The Daily Mail’s tedious and unfunny churnalist Richard Littlejohn would be at the head of the queue when taking broadcasters to task over the use of repeats, but the same clearly does not apply to him, as today brings another Human Rights Act rant (or, in Littlejohn land, “yuman rights”). Giving human beings of whom Dick does not approve any kind of rights is clearly A Bad Thing.
Making things doubly bad is that giving all human beings equal rights before the law is, in Littlejohn’s mind, something only done by politicians he doesn’t like. So while Young Dave and his jolly good chaps get a free pass, Corporal Clegg gets both barrels from Dicky Windbag, and he and his fellow Lib Dems get smeared as “Terrorists’ Friends”.
Terrorism? It's what I say it is, innit?!?
Dick draws his conclusion because two men involved on the periphery of the failed July 21 2005 bomb plot have been freed from jail after completing part of their sentences, and are still in the UK. Littlejohn does not tell his readers exactly what the two did to earn their sentences, but then, why should trousering the thick end of a million notes a year mean being arsed to do some research?
That last point is important in this case, as the two that Dick wants to see deported – Ismail Abdurahman and Siraj Yassin Abdullah Ali – did not take part in a terrorist act. We know this because the Guardian has set out the facts. Factual journalism, eh? Small wonder Littlejohn hates the Guardian.
Abdurahman, in fact, did not even know about the plot in advance, and was only convicted because one of the failed bombers stayed with him afterwards. Abdullah Ali did know of the plot: his crime was that he failed to tell the authorities. They didn’t “plan to murder” anyone, and neither was “involved in the plot”. So Dick’s assertion that in the USA they would have been serving “35 years to life” is drivel.
And so is his petty description of the Human Rights Act as “venal”. Once again, Dick is let down by not bothering to do five minutes’ Googling: “venal” means “open to corrupt influence and especially bribery”.
Like being bunged a million notes a year to write knocking copy to order. What goes around comes around, eh, Mr Dickie Venal?
Quibble: in the US there's a reasonable chance they'd be serving 35-to-life despite not having been involved in the plot. A relative-of-good-friend is in jail for 20-to-life in the US for running a charity that broke the Iraq sanctions by sending food and medicine to prewar Iraq, which gave bungs to government people to ensure the food and medicine reached Iraqis. Brown chap, conspiracy to terrorism, game over.
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