Obsolete: Jack Straw and the oil tanker: The real April fools.

Saturday, April 01, 2006

Jack Straw and the oil tanker: The real April fools.

After a pretty miserable week in politics, the demonstrations which have greeted the visit of Condoleezza Rice to the north of England have been greatly mood-enhancing. Faced with significant protests, the attiude of our very own Jack Straw has been condescension.

Mr Straw described crowds of supporters outside as "remarkable" and dismissed the number of demonstrators as "not large".

"They (protesters) said they were going to get bus loads and bus loads in. Well they didn't do very well," said Mr Straw.

"If they had asked me I could have done better for them."

The BBC says they were around 200 protestors, while Sky claims 500, which is surprising seeing as one is owned by Mr Murdoch, and one err, isn't. Maybe the reason why Straw dismissed such a number is because, after all, about that number of civilians dies every week in Iraq, and he's long since pushed any such worries out of his mind. Yesterday saw a much bigger protest, with BlairWatch reporting between 1,000 and 3,000 turned up in Liverpool while Rice was visiting the Philharmonic.

The whole visit has gone tits up, quite frankly. The visit to the mosque, withdrawn at the last minute, was not due to "militants" planning to stage a sit-in, but rather because it was made by a few people without consultation. Condi was forced to enter the Pleckgate school by a side door, while the police had a intimidating presence on the band of protestors who had gathered. The children inside the school were cherry-picked prefects, lest any of them say anything somewhat radical or controversial. She was supposed to have watched the football at Blackburn, not just give a speech and receive a shirt, but Sky moved the match to Monday instead for television purposes. A couple of performers at the Philharmonic pulled out, and the noise from the crowd outside could easily be heard inside, while one of the singers segued into Give Peace a Chance after Imagine.

Perhaps the last word should be left to Condi on the first of April.

"It was not a mistake to overthrow Saddam Hussein. It was not a mistake to unleash the forces of democracy in the Middle East."

The same forces of democracy which have killed over 2,000 US servicemen, no doubt.

Update: Corrected the error which said one of the school children sang "Give Peace a Chance" rather than one of the Philharmonic performers. Apologies for the misunderstanding.

Share |

4/01/2006 05:52:00 pm | Permalink |

I'm sure you could come up with a "conspiracy" about Sky moving the Rovers-Wigan game so that it takes place after she's left Blackburn...

Bad publicity if there were protests & she was booed when she did the half-time lottery draw, perhaps?

Posted by Unknown | Sunday, April 02, 2006 10:56:00 am