The Fisk

Alex Deane: What an exclusive!

The Independent has, in a rare act of public service, named and shamed the most ignorant people in public life and put colour photographs of them on their front page so that you can spot them coming. 

Oh wait.  Looking more closely, I realise that I’ve misunderstood.  It's a list of people who oppose the renewal of our nuclear capacity.

To fisk it, or not to fisk it..?  Well, it might be to give it prominence it doesn’t deserve, since at the last count this website was read by at least, well, me, which is one more than the Indy’s circulation once you take off the hotel handouts and airline freebies.  But it is the idea of the site, so… to begin at the beginning.   

"Not in our name."

Name?  Singular?  But there are several of you.  Have you a collective name?  What is it?  I could suggest some.  No?  Think I’d be unfair?  OK then I’ll just give you a clue.  It starts with p and ends with rats.

"Exclusive."

The effrontery of labelling this ring-round of their mates an "exclusive" – as if it’s a piece of news that they’re reporting, rather than a self-created, self-serving bit of propaganda – is shocking.  Or rather, would be shocking if one expected this "paper" to actually report anything rather than plod out campaign lit for the leftist dullards of the day.

"A powerful coalition of 100 scientists, lawyers, church leaders, actors, writers and MPs is today demanding a halt to the rush by Tony Blair towards a replacement for Britain's Trident nuclear weapon system."

Bloody hell people, hold back on the defence spending – the actors and writers are against it!  There are some lawyers too – well they must be right then.

Scientists, you say?

"Stephen Hawking, the astrophysicist, is amongst…"

Golly.  Well he is a real brainbox.  They must be right.  What does the good Hawking say?

"To replace Trident would make it more difficult to get arms reduction."

Well that might be right in absolute terms.  But given that umpteen nations are proliferating right now, how realistic is arms reduction anyway?  What difference would Britain disarming make, other than depriving us of a weapon an increasing number of other nations will have?  How does the mechanism you suggest do anything to reach the aim you identify?

But he’s not finished!  He goes on:

"It would also be a waste of money because there are no circumstances in which we would use it independently."

Yes, because it would of course be utterly moral to leave nuclear war to our allies rather than doing anything to contribute ourselves.  Damn keyboard.  I left out an "im".  It would be immoral.  Plus of course that attitude presumes that we will be allies with Uncle Sam forever, a notion that this bunch of pinkos would presumably spit out like the worst rocket offered at the Islington dinner party.

Not in the online edition but available for all you keenos with a hard copy, there's an accompanying photo which has a caption along the lines of "anti-war protestors in 2003" – of course, it's a pic of the "anti-doing anything about Iraq" campaign and nothing to do with Trident, but y’know, it’s all the same, innit? Actually, that’s probably true.  It is always the same people on the wrong side of whatever argument we’re having.  Though accidental, it’s probably the least chunderworthy bit of “analysis” in the whole piece.

But, I hear the protestor cry, these people on the list are all so famous!  And the “newspaper” asked them what they thought about nuclear arms, so they must be experts!  Yes, even Damon Albarn!  They must be right!   

Are they?  The logic that’s on offer is one that presumes nobody really wants to nuke us or our allies anyway.  Well, I doubt that and I prefer to take the news from the fundamentalist horse’s mouth before this lot any day.  Iran’s head lunatic Mr Armageddonjad has made his intention to nuke Israel asap pretty clear.  Then tzatziki of course, but then he’s going to be looking out for new targets.  Who’s to say it ain’t you and me?  Well, the Indy’s merry men, apparently.  But why take their word over Arma’s?

As Professor Colin Gray perspicaciously wrote in this month’s Parliamentary Brief, 

"[Y]ou can’t know that deterrence will work, but it is still an essential asset… We do not and cannot know what the strategic value of a British nuclear force will be in future decades, but we do know enough about the hazards of the twenty-first century to judge that it would be imprudent to discard such a force… we have some good grounds to suspect that the era of inter-state conflict is not over.  To be nuclear armed is to raise the threshold and the stakes for actual and potential enemies considering taking action against Britain"

Which, you might think, contains more sense that the whole edition of the Indypuff.

And as for their list – the thing of note is really what a mediocre list it is.  What a rag-bag of pseuds.  Such effluvia have been whinging throughout history.  For the most part, thank the Good Lord, nobody has listened.  Had they had their way, we’d have seen the Red Army watering their horses at Hendon long ago.  How wise are they, who see the world in shades of grey!  Sadly for them (but not us), those they sneered at kept hold of the reins – those who see black and white, rights and wrongs, saved the West and won the Cold War.  And fortunately, much to the chagrin of this list’s members, those hands are still on the reins (outside of the Indy) even in the benighted Labour Party.

The future is a dangerous place.  I for one would prefer to walk there with a big stick it turns out I don’t need, rather than finding just at the wrongest of times that the stick I discarded would have been very handy indeed.

Alex Deane: The bonkers Indy

This morning’s big story was the series of raids in Birmingham on homes of those suspected of plotting to kidnap, torture and murder a British Muslim serving in our armed forces.  Every paper led with it.  Except The Independent.  That august publication chose instead to run with this (left).

It is, a story about poor treatment that a family of Muslims has apparently received from various government bodies, culminating in their deportation.  Its appearance today, one would guess, is motivated by a misplaced desire to show "the other side" of the story.

I freely admit that this is nothing new – The Indy has been doing bonkers things with its front page for years.  But the "other side of the story" exists within the kidnap story.  As (for example) The Telegraph reports:

"Shabir Hussain, who preaches at the Ludlow Road mosque near to Jackson Road, said… "We came here to work hard and bring our children up as good British citizens. What has gone wrong?"

The kidnap plot is apparently one of thirty major plots being monitored or investigated by MI5.  The issue at the core of all of them, and the plot to kidnap a Muslim soldier in particular, is the battle within the Muslim community between those who wish to keep the law, and those who don’t – those who wish to be British, and those who subscribe first and foremost to a doctrine of fundamentalist hatred. 

Certainly, Austin Mitchell might write a story for you about a more photogenic story about an example of the former.  There is probably merit in the story, I don’t know.  But to run with it at the expense of the biggest story of the day because, on the face of it, it doesn’t fit with your political agenda… well, you might as well do what The Times used to do, and use your front page to display adverts.