Lebanon: Repeats on the BBC

My mate is sick and tired of repeats on the television. Yes, it was really funny watching Penelope Keith fall over in The Good Life the first time. And the second time. Even the tenth. By now, my mate is switching over and watching something else, so the BBC are repackaging repeats as nostalgia shows. So we get Richard Briers talking about how he wasn’t sure he wanted to be in the show, but that it worked out quite well in the end. They then talk about the casting for Majorie, and cut to Penelope Keith wearing that spotless yellow outfit and falling into the mud. Again.

One thing that the BBC can’t usefully repeat is the news. You can’t really show that stuff again. Only, for some reason my mate seems to be watching re-runs of the 1980 conflict in Lebanon where current affairs should be. Let’s remind ourselves, shall we:

• Agitators in southern Lebanon deliberately piss off Israel.
• Israel responds with overwhelming and disproportionate force.
• World throws up its hands.
• Israel destroys the Lebanese government.
• Agitators gain the local equivalent of street cred.
• Everyone talks behinds Israel’s back.
• Israel throws up its hands and moves out.
• Richard Briers chases Felicity Kendall up the stairs
• Civil war ensues, mostly started by the same agitators who pissed off Israel in the first place.
• Hostage taking and the usual stuff occurs that happens in failed states.
• Yet another country invades, supposedly to keep order, but actually as part of a power grab.
• Lebanon becomes a puppet state. This suits the agitators just fine.
• Geoffrey Palmer gets the order for the Christmas tree wrong.
• Popular uprising kicks the occupiers out, and tries democracy for a while. Agitators love street cred.
• Agitators in southern Lebanon deliberately piss off Israel.
• Penelope Keith falls over.

What makes the whole story even more boring is the fact that it’s the same damn people as last time. Hizbollah didn’t do too badly out of the destruction of the Lebanese state last time round, so why should they do anything different this time? The Israeli hawks just love shelling their neighbours, and know that no-one will stand up to them. So, who loses? Well, anyone who thought the idea of a Muslim democracy was a good idea, for one.

Much as my mate hates repeats, though, at least he can switch off the television and get on with his life. There’s thousands of people in Lebanon who deserve better, from all of us.

The NatWest Three

My mate isn’t the only person in the country angry about the NatWest Three, but he does wonder that some people seem to be angry about the wrong things.  We are talking about three guys who are being shipped off to another continent without a shred of evidence presented against them.  In comparison to that, lots of things sound pretty irrelevant like:

• Where they’re being shanghaied too.
• What you think of the American justice system.
• Whether Americans can be shanghaied in the same way as British people can.

And frankly, whether or not they’re guilty.  Let’s be straight about this: my mate doesn’t care.  They’re British Citizens and deserve to be better treated than this by their own government.

If you really want to be scared, consider this: there’s something like twenty-five other countries with whom Britain has similar deals.