Beyond satire

Dear oh dear, at this rate we’ll be looking back to the implosion of government under Gordon Brown as a golden age of political efficacy. The Cameron coalition appears to be plunging from one blunder to another.

In the wake of the farce over getting British nationals out of Libya, Foreign Secretary William Hague’s idiotic claim that Gadhafy was en route to Venezuela and Prime Minister David Cameron’s ringing declaration that he would impose a no-fly zone over Libya, only to retreat the following day when told this was not actually a runner, we have now seen the fiasco of the SAS/MI6 men in black helicoptering into Libya at dead of night armed with guns and explosives and multiple passports, thus being captured by the rebel forces they were ostensibly there to assist who not surprisingly took them to be...

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Mote, meet beam

Following claims in March 2010 that Israeli Mossad agents had used cloned British passports on a clandestine mission, the then foreign Secretary David Miliband raged:

Such misuse of British passports is intolerable

and that Israel had displayed a

profound disregard for the sovereignty of the United Kingdom.

Today we learn that the six SAS soldiers detained (and now released) in Libya

were held after going to an agricultural compound when Libyan security guards found they were carrying arms, ammunition, explosives, maps and passports from at least four different nationalities (my emphasis).

We trust most earnestly that none of those was an Israeli one.

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A change of direction?

I have previously noted on a number of occasions -- see here and here -- the acute hostility towards Israel being displayed by David Cameron’s administration. This week, however, there was a screeching of brakes and skid marks all over the road – and not just over Libya.

In a speech to the Community Security Trust two days ago, the Prime Minister delivered a passionate affirmation of his support for British Jews against the threat posed by radical Islam, and of the need for Israel’s safety to be protected from the current uncertainties now gripping the Arab world. True, there was still a reference to the need to continue the Middle East appeasement process and no sign that HMG is about to change its lamentable position on the ‘illegality’ of the Israeli homes across the green line....

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The judges' atheist inquisition

The secular inquisition against Christians was ratcheted up another notch yesterday in a grotesque judgment in the High Court by two judges, who have upheld the ban against a couple from fostering children simply because they hold traditional Christian views about homosexuality.

The implications of this judgment are utterly appalling on many levels. The couple involved, Eunice and Owen Johns, are upstanding, traditional people whose quality of care for the twenty or so children they have fostered is not in doubt. At a time when is estimated that there is a need for another 10,000 foster carers, one might have thought the Johns would be treated as gold dust. Nor have they even prevented any homosexuals from having or doing anything. Their crime is simply to believe it is wrong to promote a homosexual lifestyle to a child in...

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The debauching of the LSE

The Times (£) reports that half the board of the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics, which has received money from Libya among other Arab dictatorships, has called for a boycott of Israel, the one democracy in the Middle East.

It figures.

Now, apparently, there are some red faces:

The university has already been urged by its own dons to give up the £300,000 it received from a foundation headed by the son of Colonel Gaddafi. Howard Davies, the LSE director, is said to have told academics this week that he was ashamed of the institution’s links to the dictatorship.

Questions have been emerging about the LSE’s wider reliance on finance from authoritarian regimes. One of its lecture halls has been named in honour of a sheikh reputed to have promoted anti-Semitic material.

An academic

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A case of wishful thinking?

I was more than a little puzzled to read a press release from YouGov about polling evidence from Egypt conducted by YouGovSiraj, YouGov’s Dubai-based Middle East company, for Al Aan, a pan-Arab satellite broadcaster. The press release says excitedly:

The first survey conducted in Egypt since the fall of President Mubarak shows that the main priority of most Egyptians is freedom and democracy: they believe economic and social reforms can wait.

And the evidence from the polling is..?

Asked to rank the priorities of the new Egyptian government, this is what the public wants:

1.    Political stability (74% made this their first or second priority out of six)

2.    Security of the masses (57%)

3.    Economic growth (39%)

4.    Generation of employment (16%)

5.    Better education (11%)

6.    Better healthcare system (3%)

It is also clear that

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