It seems natural to return to a subject I’ve often posted about for my 700th post, and this article allows me to do just that:

The number of legal abortions carried out on women living in England and Wales last year was the highest ever, up more than 3,800 on 2003.

I think I’ve made my abortion views fairly clear over past posts – abortion isn’t something I particularly like, but nor is it something I feel should be criminalised, as this penalises only the most desperate.

What’s shocked me in this case, though, is not the figures themselves, but the Department of Health’s response:

The DoH said: “It is disappointing that the overall level of abortions has increased this year.”

What possible authority does the DoH think it has to pontificate about the decisions desperate people take, and to call them ‘disappointing’? The health service should be about providing unconditional help to the needy, not judging them. Their comments naturally imply that abortions are a ‘bad thing’, without recognising that they are often medically necessary, and that it is really the parents’ decision as to what is a ‘bad thing’ for them.

The DoH would never dream of saying that it’s ‘disappointing’ that suicide levels have increased, or that it’s ‘disappointing’ that poor diets mean diabetes is on the increase. Why is it any different for a parent who feels so desperate that they have to go through the appalling procedure of abortion, often meaning (in the case of later abortions within the legal period) that they have to go through a full birthing process, producing a stillborn foetus. Until the righteous right realise that getting an abortion is rarely as easy as having a tooth removed, then they can’t even begin to understand the mental anguish it confers upon the parent.

Could their be any greater example of the ‘nanny state’ than saying that the result of one of the hardest decisions a person has had to take in their whole life is ‘disappointing’? I think not: It is truly abhorrent that figures relating to the most vulnerable are being given a populist spin to appease Mail readers and secure political gains.

First, he quit his TV show before the BBC pushed him. Then he quit UKIP before the leadership pushed him (leading me to say “Surely this idiot has finally lost every scintilla of credibility he ever had”). Now, he’s quit his own party, set up only six months ago, before the membership pushed him. Oh, and now he’s being encouraged to quit as an MEP. It’s probably for the best. We couldn’t have him breaking with form. And to think, I called him a ‘delusional fool’ when he said he’d change the face of British politics. Could I have been more wrong? 😉

When he joined UKIP, Kilroy said:

[People are] fed up with being lied to … fed up with being patronised by the metropolitan elite

At the launch of his party, Kilroy said:

People are fed up with the old parties and lies and deception.

Today, he said:

[T]he electors are content with the old parties and … it would be virtually impossible for a new party to make a significant impact

It’s good to have a fun story in a month that’s been so difficult. And Kilroy is certainly nothing more than a figure of fun.

The question now is: Where does Kilroy go next? Will he quit politics altogether? Perhaps he’ll become the new face of Orange.

It is difficult to see this news as anything but a move forward, as sceptical as some people might be. For once, I think the White House have got it right, calling this ‘potentially’ historic. But could someone please tell Martin McGuinness that the correct preposition for Capitol Hill is ‘on’, not ‘at’ or ‘in’, because it is beginning to bug me…

This from MediaGuardian:

The Daily Telegraph was facing a PR calamity today after a printing error led to an “unprecedented number” of winners in its new, £1m Paper Poker promotion. The paper was inundated with calls from readers who thought they had won the £5,000 top cash prize. But a technical cock-up had caused the wrong playing cards to be printed in yesterday’s paper, leading to many more winners than intended.

Stories like this do amuse me.

Mr Blair claims to be ‘desperately sorry’ for the police killing – murder, if you will – of a completely innocent man. I don’t question that – I’m sure it was very difficult news for him to hear. However, this isn’t the only claim Mr Blair made:

I understand entirely the feelings of the young man’s family.

How can Mr Blair, with his family comfortably tucked away in the Downing Street green zone, possibly even being to appreciate, let alone understand, the pain of a parent whose child has been brutally murdered under the accepted government policy of a foreign nation? I certainly can’t even being to imagine how I’d feel, and I certainly can’t claim to understand it. How can Mr Blair?

Who does ‘Tony’ think he’s kidding when he says that he feels Londoners need to stay strong, be brave, and continue with their every day lives, whilst he’s stood surrounded by more layers of security than any other individual in the country? It’s very easy for him to get back to normal when his transport arrangements include bullet-proof government cars, rather than crowded tube trains. He tries to evoke ‘Blitz spirit’, whilst simulateously removing himself from any personal risk. He tries to convince us that ‘we’re all in this together’, and doesn’t realise how disingenuous it makes him sound.

How far Mr Blair has come from that moment in 1997 when the fresh-faced Prime Minister spoke in real unity with the citizens he leads when giving his reaction to the death of Diana. He has now seemingly forgotten what it is to be a ‘normal’ person. No longer Mr Blair the “pretty straight sort of guy”, now Mr Blair the devious statesman. How the mighty have fallen are falling.

The Observer reports today that

A private company is being accused of charging NHS patients exorbitant rates to use the phone and watch TV.

This is a private company which has paid to help improve NHS services. As with any private company, the most important thing for them is that they make money, and they’ve spent millions of pound installing the Patientline service with the government’s backing. Now that they are trying to recoup those costs, and make a profit, it is the private company that is being critcised.

This seems deeply illogical to me – the NHS is so misfunded that private companies are having to be brought in provide the services which patients view as necessary. Patients are then asked to pay for these services, because the government won’t. And yet it is the private company which gets criticised.

Michael Summers, chairman of the Patients Association: says: ‘It’s critical that people who are unable to visit a sick, elderly or very young patient should be able to get through to them at a reasonable price. These charges are too high and callers should be told very clearly how much they’re paying for the service.’

Surely in a National Health Service, it is the job of the government to provide ‘critical’ services. Their failure to do so should reflect badly on them, not the private companies they invite to step into the breach. And I’m quite surprised that The Observer of all newspapers has chosen not to point this out.

Following each of the terrorist attacks of the last few years, including that of two weeks ago in London, George Bush, Tony Blair, and their associated administrations and political parties have roundly criticised the terrible jihad – deliberately mistranslated as ‘Holy war’ – which radicalised Muslim groups have declared against Western society. They conveniently seem to forget that it is not the radical groups which declared the war, but George Bush, when he declared a War on Terror.

According to my dictionary, war is

the waging of armed conflict against an enemy

Conflict. That involves retaliation. It’s a two-way thing. So how can our leaders declare a war, effectively beginning a two-sided conflict, and then condemn any attacks which come their way? They’ve said they are attacking their enemy, the enemy is providing a great deal less retaliation that the force which the coalition is putting forward. Can one imagine Churchill standing up and spouting about how it’s terrible that fifty British citizens should die in the war, when we’ve killed tens of thousands of innocent people in their home countries? Tony Blair and George Bush have announced that this is a war. They have to expect colateral damage on both sides, since that is a product of war. If they weren’t comfortable with that idea – and remain uncomfortable with it – then why declare war in the first place?

This post has been sat in ‘draft’ status for a few days now… Today, I notice that John Pilger has made a not-dissimilar point in his excellent article in this week’s New Statesman:

In 2001, in revenge for the killing of 3,000 people in the twin towers, more than 20,000 Muslims died in the Anglo-American invasion of Afghanistan. This was revealed by Jonathan Steele in the Guardian but never became news, to my knowledge. The attack on Iraq was the Rubicon, making the reprisal against Madrid and the bombing of London entirely predictable: this last “in response to the massacres carried out by Britain in Iraq and Afghanistan”, claimed the Secret Organisation Group of al-Qaeda in Europe. Whether or not the claim was genuine, the reason was. Bush and Blair wanted a “war on terror” and they got it. Omitted from public discussion is that their state terror makes al-Qaeda’s appear minuscule by comparison. More than 100,000 Iraqi men, woman and children have been killed not by suicide bombers, but by the Anglo-American “coalition”, says a peer-reviewed study published in the Lancet, and largely ignored.

In fact, go and read that article – it makes the points rather more eloquently than me, even if I don’t agree with everything he says. Plus, it’ll save me finishing off this post. Go read.

It’s very difficult to comment on a situation like that in London, particularly when it is ongoing – even as I type, it would appear that an arrest has been made in Birmingham, and suspicious suitcases are being dealt with there. Above, I’ve put the CCTV pictures released by the police following yesterday’s attempted attacks. I would personally have thought that it can’t be too difficult to track down failed suicide bombers – after all, they didn’t expect to survive and so presumably wouldn’t have put plans in place to get away.

It is clear that these attacks, and attempted attacks, are terrible. We can only hope that fewer will happen in future, though that looks increasingly unlikely. It is important in all of these to keep one’s head, and I can only hope that the police haven’t lost theirs, with the reports today of a horrific killing by police this morning, which appears to me to have been an over-reaction to a perceived threat. The basic story is that a man under surveillance following the attacks refused to follow police orders, and so was shot five times at close range. I wasn’t there, and can’t claim to really know what went on, but I do wonder whether the situation was grave enough to use lethal action – and why was it necessary to shoot him five times? Perhaps the police were acting entirely professionally, as one would expect them to, but there are clearly questions which need to be addressed. We can’t go killing every Asian man in a big coat who doesn’t do as police ask.

In the two weeks since the 7th July attacks, there have been over 250 security alerts, and armed police officers are now stationed at every tube station and patrolling the streets. A second attack can only increase the fear, and it would appear that certainly American tourism is suffering. In other words, the terrorists appear to be succeeding in disrupting our daily lives, and – essentially – terrorising us. At the same time, it’s not good enough for the police to simply instruct Londoners to ‘get on with their normal life’. You can’t instruct someone to not be scared.

As I’ve said, it’s impossible to reflectively comment on an ongoing situation – and it appears that this situation will be ongoing for some considerable time – and I have no solutions to the problems I’ve mentioned. I’m sure I’ll post more about this in future, but for right now, I think I’ll leave it there.

Sorry, I couldn’t resist. Longhorn is now Vista. Personally, I preferred the former.

There appear to have been some incidents on the tube and on a London bus. BBC One, ITV, and Five have all scrapped their schedules and are broadcasting rolling news coverage. As some presenters have been noting, this incident probably wouldn’t be getting nearly this much coverage if it wasn’t for the previous attack, because it doesn’t currently appear to be nearly as serious an attack.

The incident doesn’t (at this stage) seem to have caused the number of casualties as in the attacks of two weeks ago, and the police are not currently treating this as a major incident. As you would expect, details are still emerging – it would appear currently that the working theory is that the evacuation has been caused by the explosion of three detonators, but no bombs. You can follow the latest developments on the Newsblog or on the BBC News site.