---

---

The commentators                    22-01-15

---

...on the Chilcot inquiry

The best war inquiry was into the Charge of the Light Brigade. It was conducted by the poet Alfred Tennyson in eight weeks, and reached a one-line conclusion, “Someone had blunder’d.” It has never been bettered. Everyone knows who blundered in Iraq. It was Tony Blair. Mild interest may still attach to the question, why? But no one is sitting in an agony of suspense.
- Simon Jenkins, The Guardian

What the public craves is a full account, an official one, that lets nobody escape from his or her responsibilities. The mistakes were too large, the consequences too dreadful for anything less to be appropriate. The families and friends of the Iraq war casualties want a reckoning. Their wounds are still open. Healing cannot begin until Sir John reports. That is the urgency.
- Andreas Whittam Smith, The Independent

The people politicising Chilcot are those demanding that his report be delivered before the election, in 15 weeks’ time. The report has nothing to do with that election but there may be a few Lib Dems who imagine that the sandbagged defence of their existing seats can be scraped together from materials left over from old battles.
- David Aaronovitch, The Times

---

Come May, most voters will go to the polls and vote for a political party based on factors entirely unrelated to the Iraq War of 2003. This was true when it looked like the Chilcot report into the war would be published before the election and it remains true now we know that it won’t.
- James Bloodworth, The Independent

The news that the Chilcot Inquiry won’t produce its long-awaited report until after May’s General Election is hardly unexpected. Nonetheless, it is a depressing and shaming reflection on our democratic procedures
- Stephen Glover, Daily Mail

One lesson is that any public inquiry should spell out that conclusions should be published within a reasonable time. Otherwise the ever-mounting cost of inquiries – and this one is in the order of £9million – will add to what is already a national scandal.
- Lord Morris, Daily Mirror

---

Pretty young girls are queueing up to feature on page 3 and if they want to take off their bras and pose for photographs in the hope of advancing themselves, why stop them?  The budding lawyers, doctors, vets and dentists have their opportunities, is it right to deny those with a little less up top (but a bit more further down) their chance of a richer life?
Is it exploitative? Is it demeaning? Is it offensive? Perhaps, but I find I object more to the nudge, nudge, wink, wink captions than to the generally cheery photographs. I'm glad the days of women draping themselves over boats and cars are over, and I wouldn't be sorry to see page 3 disappear, but I think there are more troubling matters for feminists to worry about.
- Women of note from June 2013

---

---

Please sign up for SubScribe updates  
(no spam, no more than one every week or two)

---

---

Comment digest courtesy of
Editorial Intelligence

January 21
Page Three
January 20
Anti-semitism and Islam
January 19
Religion and freedom

---

January 16
World politics
January 15
Election debates
January 14
Charlie Hebdo
January 13
Charlie Hebdo
January 12
Charlie Hebdo

---

January 9
Charlie Hebdo
January 8
Charlie Hebdo
January 7
UK politics
January 6
UK politics
January 5 
UK politics

---

---

For EI daily digests from June to December 2014 please click here

---

Follow @gameoldgirl

---

---