Let loose the fog of thought

You can hope for politicians to have clarity of thought but it sometimes seems that it's awfy hard for some of them. Labour's Richard Baker has joined the Conservatives' Paul McBride in calling for Parliament to be recalled to allow his rapier-sharp mind to be used to interrogate the Justice Secretary on the Megrahi case (I wonder how much that would cost). I had thought that someone sensible in Labour had realised how daft Baker's comments on it were becoming and had told him to stay quiet, it seems we are not so lucky as a nation.

Let's see what Ricky's saying: He says the affair has been mishandled but doesn't say how; he says we need answers but he doesn't say what we need answers to; he says there are serious questions to be answered but he doesn't say what the questions are. In short, he's dipped his chubby mitt into the sweetie jar of standard 'shocked and stunned' quotes and sprinkled them liberally across a news release without thinking about the issue. Here's the top notch quote, though:

"Parliament needs to have the opportunity to ask questions about this because it doesn't serve the reputation of the Scottish justice system well, or the families of those who died, to have all this confusion over whether the decision has or has not been taken."

There you have it - Ricky can't understand any of the simple variations of the comments that the Scottish Government has been using since this story was first spun, namely that no decision has been taken and that the Justice Secretary is considering the issue. Because Ricky is struggling with this simple concept he thinks that the rest of the world is looking askance at Scotland and that, therefore, Parliament should be recalled to discuss the case. I just praise be that our Justice Secretary is Kenny MacAskill rather than Richard Baker.

There's a decent wee article about the case on the BBC website written by Alister Bonnington wherein he makes clear his feelings on the conspiracy theories in fairly stark terms like:

I have been observing the Lockerbie trial conspiracy groupies for many years.
Unlike most who provide "expert" comment on the case I attended a good part of the trial at Zeist in Holland - on the old fashioned basis that being possessed of the facts is a prerequisite for an opinion.

You can read some of the self-serving stuff on Robert Black's blog - he has the interesting habit of referring to himself in the third person.

Mind how you go!