdering soldiers and civilians on false grounds. Something short and snappy : “We lied. You died. Sorry.”

Secondly, get the soliders out of there.

It may sound like a broken record, but ultimately, the military conflict is a collossal mistake and poor military strategy. The most effective way to correct faulty strategy is not to succumb to the stupidity of pride and plow on, but to reconsider and withdraw if necessary. People who admit they have made mistakes are smarter than people who don't admit that they have made mistakes. Firstly, if you admit you have made mistakes, you are willing to learn from experience. Secondly, if you think everything you do is automatically right because you've done it, you will never do anything wrong, and you will never stop making mistakes.

And thirdly, and finally, soldiers must accept the public opinion of many of them: they are hired killers. Those of us who have evolved beyond blowing each other up in gunpoint diplomacy see the military as willing participants. Soldiers know the risks. You accept the risks when you wear the uniform. Being in the military is a gamble: you risk getting your legs blown off. It is a tragedy and undoubtedly a horrific experience for all concerned – but don't be so naïve and stupid as to think joining the army means you can drive around doing wheelies in tanks. You will get shot at, and many of you will die. Being brave also means accepting the consequences.

Soldiers are not special. They are not better than any of the rest of us. They are not more deserving. They are not first class citizens, with the rest of us lilly livered cardigan wearing guardianistas as second class serfs put on the planet to provide for them. The principle of democracy is equality.

Unless democracy is just a word politicans throw around to confuse the populace.

This is not to say that the former military get fair or adequate post-combat care. They don't. Then again, the quarter of the population that experience mental health issues in society deserve better care as well. When I had my nervous breakdown, the NHS told me to take the pills and shut up. I reached out and was pushed away.

What if the whole of mankind just grew up and diverted the military budget into health care and social care?

The bottom line of this is that those who have served in the military deserve fair and equal treatment, and if that means being treated as shabbily as the rest of us cowardly proles, then so be it. The entitlement to access of care should apply to all of us, not just the few. We, the people are here to be served by the Government, and not the other way round. The tail don't wag the dog, and the military deserve fair and equal treatment. Those of us who chose not to serve in the military are not second class citizens, and we do not deserve second class treatment.

The Left and the irredeemable Back Foot Syndrome

The dominant rhetoric over the Luton protests highlighted the way the 'Liberal Left' feels it's got to justify every single one of its moves.

I don't know if the British left is doomed, but they most certainly look terrified. Whether it's the economy, the welfare state or the military, large swathes of the self-appointed 'Liberal left' in the UK are plagued by the Syndrome of the Back Foot. Last week's major overreaction over the Luton events at a parade of troops returning from Iraq highlighted the Left's depressingly defensive approach.

Let me explain. Few now can deny the political discourse is increasingly set by Fleet Street. The tabloids hiss and diss and shout at every corner, rolling out story after story against 'political correctness', the foreigners, 'social workers', 'welfare scroungers', the Muslim or any of the usual targets.

But instead of challenging the right's myths and suffocating narrative, instead of regaining the initiative, the cornered liberal left appear permanently on the back foot, lest they cause an all-out conflict with the right wing media or get branded as 'loony', 'traitors' or similar.

Yet you'd have thought that, given the spectacular failure of the neo-conservative 'Us and Them' approach (enthusiastically backed by the British tabloids since 9/11), at least on Iraq the Left would have a field day, grab hold of the initiative and push back the tabloids' oily concoction of ignorance, opportunism, jingoism and goldfish memory that has caused this and other countries so much grief.

Dream on. Following the Sun's vicious onslaught against 'sick Muslim extremists' who "hurled abuse" at Our Boys, left-wing politicians have been queuing to show that they too can spell out the words "Our" and "Boys" and more generally ape the tabloids' jingoistic tone. But if hardly any better was to be expected from the Labour government (for it was them who actually started the war), the reaction from a number of journalists and bloggers has been remarkably disappointing.

Liberal Conspiracy is a case in point. Most (though not all) on their website expressed the opinion that protesters shouldn't conflate the troops with the political decision to go to war, which was basically the line given by the oh-so-authoritative Ross Kemp in the Sun. Nevermind conscription ended a long time ago. Nevermind the fact that thousands of new recruits joined after the first allegations of torture and WMD-related lies were already coming to surface. 'Our Boys' are never to blame.

Sunny Hundal, editor of Liberal Conspiracy and Guardian writer, wrote that rather than the troops, as far as Iraq is concerned, "we are even more responsible as voters" and, as such, we shouldn't "take an antagonistic attitude towards [the military]". So check this out. It is not the soldiers who are responsible for this. It's the voters, presumably even those who - repulsed by the Iraq war - did not back Blair in 2005.

Meral's musings and Obsolete also take it as a given that the Luton protesters were "extremists" and "idiotic". "Look", they seem anxious to point out, not all anti-Iraq war people are like them and only 20 people joined the protest.

Then there's the Independent. Their article is called The Enemy Within?, and in case you hadn't grasped the tone, it quickly describes the eerie background of "identical black tunics" and "long full beards".

So what we say is: come on, 'liberal left'. Challenge those myths. Tackle that empty rhetoric. Say it loud and clear: clutching at the "extremist card" will not deflect from the fact that the Iraq war was illegal, a murderous disgrace, a disaster, a massacre, a military aberration that seriously undermined Britain's reputation in the world and made us all less safe in the process.

Grab the initiative with both hands. Post this video everywhere. Stop being defensive. Stop having to justify yourself. Make it clear that the sickening 'Our Boys' rhetoric is exactly the type of crap that is at the root of most of what is going tits-up with this world. Don't let the tabloids turn it into something to be taken for granted - that chavvy concept that because they're 'ours' they can't do no wrong.

Stop whimpering that those banners were "bad taste". How about this for bad taste? And this? Or this? Don't hide behind the flimsy "but the Conservatives too" or the trite "but the politicians...".

The British Army went to Iraq to invade and did so on the basis of a lie. And in doing so they killed people. And in the process a number of soldiers got also tangled up in barbaric episodes of torture. That was wrong. Full stop. And I don't care if al-Muhajirounn also happens to be against what happened in Iraq. That doesn't make our position any weaker. You don't see the Tories mincing their words about the Euro because the BNP are also barking against the single currency, do you?

Like solicitor Phil Shiner said with regard to some of the evidence of abuse, "We do not want to be talked about in the same vein as the Japanese in the second world war or the Americans at My Lai, but unless we stand up and say as a nation that this cannot happen in our name, that is where we seem to be headed."

See also Chavs and the Psychology of Our Boys.

A New Just Iraq

Muntazer al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who hurled shoes at Bush, was given three years to be enjoyed in the humane, pristine and hospitable new prisons of the peaceful and democratic Iraq. There's a lesson to be learnt here. If you drop bombs over a school or a hospital, you earn prestige, badges, awards and lucrative contracts. You hurl a shoe or two and all you get is a 3-year sentence. Mr Al-Zeidi lacked ambition.

'Chavs' and the psychology of 'Our Boys'

The right wing tabloids behave exactly like the same people they mock. "He's my son and he didn't kill nobody" sounds exactly like "whatever you make of Iraq, these are 'Our Boys'" .

The Sun likes to sneer at "council estate parents" who stick up for their kids even after they've been convicted of heinous crimes. Nothing can get those mums and dads to disown or condemn their criminal children, not even in the face of evidence. Whether it's manslaughter, drug dealing, murder or setting fire to a bin, "he's my son and he could never have done such a thing", and cue the reports of the offenders' families laughing in court or pulling faces at the victims' relatives.

But if you just look at it, the Sun and the Daily Mail perpetrate this sub-human pattern in a much grander scale. The way they lashed out at the anti-Iraq war protesters in Luton (who accused British soldiers of brutality as well as of illegally invading another country) was textbook.

Whatever your views on the Iraq war, the Sun writes, these are 'Our Boys' and we should stand by them as "they're 20-year-old lads trying to do their job regardless of politics". Read that back to yourself: regardless of politics.

This way, the Sun and its readers, with their eyes fogged by pairs of tits, pictures of Amy Winehouse wasted and stories of dogs mauling little girls can easily avoid questions that don't sit easily within the grey stuff. Do 'Our Boys' illegally invade a sovereign country on behalf of a calculating and deceiving politician? It doesn't matter, they're 'Our Boys'.

Do they get involved in dozens, maybe hundreds, of unlawful episodes of torture and brutal beatings of innocent people? 'Course nobody likes that, but still it's 'Our Boys' who did it and they're "serving our country with distinction and courage".

Do they kill tens of thousands of people as part of 'their job'? How dare you slag off 'Our Boys'.

So what will it take for the Sun & co. to stop supporting 'Our Boys' as if they were a group of religious nutters? How many episodes of torture? How many Abu Ghraibs? How many dead? If a million doesn't stop their blind support for 'Our Boys', will two million do?

And as far as the lame claim that "soldiers aren't to blame" because "they're not policy makers" and those who declare wars instead are "the politicians", well, the Sun may like to learn that conscription in Britain ended in 1963.

If you join the Army these days you ain't doing so because you want to help old ladies cross the street or because they force you like the Americans during the Vietnam war. You know full well that you've got to obey orders no matter what they are, including sooner or later wars and carpet bombing based on doctored evidence.

The Sun, "Our Boys" and "sick Muslim extremists"...

Don't protest against Our Boys' invasion of Basra and them kicking the shit out of innocent people, or the Sun will call you "vile" and "sick".

Between 601,027 and 1 million people have died since March 2003 as a result of the invasion of Iraq. All but the most die-hard of warmongers would now concede that such carnage was the result of, at best, a reckless war and, at worst, this decade's most shameful crime against humanity.

However, according to the Sun, if the protests against the British role in Iraq involve people of Islamic creed, then the placard wavers are none other than "sick Muslim extremists". Yesterday, their fault was apparently that of shouting 'Baby killers' at a group of British soldiers returning from Basra.

The protesters were holding banners that read "Anglian Soldiers - Criminals, Murderers, Terrorists". The Sun interpreted them as "vile abuse hurled at Our Iraq Boys" and added the customary comments from "one man who had given up his lunch break to salute the troops" saying that "To hear people scream 'Baby Killers' at them and unfurl banners accusing them of being butchers was absolutely appalling".

Absolutely appalling? We know that a paper as intellectually stimulating as The Sun can bamboozle the brain and play tricks on the memory, but let's just remind your average Sun reader and lunch break martyr of what Our Boys did. For instance, the fun video (see below) filmed by the Boys themselves as they were enjoying brutally beating and kicking defenceless Iraqi teenagers in an army compound in Basra.

Gordon Brown said yesterday that "[T]he whole country is proud of our brave servicemen and women who serve their country with great distinction and courage", but you'd have to be a pretty spineless human being to be proud of stuff like the video shown below. Which, lest we forget, was only fortuitously caught on camera, suggesting that it was just the tip of the iceberg. And in fact, more evidence of torture and unlawful killings at the hands of 'Our Boys' has kept pouring in ever since (as also powerfully portrayed by the film the The Mark of Cain).

That The Sun doesn't see that instead as "vile" and "sick" is yet another sign that they should simply stick to Page Three.

Bush: My mistake with the WMDs

But no paper thinks it's worth the front page. Can you believe it?

Iraq is no longer front page news. Even when the biggest architect of the war makes his retreat in public. In an interview with the American network ABC news, George W Bush admitted that "Iraq is his biggest regret" and that "his biggest mistake was to believe that there were WMDs".

Just over a year ago it would have been a bombshell. There'd have been more chance of the Pope owning up to wearing a condom. But today, with the exception of the Guardian, no other British paper gives Bush's incredible admission any relevance. Can you believe it? Not even The Mirror, a paper that made a fortune on the grounds of its opposition to the war. And that's in spite of a country being literally torn to pieces on the basis of such false allegations, over a million dead and Britain's most controversial involvement in a war for at least half a century.

Not to mention that a lot could be said about Tony Blair, now the only remaining cheerleader for the war, cashing it in on the public speech circuit. Pedantic details, aren't they?

It's worth pointing out that the European press is making a much bigger deal out of Bush's admission. It's front page news in Spain (see El Pais), Italy (la Repubblica, for instance) and France (Le Figaro). I guess Britain's too busy with Britney Spears losing it on the X-Factor, I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here and the Justice for Baby P crusade. That's how collective goldfish memory is fostered. Until it becomes run of the mill.