Apple’s chutzpah
Chutzpah was once defined as the state of mind that enables a person, after murdering both his parents, to appeal for sympathy as an orphan. So how about the Apple Superbowl ad? The sheer, unadulterated sassiness of it is, well, wonderful.
Interesting insight into Hutton’s past
From Paul Foot, writing in today’s Guardian:
“In August 1973, the Derry coroner, retired Major Hubert O’Neill, completed the inquest into the 13 unarmed people killed by the British army on Bloody Sunday. The jury returned an open verdict. Off the cuff, Major O’Neill described the killings as “sheer unadulterated murder”.
That was too much for the young barrister representing the Ministry of Defence. He lectured the coroner as follows: “It is not for you or the jury to express such wide-ranging views, particularly when a most eminent judge (Lord Chief Justice Widgery) has spent 20 days hearing evidence and come to a different conclusion.” The barrister’s name was Brian Hutton.
Whatever the outcome of the Saville inquiry, set up in 1998 to investigate the Bloody Sunday killings, everyone now accepts that the one-man Widgery tribunal was seriously flawed. So it follows that Brian Hutton quite early in his career was sticking up for one judicial whitewash and that, 30 years on, was playing the lead role in another one…”
The next whitewash
Is it any wonder people have lost trust in their politicians? Over in Washington, Dubya is suddenly demanding “to know the facts” about Iraq’s WMD for all the world (as Jonathan Freedland points out) as if he were “an aggrieved American voter, somehow hoodwinked into the war with Iraq”. In London, as late as last week, Tony Blair was denouncing the idea of an inquiry as ludicrous, unnecessary, etc. But now, suddenly (and immediately after Washington decides it has to have an inquiry), there is to a British inquiry too.
It will be a typical British affair too — held in secret and run by a panel consisting of two trusty political has-beens, a retired soldier and a former diplomat who has spent most of his professional life in the company of spooks. And it is to be chaired by Lord Butler, the former Cabinet Secretary who defended the Tory government’s supply of arms to Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war and was hoodwinked by Tory liars Jonathan Aitken and Neil Hamilton. This forensic genius is to preside over an inquiry with sclerotic terms of reference, designed to make sure that the Blair government’s decision to go to war on false premises will not be questioned. Ye Gods! Who do these people think we are? The Liberal Democrats were right to boycott this secretive farce.