So, Dr Reid, why are ID cards necessary?

Without them, the terrorists will be able to sneak past any security and kill us all in our beds.

Can you justify the closure of accident and emergency units around the country?

It’s our way or the highway. We need to enhance A&E. If we don’t, we will all die.

Why does the Government insist on allowing religious organisations to run its new academics?

It is the right solution for education. If we didn’t allow it, education wouldn’t work, young people would turn into terrorists and cut us down where we stand.

Finally, Dr Reid, why shouldn’t Scotland become independent from the rest of the UK?

Scotland we be defenceless against al-Qaeda. Terrorists, death, etc.

I am, of course, completely taking the mick. Well, maybe not completely.

Completely unrelated, but here’s a quote from Francis Wheen’s How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World:

“Non-medical ‘doctors’ who insist on drawing attention to their postgraduate qualification – Henry Kissinger in the US, Ian Paisley in Northern Ireland – always bring disaster in their wake: it’s tantamount to having the warning ‘This Man is Dangerous’ tattooed on one’s forehead.”

A Sonnet on William Shakespeare by the Home Secretary

Macbeth the Thane had a vision of a thing
He asked: “Is this a dagger I see before me?”
Instead of murdering his way to be king
He should comply with our knife amnesty

Romeo and Juliet on each other were quite keen
He took his own life drinking poison from a vial
Young Juliet was not yet aged fourteen
So good riddance to the paedophile

I have a plan to beat Gordon Brown
The Winter’s Tale has given me a lead
I’ll ride the Chancellor out of this town
“Exit, pursued by John Reid”

Was Shakespeare or Marlowe or another the Bard?
We would know if he’d had an identity card

So Joe Lieberman lost the Connecticut Democrat senatorial primary by a few percentage points – despite the best efforts of Fox News. There is a question over which of Lieberman and victor Ned Lamont is the more liberal as we would define the term over here – this was perhaps more akin to a Blairite being deselected in favour of an Old Labour type, although it’s not as simple as that. What is interesting – and, yes, pleasing – is the sight of voters turning out en masse to make their voices heard and giving the White House’s favourite Democrat a slapping.

Regardless of the finer points of social security reform, Lieberman’s support for Bush – and his comments along the line that criticising the President at a time of war is bad for the country – makes his loss gratifying. It shows what can happen to politicians who continually disregard the peope who worked to get them elected, and who put their own political careers first. If there was any doubt on the latter point, it was disspelled when Lieberman announced that for the “good of the country” he would run as an independent. He is asking what Connecticut can do for him rather than what he can do for Connecticut.

Alex has written a typically thoughtful piece that’s worth a read, and there’s continuing coverage at Daily Kos.

Meanwhile, someone apparently taking a leaf out of Liberman’s book on being “strong on security” is Dr John Reid, who, in true New Labour Newspeak, tells us that:

“We may have to modify some of our freedoms in the short-term in order to prevent their misuse and abuse by those who oppose our fundamental values and would destroy our freedoms and values in the long-term”.

“Modify” our freedoms? What sort of euphemism is that? And how many freedoms that the government have recently curtailed in the “short-term” have we since had restored by them? Any? And does “short-term” mean “for the duration of the open-ended War on Terror”? Do they not get that making the UK less of a free state is giving into terrorism?

According to theguardian:

The education secretary, Alan Johnson, dismissed the accusation, saying: “The point about John Reid is he is not Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. He doesn’t get pushed around by anyone.”

Could someone with more literary nous explain the allusion? Was Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm particularly acquiescent?

I now can’t shake an image of John Reid as The First Mrs de Winter.

Next time:

The education secretary, Alan Johnson, dismissed the accusation, saying: “The point about Tony Blair is he is not Rhett Butler. He isn’t a Southern gentleman and he does give a damn.”