More tales of chaos

Yet another Heathrow horror story, again showing that the BBC and other mainstream media have been giving a ridiculous rose-tinted version of how bad things really were. I think we've going to be seeing more and more stories like this in the coming days

If there really was a serious threat (something that's looking increasingly unlikely), BAA's correct response should have been to close the airports and cancel all flights, at least until the extent of the threat was known.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Calder reminds us of a Guardian profile from four years ago about the Stalinist John Reid.

In private, for none will speak on the record, Reid's enemies in the party accuse him, among other things, of being: over friendly with a wanted war criminal, an unprincipled dogmatist, both a vacuous New Labour hack and a back-stabbing Old Labour schemer, and a man so in love with the sound of his own logic that he never stops to examine his false initial premise. Worse yet, Reid is a lone Blairite traitor within the ranks of the Scottish Labour party. He remains a relatively isolated figure even within New Labour. Without Blair's blessing, he'd be in the wilderness. He is more of a functionary than a potential leader; an apparatchik. If we had a Politburo instead of a cabinet, Reid would probably be running the State Security Division. And he'd probably be good at it.

That sounds much like the sort of man we're seeing at the moment, shedding crocodile tears about the large-scale human misery his authoritarian overreactions have caused, and claiming all the delays, lost luggage, missed weddings and broken laptops is a price worth paying to keep us safe from evil terrorists.