It has been most entertaining watching the PM attempt to disassociate himself from his right hand (or Michael Levy as he’s known to most).
Steve Bell put it elegantly in The Guardian this morning too.
It is often possible to hear whingeing about the lack of a skilled workforce in the UK, this usually comes from the CBI and large corporate employers. When one considers the efforts to outsource jobs to other countries and offshore units, one might think UK workers were simply one of too many seals – with balance sheet innappropriate labour costs.
Kudos to a professional colleague – Ian Reeves – a man blogging about the future of journalism (hackery).
As he says;
> my conversion from inky-fingered print journalist to multimedia contender is requiring me to make a steep dive into a deep pool of technical gloop. Come on in, the water’s lovely.
I strongly recommend a dip.
The arbiters of the world’s fortunes appear to be having a medical crisis – how serious it is, only time will tell.
My colleague Morten is much taken with the unveiling of a statue of former PM Mrs Thatcher this week. He wondered on his blog, how big Mr Blair’s piece of art would have to be to compete … and it’s an intriguing question.
He started with a bust – shown here – and then enlarged to a statue…
He then threw the challenge back to me – and anyone else who’d like a go.
And below is my response. Hat tip to The Sun.
Yeah – it’s obvious, Tony would have at least two busts in the first place.
The Prime Minister has announced we will be leaving Iraq as soon as possible. How?
A marvellous piece of news (or lack of it) photography from Nick Danziger. The article published by The Guardian.
You may see some interpretations of the consequences of our actions at
Kudos to Matthew Parris of The Times who spots a gem of a little story tucked away inside his own paper. I quote selectively from it here.
> “A British Hercules aircraft had to be destroyed on the ground after being crippled soon after landing in the lawless Iraqi province of Maysan, the Ministry of Defence confirmed yesterday.” The report said this was to stop equipment falling into hostile hands on a runway near the provincial capital of al-Amarah.<
This is a province our government says was “under control” and ready to be handed back to the Iraqi government in January. Things have been delayed.
Parris again:
>I rang the Foreign and Commonwealth Office: had I missed an update on Mrs Beckett’s November statement? No, a spokesman told me: “We did hope to hand over the province.” However, more time was needed. Britain is now (apparently) “hopeful of handing over in the spring”.
Hopeful? How hopeful, when we blew up one of our own aircraft there this week, unable to guard it? Yet the Defence Secretary promises we will not leave until the job is done. If you seek the real source of public cynicism in politics, look no farther. We’ve lost. Why not just say so?
UPDATE:
Can’t resist this link from the BBC. It describes an official US goverment pre-invasion plan as expecting only 5,000 US troops to remain in Iraq by December 2006 as ‘delusional.” Rarely a truer word spoken.
