So, then… following on from my theme of a fortnight ago regarding the parlous state of the state’s self-policing. It would appear this week that yet again justice — as with the legendarily partisan appraisal of pulchritude — is very much in the eye of the beholder.

First off we were patronisingly informed that the Home Office, in its beneficence, has decided that there is about as much chance of us getting an independent investigation into the savage assault on pickets by police (mounted or otherwise) at the Orgreave coking plant during the ’84-85 miners’ strike, as there is of finding a working pit in this country.

Orgreave was for many an epochal moment, when the full fury and savagery of the state against its own citizens was on full display.

Or at least would have been if it wasn’t for the extensive fitting up job carried out by the forces of law and disorder.

Getting the BBC to reverse its footage to make it appear that miners on foot had charged the police horses, in what, it must have been blatantly apparent, was a highly unlikely tactic for the strikers to employ.

As any military historian worth their salt will tell you, when heavily armoured and armed cavalry troops (and make no mistake that is exactly what they were) collide with unarmed civilians there only tends to be one outcome.

The cops, and particularly the hired thugs of the Met, were paramilitary shock troops and deployed in just such a manner as the term implies. Given carte blanche by the Thatcher government to crush the so-called “enemy within.”

They then fabricated evidence against almost 100 miners attempting to have them done for rioting, which carried a mandatory six-month sentence, and any other fictional offences they could think of.

There can be few clearer examples of state-sanctioned collusion and brutality.

The case only collapsed due to the arrogance and stupidity of the powers that be who effectively churned out near identical doctored statements as if by production line.

Yet, we were informed this week that the incident didn’t merit a public inquiry because… no-one had died.
Only due to dumb luck.

The fact that no-one died, although many were seriously injured or had their lives ruined and their reputations smeared as a result, is hardly the point.

This is the state actively conniving to destroy whole communities using its own private army to crush any form of opposition. If that’s not worth examining by an independent panel I don’t know what is.

We all know why they don’t want a proper investigation into Orgreave. They are guilty as sin and there are no possible mitigating circumstances.

Of course that’s not the reason they gave.

“There are too many inquiries and they cost too much to the taxpayer,” they slimed.

Curious then that in the same news cycle the Mayor of London announces… yes, that’s right an inquiry into the soaring costs of the Olympic stadium.

There, folks, we have our political system in a nutshell.

If it’s potentially, or in the case of Orgreave definitely, going to be seriously embarrassing it becomes a trifling incident; if, on the other hand it comes down to the government losing money there’ll be some elderly citizen from the colonies dusting off their gown and wig before you can say Inquiries Act 2005.

Which brings me to the next item of major national and international import which emerged this week, yet which was conveniently almost totally ignored by the press and HM Gov plc — the death of a certain Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, from natural causes aged 75.

Now, why is the death of an elderly retailer from Malta such an important story?

Well, in the normal course of events it would not be. Sad for the family of course but it comes for us all in the end.

Yes, but then not all of us were paid handsomely by the CIA to manufacture the only evidence “linking” an innocent man, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, to the Lockerbie bombing.

It was Gauci who fingered Megrahi as the individual in question who purchased items in his store which were subsequently found amid the wreckage of the doomed Pan Am flight.

The intriguing thing about Gauci’s “evidence” is that he originally described this nefarious individual as looking nothing like Megrahi.

But then, in an act of Damascene conversion the like of which has not been seen since a certain tax collector set off hitch-hiking, he recanted his original statement and suddenly gave a remarkably accurate description of the accused.

So accurate in fact that it might have raised a few eyebrows, if that is anyone involved in the shoddy proceedings had any interest in establishing the truth of what happened.

Which of course they didn’t because it would have raised seriously awkward questions regarding the US’s shooting down of an Iranian passenger plane just weeks prior to Lockerbie and the fact that they needed to deflect attention from the real culprits in order to further the US’s plans for Middle Eastern conquest with Britain as its willing stooge.

Megrahi spent most of the rest of his life as a wholly innocent man behind bars, only released on “compassionate” grounds when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Gauci did not and while it is impossible to know the inner workings of his mind, did not seem overly concerned with his mendacious and egregious role in the travesty.

Incidentally there is absolutely no chance of there ever being a proper inquiry into Lockerbie, despite the fact it would appear to fulfil all the criteria hypocritically espoused by the government this week.

As usual, when it comes to the issue of justice Britannia waives the rules.