I haven’t really got much to say on the specifics of Abdelbasset al–Megrahi’s compassionate release from his Scottish jail. I think it was a fudge; if the man was guilty he should have stayed in jail, while if people seriously believed him to be innocent his appeal should have gone ahead.
But the terrible thing is this: our automatic assumption is that someone, somewhere, is lying about what was said to who, and when.
I talked briefly to someone about this during the week, and suggested that CCHQ must have had some concrete knowledge of something dodgy going on – they are a cautious bunch, and rightly ensure that they have as much information as possible before going in hard on an issue. My friend (while not knowing for sure) was of the opposite view – given who was involved, and that the handling of the release of both Megrahi and the information surrounding his release has been so messy, CCHQ took a punt and gambled that there was something else happening behind the scenes.
I don’t know. And I doubt we will ever know for sure. But it is hugely disappointing that we have so little trust in this government that the automatic assumption is that they have done a dodgy deal.
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One senior civil servant complained about this recently – that we assume a supposedly factual statement by a Government politician is a lie. A case in point was Harriet Harman’s recent announcement that women earn 26% less than men in Great Britain, when the head of the National Audit Office said that when you crunched the numbers properly it was about half that. Still egregious, but not the same.
You have hit the nail on the head Fiona. I am old enough now to remember PM’s from Macmillan to Brown and I cannot remember ever mistrust in what a PM or politician says has been treated with such mistrust. Helthy secpticism “yes” but this is of a different order.
I don’t know whether anyone else agrees with me but I put the root cause down to the Iraq War. To me the reasons for going to War were spun so heavily that as the real facts emerged the reality that the British public had ben misled by a PM over a matter as grave as that of War has had a profound effect on public trust. So much stems from those actions. It was very efreshing to hear David Cameron simply state his views on the Lockerbie bomber without prevarication in any way- not that that surprised me one bit !
really sad to say this is how we now all think. If anything, the number one thing the Tories should do is make sure everything is open and clear. Whether you agree with it or not is something else, but at least it would be possible to trust again.