Yo, Blair!

I just finished reading this book by Geoffrey Whitehead.
I can only call it the most devastating charge sheet, which, very conveniently, confirms everything I have been saying about Bliar and NuLabour. The totalitarian nature of the beast ( very unfavourably compared with Nazism I may say), the lack of real ideology, the total abrogation of policy to " what works" which painfully doesn't, and the stubborn adherence to disater all militate to underline how far we as a country have fallen and been humiliated.
Whitehead says that no lessons were learned from Suez or Germany post WW2 on how to deal with a declaration of war or the aftermath of it. Of course, I would argue that Bliar never learned anything beyond his own overwheening belief in his ability to con everyone - which he very successfully did for a long time.
For much of his premiership, Bliar led the media by the nose - never more so than over Iraq, where the newspapers in particular came out with sentences like " We know Saddam's got WMD. He knows we know. And we're going to get rid of him and them" - complete lies of course, but very flattering even for hardened journos to be personally briefed.
So what have the journalist learned? Well, judging by their behaviour over Flash Gordon's honeymoon, not a lot. They appear to have been happily helping out Flash and his minions - right up to the point where Gordon went to Basra last week, and they suddenly noticed they were being conned again, and the Great British Public weren't having it any more. As Ian Hyslop said on Question Time last night " It's OK, Ruth, to lie to another politician or the public, but it's very very dangerous to lie to a journalist."
Mind you, I haven't noticed any apologies for the media's abject abrogation of an enquiring mind over the last ten years, and particularly over Iraq.
Oh, and by the way, did you know that every single offence is now arrestable? This has been the case since 2006. Even throwing a cigarette out of a car window. Jaywalking. Holding back someone from hitting you. Failing to move out of the way if a policeman wants to get past you, whether in a car or on foot.
So think about that the next time you take your hand off the driving wheel to change gear. Technically, it's an offence not to have both hands on the wheel at all times.
You could be arrested.