Matt T

Hutton 3

I've now read much of the Hutton Report, and my view has somewhat changed. I think m'lord has done a great service for the government. It reminds you of the Peat Defence, in this case Hutton seems to believe anything that a member of the government has told him, because they are a member of the government, and as such he believes them implicitly.

It strengthens Blair unbelievably. Hutton didn't address the question of the rationale for the war, or whether there were weapons of mass destruction or whether the intelligence was correct. But Blair is already saying it vindicates him, and I think that is how a lot of people will see it on the wider issues as well as the narrow issue covered by Hutton.

The BBC has done a tremendous job in covering its own funeral, and as Harry says only the BBC could have done this (check out the comments for a laugh by the way - these people probably think the Sun tells us someting important each day). Clearly there will need to be changes, and perhaps the most important will be to appoint a Conservative as chairman, more able to resist absurd criticism from the usual suspects.

As for the others -- Greg Dyke will probably either fight or resign, Andrew Gilligan proves you should never employ Telegraph journalists, Geoff Hoon amazingly continues his one man fight for mediocrity, Michael Howard should apologise to the PM.

Update: Mr Truth Unvarnished (does he know how ridiculous that looks? Probably not) comments. He also thinks my political views are 'virtually part of the [BBC's]charter' which is a typically endearing and obviously wrong. I was opposed to the recent war in Iraq, and like most of the Great British Public found the BBC's coverage pro-war and pro-government.

Update II: If one does accept the report, which given Hutton saw the evidence and we didn't, I guess one has to, presumably it does make Tony Blair out to be whiter than white in all areas of policy. No PM has ever had such a tough investigation into how he runs his government and come out so free of criticism. There seems no good reason to believe the way this policy was managed is any different from any other policy.

posted by Matthew @ 1/28/2004 09:28:00 PM Comments: 0