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Anorak News | Vince Cable, Wikileaks Lockerbie Are Beyond Journalism

Vince Cable, Wikileaks Lockerbie Are Beyond Journalism

by | 25th, December 2010

JOURNALISM is a verb, a doing word, and right now it is difficult to know who is doing what to whom and why

The UK’s coalition government is showing it’s first real signs of strain and potential breakup as the result of a thoroughly modern Sting operation by the Tory supporting British newspaper the Daily Telegraph. It used a team to visit MPs while posing as constituents and led many Lib-Dem coalition supporting MPs into damning indiscretions.

The now very angry and smarting Vince Cable, above, is the self-proclaimed Lib-Dem big thinker and tower of strength, integrity and all which is great within the Lib-Dem ranks. His Party boss Nick Clegg (difficult to place him but he is the UK coalition Deputy Prime Minister) believed Vince’s publicity machine and was lightning quick to have Vince appointed as a subsidiary Minister to the Chancellor of the Exchequer the Tory stalwart George Osborne.

Cable has since allegedly reneged on many of his former ideals and has supported a number of very unpalatable moves through the British Parliament this year.

He is Business Secretary and one of his responsibilities was the media. As part of that job he was to have had the final say on a series of proposals which may or may not have involved the UK structure of News International.

Rupert Murdoch’s empire is a media monolith; an often angry giant and has tentacles across the world. Vince seemingly dislikes News International (Sky, The Times, The Sun and The News of the World in Britain) and was stupid enough to say he had “declared war” on Murdoch. Stupid because Murdoch has always relished a good scrap (as former Scottish Member of Parliament Tommy Sheridan knows to his cost).

The row and subsequent stripping of some of Cable’s powers has been well reported and so has the eventual Vince Cable response of attacking the methods of The Telegraph.

This attack from a politician who has a network of informants throughout the media, broadcast and written, civil service, business and Westminster is disingenuous to say the very least. Vince Cable, is no better or worse than any politician the world over; he survives on exposing deceits and treacherous behaviour while being an expert in the same dark arts.

The fact Lib-Dem politicians do not like the bitter pill they are being forced to swallow as a result of their greed for power within a Conservative-Liberal pact coalition IS in the public interest and this exposé, however gained, is correct, accurate and totally justifiable.

Cable was always a paragon, a supporter of freedom of expression…until he was stung. Right now his future looks to be extremely limited. This is a great shame since he was probably the strongest White Knight hope among the current political lightweights which could have forced British Prime Minister David Cameron into holding to his promise of releasing some of the documentation on the sad-sack of secrets surrounding the Lockerbie bombing. ALL such documentation should released and freely available.

British venality, the thirst for oil and arms sales are all inter-connected and despite denial after denial the half truths are out and about. It long past time the whole truth was revealed, if for nothing else then for the families of the 270 murdered when PanAm’s Maid of the Seas was blasted from the skies 22 years ago.

Scotland’s Nationalist Government which released the convicted Lockerbie bomber was this week goaded into dismissing a report by US senators into the release saying it a “false interpretation” of an “incorrect and inaccurate rehash” of information.

The Glasgow Herald said: “The four US politicians, led by Senator Robert Menendez, published their freelance report, Justice Undone – The Release of the Lockerbie Bomber, at the Capitol in Washington on the 22nd anniversary of the atrocity.

“The American politicians claimed the freeing of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi on compassionate grounds was based on an “inaccurate prognosis” that the Libyan, who has prostate cancer, had just three months to live.

“They said the UK Government played a “direct, critical role” in the decision to free him in August last year, stating that “evidence suggests that UK officials pressured Scotland to facilitate al Megrahi’s release.

“The SNP administration at Holyrood may also have been influenced by the “opportunity to act independently on the world stage” when Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill decided to grant Megrahi his freedom.”

The majority of the 270 people who lost their lives when Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie on December 21, 1988 were Americans.
The Herald has also said the report appears to contain material which is inaccurate and poorly sourced.

The question has to be: Where does the verb journalism begin and end? It is certainly not the sole prerogative of journalists (noun) or politicians or Julian Assange of Wikileaks.

Sting operations do leave the victims hurt and bewildered. Cable seems to been at least naive, look at Anorak’s own Harlem’s Great Black Hope Felled . This year the international Sting warnings were flagged up very clearly. If it can go down in New York, why should Twickenham remain a safe haven for a politician prepared to lie?

Cable was a step too high on a Tory ladder and ready for the Christmas stuffing.

The Labour party could not have engineered or prompted the Telegraph Sting. It had to have come from the Lib-Dems’ allies…the Tories. Vince has few friends there either.

It would be a comic tragedy if a professed Liberal, like, say, Vince Cable, was to lash out to the point where he sought to enforce restrictions which would allow he and others to govern more effectively and in secret…that would not be liberal at all. It would be a ploy worthy of of the worst tyrants.

Vince was caught fairly and squarely and he should be man enough to admit it.

His past work has been good and the knock-back could be just the spur he needed to flourish, get out of that genuinely held self-important mind-set and his angry mood. Then perhaps he can once again be good at what he can do best…pricking the petty bubbles of pompous buffoons around him.

It is not a job best left to the Fourth Estate…it too can be very Andrew Neil(ish). – Alan White

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Posted: 25th, December 2010 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink