I don’t usually watch the ITN news but I caught the bulletin at 6.40 yesterday and was reminded why.

Their lead story was “Lockerbie Bomber Escapes Justice Again.”

Really?

Escapes justice?

Again?

Apparently the new Libyan regime will not extradite Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet Al Megrahi to the West.

And why should they?

ITN was peddling utter tosh. Twice over.

Even putting aside the fact that he is almost certainly innocent, Megrahi has not escaped justice. He was convicted, and served a term of imprisonment from which he was released on compassionate grounds under the terms of the justice system concerned.

So he did not “escape justice” even once: still less once more.

The BBC news earlier in the week wasn’t much better, though. A reporter knocked on his door in Tripoli and received no answer and on these grounds decided Megrahi had fled and had thereby broken the terms of his release.

Now, if you lived in Tripoli would you have answered your door this past week? And, if he has fled, wouldn’t you have in his place?

While he has survived way longer than we were led to expect he would, the man is still clearly ill. Given that he has already been duly processed, if under extraordinary provisions, it would be a crime to subject him to further detention.

And let’s have none of this “the victims want this to happen.” (That is to say the victims’ relatives.) They most certainly do not – or at least not all of them do.

That there is talk of US snatch squads apprehending him is an outrage. To do so would be a clear breach of international law and would put the perpetrators on an equal footing with any other law breaker.

Edited to add:-
It seems Megrahi is now at death’s door and has been found in his family home so perhaps we’ll hear an end of this.

I heard William Hague’s voice on Newsnight last night. I don’t know what he was talking about as I was in another room but if it was Libya and I had been the interviewer I’d have felt tempted to ask him if he thought Colonel (can anyone else remember when he was only a lieutenant?) Gadaffi might now be in Venezuela.

Gadaffi has still not been found as I write and continues to spout defiance. It could be a long time yet.

Is anyone else slightly sickened by the outpourings of Mr Irresponsible and Boris Johnson over the recent riots in London and elsewhere.

Aren’t these two erstwhile members of the Bullingdon Club, whose activities consisted of exactly the sort of thing they were condemning?

Where is the difference between what they are said to have got up to in their youth and what we have seen on our TV screens?

I found it particularly ironic when David Cameron said the perpetrators would, “feel the full force of the law,” and Johnson that they would, “regret it.”

Did Mr Cameron feel the full force of the law?

Did Johnson regret his actions? (“We got drunk, trashed the Ritz & then went down Piccadilly to loot a few items from Fortnums” – Boris Johnson in his autobiography, 1986.)

Or is it just that they could get away with it because their daddies were rich?

I hope the rioters do not get away with it. Nothing excuses such wanton acts of violence and vandalism. (Whether their daddies are rich or not.)

Parliament has been recalled for Thursday. Expect a whole series of speeches ploughing the same themes – none of which will be along the lines of why people might have been motivated to act in this way. Get to the root of that and the problem – for there clearly is a problem – might be on the way to being solved.

I’m not optimistic. I feel further restrictions on civil liberties coming on.

Now that the steaming cess-pit that was the News of the World has been exposed – at least in part – the ramifications are widening, not least for our non-elected Prime Minister.

I listened to Mr Irresponsible’s speech today and his answers to the subsequent questions. This may or may not turn out to be David Cameron’s Iraq or Black Wednesday but it was certainly his Ed Miliband moment.

I lost count of the number of times he repeated the phrases “€œsecond chance” (must have been around twenty repetitions) and “€œresigned all over again” (ten? fifteen?) Was it he who came up with these formulations or one of his scriptwriters? Whatever, he stuck to them like a limpet. Or a comfort blanket.

Before that, though, he said we the public look to the police to protect us, to politicians to represent us and to the press to inform us and that all of them have been let down. I’€™ll repeat that. All of them have been let down. The police, politicians and the press have been let down?

In such a carefully crafted speech can this have been a slip? (Freudian or otherwise?)

Or does it betray Mr Cameron’s true attitudes? I think the latter part of his performance argues for him still not seeing where he has erred.

Second chance…. second chance…. second chance.

Resigned all over again…. resigned all over again.

These phrases were clearly designed to put Mr Cameron in a positive light. Yes it is entirely worthy to give someone a second chance. I wonder, though, how far David Cameron’s enthusiasm to rehabilitate others would go. Will he now be employing any ex-€“burglars do you think? Former fraudsters? Rapists? Murderers? Licence-fee dodgers? Others who have had to resign from their jobs for underhand, dodgy or illegal activities? Tax evaders? Oh wait a minute! He’€™s probably done that last one.

However, “€œresigned all over again”€ can have had no other meaning than that Andy Coulson had already been punished for his misdemeanours, indeed had been overpunished. That phrase (despicably, to my mind) tries to cast Mr Coulson as the victim, something which he is very far from. It is there purely to attempt to exculpate: whether Mr Coulson or Mr Cameron I’€™m not sure. And let’s not forget there was no punishment. Mr Coulson walked into a – presumably well paid – job with Mr Cameron. And, moreover, precisely because of his former job and its connections.

There is also the more pressing question of police entanglement with News International’€™s operatives (including the apparent payment of money to serving police officers for information.) Is it any surprise that initial investigations into News of the World’s reporters’€™ activities were tardy and incomplete? The police are there to uphold the law, not to provide juicy tit-bits to journalists; certainly not to benefit from such provision (beyond any help it may have in securing further information from the public.) Press releases and press conferences are fine; underhand undercounter payments for exclusive access are not.

I am reminded of the old Latin tag, “€œQuis custodiet ipsos custodes?”€ (“€œWho guards the guardians?”€) Are the Metropolitan Police in any position, now, to investigate these matters? Are they not, like the Prime Minister, utterly compromised?

Then there is the implicit protection being part of Mr Irresponsible’s team as Leader of the Opposition and then in Downing Street itself must have given to Andy Coulson. Is it any wonder the police did not pursue him too closely to begin with? When he got the job with David Cameron he must have thought he was fire-proof. No wonder he gave “assurances.”€ Assurances that were not worth the breath they were uttered with.

Please let David Cameron not get away with this catastrophic misjudgement by pretending to lance the boil the way he pretended to over the MPs expenses scandal. (The main scandal there being actually that those who could pay back their spurious or fraudulent claims have got away with it. Many members of the present UK cabinet included.)

The cosy relationship between politicians and the representatives of News International, the currying of the favour of that organisation politicians (all politicians) undertook – perhaps in the mistaken belief that an interest other than the corporation’€™s own might then be followed – the hands off treatment of that organisation’s tentacular growth, have all been large contributors to public apathy with the political process. Vote X get Murdoch. Vote Y get Murdoch. Let’€™s not vote; we’€™ll get Murdoch anyway.

A free press is indispensible to a functioning democracy. A cohort of politicians in thrall to one section of that press is not.

Today David Cameron promised Public Inquiries. Let their remits be as wide as possible and let them start as soon as possible so that they can take advantage of any information the police investigations turn up. Only under those two conditions will his credibility as PM be restored.

One steaming cess-pit down. How about The Sun next?

(Oh and are the Murdochs fit persons to be in charge of any news organisation?)

I’m sure my occasional correspondent Big Rab won’t mind me quoting this post on his blog recently about the background to the strike by public sector workers on Thursday. I couldn’t have put it better myself.

“Remember when teachers, nurses, doctors, librarians, social workers, care assistants, bin men and lollipop ladies crashed the stock market, wiped out banks, took billions in bonuses and paid no tax?

No, me neither.”

I thought the Tories were supposed to be the party of law and order.

Yet I well remember Tim Yeo once speaking up for those who, due to the use of speed cameras, had been caught breaking the law. Yeo talked as if the law were something to be neglected or set aside, as if people who broke the speed limit were not law breakers, which quite clearly they are.

At least at the time Yeo was merely a Member of Parliament (if a spokesman for the opposition.)

But Michael Gove…..

Michael Gove is the UK Secretary of State for Education.

Yet on Sunday he incited parents to take part in a mass act of law breaking by volunteering to keep schools open during the proposed strike tomorrow by teachers. (This does not affect Scotland – and Northern Ireland I expect. I’m not sure about Wales but I think education is a devolved power there too.)

Quite apart from the fact that Gove thereby declares that teaching is easy and anyone can do it without training and so demeans those who are effectively his employees (he should perhaps try it sometime) teachers are not only trained but thoroughly vetted before being allowed near children. The procedure is known, in Scotland at least, as disclosure and is specifically designed to protect children from potential danger or harm. (As some recent cases have shown it does not always work, but it is a sensible precaution.)

Gove has in effect incited parents, and any Head Teachers who permit this to take place, to break the law, since, if an undisclosed person is placed or places her- or himself in front of the children an offence has been committed.

As Secretary of State Gove ought to be aware of this law. If he was, then he has deliberately encouraged an act of law breaking – become an accessory before the fact. If he was not so aware then the law does not hold ignorance as an excuse and he is still guilty.

But then what else can you expect of a man who has conned thousands of pounds of various monies out of the taxpayer via MPs’ expenses but has got away with it – like many of his cabinet colleagues, including Mr Irresponsible himself – because, being a millionaire, he could afford to repay it? (Or some of it.)

We took a stroll around North Queensferry last week. It wasn’t much of a stroll because it’s not very big. It must be the best location in the world for viewing iconic bridges, though. It lies slap bang between the two famous ones over the River Forth.

The following two pictures were taken from the same spot. The angle between the photos is about 60⁰.

They’re doing some repair work on the Road Bridge which, thankfully, you can’t see from the road.

The next time I drive over it will be more scary than usual now I know all that is going on below.

Pictures of the northern cable anchor point and a support pillar are on my flickr site.

Looking west we could see the trans-North Sea ferry berthed at Rosyth.

There was an aircraft carrier at the Royal Navy base too. I had thought we no longer had any of those, or was it just the new ones the Coalition Government planned to scrap? My camera isn’t quite good enough for the distance involved but it was definitely an aircraft carrier. It had that upward sweep at the bow.

I’ve been puzzling over the quite stunning result of the Scottish Parliamentary Election yesterday. How to explain the sudden deluge of votes for the SNP? An overall majority which the structure of the parliament was expressly designed to forestall?

Partly of course it’s the uninspiring nature of Labour’s Scotish leader, Iain Gray, a man with little charisma or presence. Also the lack of big Labour names on the ballot papers – though this did not prevent them taking the usual swathe of seats at the last such election four years ago. There may too this time have been a feeling that Labour took its vote for granted. The minority SNP administration also made a reasonable fist of its past four years in power, with not too many cock-ups.

The major difference, though, might, for the first Election since the Scottish Parliament was set up, be the fact of a Conservative led government at Westminster (which Scots by and large voted against – as did most of the rest of the UK, to be fair.) The Labour vote in Scotland at the UK General Election last year, as in all General Elections since the 1970s, was about attempting to protect Scotland from the effect of Tory depredations. In this it signally failed – as did the “safe” option of voting Lib-Dem – whose MSPs (and English local councillors) paid the first price for the deal with the devil their UK Parliamentary Party made on going into coalition with those loathed Tories.

At least until the next UK General Election (due in 2015) Labour will be unable to fulfill that protecting role as their UK Parliamentary presence is an irrelevance; and so too could their Scottish hegemony be ignored.

An SNP majority in the Scottish Parliament, an unfettered SNP administration, is a statement of another kind. The calculation may have been that the SNP will fight for Scotland more, or better, than Labour – or that it will be able to secure more concessions from the Westminster coalition than Labour could ever hope to achieve.

Whatever else the vote was, it wasn’t a vote for independence. Most Scots do not wish to be separated from their neighbours and friends – in many cases families – and are happy to remain part of the UK so long as said friends and neighbours don’t shaft us too much.

There is a warning there for the Westminster coalition – but also for the new Scottish Government.

For what it’s worth I’ll be voting for a change to the alternative vote in the referendum tomorrow.

Not that I think it’s a perfect system, there isn’t one – and there’s not a snowball’s chance that anyone but Labour will win in my parliamentary constituency, Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, anyway, under any system – but simply that it’s a (tiny) bit fairer than the so-called first past the post method which I have blogged about before.

[To see just how perverse the FPTP system can be see doctorvee’s excellent post on the subject here.]

I also see AV as an essential first step towards a more fully proportional election procedure. Consider: the coming of universal suffrage in the UK took nearly 100 years from the Great Reform Act of 1832 till women finally got the vote on the same terms as men – and one person one vote was not achieved (with the abolition of university seats) till after the Second World War!

If the AV referendum posts a no vote it will be taken to mean that, or represented as, there is not a wide desire to see a fairer system in place and the chances of any sort of PR system for UK parliamentary elections will thereby be lost for perhaps a generation, maybe even for my lifetime. Anyone who votes against it on the grounds that it isn’t the PR system they prefer is letting the worst (FPTP) take the place of the acceptable-for-now.

Did anyone else find the scenes of rejoicing in the US over the death of Osama Bin Laden a little premature? Not to mention a trifle unseemly?

In many parts it was greeted in much the same way a victory in a sporting contest might have been and whatever the “War on Terror” was or is it is far from sporting.

Yes he was a bad lot and totally against almost all that we in the West take for granted yet his demise came about in exactly the same way as his crimes were committed; in effect it was an extra-judicial execution. While there may have been no other way to remove his menace and his capture might have led to problematic scenarios involving the taking of hostages to be used as pawns in an attempt to have him freed – in effect President Obama had no choice – the fact remains that he was not subject to what ought to be our overriding principle; that a person has to be tried in court before being deprived of liberty or life.

It always bears saying; if we are no better than them then we are in fact worse. Or we are, at best, hypocrites.

And this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. It might not even be the end of the beginning.

The circumstances that led to Bin Laden taking up the cudgels against the USA in particular and its hangers-on in general are still in existence and his umbrella organisation will still act as a focus for disaffected individuals and those with an axe (or a suicide bomb) to grind.