THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD

I CAN OFFER NO APOLOGY for my reneging on what has managed to become seen as my duties of late, but a tight schedule for getting a chapter ready for proof-reading before publication and an emergency at the college at which I am a sometime teacher, involving me having to help the Dean in his duties, managed to bog me down somewhat over this blisteringly cold yuletide season. One might also state that there has been precious little worth writing about in the field of politics of late.


ALL OF THIS SEEMS TO BE CHANGING now as the New Year starts to “kick in”. Seeing as elections in the UK are sneaking ever closer, nerves are a-starting a-jangling among our beloved leaders and honest representatives. Even the most optimistic polls published in the tidier newspapers suggest that one third to four fifths of the present occupants of the Mother of All Parliaments will be looking for alternative ways of earning a living after the suffrage. We even have scandals of a heterosexual nature emerging from Ireland, which is a pointer towards interesting developments in the future.


BUT THE BIG NEWS OF THE DAY has to be the long-awaited appearance of Alastair “I know where you live, you scumbag” Campbell before the goodly gentlemen and refined ladies who make up the panel of the Iraq Inquiry in their laughable bid to find out the “truth” behind Britain’s – and particularly Tony Blair’s – decision to go to war against Iraq on the flimsiest of details.


IF ANYONE THOUGHT THAT CAMPBELL would play the game of these effete dullards and break down in tears after a soft rating then this is because they have never been to Burnley. Campbell stood his ground, stuck to his guns and stiffed the panel up for its arrogance. Leaving them all “stymied” at best. We all know that Tony Blair went to war in Iraq in order to get his name written down as a war hero on the pages of history, and that he needed someone smart, sleek and intelligent to present and sell his image – and there was no way he would find anyone fitting this description among the elected anoraks of the Labour Party. I think today’s performance is a hats off and trebles all round day for Blair and co., and Campbell did not leave without a fairly stiff digit being pointed in the direction of the hapless Gordon Brown.