Philobiblon

… to anyone who was trying, or planning, to fly today. Why the chaos? Well I won’t be believing much of what I read or hear for at least the next week – particularly if it is sourced to “security sources”. After the dust has settled there might be some hope of judging what the threat, if any, was.

Why the cynicism? Well remember the “sarin” plot, the “blow up Man U ” plot, the “tanks around Heathrow” scare, poor old Jean Charles Menendez, Forest Gate … I could go on.

And notice how much trouble the Blair government is in: on Iraq, on the Mideast (with growing calls to recall parliament), in Afghanistan.

That’s not to say that the whole thing is cynically made up – there undoubtedly is some basis there somewhere – but as the non-existent WMDs in Iraq showed, a wide variety of judgements can be applied to “intelligence”, and if the push from the top is all one way, the outcome is almost inevitable.