I forgot to mention an invaluable resource yesterday: the Daily Mail-o-matic, every Fleet Street hack's dream, producing darkly insinuating (but, for libel purposes, harmlessly speculative) headlines at the click of a button!
(Don't miss the David Blunkett Policy Maker while you're there).
Posted by Alan Allport at August 6, 2004 06:56 AMWell, I know I couldn't...
Just tried the Mailinator and got, inter alia, "Will The Germans Scrounge Off The Police?"
But much better was my very first Blunkett Policy Maker result: "Put homeless people under a curfew order, and then pre-emptively convict them." I know that's what our mayor would like to do here.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at August 7, 2004 02:08 PMI like "Pre-emptively convict everybody, and then lock them up."
Posted by: Alan Hogue at August 7, 2004 03:22 PMWhat makes the Blunkett Policy Maker particularly apt (more so than an Ashcroft equivalent would be, I think) is the slightly desperate nature of his proposals - the sense that his heart's not really in it, but that Labour's terror that it will be perceived as 'soft' on law and order means that he will grasp at any headline-generating initiative, no matter how unjust or absurd.
Posted by: Alan Allport at August 8, 2004 04:56 AM