Alan Johnston - Business As Usual

[indikit]

Who wants to take bets that Alan Partisan Johnston will now be twice as smug as he was before he was captured, twice of the belief he is indestructible, twice in favour of Palestine?

This from the editors blog:

"Director General Mark Thompson said that the BBC depends on people like Alan - on their courage and integrity and conviction."

A few too many "ands" there, but I doubt Mark Thompson landed top job at the Beeb for his mastery of punctuation. But if walking around the Gaza strip shouting your gob off about how great Palestinians are is a measure of courage, integrity and conviction, I'd say Thompson needs to buy himself a new ruler.

[indikit]

Please god help me. Read the "Have Your Say" comments about Alan's release. Have any of these people ever left their homes in the past twenty years? Most of them come off sounding like 'The Railway Children'.

"It brought tears to my eyes!"

Yeah, it brought tears to my eyes too, having just slammed my testicles in the desk drawer out of frustration.

[indikit]

This one is brilliant:

"Great news. However, as a subscriber to the BBC News website's "breaking news" text message alerts, can I inquire why I was texted when Paris Hilton was released from captivity, but not when Alan Johnston was?"

The clue is in the title "breaking news". The Beeb certainly aren't "fixing" it.

[Teddy Bear]

As I wrote elsewhere
"While I imagine that Johnston would probably want to keep a fairly low profile in the coming weeks, and particularly wish to avoid commenting on the Palestinian situation, as I believe his head and view went through a few changes during his abduction, I expect the BBC will put pressure on him to laud praise on the efforts of Hamas for securing his release. Whether or not he will return to his previous stance, or be rather more circumspect in light of his personal trial he has just endured remains to be seen. Since he can make a lot of money now in after-dinner speeches, and will not want to 'offend' the Muslim elements, he will probably revert to his former view.

But on this, this time I'd like to be wrong. "