Lies and Truth in Libya

Two statements; one false, one correct. First up, from everyone's favourite counter-revolutionary Muammar Gaddafi:

Col Gaddafi said he was loved by all his people and denied there had been any protests in Tripoli.

It appears Gaddafi has been in reality's departure lounge for quite some time, and is now boarding the jet to insanity. Which leads me nicely to the second, correct comment:

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is "delusional" and "unfit to lead", the US ambassador to the UN has said.

Y'reckon? And how come you've only just fucking well noticed?

Comment of the Day

From Lord Digby Jones, on the Civil Service:

"I was amazed, quite frankly, at how many people deserved the sack and yet that was the one threat that they never ever worked under, because it doesn't exist."

The threat of the sack doesn't exist. Sheesh. Proof, if any further proof was needed, that the public and private sector are not just worlds, but universes, apart. As so many people look down the barrel of a gun marked called "redundancy", I can't help but look at jobs in the public sector with a degree of envy. And the phrase "if you can't beat them, join them" is swimming through my mind. 

Being banned from the pub is punishment enough

Not quite sure what to make of this story:

A judge has told a Glasgow pensioner that stopping him going to the pub was a "more meaningful" sentence than a prison term for killing his wife.

My gut reaction is this – surely the judge could stop him going to the pub by, y’know, sending him to prison?

There is justification for restricting this man’s chances to go to the pub, though:

"You still go to the pub where you went with your wife. That must annoy her relatives.”

Yeah, I’m guessing that would annoy the relatives. Probably not as much as the murder peeves them, though. I’d imagine that the murder is considerably more of an annoyance than where the killer drinks. Maybe I’m wrong; I’ve never had to deal with a murdered relative. Or had to worry about where the killer gets shitted.

Still, there is a reason why this man is not going to prison:

"I have read and considered a number of reports from experts. It is plain to me that if I were to impose that sort of sentence you would be released in a very short time because prison would not be able to cope with your condition.”

So, a murderer isn’t going to prison because prison can’t cope with his condition. What are we going to do, free people when their health problems get too much? Free Peter Sutcliffe if he gets cancer? Let Dennis Nielsen go free if he has a dicky ticker? Let Ian Brady leave prison because he has seen better days?

Make no mistake this man is unwell:

"There is a clear diagnosis of dementia setting in. It is a progressive condition and ultimately he will need 24-hour care. I am deeply conscious there has been a death here, but this man is very unwell. He was always willing to plead guilty to culpable homicide, but this was flatly rejected by the Crown and that is why a trial was necessary."

Dementia is a terrible condition, and will lead to this man’s terminal decline. But he still killed someone. If he committed the murder consciously, he should be imprisoned. If he committed it because of mental ill health, then he should be confined to an appropriate medical institution. Letting him go free, despite taking a life, is a staggeringly awful decision.

Banning someone from the pub is the sort of punishment you might give to a wayward teenager – not to a grown man who has committed murder.

Election 2008: The Clinton Millstone

On some levels I feel sorry for Barack Obama. Yes, he’s got what he seems to lust after – the chance to run for President. He actually stands – despite a massive lack of experience – the chance to get elected President. He’s not done too badly for himself.

Yet he has a massive headache. In fact, he has an eyeball popping migraine of a problem. It is, of course, Hillary Clinton. Now, Obama and his campaign might feel she is no longer a problem – after all, he seems to have finally consigned her campaign to the dustbin of history. Yet she still looms over him, like a shrill, demented sword of Damocles. Because, having failed to win the nomination, she now has set her razor sharp, Terminator-esque eyes on the vice-presidential nomination.

The simplest thing to do would be to offer Clinton the vice-presidency. He would have her onside, and he would have the considerable support she mustered in the primaries behind him as well. Yet how long would it be until she started to think that she was the one running for President rather than Obama? If their ticket won the White House, how long would it take her to assume she was President? You’d have to be delusional and arrogant to make that that sort of assumption – but after her endless campaign for President, you could argue that Clinton is both.

However, the latest intelligence seems to suggest that Obama is shunning Clinton. Fair enough, but this strategy has risk attached to it as well. And that risk can be summed up by the question “just how insane is Hillary Clinton?” If she is snubbed again, what will she do? I doubt, given her campaign for the Presidency increasingly showed the *tenacity* of a rabid poodle savaging a child’s face, that she will simply shrug and walk away. So how destructive will she be? Will she just refuse to campaign for her unlikely victor? Will she start a whispering campaign against him? Will she completely lose the plot, and run as an Independent - thus throwing the chances of the Democrats winning the White House back straight down the crapper?

Make no mistake; Hillary Clinton is a millstone around the neck of Obama. And it is a millstone that could drown the Obama campaign, just as surely as it drowned the once invincible Hillary ’08 campaign.