Oil And Terrorism Don't Mix

You don’t have to be a chemist to realise that a solution of oil and terrorism doesn’t mix. But politicians are would-be alchemists and in their eyes the two are intertwined, particularly when the goal is vast financial gain.

I don’t know about you but I have watched the whole saga of the Lockerbie Bomber’s release and the subsequent series of revelations totally aghast yet knowing that I should not be surprised. The whole genre of the current Government has been based on spin, deception, double dealing, incompetence, cronyism and sleaze and yet we still seem to accept it all well within our stride. In fact, it some ways it would still not surprise me much if Gordon Brown not only survives his own leadership battle but actually wins the next election – it is that perverse.

You see, we could have all bet our shirts that there was some sort of deal involved in letting a mass murderer go that involved oil and money. It is just so unpleasant how people try to lie about it, try to make it sound as if it is good for us all and that everyone was acting in a straightforward way.

But what came as a huge surprise to me, given the appalling history we have with Libya – the Yvonne Fletcher shooting, the Lockerbie Bomb, the IRA semtex and training grounds - is that Libya has been so welcomed back into the international mainstream and the speed at which the reconciliation has occurred, let alone its totality. For any minister to think that the public would swallow Gadaffi’s new bonhomie as being a good reason to forgive the nation for the atrocities we have all been told they perpetrated enough to show a jot of compassion - dead, alive or nearly dead - to a man who was convicted of blowing 270 innocent people out of the sky and onto the rooftops of Lockerbie is verging on the insane.

But Straw, Brown, Milliband and, no doubt, Mandelson seem to think that ‘All is fair in love and terrorism’.

Now we have the equal farce of the pursuit of compensation for the victims of IRA bombs which contained Libyan semtex. I had to admit, I had no idea that such compensation was being asked for and I was a little surprised. Not least, such claims cannot be viewed in isolation. I mean if IRA victims are to be compensated by rogue states who sell raw materials willingly, then where does it stop? Do Loyalist victims have similar claims? Moreover, do suppliers of money like the US, where Noraid was the front for the influx of considerable sums of money to purchase such weapons for the IRA, also have to be stood up and be counted? The question then extends to what people would like to think is the ‘ethical weapons trade’. Should we pursue all those manufacturers of weapons who allow their products to end up in the hands of terrorists and insurgents? I don’t know.

What I do know is that we have the idiotic sight of Gordon Brown openly telling relatives of the victims of IRA bombs that it was not in our interests to pursue claims for compensation from Libya in one sentence, then to say that he actually did support it in another and now for him to say support, yes, but directly against Libya, no. And then he has the complete chin to say that there are no background deals going on – maybe he is right, perhaps it is so obvious that there are deals but that he can deny that they are background or underhand as they are real and right in our faces.

I have been disillusioned with this Government for a long while and never, ever trusted them on an economic policy that I knew was flawed although even in my wildest nightmares could I have even guessed what havoc and cost it would cause. But while I am pro-free trade, I have a strong social conscience and it’s why, I think, a lot of people got sucked in by Tony Blair and his spin-merchants. The messages appealed to our sense of personal wealth status while answering our concerns on the social things around us. While the dream seemed real, the reality has been the opposite and pretty hurtful for a great deal of people. There has always been a lack of trust of the integrity of several individuals in the Government, not least Blair himself. But the one guy we all thought was too straight, sombre, cerebral and downright boring to be crooked was Gordon Brown. Full of his own economic importance, and incompetent at that, yes - crooked, no.

Well the whole affair over the Lockerbie Bomber and the subsequent shenanigans has changed all that. Brown is just as crooked as the rest of his sleazy ministers and he finally has proved that the Government is absolutely morally bankrupt.