Counter-intelligence - that's this government

Yesterday, counter-intelligence officials said that Britain was now the number one target for al-Qaeda (presumably outside of North America, that is). Bravo, Tony. You're struggling on for ten years to secure your legacy, but it's arrived a bit early, so you can bog off now to do your retirement after-dinner speeches. Al-Qaeda may be implacable in their hostility to Western values and are more of an umbrella ideology than organisation, but they still need footsoldiers to carry out atrocities. For them (and the USA with its client states), it's war and, of course, the thing about war is, if you feel strongly enough about something, you'll go and fight. Muslims across the world were outraged by the wholly gratuitous invasion of Iraq, which they saw as such. If the Coalition of the Foolish had not done so, we could have focused our energies in Afghanistan in permanently rooting out the Taliban and terminally weakening al-Qaeda (both suffering serious organisational disruption in December 2001 with the Western intervention). Instead, the build-up went towards Iraq and now we are fighting in Afghanistan battles of such ferocity that could all have been avoided with careful care and attention immediately after the fighting in Dec. 2001. It would have taken decades to bring Afghanistan up to a stable democracy (something it's never really had) with that approach, now it may not be even possible. So, well done, Blair, you've made the British people even less safe.
Watching Extras on BBC Two last night, once again, it failed to live up to its billing, namely as a comedy. It would be less painful to have teeth pulled. Without anaesthetic. It was so infuriating last night that I had to mute it for long periods. The simple fact is that so little of it is credible. OK, you can see Ricky Gervais' character getting that lucky big break - it happens, but far, far too many situations are simply not believable. In real life, they would just not happen and so they are cringeworthy, but they are not funny. Richard Pryor said, in an interview a few months before he dies, as to what makes good comedy "Use truth first, the comedy will follow." But that is not applied in Extras. Time and again, the rule was violated. The Office was hilarious because while making you cringe, it was believable that there were such characters, in such a situation and that they would act in this way. The best parts of Extras usually come from the 'Stars' appearing as themselves and being eccentric or unpleasant, as if their real personas were coming out, but last night Jonathan Ross was just about credible (if a little scary with the male bonding, which could have been followed up), but Robert Lindsay was so over the top, it was rubbish - and I'm not criticising either Woss or Lindsay because they could only do the best with the lines they had. Robert de Niro was totally wasted. There was also a few running jokes through the series, but again they would only be funny if they were they could be imagined as possibly happening; alas no, they were as stock as the sitcom that Gervais and Stephen Marchant are parodying. Gervais is a funny man and he and Marchant have some pedigree, but if they're not to end up as filligree, they're going to have to really raise their game for their next outing, instead of the sloppiness that was evident here.