Swift self-selected non-select-committee summary

So much to blog /  so little time. 

The Islamophobia awards. The notion of giving the prize to Charlie Hebdo. 

For Islamophobia. 

A clumsier blunder you’d be hard pressed to find. 

Muslims already awarded Charie Hebdo the ultimate sanction - murder - as a prize for its alleged Islamophobia, so giving it a supposedly ironic ‘award’ should have been a gross embarrassment to all, especially the IHRC.

All those foolish supporters like Rowan Williams seem to have overlooked the fact that Charlie Hebdo wasn’t any more “Islamophobic" than other types of 'phobic' in the first place.  

At least Peter Oborne has come out and cemented his position as honorary Islamist, which I suppose is a good thing in the spirit of transparency. 

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This new report has the military and legal expertise that Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and  Navi Pillay ( former  United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights) lack. 

However, many people are expected to fall back on the Mandy Rice Davis manoeuvre to dismiss the 2014 Gaza War Assessment. That’s because the organisation that commissioned the report is called JINSA. The “J” stands for Jewish. Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. They may be Jewish, but “The authors know the Laws of Armed Conflict far better than the NGOs do.” H/T EoZ)

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I don’t know if the dumbed down BBC is interested in that kind of thing and I can’t be arsed to try and search their new-fangled website these days. 

On our sidebar, the small handful of websites we thought relevant when we set up this blog constantly jostle with each other for top billing as soon as new articles appear. Recently I’ve noticed that while Sky, Google and the Guardian usually feature serious news, the BBC increasingly seems to focus on trivia and sport. 

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Talking of which, I’m quite amused and entertained by the Clarkson debacle, particularly the way certain people pronounce the word ‘fracas’. Michael Grade said “Frackarse” for instance. (I thought the ‘s‘ was  silent but what do I know?)

The fracas business is more entertaining than Top Gear so let’s hope it drags on as long as possible.

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Last and arguably not least I have to just mention the abuse of the house-room we give (i.e. purchase) to the garbage beamed into our houses in the shape of yesterday’s wall-to-wall coverage of yet another of those laughable select committees chaired by very important pompous master of ceremonies Keith Vaz. I understand other channels gave that panto similarly extensive coverage, but somehow it was all the more offensive from the BBC. I can’t really explain that.

There they were, three self righteous victims and one smug legal advisor sitting in a row, being encouraged  by their inquisitors to  think up ever more far-fetched grievances against the police and justify blaming everyone but themselves. 

Who was the elderly gent on the committee that sounded like Joe Pasquale who assured the family that clearly I.S. is nothing to do with Islam? 

What exactly is a select committee, who selects it and what good does it do?