Not only terror is the enemy
Last updated at 10:59 15 December 2005
A Churchillian chestnut of apocrypha has him asking a grand lady dinner companion if she would be willing to sleep with him for £1 million. To which the lady responds that for such a sum she would have to give the matter serious thought.
Whereupon Churchill rumbles on: "And would you sleep with me for £5?" The good lady is affronted. "How dare you, Mr Churchill - what do you think I am?"
To which the great man is supposed to have replied: "We have already established what you are, madam. It only remains for us to agree a price."
Which brings us to the Blair Government and the price of morality. Bernard Shaw's Alfred Doolittle said that on a dustman's wages he couldn't afford morals.
Now we have the doomsayers like Met Police Chief Sir Ian Blair warning apocalyptically, "The sky is dark," by which he means that the terrorist threat to the UK has intensified so much since July 7 that Scotland Yard is now getting high grade intelligence on suspects by the day.
All of which leads Blair the policeman to conclude that: "There are currently people in the UK who are planning mass atrocities and who will use suicide as a weapon. That is a different place to where we have been in my lifetime."
And which encourages Blair the politician to declare his faith in Condoleezza Rice's unshaken belief that no one on our side of the fence has been or ever will be tortured.
As for the use of CIA flights into Europe for "extraordinary renditions" at secret interrogation centres - a new descriptive phrase for the dictionary of euphemisms - we have the word of our Home Secretary Charles Clarke that: "The Government strives to preserve our fundamental right to be protected from terrorism, while at the same time upholding human rights and opposing the use of torture."
Which, taken in conjunction with the other hummings and hawings on the subject from both Mr Clarke and the Law Lords, seems an exercise in having one's cake, eating it and mopping up the crumbs.
What it all comes down to is whether torture is a legitimate weapon in Bush's "war on terror" or not. It's not enough to make it a Nimby issue - not in my back yard, but we don't mind the CIA landing torture flights here so long as we're not asked to pull any fingernails out ourselves.
Can torture, even by the goodies, ever be justified? I believe it can't, since there is no known case of an act of terrorism being foiled by its application.
Terrorism suspects being shunted around the world have already been caught. Usually they are small fry. If they know anything the CIA or our own equivalent doesn't already know, this is a reflection on our own sources of information rather than an exposure of theirs.
The real danger is in setting a public mood where it becomes acceptable to degrade accepted standards of police behaviour, courtroom evidence and so on, to a kind of state-of-emergency norm where anything goes.
Thus - although under vigorous protest - we allow an old man to be frog-marched out of a political meeting for calling out "Nonsense" at the platform. Thus - but I will thus you no more thusses. Every day there is a new example of the authorities taking a liberty with our liberties. Terrorism has more than terror to answer for.
Mind how you go.
Cheers
If a draft ruling from the European Commission gets the go-ahead from our TV regulators, what is called product placement will become commonplace on our TV screens.
Product placement is the skilful placing of some commercial product or other into a TV programme for a consideration.
The practice is at the moment illegal, but that has never held anyone back.
Indeed, in the earliest days of commercial TV, there was a bizarre little programme called Jim's Inn, featuring Jimmy Hanley, which depended entirely on product placement for its existence.
Jim was mine host of a pub, into which would troop a procession of customers bearing - I should say brandishing - their shopping.
"Usual, Fred? Is that a Magicord electric drill you've got in your new Grippit holdall?"
"That's right, Jim. I'm going to screw up some of them Eazifit shelves on special offer at all DIY shops. Cheers."
Say what you like, it beat Crossroads.
