Ok I had a bit of a rant yesterday but I felt it had to be said in light of some of the things that are being bandied around. I feel better for it but I’m sure nothing will change.

As regards the news today well Bush has decided to have an enquiry into the intelligence that led to the Iraq war, how magnanimous of him. This comes as little surprise as I’m sure the Hutton report has filtered back to the US and GWB thinks “mm I’ll have me one of them exonererating reportats”!!! I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he doesn’t get Hutton to do it personally. Now of course Blair has to follow suit so he says he’ll have one too but then that’s no skin off his nose at the moment he’s all buoyed up and felling cocky. Now one wonders exactly how they’ll conjure a defence on this one, but then I guess they don’t really have to after all the Hutton report had all the evidence and then chose to read a positive slant onto all the circumstantial parts with respect to the government and a negative one when it came to anything relating to the BBC. The government, according to Hutton, believed in good faith that the intelligence they had was correct and Iraq posed a threat, whereas the BBC acted dishonestly and without proper editorial control regarding their questioning of that intelligence. Hutton appears to have missed what I would have thought was a key fact here, there are no wmds in Iraq even the US inspectors admit that, so in fact the BBC were quite correct to question as the government cannot have provided enough fact to backup their claim as their claim has proved unfounded. Having said that even if weapons had been discovered it is the job of the BBC to hold the government to account, as the public service broadcaster it is the only one that can ask these questions without being subjected to by outside influences such as sponsors or owners.

I feel this sets a worrying precedent and could if enough opposition is not forthcoming result in a dillution of the BBC, and whilst the BBC is by no means perfect or even always impartial I fail to see how the sort of boot-licking patsy that any government wishes to turn it into could in any way be deemed fulfilling a public service remit. It would be state-owned media in the old stalinist sense of the word.