The thing about perceptions is that it is generally a good idea if they have some degree of grounding in reality.

If you can’t tell the difference between a giant and a windmill, then the noblest of intentions won’t prevent you from looking an idiot and being a menace.

Al jazeera may well be big, scary and above all unfamiliar, but don’t let that lead you to the same mistake as Don Quixote.

soru

Considering what they could do if they chose to. And considering the fact that, as divided as the American public is about why they went to war, the general attitude of most of them is one of “Lets just take the leash off the military, let em do what they do best and end this thing. Then bring em home.”
Far from getting indignant at the fact the idea of bombing AJ was tossed about – I’m rather surprised at the restraint shown so far by the fact they’re still on the air.

And don’t think any concern for the opinion of Europeans or anyone else ways heavy on their decision making process. Paraphrasing here – But the attitude towards the complaining of foreigners (Europeans in particular) has been summed up for me as “Complain? Let em complain all they want. You figure the more energy they spend bitching about us – the less likely it is they’ll l fall back into their default mode of acting out their frustrations & start killing each other off in obscene numbers again.. Naaah, better to have em hate on us than us have to waste any more blood and treasure stopping anymore of their genocides.”

… rather assumes that Labour MPs bother attending the chamber, outside of voting

An alternative would be to find a pliant peer to read it in the Lords; I don’t know what the rules for proceedings in camera are but it’d be harder to pass the motion for secret proceedings given there’s no Labour majority there.

“English literature only comes down to 1815. After that there are merely books.”

I’d heard that line attributed to Tolkien

It can’t have been Tolkien: he would have said 1500.

That may well be, but it was published unattributed in The Times (and not by Tolkien, whose name I would have recognized). Has a nice ring to it, in any event.

To Dan Hardie’s point 10, that rather assumes that Labour MPs bother attending the chamber, outside of voting. There’s not much evidence of that. Remember the hunt protest? The place was virtually empty. The cameras rarely show how empty the seats are. Also, the chamber isn’t big enough to seat all 649 should they turn up at the same time. Some have to stand or sit on the steps in the really big debates.

It reminds me of the Dwight MacDonald attack on the Church of England ditching the King James Bible: ‘Yes, they didn’t change ‘Jesus wept’. But I’m sure there was strong support for ‘Jesus burst into tears’…

I think the ‘I am Spartacus’ approach is the best way to call Blair’s bluff here. Either that, or the Peter Wright approach. (Funny to think of the pre-Web days, when people had to buy Spycatcher in Australia…)

It has indeed, Mrs. Tipton, it has indeed.

One of my favorite memories from my days as a student in London (mid-1960s) arose during one of the routine disparagements, in the pages of The Times, over the proposal to drop the Anglo-Saxon requirement for those reading English at either Oxford or Cambridge (I forget which), on the grounds that those studying modern literature had less need of A-S than of other subjects. Amid the more or less reasoned, more or less detailed, analyses of this proposal there was one letter which read in its entirety (I quote from memory, alas):

“English literature only comes down to 1815. After that there are merely books.”