Category Archives: UK

The Hutton Report is due out in a few hours. Meanwhile, the Sun Newspaper — a British tabloid best known for running daily pix of half-naked women to pump up circulation — reports that it has had advance access to the Hutton Report and that the report 'clears' Blair.

Hutton 'clears Blair': The Sun newspaper has tonight claimed to have a leak of the Hutton report. The paper says Tony Blair has been cleared of wrongdoing but that the BBC and the governors have been criticised for not investigating the veracity of the Andrew Gilligan report that sparked the row between the corporation and the government.

But the slant the Sun has taken is already being treated with some scepticism – Lord Hutton demanded that everyone who received an early copy of his report sign an undertaking not to disclose its contents and there is suspicion that the tabloid may have got its leak from a source sympathetic to the government.

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The Sun has supported the Labour party throughout the Kelly affair and it appears that it has not the seen the full report, but has only had part of the conclusions read to it.

The paper's front page story claims the prime minister will not be blamed for the 'naming strategy' that led to the public identification of Dr Kelly as the 'mole' who had an unauthorised meeting with Gilligan.

According to the Sun, the BBC has also been criticised for not making more rigorous checks to establish the truth of Gilligan's central claim that the government had knowingly 'sexed up' the Iraq dossier that made the case for war.

Although once Margret Thatcher's biggest cheerleader, Ruport Murdoch's newspaper has been a big supporter of Blair, especially as regards Iraq.

If this news report is correct, the UK will adopt a greater separation of powers for the judiciary. Members of the House of Lords Judicial Committee, who are currently not technically judges but actually members of the upper chamber of the legislature, will cease to sit in the House of Lords and become an independent court. [Will the body be renamed 'the Supreme Court'? The article does not say.]

There will, however, be no increase in the (total lack of) (formal) separation between the legislature and the executive.

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An update on the previously blogged matter of the plight of Richard Latham, QC, the advocate whose victory was threatened because a lovelorn juror sent him champagne: “A woman juror who sent a flirtatious note and a bottle of champagne to the prosecuting counsel after a serious fraud trial ended cannot be questioned about the incident, the Court of Appeal ruled yesterday.”

That doesn't mean, however, that poor Mr. Latham is out of the woods. The question of whether there “might be grounds for arguing that there was 'an appearance of bias'” will “be considered further by the Court of Appeal in the spring,” albeit it seems without the benefit of the juror's testimony.

I'm not just a chromosomal faux pas (may require registration): The second daughter of the Thane of Cawdor argues that it's time to abolish male-only primogeniture so that her older sister inherits the title instead of her younger brother. And of course she's right. If the Japanese can change their rules to allow an Empress, why can't the English change their rules to allow a châtelaine of Cawdor?

It is a strange anomaly. After all, western women are no longer closeted at home or deprived of formal education. We have suffrage, have embraced the freedom that divorce and contraception have given us, have fought for our countries. Primogeniture harks back to a time when rape charges were reduced if a victim was pretty and when wives were chattels.

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It seems too grotesque to believe that someone would be repeatedly assaulting Stephen Hawking in his home, but police are investigating: Hawking's nurses questioned over 'assaults'. The evidence includes cuts and bruises observed on Hawking, but the alleged victim—paralyzed, brilliant, confined to a wheelchair and dependant on a voice box—is not cooperating with the investigation, which also sounds pretty odd.

Date set for Hutton report. Due Jan 28. The Hutton report is the one that will speak to what role Tony Blair and his administration had in the death of David Kelly (much more like “Vince Foster” than the real Vince Foster….) and is also expected to go into the issue of the extent to which Blair and his crew went beyond the evidence to support their claim that it was necessary to invade Iraq.

Meanwhile, it seems Tony Blair is not very popular in Spain. Here's what Jose Bono, one of the three most powerful figures in the opposition Socialist Party said about him when he wasn't aware a camera was recording…

“Blair? He's a complete dickhead (un gilipollas integral). He's an imbecile.”