Well you could read it for free but don’t let me spoil your narrative.
No, but see above.
OK I managed to read it. It’s a poor article. He first makes the mistake of giving his own interpretation of what the DSTL spokesman said regarding the provenance of the poison they tested.
He’s also accepting the assertion that a nerve agent was used which contradicts the NHS spokesman who took the trouble to write to his own paper about it and which is also thrown into some doubt by the impending recovery of all 3 people afflicted by whatever poison it actually was.
He’s right to remind his readers that neither Britain nor the US have a great record when it comes to politicians presenting dubious intelligence as fact.
What I don’t understand is the unseemly rush to judgement in this particular case. The police should be allowed to work through the evidence they can muster, cctv footage, phone movements, witness statements etc & work up a plausible account of what happened that day. Instead we’ve had May & Johnson flinging serious accusations about & then trying to back them up with their GCSE level dossier (which also made its appearance at the UN yesterday!) to get other countries on board. We’ve had the FCO making statements & putting out tweets they are subsequently forced to retract. We’ve had the press ‘briefed’ with any number of fantastical scenarios about door knobs, car vents, flowers, porridge oats etc.
It’s also disappointing to see how little proper journalism is being done. It wouldn’t have been too taxing to ask a few chemistry departments at our various universities how difficult the synthesis of this material would be. I’m sure they’d have been happy to advise. But no one has. You’d think more could have been discovered about what Sergei Skripal actually does and who he does it with & for. You’d think they’d also be digging deeper into the murder of Nicolai Glushkov as well. The sadness is that they’re still (even after Chilcot) too happy to lap up the government’s line and rattle their sabres when told to
It’s worth remembering that Aaronovitch completely bought into Blair’s “Saddam has WMD’s” bullshit despite Hans Blix & UNMOVIC being unable to find any evidence of them. Alarm bells were ringing for people with half a brain but not Aaronovitch.
It seems the guinea pigs starved to death, and the cat was put down because of malnutrition, having all been sealed in the house
The Times also claims to have seen the intelligence briefing that led to the diplomatic expulsions in all those countires.
You seem more concerned with that that Russia’s antics with the press.
The mistake here is to assume that the job of the press is to pursue the truth on behalf of the people. With the exception of the BBC, and the commercial broadcast media insofar as they are constrained by the regulator, the job of the press is to get people to buy their papers and watch their programmes. They do this by telling stories which have to be interesting and, in general, aligned with the views of their readers/viewers/listeners. If they can also be true then that’s a bonus. Just occasionally some commercial journalist (e.g. Woodward and Bernstein) really does root out a hard-to-listen-to-but-you-need-to-hear-it-anyway story. It’s sufficiently unusual that they get films made about them.
The BBC etc are supposed to be a special case. But as you’ve pointed out ‘doing the job properly’ takes ages. So they don’t (yet) have enough hard, proven counter-evidence to slap Boris with when he comes on the programme (which he can always refuse to do). All they can do is push him to provide some evidence and he can always say “It’s a secret”.
VB
They’ve gone full Colin Powell with that one. Along with the deeply sinister Hamish de Bretton-Gordon they’ve got some Rifkind quotes in at the end Top work!
Attitudes to this issue & Russia generally seem to depend on how the EuroMaidan revolution in Ukraine is viewed. Much of this and the friction since stems from that. Was it a CIA / EU inspired coup or not?
I was watching this last night.
Let’s run with your doom scenario for a moment and assume it’s all made up.
My question would be: why? What do we have to gain strategically or tactically by poking the Russians?
There are a hundred softer targets available. In fact I can’t really think of anyone more dangerous to unilaterally rattle a sabre at this this present time.
On top of this, our international diplomatic stock is at an all time low. So how did we manage to get consensus from our allies (particularly in the EU) to do what they did?
Syria
But for that to be the case, this ‘endeavour’ wouldn’t be a unilateral initiative from the UK.
Sorry, had to ninja edit an important typo above^^
I’d ask the same question
Particularly with the World Cup coming up (Billions of dollars worth of TV rights, advertising, tourism etc at stake.
Well Putin pretty much thinks he’s invincible (and it’s hard to argue against). He does it almost for sport, and don’t forget he’s just ‘won’ another domestic election, no doubt showing everyone his foreign policy chops.
He also likes to keep his domestic and foreign rivals in check. It’s widely touted that he runs the country as the boss of a McMafia style operation. It’s about the message as much as anything.
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Maybe he will make a full recovery
though secondary effects could yet prove fatal
I didn’t think Boris Johnson actually lied. The way the German woman questioned & then prompted him I always thought he was saying that PD had said it was categorically a Novichok not that it came from Russia. His subsequent answers that something needed to be done about Russia made people assume it was what PD were saying & he didn’t make any attempt to clarify that it was other intelligence (or the mistaken notion that only Russia could make it) that had caused them to point the fingers in that direction. His sloppy speech doesn’t serve him in his job very well.
I think we can all agree he’s wholly unsuitable for any high office, but particularly Foreign Secretary where detail and nuance are paramount.
In fact it’s hard to think of somebody less suitable.
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No it isn’t.
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As much as I despise his politics and beliefs he would be far better than Johnson because at least he thinks before opening his gob.
Incidentally the Sun’s Tom Newton Dunn must’ve been at a different security briefing as he ‘exclusively’ revealed the secret lab to be “the SVR’s notorious Yasenevo lab in Moscow”
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That one is better looking and simultaneously more sinister than the Times’.
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Yep, I was trying on a bit of irony. Ironic that they were unaffected by the nerve agent nearby though.