Burn baby burn

What a strange world this has become. The behaviour of an eccentric pastor has prompted intervention from the President of the USA, the US Secretaries of State and Defence Secretary and the Commander of USA and allied forces in Afghanistan. Yes Terry Jones (presumably not a Python) whose Florida flock numbers around 50, has provoked a storm around the world with his promise to burn copies of the Koran tomorrow, the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, in protest at plans to build an Islamic cultural centre near Ground Zero. I am far from clear whether Pastor Jones will carry out his stunt tomorrow – there appears to be a great deal of confusion. Earlier reports that he was cancelling because the plans to build the centre had apparently been shelved. However, it later emerged that the centre is still on, so he had put his protest on hold. It may well be that he has abandoned them again. Regardless of whether Korans are burnt or not, that fact that Obama, Clinton, Gates, and Petraeus have all become embroiled in Jones's nonsense illustrates perfectly the power of the 24-hour media in which we now live. Terry Jones’s medieval gesture has been given air-time and these leaders felt compelled to respond. Their audience was less citizens of the USA rather than the rest of the world, particularly the Muslim world; their message that the enemy is not Islam but bombers and terrorists. In the world before rolling news, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, communications advisers would have counselled against getting involved – “don’t give the crazies the oxygen of publicity,” they would say. And in those days they were right. But it would just take one of Terry’s zealots to upload footage of the conflagration from their video-phone to the internet, even responsible broadcasters feel obliged to cover it and suddenly people around the world are being persuaded to believe that the whole of the US was ablaze with burning Korans. So Obama, who has far better and more important things to be doing, is forced to get stuck in. Not a happy position to be in.

No tea for racist Griffin

The words "good on the Queen" are not ones I would normally utter. They rank alongside "I just can't get enough of the gym" and "I love it when it is cold". But today, I feel I can. Ok the chances are it wasn't QEII herself that issued the decree (but wouldn't have been brilliant if it was) but Buckingham Palace today told the racist Nick Griffin that he was no longer welcome at this afternoon's garden party. Why was he invited in the first place is a good question. The answer apparently is that he is an MEP representing the North East of England and as such gets an automatic invitation. However, Griffin was a bit too cocky about the invitation, he blogged about it, he boasted about it, he invited his racist supporters to suggest topics of conversation he could raise should he meet Her Majesty "over the cucumber sandwiches". This vulgar and unpleasant behaviour gave Palace officials all they needed to uninvite the man, on the grounds that he had abused the invitation, using it for overtly political purposes and thus increasing the security threat and discomfort for other guests. Griffin of course wasted no time in scuttling over to the nearest broadcast studios to attack the Palace and the liberal media for being undemocratic. Quite the reverse, for the first time in a long time I feel my views have been represented. Well done, Liz.

The truth about MMR

Once again, Dr Andrew Wakefield, the author of the report which sought to link the MMR jab with autism, has been discredited. The General Medical Council has today found that he acted "dishonestly and irresponsibly" in doing his research. It will now decide on his penalty. In coming to their decision, I hope the Council Members take into consideration the huge damage his flawed findings have done. Take up rates of the vaccine plummeted, herd protection dropped and cases of measles soared. In 2008 for the first time in 14 years, measles was declared endemic in the UK. But if Wakefield was dishonest and irresponsible, so were many within the media. Wakefield's opinion was persistently presented as having equal validity as that of the Chief Medical Officer and the World Health Organisation. It wasn't. Repeated research by respected health professionals around the world found absolutely no link. Nevertheless, media scaremongering was rife. After all why present the truth when you can exploit a fear? Let's see how the case is covered in tomorrow's papers.