It will be a great consolation to Gary McKinnon when he begins his prison
sentence in the United States to know that back home, the prime minister’s
wife is still shedding tears for him. Or perhaps she will have stopped
crying by then – one really can’t tell with women; one moment they’re
crying, the next they are right as rain. And they cry over the strangest
things.
The likeable Sarah Brown, apparently wept when she met Gary’s mother, Janis
Sharp, who – as you might expect – has been fighting hard to prevent her son
from being extradited. McKinnon, who has Asperger’s syndrome and believes
very fervently in little green men, UFOs and what-have-you, is wanted by the
Yanks for his nefarious, geekish hacking adventures, which he carried out
under the somewhat portentous cybername of SOLO.
McKinnon wormed his way into a collection of US military networks, including
those of Nasa, the Department of Defense and the US Army; the Americans are
claiming that he caused $700,000 worth of damage – a seemingly arbitrary
figure which they have alighted on without providing a single shred of
evidence. And that’s rather the point – because they don’t need to provide a
single shred of evidence. And whose fault, Sarah, is that?
A whole bunch of politicians and celebrities are now supporting McKinnon’s
battle to remain in the UK – including some of the very people who made this
rank injustice more likely. Sarah’s hubby was a fairly important part of the
government which signed the 2003 Extradition Act, a dreadful piece of
legislation which enables the US to swoop on British citizens and bang them
up without the necessity of providing prima facie evidence. And Gordon,
being prime minister, could stop the whole right now if he wanted to but has
said it would be “difficult to intervene in the legal process”.
You’d think that if Sarah was so upset about it, she might have a word with
him, perhaps while he is grimly beating himself with birch twigs in the
shower of a morning. Or maybe she has had a word but he’s decided it’s just
one of those inexplicable things women cry about and soon she’ll be as happy
as Larry.
Anyway, the Extradition Act did not receive much in the way of parliamentary
scrutiny; it was hurried through because it was, you know, important in the
fight against terrorism. Quite a few stupid or invidious pieces of
legislation have been pushed through under this dubious banner; I’m slightly
surprised they didn’t use the same excuse when they were trying to privatise
the Post Office. Anyway, so far, the treaty has been used largely to
extradite people who are a very long way from being terrorists – people such
as McKinnon.
Even more remarkably, one of the celebrity politicians supporting Gary’s case
is a certain David Blunkett. Come on, you remember David. He was the very
minister who actually signed the extradition treaty back in 2003. I don’t
know if David’s been crying about it too. Maybe he got his guide dog to weep
instead. But this is a new political tactic pioneered by the Labour party –
campaigning avidly and with great passion, even to the point of tears,
against legislation which you yourself have enacted.
It was pioneered by the onetime Labour minister Michael Meacher, who joined a
Countryside Alliance march which was, for the main part, protesting against
proposed legislation (supported by most of the Labour party) banning hunting
with hounds. At the time, one was tempted to write this off as simply Mike
being Mike, a chap often regarded – perhaps wrongly – as being a
well-intentioned but sometimes bewildered visitor from a planet somewhere
near Betelgeuse.
But this was to misunderstand that campaigning against your side’s legislation
was to become an important Labour strategy. A cunning ruse to disclaim
responsibility for the consequences of your own actions and an attempt to
convince the electorate that they are not consequences at all, but the
result of pure misfortune.
+ It is a good many years now since the train robber Ronnie Biggs issued his
rather plaintive plea from exile in Brazil: “I just want to walk into a
Margate pub as an Englishman, buy a pint of bitter and hit someone over the
head with an axe handle.” A simple wish for a simple man – and unluckily for
both Ronnie and the beer drinkers of Margate, unlikely ever to be realised.
Ronnie Biggs will most likely die in prison and, curiously, the nation seems
to mourn this fact.
Biggs did not actually say the stuff about the axe handle – I filled that in
for him, just in case, once in the pub, he felt moved to rob somebody again.
His request instead was a calculated tugging at our emotions, and at the
same time a self-pitying whine of complaint. It seems that over the years
Biggs had come to see himself much as some sections of the media saw him, as
a sort of gor-blimey-up-the-apple-and-pears version of Robin Hood.
Biggs is quite unrepentant and has even said he is pleased that his name will
go down in history for his crime. He has served only a fraction of his
30-year sentence and has spent the proceeds of his share of the loot. He
came back only when he was skint. Let him stay where he is.
Bubbles, the voice of sanity
Like you, I have only just come to terms with the death of Michael Jackson and
now, like a hammer blow, we learn that members of his entourage have been
plotting against the singer’s closest confidant, Bubbles the chimp. Bubbles
has been banned from his master’s funeral because he is “too violent”. But
the reason Bubbles is violent is that he clearly knows something. And the
last thing they want at the funeral is a furious monkey leaping up and down,
screaming and pointing an accusing finger at any one of Jackson’s retinue of
shady quacks, spoon-bending spiritual advisers, skin-bleaching operatives
etc. Indeed in the madcap world of Michael Jackson, Bubbles was a rare voice
of common sense.
One, flue, three . . . just learn to count
It’s that man again: Britain’s chief frightener, Sir Liam Donaldson, was on
the front pages suggesting that 40 people a day could die from swine flu.
That number, Sir Liam added helpfully, “could be lower. And it could be
higher”. Indeed. One of the two, then.
Sir Liam once suggested that hundreds of thousands of British people “could”
die from Sars, although he added the proviso that such a figure “could be
lower, and it could be higher”. As it happens, it was lower – somewhere
around the region of nil.
There are lies, damned lies and statistics. And then a fourth category – Sir
Liam’s statistics, scientifically calculated and precise and always wrong.
So far, four people in Britain have died of swine flu, all of whom had been
suffering from “serious underlying medical problems”.
* * * * *
It is now 40 earth years since Neil Armstrong landed on the moon and professed
himself pleasantly surprised by how nice it was. Neil was from Wapakoneta,
Ohio, where those locals who don’t get the hell out to the moon work in the
Goodyear tyre factory, so you can appreciate the astronaut’s pleasure at
alighting somewhere without endless strip malls and a pervading odour of
burnt rubber.
The space race was driven by a fierce – and close – technological rivalry
between the West and our enemy, the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is no
more and now we have to pit ourselves against an enemy possessing the
technological competence only to blow themselves up, if they remember to
bring the lighter.
