Friday, February 16, 2007

No, Iain, That’s Not A Rocket Launcher, He’s Just Pleased To See You

Laban has some great background – and a great headline – on the Greatest Crime Never. Executive summary: folk in Lancashire do not, in fact, go to sleep tucked up next to anti-tank weapons, while the use of the word ‘chemicals’ was predictably slippery.

Not that I’ll mock the police’s confusion of crossbows and RPG-7s, it’s an easy mistake to make – that’s partly why I left the Archery Club under such a cloud. On the other hand, not to give aid and comfort to the enemy, but the Islamopaths probably want to have a think about whether they really want storing large quantities of rice and sugar to be taken as evidence of terrorism.

Still, all of the above does cast a different light on the Tories efforts to cast this as the BNP’s own July 7 (and, remember, this effort comes from the very top). Consider that the ‘suspect’ was a Conservative Party member for 30 years, compared to only a few months in the BNP. Not only does this raise the question of why he’s a ‘BNP bomber’ and not a ‘Tory terrorist’ , it also raises a rather more serious point. Are we meant to believe that after thirty years there was no one in the local party who knew both the suspect and the informant well enough to say ‘hang on a mo’- you know these folks are mentally ill, right ?’ That makes RPG-7s under the sink sound plausible.

There’s plenty to object to in Nick Griffin’s ideology, but at least the BNP has never resorted to exploiting the mentally ill for political advantage. The folks who poked the inmates with sticks at Bedlam at least had the excuse of ignorance and superstition, what excuse do Call Me Dave’s carin’ sharin’ Tory Boys have ?

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