Shameful

Absolutely fucking shameful. Everyone is talking about burying bad news today - on the same day as the Stevens Report was released, Blair was interviewed by the coppers and Darling closed some Post Offices. The real news they are burying is this.

A major criminal investigation into alleged corruption by the arms company BAE Systems and its executives was stopped in its tracks yesterday when the prime minister claimed it would endanger Britain's security if the inquiry was allowed to continue.

Oh really? The executive stepping into a major criminal investigation and stopping it. The Goldsmith statement put the final nail in the coffin of that quaint notion that the Exectutive should not intervene in the legal process. This man and his actions throughout his time as Attorney General have shown that he primus inter pares when it comes to being a mendacious cunt - and look at the competition he has!

In recent weeks, BAE and the Saudi embassy had frantically lobbied the government for the long-running investigation to be discontinued, with the company insisting it was poised to lose another lucrative Saudi contract if it was allowed to go on.

So? The government doesn't owe alleged crooks a living as far as I'm aware? The way in which the SFO operates should not be beholden to whether or not the investigation will have a negative impact on business.

This came at a time when the SFO appeared to have made a significant breakthrough, with investigators on the brink of accessing key Swiss bank accounts.

Funny that.

However, Lord Goldsmith consulted the prime minister, the defence secretary, foreign secretary, and the intelligence services, and they decided that "the wider public interest" "outweighed the need to maintain the rule of law".

What wider public interest? Why is it in Britain's interest to lay down to simple bribery from a despicable regime and the footstamping of a major company? I think, and call me a quaint old fruit, that the rule of law is actually quite fucking important to the British system. This sets an unbelievable precedent. Are we going to take 'wider public interest' into account for every judicial decision?

The Saudis had also hinted that they would do a deal with the French instead if the inquiry pushed ahead. A 10-day ultimatum was reportedly issued by the Saudis earlier this month.

Nothing more than blackmail. We've been blackmailed by one of the vilest regimes on Earth. Doesn't it make you proud to be British? Pounds before principles as ever.

But in its statements last night the government said commercial considerations had played no part in the decision.

You fucking lying cunts. Never, not even in the sleaze years of the Major administration, has a government had such a capability for mendacity. You are a brigade of charlatans, a column of liars, a council of toads. Nefarious, duplicitous and downright dangerous, you treat our constitutional conventions with contempt and caprice. You should be ashamed of yourselves but, as ever, you'll come out of meetings with shit-eating grins painted on your tanned faces as if nothing has happened. Your capacity for sheer brazen brass-neckedness is quite unbelievable.

The decision was condemned last night as naked political interference in a criminal case.

How else could it be condemned? The government has interfered in a criminal case because the Saudis put some pressure on them. This has got fuck all to do with national security, fuck all to do with job losses and everything to do with Saudi. They'd stop helping us out in the War On Terror? How much are they actually helping us, at present?

Lord Goldsmith's statement was unusual in that it did not refer to the claimed threats to British jobs, but instead concentrated on "national security".

Really? You think that is unusual?

The destruction of its inquiry will be a severe blow to the SFO which has spent more than £2m on what was its most extensive current investigation, and taken hundreds of pages of statements from witnesses.

So not only have they subjugated the rule of law to national interest (presumably Saudi's national interest), they have managed to piss yet more of the taxpayers money up the wall. Quelle sur-fucking-prise!

BAE, in a statement, said it welcomed the dropping of the inquiry. But the company and its executives may not yet be out of the woods. The attorney general has allowed investigations to continue into BAE activities in Romania, Chile, the Czech Republic, South Africa and Tanzania, which legal sources say are making strong progress.

Are these going to be dropped as well? What if Romania stops helping us in the war on terror?

You all know what I think of that cantankerous old witch Claire Short but like a blind squirrel even she manages to trip over a nut occasionally.

Clare Short, Mr Blair's former cabinet colleague, said: "This government is even more soiled than we thought it was. It means that BAE is above the law."

What a fucking shower this lot are - so unbelievably mendacious, so utterly cowardly, so horribly spineless they can make decisions so incompetent that Claire Short can be right on something. A national disgrace, an insult to the word government.

RS