Thatcher, Millwall, Measles and the LSE.

Or to put it another way there's a series of small things that I need to comment on quickly.

Firstly the Trafalgar Square street party celebrating the death of former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher did take place yesterday. Between 2-3000 people attended and pretty much just had a party until roughly 01:00. There was no real violence and no property damage although the police did make 16 arrests for offences such as drunk and disorderly (8), affray/fighting in a public place (2), swearing in a public place (2), assault on police (2), breach of the peace (1) and obstructing a police officer (1). However this is all pretty average for central London on a Saturday night.

What is interesting though is the way that Britain went out of it's way to hype up the prospect of serious violence ahead of the party. The majority of this was through the use of the Internet to threaten that supporters of Millwall football club who were playing the FA-Cup semi-final at Wembley stadium earlier in the day would turn up to attack the party goers. Then when Millwall supporters started fighting amongst themselves at Wembley this was widely covered both in the match coverage and in the news media. I should point out that Millwall fans do that at pretty much every match it's just that it's rarely reported as not to encourage it. In the end some Millwall fans did attend the party but that was mainly to fight with the police. After all Thatcher hated football supporters and Millwall fans in particular to the point that many believe she deliberately ordered the Hillsborough tragedy in order to justify a clampdown on football hooligans ahead of the Poll Tax riots. Therefore you will struggle to find a football hooligan from that era prepared to fight on Thatcher's behalf.

Also the trial of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt was adjourned yesterday as a consequence of Margaret Thatcher's death. Mubarak is on trial for a number of offences relating to attacks on protesters in Tahrir Square in what is generally know as 'The Battle of the Camel.' There are extreme similarities between the way Mubarak's regime tried to contain those protests and the way Thatcher's regime responded to the Toxteth (Liverpool) riots. The way Mubarak tried to portray the protesters in a negative light by trying to make everybody focus on a camel that had been injured during the clashes was exactly the same as the UK's attempts to focus on a police horse that was injured during the Toxteth riots So it is not fair to say Thatcher was like Mubarak because Mubarak was quite clearly like Thatcher.

On a completely different topic a row has broken out between the BBC "Panorama" current affairs program and the London School of Economics (LSE) university over claims that the BBC used LSE students as a cover to gain access to the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK). As the Panorama producer's wife is a lecturer at the LSE this all seems quite made up. However I should point out that I had an offer of a place at the LSE rescinded because they didn't think I was clever enough. Events since then have called that decision into question and this argument comes up almost every year. The last time seemed to be over Saif al-Islam Qaddafi's time at the LSE. The use of students as a cover for intelligence gathering is pretty much standard practise in international espionage however the UK and the US have long hoped that I can be used without my consent to gather information about a range of areas their interested in studying. As we're now almost a year beyond the deadline for that operation to be completed along with the fact the Rihanna thing is raising some home truths means that a lot of people are starting to re-think the reality of the situation. The reference to the DPRK just seems to be an attempt to further confuse that tense and complicated situation.

Finally there has been the first death in a measles outbreak in Swansea, Wales. The outbreak which has affected roughly 1000 people is largely being blamed on a drop-off in the number of people taking up the combined Measles, Mumps, Rubella (MMR) vaccine following some wholly discredited 'research' linking the MMR vaccination to autism. I should point out that apart from being suspected by a great number of people of being autistic my father is also deaf following a childhood case of measles. Therefore there has long been a lot of interest in whether my father's autism is linked to his measles infection which has an obvious connection to the supposed link between the MMR vaccine and autism. As such it looks like the UK has simply infected a load of people with measles in order to join in this discussion. It is worth noting though that at around the time of the Swansea outbreak the US published the largest and most comprehensive study into any possible links between measles, autism and the MMR vaccine which found not even the suggestion of a link between the three.

As deliberately infecting people with measles breaks pretty much every code of medical ethics along with quite a few international treaties on the use of biological weapons the Swansea outbreak is also intended to promote discussion about the UK's litany of ethical lapses in my case along with discussion about Syria's biological and chemical weapons.

18:05 on 14/4/13.