Penn and Teller (and the Hitch) on Mother Theresa.

More bullshit about 911, Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, and the Bible.

As part of the current debate on whether Britian should give special consideration to Iraqi nationals who have served British armed forces as interpreters and civilian liaison workers, the following letter was published in today’s Thunderer…

“Sir, This sorry saga merely proves the old Arab saying: ‘It is better to be an enemy of the British than a friend. If you are an enemy they will buy you. If you are a friend they will sell you.’

HUGH MCINTOSH
Glasgow”

Old sayings – Arab or otherwise – derive from cumulative experience, and it saddens me that we even have to discuss this issue in the 21st century, long after the demise of the British Empire.

We may blame Tony Blair for the current policy, but he was at least consistent after a fashion. In spite of all the mugs of tea and on-camera chinwags with the plebs, Blair was always a broad brush chap with little time for real people and their messy and humdrum lives.

Gordon Brown has now ordered an urgent review into the case of the Iraqi interpreters, which is obviously good news as long as a status quo recommendation has not already been written.

So does the new prime minister possess a moral backbone? We shall see. But even if Brown does know right from wrong, expediency rules in politics, and this will I’m sure be no exception to a pretty much universal rule.

One politically brave exception to the rule recently occured in Denmark, where the centre-right government did the right thing and granted residency to a few hundred Iraqis employed by the Danish Army. And this when the government is dependent on votes in parliament from the local equivalent of the BNP! Prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen had more than a few shire Tories to deal with in this instance, and the so-called “Danish People’s Party” will be wanting their quid pro quo for this concession to decency and moral rectitude.

I would hope that the new British government displays a more empathic character than Blair’s, and looks to Denmark for moral guidance, but I’m not holding my breath. After all, our “son of the manse” PM inhabits a universe created by John Maynard Keynes and the utilitarian philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment, with an added dash of dreich and dreary Presbyterianism. What an unbeatable combination.

Prove me wrong, Gordon.