“The wider public interest outweighs the need to maintain the rule of law".
This never-to-be forgotten utterance of the Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith of Weaselwords, announcing to parliament yesterday his decision to instruct the Serious Fraud Office to abandon their investigation into the financial honesty of arms deals between BAE Systems and the Saudi government, should be engraved on tablets of lead and hung round the necks of every NuLab government minister.
It is on a par with the prime minister’s infamous remark, a few weeks ago, that civil liberties were an idea more suited to another age than the present one. [You can almost see the smirk of self-satisfaction with which he delivered this [Eric] Blairite bon môt.]
I’ve not got the time or energy to recount the sordid allegations about the “Saudi Princes’ Slush Fund” scandal – in which the name of Mark Thatcher almost inevitably crops up somewhere – but for more public awareness of the private cavortings of these sybaritic descendants of the naïve “Lawrence of Arabia”’s romantic lithe young warrior-chieftains galloping in flowing white robes across the empty desert on thoroughbred stallions NOT to be in this country’s best interests strikes me as surrealist drivel. For one thing, it might curb the inflow of Saudi funds which foster UK Wahabbist Islamic extremism.
OK, if the can of worms was opened to public inspection we could have lost a lucrative 'defence' contract and thousands of jobs to the Frightful French. But we might have better preserved our national honour – if such a quaint notion cuts any vanishing ice anywhere any more.
I sometimes think
5 comments:
What's really astonishing to me is how they can brazenly announce such a decision, without a tremor, as if they no longer give a damn what public opinion may think. Shows just how passive the British population has become and how isolated we all are. Where are the demos, the movements, the organizers, the campaigners ?
Bloggin' ;-)
Not in anticant's burrow, I'm afraid.
As John Pilger wrote : "Morality? Do not make me laugh".
Rt Hon Barbara Castle please come back all is forgiven.
Ginger, as you are a bit of a conspiracy theorist, try this on for size: The US & UK make the Saudis their best Arab friends in the Middle East [their bestest friend there being of course Israel]. They keep the despots in power by showering them with subsidies and buying oil from them at inflated prices. Not content with that, they sell them weapons with contracts secured by dubious deals. The recipients, laughing all the way to the mosque and the Swiss banks, plough as much of this Western dosh as they can bear to spare from acquiring gold-plated Rolls-Royces, luxurious palaces, and playboy style living abroad, into exporting Wahabbist extremism back into Europe, especially UK. While they may not actually fund the Bush family's former friend and business colleague Osama, they and his Pakistani pals take good care that he isn't flushed out of his safe houses on the Afghan border or wherever. So ultimately WE - the British and US taxpayers - are subsidising extremist Islamic terrorism. Nice one, Tony.
Don't think there has ever been any doubt about that.
You must remember that it is the man on the Clapham Omnibus who bears the brunt of terrorist activity.
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