Friday 22 January 2010

1864. A former and an existing Minister at Chilcot, Doncaster Darkness and the Pelican Brief

I have wasted an early start to the day after plenty of sleep although dreams which reminded of some basic and acquired insecurities. Earlier in the week I completed a run of 101 winning games of chess against the computer at the second level. This is the second occasion achieving such a run in under four years and took 1000 games of play in the present series to do so. Thus I shall move on to playing games at levels 3, 4 and 5 which will require more thought and intense periods of play which defeats the purpose of the activity which is to do something else other than thoughtful working or emotional engagement. My overall state of anxiety and psychological fragility is such that I can no longer just work and sleep. I need to play the games and in fairness to myself the ratio of work to other activities remains better than most for my age, but not for what I am used to or need to do.

The mood of dissatisfaction has overcome my natural positivism. The spell grammar checker did not allow positiveness or positivity which was the first inclination. I must control yielding to inclinations unless I am well satisfied in advance of their rightness. I am beating myself up more than most, but one cannot claim to be different to most then cling to normality. I also lecture myself about controlling my finances and my weight better.

Having commenced the week with the intention of making two cinema visits, I am still to see one. I stayed in to watch Geoff Hoon today and Jack Straw on Thursday and then yesterday I was affected by he exchange between the Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister over the level at which at risk in the area of the Metropolitan Borough of Doncaster are being protected

I was impressed by the former Minister and the current Minister of Justice with Jack Straw, a lawyer by having evidently been meticulous in his preparation and ensuring that there was no misunderstanding about his personal position. He did not support the USA Democrat Clinton view that regime change was the primary object for Iraq which was came to the fore under Bush Republicans following 9/11 which transformed the American Psyche as it as the first mainland hostilities since the Civil War, with Pearl Harbour taking place some distance away from the mainland although on USA soil and causing deaths and injuries of US armed forces and civilians. He also considered regime as aim illegal. The object of the action had been to obtain compliance on weapons inspection and control and had any anytime the Iraqi leadership showed their willingness then there would have many no military intervention by the UK. He had prepared alternatives for the PM.

His evidence illuminated our suspicions about the USA system in which all shades of opinion are reflected in the administration and where a Labour administration is regarded as neo communist among a large section of the government and population. It could not be said that the USA had a foreign policy until the President rules and this was also true for the France where the President of France had scuppered any chance of gaining a second Resolution although in fact they would not have made such a major issue if the USA and GB had intervened on the basis of the first resolution alone, this aspect was not clear to me

To an extent the PM and British politicians and officials had to establish a platform from which they could influence the USA to place any action re Iraq in the content of the Middle East settlement involving the future of Israel and all its neighbours, particularly an independent and viable Palestinian state. The problem why significant progress was not made is the position of the present Israeli Prime Minister and the Republican political wish to gain the Jewish vote which traditional had gone to the Democratic Party.
The main point of the testimony of Jack Straw in his response to questioning was to emphasise that military action would not have been taken if Parliament had not voted in favour and the action had not been declared legal according to International law. He refused to comment on Mr Blair‘s recent TV interview statement that he would have been prepared to argue for intervention on the basis of regime change had this proved necessary. This is only part one of Mr Straw’s evidence and he will return after the inquiry has heard from the former chief legal officer.

The approach of Mr Hoon was different, emphasising the areas where he accepted responsibility and where he did not. One of the main issues was the extent to which the forces were adequately equipped and he accepted that one of the problems was getting the equipment to the right people at the right time and there were occasions when some units were over supplied and others were under. He also pointed to Treasury control of the budget which raised questions about the role of the Present Prime Minister. Mr Brown was to have given evidence after the General Election but having indicated his willingness to attend beforehand he will now do so and therefore lance this party political and media boil and which also demonstrates his growing confidence in exchanges with the opposition and about the electoral prospects of his government as the main opposition appears to falter.

Because of the announcement of a fall in unemployment, it was anticipated that Mr Cameron would steer clear of economic subjects at Prime Minister‘s Question Time this week. Instead, after two information seeking questions about Haiti, the Opposition leader concentrated his four main questions on the decision to only publish the executive summary of the serious case review held on the two boys in the care of Doncaster Council presently before the courts accused of torturing two younger boys in the Yorkshire town where they had been placed with aged foster parents. The BBC (Newsnight) had gained a copy of report which listed 31 instances of warning signs or when action could have been taken which should have prevented the horror taking place. Cameron wanted the full report to be published arguing this was Haringey all over again and a number of children on the at risk register of the local authority managed system had died over the past five years. He said that according to the BBC who had obtained a copy of the full report there were fundamental differences between what was in the full report and in the summary.

The Prime Minister had been caught out on the baby Peter situation when raised by Cameron was better prepared this time and Ed Balls the responsible Minister was on hand to add information as the questioning progressed. The government has a duty to protect the identities of all the children who are all below the age when publication of identifying information is permitted. The case is immediately before the court. The Government has already taken over the running of the local authority child care services because of the inadequacy of the previous social services management and operational staffing. Its is therefore difficult to understand what more can be done in the present circumstances in terms of management and professionally. However that it was raised at PMQ’s suggests there is a political dimension. About this I have direct knowledge although it goes back forty years to the days of West Riding and Children’s Departments and the Doncaster Authority after it became a Metropolitan Borough was steeped in the culture of old Labour and industrialization politics. The decision for the matter to be raised at PMQ’s was hinted at by the BBC Chief Political commentator although he denied advance knowledge of the particular subject. It will be interesting to see how the situation is handled at a political level once the legal proceedings have concluded.
Cameron opened by giving the Prime Minister the opportunity to explain the latest situation and position on the relief effort in Haiti. The Americans who have taken the over control of the airport are failing as they failed in the aftermath of the Iraq war. When the general in charge was asked to explain why the people living in the open air within sight of the airport were not being fed he did not know but promised to find out.

The USA Presidency has also hit the buffers especially for the President’s health plans as Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat Massachusetts switched to Democrats for the first time in half a century. The USA Ambassador tried to put a gloss on what had happened which was exploded during the midday political programme. Normal Tebbit was quite scathing about the position of Ted Kennedy and another commentator made the point that racist hostility against he President should not be underestimated. The medical care programme was likely to his the buffers as a consequence even with trying to accommodate Senators through pork barrel politics when approval for projects in individual states unconnected to medical care are added to the Bill The President responded by launching moves to control and punish the bank community. It will be interesting to see if he is more successful in this initiative. The comment was made that when Clinton’s medical care initiative floundered because it was regarded as neo communistic socialism, he moved to centre and became successful having done so. President Obama appears to be digging his heels into a centre left position which political integrity but which in the USA is likely to fail. However it will put the Republicans on the spot because their natural inclination will be to oppose controls on capitalism yet the general public in the USA is still angry about what the Banks did to the country in a situation when unemployment was significantly higher than in the UK and asocial security and retraining measures significantly less.

I stayed up until after 1am on Wednesday to watch the Pelican Brief again. This is a light hearted conspiracy crime at the highest levels rendering of the John Grisham book, which I have not read, nor did I The Firm which is the same kind of story. My interest was with the core issue of what happens when an insider blows the whistle on a situation of which they are major part of, although this was a very loose variation compared for example to the film about the Tobacco company.

The central character of the story played by Julia Roberts being Julia Roberts pretending to be a young law student who speculates in a formal way why two Supreme Court judges are suddenly assassinated. She does this as an assignment, investigating the cases of the two judges and concluding that the evidence pointed to the intervention of a major oil company which had wanted to drill in an area of the USA which would have further endangered a rare species of Pelican, hence the shorthand title The Pelican Brief. I am not sure if law students ever investigate and speculate in this way, for example in the UK over the allegations of a conspiracy which led to the death of Princess Diana? Or if having completed the work, ones, Professor/Mentor is so impressed that he shows the work to an FBI lawyer he knows in Washington? Of course it helped that Julia was sleeping with her tutor, played by Sam Shepherd and when her is murdered and then the Washington FBI lawyer, Julia has good reason to be afraid. What she then does demonstrates courage and determination which the Julia character, as it is played, does not fit. She contacts the Washington post and a particular black reporter played by Denzil Washington.

I mention his skin colour because while Hollywood these days like to show it liberalism and political correctness it still shirks blacks and whites having an adult relationship unless it is in a film about blacks and white having adult relationships. At one point after it is evident someone is trying to kill both of them, she asks Denzil if he would sleep on the couch in her hotel/motel room and he does and when the adventure is successfully over all that happens is that she gives him a hug of the kind of two close friends who are about to go their separate ways. Most of the graphic portrayal of adult relationships in contemporary USA films is commercially gratuitous and the contrast to what happens in this film merits comment.

What emerged during the film is that the oil firm in addition to organising the assassination of the two supreme court judges likely to favour the environmental objection, have made several million dollars into the President’s re-election coffers and when they draw attention tot he existence of the Brief to the Presidential Chief of Staff, he not only alerts the President but get the CIA on the case to go after the reporter and the author of the Brief. Fortunately the murdered FBI lawyer has left evidence which the couple retrieve and publish narrowly avoiding being blown up in their car. The outcome is that the head of the oil firm and a number of senior executives face the Grand Jury, the Presidential Chief of Staff quits and the President decided not to stand for a second term. Julia goes off to somewhere nice with the help of the FBI although she has to agree to return to give evidence as required. I felt much more could have been made of the story, particularly given the quality of the participating actors.

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