Blair must go

And just as people had put away their “Blair must go” T-shirts, out of mothballs they come to serve the purpose of (rightly) calling for the metaphorical head of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan POlice.    There is little to add to what others have said,  there is a fine post by Kevin Williamson and a passionately argued piece by septicisle which is well worth a read.  Also, Alastair (whose professional background give added weight to his thoughts on the administration of justice) has a great post.  However, while there has been outrage at the state inspired smears, the phone calls this morning to radio shows indicate that a sector, a large sector, of the public has been taken in by it.  A number wrongly referred to de Menezes as an illegal immigrant (so that obviously makes state execution okay); wrongly referred to him running awat from the police (the eye witnesses did not see this and remarked the only man acting suspiciously was the surveillance officer).  

When I was at school the English teacher gave me his copy of Arthur Koestler’s Reflections on Hanging.  This study of the subject ended with hope suggesting that “despite the inertia of man’s imagination and its resistance to reason and fact, people are beginning to realise that the deliberate taking of life by the State is unjustifiable on religious or philosophic or scientific grounds”.  The callers to the phone in shows leave one less optimistic – the inertia of man’s imagination and its resistance to reason and fact shows itself not only in the responses this morning but in much of the response to the government sponsored reaction to the war against abstract nouns.

ETA – I wrote the above before seeing the latest from Beau Bo D’Or on this.  Typically brilliant.

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