Saturday, March 1, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Stanislav's Rants on Guido (www.order-order.com) plus whatever else tickles my fancy.
Blog Archive
About Me
- Plumbers Assistant
- This blog is a compilation of Stanislav's Rants as they appear on Guido. It is neither operated nor sanctioned by him. If you don't like it, don't come back.
Which is the more important ? That young Hewitt gets what he wants or that the media and the bloggers collude with the government in deciding and limiting the public interest? Discuss.
Stanislav asks the key question. Here goes.
There is no constitutional issue at stake. H is third in line and you can always find another one, or even change the law and let the old boot Anne have a go, followed by the gorgeous Zara. In political terms, this is of interest only while sitting in the dentist's waiting room . It is gossip, not news. It is of interest to the public but it isn't an issue of public interest.
The combination of celebrity and service is mildly diverting, though. Fr'instance, Sarah Brown on official visits. Would you credit it, but she does her own face, has her hair trimmed at which ever hotel they are staying, and borrows clothes and jewellery from designers, who then get a name-check? (Thank you, no, the dentist said there was no work to do this time.) It is spin to create the contrast with Cherie but it could raise its chin over the threshold of news if public expenditure were at issue. Instead, it is in the celebrity mags, placed there by fawning PRs.
Suppose it was not Prince Harry we were talking about, but Harry Potter. Suppose Daniel Radcliffe had enlisted. There would be hoards of screaming girls (and boys) demanding to know where he was serving - but it still isn't their right to know. The forces might not want to take him because he is enough of a public figure that he is a special target. On the other hand, they might decide he is a good soldier and only a target if his whereabouts is known. Any celeb mag which exposed his location would not get much sympathy. Operational necessity takes precedence over precise knowledge. This is not because mums and dads and siblings and loyal subjects should not know - it is because the enemy should not know, but there is no effective way of telling the mothers but not the enemy. It is not public interest which is at issue - it is enemy interest.
This story does not engage a public interest consideration because it was always intended to break; it was only ever a question of when. The wranglers only had to cope with the outside chance of him coming back in a box. For the cynical, that is a hallmark of a stunt rather than a genuine military career. Like any stunt the story value is in the surprise unwinding; there is no public interest served in news editors hissing: 'You know there's a gurrl inside that big birthday cake, don't you'.
Stanislav asks what weight to give to Harry's wishes. This is equivalent to asking about the limits of privacy and where it serves public interest. It depends on context. When Gordon Kaye was monstered in hospital and apparently signed some kind of permission while all woozy, it annoyed people in to thinking there must be some limits. Naomi Campbell won her case on the grounds that you don't deter people from seeking medical help. Judge Munby is trying to strike a sensible balance in public family law by allowing reporting of cases but insisting on anonymity. In the case of the conjoined twins, the courts immediately gave stage names of Jodie and Mary to the children. Later, when it no longer mattered, the family name emerged in follow-up articles.
Should Harry have been allowed to be Tommy Atkins, with the connivance of the media? It was the great Polish philosopher Stanislav who wrote: “There is a noble and necessary tradition of noms des plumes -Atticus, Beachcomber, Crossbencher, Guido - which you are evidently too fucking stupid and sanctimonious to realise is a valuable, vital component of our public discourse.” (19 Jan 2008). Admittedly Harry has little to do with public discourse – just as well, considering past performances – but here he wished to serve public interest briefly in the persona of Tommy Atkins (cynicism is optional).
What I would really like to know is if Drudge picked it up from the Aus magazine, or if somebody in NuLab decided to pull this particular communication chord this weekend and handed the story to him. Instinct says that there is something else which we are not supposed to notice, not just the normal EU disgrace. Someone is throwing glitter in our eyes.
That’s enough bloody words from me, gabby woman without even a pretend name, whoever I am.
Dear Mr Woman on a raft.
stanislav not have any answer, only more question.
If AngryGingerBastard was really at the sharp end, was that not a monumental misjudgement by Brig Gen Rupert Jockstrap McKay ? And have we ever heard such brown-nosing praise from a CO to a miserable 2nd Lt. Fuck me, Mr Woman on a Raft, it was like five more minutes out there and young Hewitt woulda had the war, as they call it, won and fuck all these other commoner bastards, eh, shipped home in shreds to an indifferent, cost-conscious NHS future?
Had AngryGingerBastard been killed or worse, captured, vulnerable to torture and head-chopping, all broadcast on the global net would that not have been a catastrophically damaging propaganda victory, liable to galvanise volunteer Jihadists in huge numbers and thus, inevitably, result in even more dead Tommies and even Joe Bloggses in the UK ?
Can we imagine the scene in Oxford Coroner's Court if, conversely, Lt AngryGingerBastard, up the sharp end, found himself, as is not unknown, collateralised unto fertiliser by Uncle Sam's shoot-em-up air corp?
(This is Bird Dog One to Bird Dog Ground Control, Think we fucked-up here,Colonel, big time, think that was AngryGingerBastardLimeyFoxtrotWindsor we just napalmed. Bird Dog control here, Never mind, son, just jettison the videotapes and fly yer asses back here. These fucking Limeys're always bitching. Let me fucking worry about that pansy Coroner; he's always on my ass. )
The Coroner would go fucking nuts. He'd wanna see every piece of paper ever written in the history of the British Army,declare martial law and blockade the Pentagon. No Angry Ginger Bastard getting buried round here, not until I get some fucking answers off that Jock cunt Browne.
Brenda'd go apeshit, gold-braided caps'd be rolling down the Mall. Equerries and flunkies and aides de camp would be shitting themselves. Fuck me, Phil, I only said he should go there and shake a few hands, dazzle some fucking dimwit, media studies cocksucker graduate from the Beeb. Shoot his gun in the sand a bit. 'Snot like we was fighting the Argies, most of whom went to Sandhurst, No, Phil, Fuck me gently, these ragheads is fucking nutters, chop a bloke's balls off soon as look at him. We didn't say nothing about the drunken little git being up the sharp end.
The tabloids and the Dimblebys would have a field day, of course. John Shitbrain from the Sun would be glowering: Hanging's too good for these Yanks/Ragheads/Anybody, the Sun says Torture the Fuckers wot killed our own AngryGingerBastard, Or Any Other Bastard, Its Wot The People Want. Turn on the idiotbox and it'd be: And now. As the sombre cortege. Files past. As it did so poignantly. With his late mother. The Princess. Some called her. Of Tarts. A stricken nation. Bids farewell. To a suddenly favourite. Right royal. AngryGingerBastard. Reflecting on. The very great. Some say unpayable debt. That the poor owe. To the rich. Like myself. And my entire family. His late mother, the deranged NHS Stalkerwoman, used to say that there were three in the marriage. But. As it turned out. There was only one in the coffin. But, for now, we mourn Wotsisname. Slain in the line of Duty. By whoever. Join me for Question Time when my guests will be the usual bunch of cunts. Lembit Opek, Caroline Flint and some other tossers. From the Cenotaph. Back to you in the studio.
Stanislav asked originally if the public interest was, legitimately, so easily manipulated and stanislav did not insist that this bloke's whereabouts on duty were part of the national interest, hence: discuss.
Think it was criminally irresponsible to deploy him to Afghanista, regardless of what the mouthy little prick, himself, wants. Think, for reasons above, that it was inevitable that he would and should be shepherded and protected in the national interest. Although any part of Afghanistan is more dangerous than UK, claims of heroism are a little overblown and unjustified.
The national interest that was relevant was that Chief of Staff Dannant, announced that there was no way AngryGingerBastard could serve in Afghanistan, for this, this, this and reason. And then, presumably after pressure, he secretly countermanded those orders. Literally thousands of people, in the press, in the regiment, in the MOD, in the snooty wine bars will have known about this, it was not a state secret and given - according to Blunkett and Schmidt and M15 - the massive penetration of thousands of mad Jihadi conspirators it is almost inconceivable that someone from the Other Side would have not deduced, even by his absence from the drunkards' circuit, that his nibs was on active duty.
He never should have been allowed to set foot anywhere in which he might, by his death or capture, enflame things further or endanger genuine soldiers; he is a deeply obnoxious spoilt little prick who has been able to bully a personal PR triumph out of a Senior Command which should have known better and the connivance of what we still call the press in this load of fucking rubbish is deeply offensive, even by their standards. Nancy Brown, presbyterian lunatic, slithering around, praising the troops he has consistently betrayed is just another ladling-over of self-interest from the most disgusting crew of media-political slags in history. Must be knighthoods and medals all round.