Secret consultation documents finally released after the Morning Star’s two-year freedom of information battle show the Home Office misrepresented public opinion, claiming support for policies that most respondents actually strongly criticised as dangerous and unfair, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
Stop dumping on our railways
WHEN first standing for London mayor in 2000, Ken Livingstone was asked by a journalist: “Can you tell us a joke?”
“Salman Rushdie was on a train and it pulled into a station,” he began. “He saw Yasser Arafat and his entourage of bodyguards and was so overcome with the emotion of seeing his great hero, he raced to embrace him. But the bodyguards weren’t very well versed in modern literature and had no idea who he was.
“So they shot him dead, thus proving the value of that old adage: never go for a Shi’ite while the train is in the station.”
More from this author