SBBS is one of the top five hits on the BBC search page for disgraceful update: and misspelled charlatan Roy Meadows. Which is more or less as it should be – I wouldn’t want people to search on him and find claims that he was a competent professional…

More disturbingly, I’m also top 10 on Google for MPAC porn (nothing on but a veil?). And since I seem to have drifted into a horrible metablogging post, I should probably thank Chris Lightfoot and Norman Geras for adding links to SBBS to their sites (I still don’t seem to be linked by any right-wingers; I’d like to believe this is because they know that my analytical thinking cuts through their arguments like a sword of truth…)

It’s a terrible tragedy that a teacher was strangled to death by a friend-of-a-friend who happened to be a shady necrophiliac sex pervert.

It’s entirely understandable that the victim’s family, in their need to figure out why something so horrible could happen, have seized upon online porn as a scapegoat.

It’s entirely reprehensible that people who should know better, apparently including some MPs (and the editorial line of dreadful tabloid TV news show News at Ten), are backing them up on this and demanding a ban on online porn (admit that a murderer murdered because he was a horrible person? No, that wouldn’t get me on the telly…)

Update – according to Metro (that quality news source), the murderer mentioned in the 1980s that he thought it might be fun to rape, strangle and kill someone. I guess it’s -possible- that he was downloading ASCII porn over a 300bps net connection…

Fortunately, given the nature of the Internet and the sex industry, trying to implement any controls on porn without an international consensus that it was vile (which only really exists when children are involved) would be more or less impossible.

“If you try to control porn, you’ll end up looking like the boy who stuck his finger in a dyke”, etc.

Continuing with my series of Shamelessly Linking To People Called Chris Who Are Better At Blogging Than Me, Chris Lightfoot utterly and convincingly demolishes the Hutton report.

I wonder if anyone will try and rebut him through reasons other than the Appeal to Authority? Somehow I doubt they’ll succeed…

As an aside, my lessons from Hutton:

* Don’t tell journalists the details of your top secret spy job

* If you’ve got a story that could bring down the government, keep proper notes

* Check whether allegations about your employees are actually true before you defend them to the death

* If your shameless deceit leaves you facing a public inquiry, it’s good to be able to handpick the person who’ll carry it out

Any other conclusions are also welcome.

This Automatic Blunkett Generator is scarily accurate – as the author says, it throws up -real- policies far too regularly not to be scary (eg “Lock refugees up, and then deny them the right to trial by jury”…)

My favourite so far is “Deport the BBC to Guantanamo Bay, and then give them an on-the-spot fine” – I imagine Tony is already working on the details…

(via Chris Brooke)

If this story is reflected in reality, I retract many of the mean things I’ve said about Ariel Sharon. Pulling settlers out of Gaza will directly mean fewer dead Israelis and less land-stealage; it also either:
– helps address the Palestinians’ grievances about Israeli occupation
or
– helps take away the “Israeli oppression” excuse for Palestinian terrorism and buys Israel international goodwill so it can keep building walls and shooting terrorists
…depending on your levels of hawkery.

Either way, the outcome should be positive. Hopefully it’ll actually happen.

This is an odd story, particularly in its (admittedly necessary, pending possible prosecution etc…) lack of detail.

To me, it conjures up very, very bizarre images of dodgy geezer doctors with camel-hair white coats, cornering people on street corners and saying “Psst, wanna buy a baby?”

David Blunkett is considering changing the burden of proof for terrorist offences from “beyond reasonable doubt” to “balance of probabilities”.

I hope I don’t need to explain why this is the worst idea ever.

Human rights lawyer Louise Christian is entirely correct to say the filthy scumbag isn’t fit to be Home Secretary (“filthy scumbag” is my description, not Ms Christian’s). And other human rights lawyer Baroness Kennedy is right to compare Mr Blunkett to Robert Mugabe in his respect for the rule of law.

As I always think when Mr B says something outrageously stupid, “may he be blinded and beaten with an ugly stick. Oh, good.”