When does Met Commissioner Sir Ian Blair have his tea? When Jean-Charles de Men-'az 'is

[webofevil]

So today is officially National What The Hell Happened There? Day, and Panorama is going out tonight while I'm here at work, dammit. Given what we now know about Special Branch's desperate attempts to occlude their every fuck-up, it's amazing de Menezes wasn't found with the gun in his hand and a note saying "ITS A FAIR COP I DUN IT SARGE".

Silver linings:

(1) Jean-Charles de Menezes no longer poses a threat to British security.

(2) He now has his own Wikipedia entry.

Unsettling and criminally negligent events like this demand stern, illiberal responses, such as this from the BBC's Have Your Say page:

I bet these so-called “liberals” who object so much to the shooting wouldn’t complain if it was a terrorist who got shot when he was about to blow himself up, or even if someone else got shot by accident on the scene as long as the terrorist was killed at the end of it. Once again it’s one rule for them and another for terrorists and innocent bystanders.

A moment's scrutiny will reveal that this “rule” makes no sense. “Don't shoot me, but do shoot innocent bystanders” is not something any “so-called liberal” has ever said. This has not deterred one reader (so far) from unreservedly recommending the comment. I have also awarded myself bonus points for the use of the phrase “Once again it's one rule for them...”. I invite those with a modicum of free time to join me in this weird, fetid pit that passes for a representative snapshot of public opinion and see if we can't make Joe Omnibus out to be even stupider than he already is.

Comments

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

That's kind of halfway true, in that the writer was me, and instead of writing to Letterbocks I thought it would be fun to submit it for real.

That wasn't meant to be some kind of big reveal, by the way, it's just that (and it's only just struck me) unless you know me, you won't know that A Cheffie is a name I commonly go by on the net, although it bears no resemblance to my actual name.

[judge-death.livejournal.com]

Ah, I'll know in future.

[judge-death.livejournal.com]

You have succeeded, by the way. I no longer know what's real and what isn't. Perhaps all the Have Your Say submitters are taking the piss? I've long suspected this of people who ring in to speak to Jeremy Vine on Radio 2.

Perhaps even the Daily Mail is actually just a long-running, hilarious injoke by liberal media types that no-one knows how to stop?