This week’s winner of the Caledonian Mercury ‘comment of the week’

I am proud to announce this week’s winner of the Caledonian Mercury “comment of the week” award. The bottle of Jura goes to Soosider for this thoughtful response to Gordon Brown’s evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry:

Soosider
It is interesting how perceptions change. I was at the time undecided about the rights or wrongs about going to war in Iraq. I clearly recall our PM giving a personal assurance to the effect that he had information that he could not disclose for security reasons that convinced him that Iraq was a clear and imminent danger to us. I recall discussing this with my wife as I was impressed that the leader of our country had put his own personal opinion on the line and felt if our leader was making such a statement then he should be believed. This turned out to be WMD and 45 minute deployment, both of which turned out not to be true. Given the nature of the PMs assurance the least I would have expected that he would have resigned on the matter once the alternative picture emerged.
The other thought that occurs to me in Gordon Browns testimony is the lack of accountability to cabinet. I believed that cabinet accountability is/was a central part of our democratic processes, it is a vital check and balance on the power of any one individual. Yet in Brown stating that he did not see the intelligence is very revealing, did no one in the cabinet ask to see it? and if not why not. After all this was probably the most important single decision that any government has made in decades. If our democracy has changed to such an extent, when and how did this happen, do we no longer have rule by cabinet? and what exactly has replaced it. Is the current matter of “Leadership debates further evidence of a fundamental change in our democracy?
To me the real lessons of the whole Iraq scenario is how our parliamentary processes failed in such a crucial manner, a PM seems to have made the decision and the cabinet and in fact Parliament seem to have failed in their basic function of acting as a check and balance.

Previous winners

Diabloandco on opinion polls.

I registered with yougov last year and have never been asked anything other than what electrical equipment/mobile phone/computer I had .

I de registered myself last month ( I am a luddite and my answers to all things techno might have given them cause for concern!)

Just once in my long life I would like some pollster to ask me a question about politics.

Keith Roberts on Iona
Hallelujah – and not every one goes for pilgrimage. Iona has long held a special place. The rocks themselves are almost as old as Uluru and far from being the British portal to Creation this is one of the planet’s oldest lands. Pictish pagans, druids and Norsemen have all been drawn to the isle. The machair has been grazed since Bronze Age times.

It is an isle of silkies and sea monsters, fairies and fantasy. The sheela-na-gig on the nunnery wall; the milk stone now hidden beneath the tarmac pounded by the feet of pilgrims oblivious of the offerings to the gruagach.

The view from the hill is very special, I prefer sunrise, just as sunset bouncing off the red granite cliffs of Mull brings a peaceful close to the day. The island takes back her own self once the last ferry is safely tied up in the bull hole, and the hordes have returned to their coaches.

Can you hear the sound of the Vikings as the white sands run with the blood of the monks? Can you taste that drizzle of garlic butter on freshly caught langoustines, washed down with a fine malt from the comfort of the Martyrs’ Bar as the ferry struggles to make safe haven in the gale. Can you see Fingal out for his morning walk? And can you get that glimpse of the Emerald Isle across the waters when the light is right.

Aye, it is a pretty special place.

disillusioned’s trenchant attack on some aspects of Scottish politics in response:
While these pygmies play politics with people’s lives for their own political gain.
We the public can only look on in disgust.
Elmer as you so aptly name him ,sat in stoney silence as his peers in Westminster(no pun intended ..maybe) gorged at the trough.

While Scotland has some of the worst social deprivation in the developed world, people losing their jobs every day ,houses being repossessed in record numbers.#etc etc.

Meanwhile Elmer chooses to home in on lunches and letters on behalf of a SNP constituent.

Dave on In The Loop
Nope, sorry, it shouldn’t win.

Why? The writing is great, that’s true. But it’s a radio play. The acting and writing is first class, but there was absolutely no understanding of the visual medium made while writing the movie script. The camera work, and camera direction, is awful, truly awful (bog-standard BBC overexposed work, does no BBC camerman understand what an iris control is for? They used to, once upon a time.).

Now, to some degree that is the direction, and sloppy D.o.P. work, rather than the script itself, but there appears to be no attempt in the script to utilise the locations or edit points to make it work as a movie.

You can get all you need from this movie from the soundtrack alone, without having to watch any of the pictures. That’s why it should not win. It’s NOT a complete movie experience.

Steve McCabe on Jennifer Trueland’s analysis of the Kinloch Rannoch GP controversy:
Steve McCabe:

The fact that somewhere like Rannoch had a GP for 110 years is as much a historical quirk as anything else. Such arrangements pre-date the NHS and even the Highlands and Islands Medical Scheme on which the NHS was modelled and which provided remote communities with community nurses and sometimes helped to fund a doctor. But many of these rural doctors were actually paid for (and, therefore, there primarily to serve) a local landowner or major employer. For example, the doctor in Bowmore on Islay was oriniginally a “distillery doctor” paid for by the local laird.

Related posts:

1. This week’s winner of the Caledonian Mercury ‘comment of the week’
2. The Caledonian Mercury/Jura ‘comment of the week’ prize
3. This week’s winner of the Caledonian Mercury/Jura ‘Comment of the Week’ award
4. The Caledonian Mercury/Jura ‘comment of the week’ prize
5. Winner of the Caledonian Mercury/Jura ‘Comment of the Week’ award
6. The Caledonian Mercury/Jura ‘comment of the week’ prize
7. The Caledonian Mercury/Jura ‘comment of the week’ prize
8. The Caledonian Mercury/Jura ‘comment of the week’ prize
9. Welcome to the Caledonian Mercury
10. Join the Caledonian Mercury online focus group