Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Was it Browne or was it Blair, or was it even Brown

Crucially in all the dissecting of who knew what, when and how the decision on letting the hostages sell their story came to be made there's one bit of the jigsaw that seems to be overlooked.

Tony Blair when questioned said. "The navy was trying to deal with a wholly exceptional situation in which the families were being pursued by the media to sell their stories." Notice he says families. Des Brown and whoever else specifically gave permission for the servicemen to sell their stories. I don't think I'm missing anything here but what was to stop the 'families' selling their stories without permission. They are, as usual, indulging in smoke and mirrors

4 comments:

Erin O'Brien said...

We've got Anna Nicole's half sister trying to sell her story over here.

Ugh.

Richard Havers said...

I used to visit Nigeria fairly frequently and the papers there used to carry some wonderful stories. Headlines like - MAN STANDS NEXT TO ME AT BUS STOP, NOW I"M PREGNANT.

It's kind of along the same lines as Anna Nicole's half sister!

Ewen Bruce said...

I always thought forces personnel were governed by the official secrets act so, technically, their families shouldn’t know anything worth selling to the tabloids anyway. Des Browne’s attitude of “it was all going to get out anyway” seems to negate the requirement for having an official secrets act altogether so I expect we will see it abolished fairly soon. All future government communications will be routed through The Sun.

Richard Havers said...

I've clearly missed something here. I thought everything was routed via the Sun :)

Interesting point about the officail secrets act. Ever tried getting anything through the Freedom of Information Act? They think all sorts of things come under the official secrets act.