THUS Magazine

. . . . “I’ll put a girdle about the earth in forty minutes” Puck, Midsummer Night’s Dream

Gordon Brown looking sad in Helmand. 'This is paradise compared to Brussels'

We heard this morning that UK Gordon Brown has broken off his constructive discussions with EU leaders to appear in Afghanistan to mourn the death of four British soldiers, killed in two bomb incidents, one where a 13 year old suicide bomber killed 3 Royal Marines. We also heard that yesterday’s government announcement that UK knife crime had plunged by 14 per cent in a month was based on fraudulent statistics and that the ‘decision’ to withdraw the remaining 3000 British troops in Iraq was leaked to the press but not announced to Parliament (therefore might not happen). We heard that the jury in the de Menezes inquest returned an ‘open verdict,’ having been barred by the coroner to return a verdict of Unlawful Killing, but had rejected the mendacious accounts of the Metropolitan Police murder squad. We heard, we heard . . .

Head shot of Cressida Dick of the Met SO13 Shoot to Kill team. Scary name, scary hair, scary job in an institutionally racist, sexist force with no real accountability. Just plain scary, in fact. Dumb dumb bullets all round.

We heard former Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, break his (unusually protracted) silence to state that he sincerely hoped this setback would not affect the promotion prospects of Cressida Dick, the Calamity Jane in charge of the Operation Kratos SO13 Licence to Kill gang. Last Thursday we heard of a foiled Al Quaeda plot in Belgium to allegedly blow up the EU Ministers gathered this weekend, a potentially huge outrage, but, mysteriously, having categorically stated that the target was Gordon Brown, the UK press have subsequently virtually ignored the story (including omitting to mention that 8 of the 14 suspects have been already released). The international press had no such emphasis on Gordon Brown. Apart from signalling the return to full fighting form of spinmeisters Mandelson and Campbell, all this whirling might mean that Brown intends to ease out of Iraq with a diplomatic cough (‘mission accomplished?’) but almost certainly ‘redeploy’ the troops to Afghanistan. On the basis that the War on Terror is continuing to pose clear and present danger to the UK we can expect continued pressure to proceed with the Identity Cards project and lots more sirens in the middle of the night to keep us in a state of fearful preparedness for – a UK general election. While in Afghanistan, Brown pledged a whopping £6 million to ensure free and fair elections (less than the cost of a Mayfair townhouse for an Afghan warlord) but nearer to home, the Tories are applying pressure for an early election. In the fog of war, we seem to forget that the glorious leader of the free world was not himself elected by the UK populace.

John J. Kelly

PS. THUS POLICY STATEMENT. My new policy is to byline opinion pieces (most of THUS falls into this category) since it is counter to free speech to hide behind anonymity when making speculative comment. We try to attribute sources wherever possible, hence the plethora of references to sources in the public domain but it’s mostly just me spoofing around acting the giddy goat. Believe nothing, believe me.