I have a profound sense of affinity with people like Dr David Kelly. As a young IT field engineer part of my patch covered Aldermaston, Rutherford Laboratory and Culham Laboratories in Oxfordshire. The computer users were boffins like Dr Kelly. Invariably when I arrived on site to fix a problem I would find a boffin sat at the console with a notepad and pen. He would cheerily greet me with "Hi Ian, I've diagnosed the problem, I think it's transistor T24." I would perform my checks and lo and behold it was transistor T24. Having fixed the problem I would return to my office in Reading informing my boss that I had fixed it and all was well. He was highly impressed and promoted me well beyond my natural abilities.
My point is, and apologies if this is beginning to sound like a Ronnie Corbett monologue, I had a tremendous sense of confidence that the UK would always be a major world player and thrive economically as long as we had original thinkers like Dr Kelly. People who could intellectually figure out a problem and think it through, rather than attack a problem with a soldering iron as I would be incllned to.
So, I was particularly offended by the treatment of Dr Kelly and outraged at his demise and the codswallop of an enquiry. If this is how we treat our best people, or cause or allow them to be treated in that way, we might as well pack it in now.
Miles' book asks some searching questions but as he points out the more relevant issue is the questions that were not asked nor key players interviewed. It smacks of a foregone conclusion or a cover-up for what reasons we are left to speculate.
Given the ambiguities of the post-mortem and the conflicting MOD/GP health checkups perhaps it was not Dr Kelly on Harrowdean Heath at all. Perhaps he is living in peace on a Tahitian Island with Shergar and Lord Lucan. Maybe the MOD doctor had as much competence as those assessing the 'fit-to-fly' capabilities of Lufthansa pilots who fly 200 people into a mountain.
If information has to be buried for 70 years there is clearly something that the state wishes to hide. Perhaps it is not for us turnip-eating Baldricks to know. Our role is to sit down, shut up, make a cup of tea and see if it happens again. It will.
I hope Miles continues with his enquiries to ultimately reveal a conclusion. I think we have a right to know.
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