Funtbag Flint Can't Be Arsed

Caroline Flint, Minister for Capitulation to the European Union, admitted yesterday that she had not read the Lisbon ConstiTreaty. It must be great being an MP, getting paid handsomely not to do your job. And telling the rest of us what to do.

G20 Summit RSA Third Sector Dunfermline Spawn Stitch-Up

They even have their own website: the G20 gabfest. You, too, can listen to Dame Barbara Stocking, Chief Exec of Oxfam answering questions on climate change, etc, and wonder why.

The Dame isn't the only one pontificating about things which are technically not within the remit of their business. Over on his blog, Matthew Taylor, RSA supremo, pontificates about the need for robust governance in the 'third sector', ie charities, voluntary organisations and pretend charities subsidised by public funds. What this has got to do with the RSA is beyond me. It's another case of ideologically motivated people interfering in areas outside their expertise, proposing solutions to problems which, as far as I can see, don't exist and which are none of their concern.

As for the shenanigans over the breakup of Dunfermline Building Society, for once I'll actually believe a banker. Jim Faulds, chair of the Dunfermline, appeared on Channel 4 news yesterday in an angry mood, saying that he had had no contact with the Chancellor or Gordon Brown, that the Society was in fairly good shape and only required a loan, not a bailout, and that the Scottish parliament had offered it one.

Tonight's Channel 4 news mentions none of this, doesn't have Jim Faulds on it but does have bits from Brown and Darling. That caps it. There's something fishy going on here. My current theory is that the government wanted to scupper the Society so that the press could point the accusing finger at another greedy banker/chairman/board, blame them, meanwhile bunging a small amount of cash at Nationwide, etc. The press are obviously briefed up on this approach as well. In other words, Dunfermline has been sacrificed for purely political (ie save Gordon Brown and the government) reasons.

Jacqui Porn Global Spawn Ponce

If you were married to Jacqui Smith, wouldn't you? Watch porn, I mean, not apologise. Mind you, under the new EU Data Retention directive (Intercept Modernisation) so gleefully embraced by her Jackieboots, all the details of her phone/internet bill will be recorded and stored by the ISP for government attention. So no doubt it would have leaked out at some stage anyway.

What's going on with the Dunfermline Building Society? Jim Faulds, chair of the Society appeared on Channel 4 News tonight in a pretty irate state, basically accusing the Chancellor of lying and saying that the press have been briefing against the Society. Whatever the Westminster government is up to it's all unravelling in full view.

Motor Mouth: Big Brother in Britain: as seen by others (ie Canada).

G20: those pesky foreigners won't play Gordon's game. They must all be well and truly pissed off with this guffoon's constant global poncing about.

The Common Purpose Of The RSA

Opening my copy of the RSA Journal this morning my eye fell upon a brief interview with David Archer, co-author of Collaborative Leadership. The first thing I thought was that we don't need any more 'leaders' of any sort. Most of the problems the world suffers from are caused by 'leaders', ie politicians (and their friends, ie 'leaders' in the business and banking worlds). My experience is that people who regard themselves as leaders are nearly all egocentric tossers.

Then a phrase caught my attention towards the end of the article: 'different groups may have separate agendas but a leader must find a common purpose and handle the kind of conflicts that will inevitably occur'. Now, I like to think I've not become a conspiracy freak from having spent too much time reading blogs, but these days a little alarm goes off in my head when I read the words 'common' and 'purpose' in close proximity. As it did when I read this phrase - particularly as it was about leadership.

I thought no more about it until some ten seconds later, when the same phrase jumped out at me again: "Fairness and common purpose prevail over selfishness, even between anonymous strangers" - it's a subheading quote from an article 'The descent of rational man' by Pete Lunn. Bugger me, I thought, I'm just imagining it.

But I wasn't - just a couple more pages on and 'Our common purpose' springs out as the title of a piece by Paul Collier on how 'a bottom-up approach, driven by informed citizens, offers our best hope of addressing global problems.' Twice is coincidence; three times is not.

The RSA (its website strapline 'Removing barriers to social progress' - which doesn't strike me as exactly what the Society was originally set up for) has decidedly become more of an unofficial organ of New Labour and its worldview under the direction of Matthew Taylor, a former adviser to Tony Blair. The Society and its Journal are awash with all those buzzwords that you find in modern newspeak: 'new', 'innovative', 'global' (everything has to be global these days), 'community', 'common response', 'social capital', 're-engineering', 'regeneration', 'networks', etc. It wouldn't surprise me at all to find close connections between certain key members of the RSA and Common Purpose.

The Journal these days is a pretty bland read: I could do without the articles of pseudo-science ('behavioural economics', 'emotional brain' stuff) and the waffle about having to find 'global' responses to 'common' problems. This is all moonshine. You can't have a global response until you have global agreement - and that will never happen unless you have a global dictatorship. So we can see where that one's going.

I hate the way people are coming up with this nonsense about us facing 'new' challenges and having to confront 'new' realities and come up with 'new' responses to everything. It's cobblers. These are the same problems and realities we've always had to face: the stupidity of politicians and the cupidity of business. This isn't the first time the world has had to face collapsing economies, currencies, land and property prices, etc. Every time I hear someone talk about 'innovation' I want to punch them in the face. 'How about that as an innovative response?' I want to say.

Bah! that's it for now.

British Draper Dregs Media

Prodicus nails the British media for their complete uselessness at understanding the importance of Hannan's speech in the European Parliament attacking Gordon Brown.

And also for inviting that tosser Draper to debate with Hannan.

Then, of course, there's the rather unedifying but occasionally amusing spectacle of Guido versus Draper on Andrew Neil's programme. The best bit being Neil telling Draper to shut up. Unfortunately anyone wanting to find out what blogging was all about would have learned absolutely nothing from what they heard. Not that Draper has any idea himself.

My advice to Guido with regard to future televisual outings is: smarten yourself up (not hard when confronted with a pathetic wannabe trendy skip-dweller like Draper), forget the internecine details of your spats with the Dungheap and concentrate on explaining to the public at large what blogging is and why it's important for our political process. All Draper needs to do to show what a pompous, bullying, vacuous little tosser he is is open his mouth.

Toxic Campbell Spawn Terrorist Facebook Threat

I can't add anything to the comments made by numerous bloggers on Gordon Brown's pathetic speech yesterday in the European 'parliament' or the amazingly good attacks made on him by Hannan and Farage. I did note that the news (Channel 4, I think) later in the evening only briefly mentioned the speeches, showing a very short clip of a French MEP talking about Brown's 'British jobs for British workers' bollocks. Presumably UK viewers would not have been able to stomach the unpalatable rhetoric of their own MEPs in English.

Also watched that festering bag of toxic odiousness Alastair Campbell on The Culture Show demonstrating exactly what's wrong about the whole New Labour project. For someone who openly despises the media for being self-obsessed Campbell spends an awful lot of time appearing in it himself.

And there's more toss from the government about tracking down terrorists on Facebook and MySpace. Yeah, right, as my 10 year-old grandson would say. Of course, if you were intending to be a terrorist (a proper one, not one of those amateur, unfunded goons after 7th July) then you will probably have sussed that the authorities are watching out for you and therefore it would be a good plan not to make it obvious who you are or what you intend to do. Rather rules out the idea of a Facebook group Terrorists R Us, doesn't it?

All of which goes to show that the government are not really interested in keeping tabs on terrorists and criminals - it's us they want to keep under surveillance.

Orwell, Truth, England And The Spawn

Re-reading Orwell's brilliant essay 'England, Your England' yesterday I was struck both by Orwell's perceptiveness and the truth of most of what he said. Things have changed since 1941 when he published this piece but enough has remained the same. Even then the left-wing denigration of the nation and its achievements was rampant: read these extracts, for instance - remind you of anybody? -

The mentality of the English left-wing intelligentsia can be studied in half a dozen weekly and monthly papers. The immediately striking thing about all these papers is their generally negative, querulous attitude, their complete lack at all times of any constructive suggestion. There is little in them except the irresponsible carping of people who have never been and never expect to be in a position of power. Another marked characteristic is the emotional shallowness of people who live in a world of ideas and have little contact with physical reality...

In intention, at any rate, the English intelligentsia are Europeanized. They take their cookery from Paris and their opinions from Moscow. In the general patriotism of the country they form a sort of island of dissident thought. England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during ‘God save the King’ than of stealing from a poor box. All through the critical years many left-wingers were chipping away at English morale, trying to spread an outlook that was sometimes squashily pacifist, sometimes violently pro-Russian, but always anti-British.

And is there not still some truth in this, following from his point about the English love of flowers (and yes, he does acknowledge the conflict over 'English' and 'British'):

What it does link up with, however, is another English characteristic which is so much a part of us that we barely notice it, and that is the addiction to hobbies and spare-time occupations, the privateness of English life. We are a nation of flower-lovers, but also a nation of stamp-collectors, pigeon-fanciers, amateur carpenters, coupon-snippers, darts-players, crossword-puzzle fans. All the culture that is most truly native centres round things which even when they are communal are not official – the pub, the football match, the back garden, the fireside and the ‘nice cup of tea’. The liberty of the individual is still believed in, almost as in the nineteenth century. But this has nothing to do with economic liberty, the right to exploit others for profit. It is the liberty to have a home of your own, to do what you like in your spare time, to choose your own amusements instead of having them chosen for you from above. The most hateful of all names in an English ear is Nosey Parker. It is obvious, of course, that even this purely private liberty is a lost cause. Like all other modern people, the English are in process of being numbered, labelled, conscripted, ‘co-ordinated’. But the pull of their impulses is in the other direction, and the kind of regimentation that can be imposed on them will be modified in consequence. No party rallies, no Youth Movements, no coloured shirts, no Jew-baiting or ‘spontaneous’ demonstrations. No Gestapo either, in all probability.

But in all societies the common people must live to some extent against the existing order. The genuinely popular culture of England is something that goes on beneath the surface, unofficially and more or less frowned on by the authorities. One thing one notices if one looks directly at the common people, especially in the big towns, is that they are not puritanical. They are inveterate gamblers, drink as much beer as their wages will permit, are devoted to bawdy jokes, and use probably the foulest language in the world. They have to satisfy these tastes in the face of astonishing, hypocritical laws (licensing laws, lottery acts, etc. etc.) which are designed to interfere with everybody but in practice allow everything to happen. Also, the common people are without definite religious belief, and have been so for centuries. The Anglican Church never had a real hold on them, it was simply a preserve of the landed gentry, and the Nonconformist sects only influenced minorities. And yet they have retained a deep tinge of Christian feeling, while almost forgetting the name of Christ. The power-worship which is the new religion of Europe, and which has infected the English intelligentsia, has never touched the common people. They have never caught up with power politics. The ‘realism’ which is preached in Japanese and Italian newspapers would horrify them. One can learn a good deal about the spirit of England from the comic coloured postcards that you see in the windows of cheap stationers’ shops. These things are a sort of diary upon which the English people have unconsciously recorded themselves. Their old-fashioned outlook, their graded snobberies, their mixture of bawdiness and hypocrisy, their extreme gentleness, their deeply moral attitude to life, are all mirrored there.

And today I read this on Dizzy's blog, which seemed to chime perfectly.

Britain's political class has sold the country out to the European Union and its plans to abolish nation states, conspired to destroy the education system and ruined the economy. New Labour are determined to reduce us to units of controllable data in their tawdry police state, interfering in as many aspects of our private lives as they can get away with and charging us for the privilege.

Meanwhile the arch-architect of this bloated shambles pontificates to half-empty halls of foreigners as if he were a colossus bestriding the narrow world, showering wisdom whenever he speaks, pathologically blind to the embarrassment he has become abroad and the shifty, patronising, pusillanimous, oafish bully he is at home.

Vanishing Labour Party Membership Oh Good

Over at Labourhome there's a post about the declining number of Labour Party members.

During the 1980s I joined the Labour Party when I lived in Newcastle. I later moved down to London and decided not to continue my membership when I discovered that the 'loony left' actually existed and weren't just a fiction of the media. These people and their ilk were more interested in going off to support the Sandinistas in Nicaragua than helping ordinary folk in their own borough.

Once the Tories were finally removed I hoped I wouldn't have to spend so much time getting wound up about politics, but by the end of 2000 I already had my doubts. Apart from the fact that New Labour were just New Tory under a different name, something else had manifested itself. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000) struck me as an unbelievably authoritarian bill, which had been provoked by nothing obvious. After that, the government's desire to monitor, record and regulate us has become almost pathological.

Like many other people, I will never vote Labour again. In fact, I'd like to see the whole New Labour 'project' and its architects utterly destroyed. Unfortunately we have no real alternative to vote for - another unforgiveable thing they have bequeathed us.

No Contest Dirty Nuke Terrorist Strategy

Oh my God! Terrorists plan to nuke us! I think I'll worry about that when Iran has finally managed to make a bomb.

Good job the government are onto it and have enlisted all of us in fighting those nasty people.

Bob Quick, the UK's most senior anti-terrorism police officer, says: "We aim to deport foreign nationals who pose a public danger". Which is OK, except for a couple of points. Firstly you can't deport someone who has blown themselves up or otherwise killed themselves in a terrorist attack. Secondly you can't deport any terrorist if they're a British citizen. And thirdly, you won't be able to deport any terrorist if they're a citizen of the great EU superstate.

As for the e-borders strategy of boasting about new technology that isn't in place yet and making life difficult for everybody else so that they can "spot terrorist suspects sooner", it does rely on the premise that terrorists are too stupid to realise they may be being watched.

The police and various other nosey jobsworths around the country meanwhile are busy harassing photographers and snooping on people and their bins, etc, using anti-terrorist laws as justification.

My personal tactic for reducing the risk of me being attacked by terrorists is to stay well away from that awful London place (and most other big cities).

Any bets on there being a series of terrorist 'incidents', 'alerts' or 'outrages' between now and the general election? Just to keep us grateful for having a New Labour government?

British Government Endless Excrement

More utter shite emanating from the government of Gordon Brown and his moronic minions:

* Logging details of our travel. Just in case I'm a terrorist (without realising it).
* Thousands Getting Terror Training. The knowledge that this brainless bitch is Home Secretary should be enough to fill anyone with terror.
* Government Databases Crap Or Illegal, according to Rowntree Report (useful comment at Heresy Corner). Our government is incompetent as well as thick and bossy.
* Cops get more tasers. Can I have one?

Saint George Is Cross And Up Them

The English-hating English and others will no doubt froth at the mouth over this: Boris Plans To Celebrate St George, but it's all predictable given decades of left-wing self-hating anti-English propaganda combined with deliberate EU dismantling of nation states (without actually telling the citizens of those states or allowing them any say in the matter).

What will happen on the other side of the Channel with regard to EU policy, however, may prove more unpleasant. In the UK the flag of St George has now been reclaimed by ordinary people from football hooligans and the fascist parties. As far as I'm concerned flying the St George cross is fine, since it represents two fingers to New Labour, Gordon Brown and all of those brain-dead dogmatists of the left who despised the very country that gave them so much. If they hadn't spent so much bloody time denigrating absolutely everything to do with England and Britain and criticising people for flying the flag, then this resurgent nationalism wouldn't be happening. No one else is to blame. No one.

ContactPoint G20 Street Action Cock Up Hopes

ContactPoint, the government's child-snooping database, is in chaos already. HT Dare To Know.

London Lockdown: ahead of protests at the G20 'summit' the press are hoping for some street action. Wouldn't it be really great if the protestors comlpetely wrong-footed the whole lot of them by NOT TURNING UP AT ALL?

Question that occurred to me during a beery moment the other day: if we are paying local councils to take away our rubbish, ie to provide us with a service, what right do they have to fine us for not filling our bins properly? Surely this is the wrong way round?

Besides which, if Labour have their way, garbage collection will become fully privatised and we'll have to pay individually to have it carted off - they removed the statutory obligation for local councils to take our rubbish last year. And no doubt there's something tucked away in an EU directive about all this, which doesn't bode well, because the Conservatives will no doubt have to do the same.

And another thing: I keep reading various Euroweenies criticising people who don't like the EU by saying they deliberately misconstrue what the EU is doing. By saying that directives, for instance, aren't 'laws' but goals towards which national governments should work. Bullshit. Directives have to be implemented, full stop. The only freedom a national government has is in tailoring it to fit into their existing processes. The end result is the same.

Of course, if we weren't a member of this bloated, inefficient, corrupt, wasteful, undemocratic Eurostate we wouldn't have to spend time and money on implementing their stupid directives. That would save parliament at least half its legislative time.

The Hungarian Prime Minister has resigned. It never occurs to The Spawn of the Manse and his cohorts that they have no moral right to stay in power. You would have thought that anyone in that position would be only too happy to say, "we've fucked it all up, we don't know what to do, over to you, Dave. You can carry the can, now, we're off for a rest." Absolutely no integrity.

Joke Of The Day

Jack Straw and a 'Bill of Rights'.

Jug-Eared Cockwaffler Terrorist Police Advert Alert

Surprise, surprise: according to a new poll 55% of Britons would like to leave the EU. If the remaining 45% new exactly how much of their lives is governed (and screwed up) by the EU, then most of them would want to leave as well.

Here's the YouTube vid where the jug-eared cockwaffler Charles Clark defends the indefensible.

More police shit.

Why don't these bastards save all the money wasted on stupid advertising campaigns by spending it on getting out there and catching criminals?

Because:

The government is really cranking up the advertising on tv: last night I noticed three adverts: one for the YouGov website and two for health and safety issues.

This is Labour's answer to all problems: advertising and databases.

Selling England By The Pound

New Labour to sell off the Royal Mint.

The Spawn of the Manse rules out upping the price of booze. Only because he'd be in hot water with the EU if he tried to make retailers increase the price and because the only other way he could manage it would be to raise excise tax. Not very popular.

And talking of the EU - Slovak farmers are up in arms and drowning in milk.

Tom Harris may not have understood why he received a copy of Orwell's 1984 from libertarians, or why many people are worried about the authoritarian legislation his own government have been introducing (helped by his vote) but he's obviously seen the way things are going and is trimming his political sails accordingly to make himself more popular with the voters. I wouldn't vote for him if the only other candidate were a dead dog.

Rafael Behr also doesn't get it (the Golden age of Liberty is Now).

With regard to something like this, for instance, the implementation of the Data Retention Directive, ie the "we're recording all your telephone and internet activity" act.

Lottery money increasingly used for government expenditure.

Quango Sector Alliance Ripoff Councils

Full page ad in today's Observer for the Alliance of Sector Skills Councils.

I can't be arsed tracking down the final details today so here's the hierarchy (with Mr G Brown at the top):

Waster-in-Chief and Assorted Hoons
The UK Commission for Employment and Skills (aka 'policy watchdog')
The Alliance of Sector Skills Councils
Sector Skills Councils (25)

You just know who's making the best living out of this, don't you?

Jesus Christ.

All travel plans to be tracked by government.

Leaders, Bleeders And Balls

Set off by NHS Blog Doctor's rant against the excremental Balls

All children's services chiefs will be sent for compulsory training in the realities of frontline social work under plans to drive up standards in child protection to be announced today.

A course will be created at the National College for School Leadership to ensure that senior managers are aware of the pressures their staff are under, and are able to do more to address chronic problems of recruitment and retention. (The Times)

- I unearthed the following:

The National College for School Leadership (note leadership, not teaching, God forbid) is an NDPB. That is, a Non departmental Public Body, ie government-funded cash-drain (a quango, in other words).

Too many bloody leaders. It's like Common Purpose. We don't need any more of the useless, self-important bastards, especially unelected ones. The elected ones are bad enough.

Here's the page from the department of can't stop fiddling (Children, Families and Schools), listing NDPBs and similar cash drains. The Childrens' Workforce Development Council is a good one (and nothing about encouraging employers to shove children up chimneys).

They Don't Like It Up 'Em

* RedRooster on Labourhome didn't like Dispatches' programme, How They Squander Your Billions. What a surprise. Unfortunately he doesn't come anywhere near rebutting Dispatches' claims. I would again draw attention to David Craig's book, Squandered, for an even more devastating look at government incompetence and waste.

I'd like to see a programme that exposes the waste incurred by the quangos set up by New Labour or continued from the last Tory government. Tony Blair, of course, promised to cut down the number of quangos but increased them instead. Thanks, Tony.

* This is what you won't see on tv, especially the BBC: the crowd turning on Muslim protestors in Luton. HT Looking For A Voice.

End Game

At last it seems the British media are turning against New Labour. Once the media become openly critical of a government, the end is nigh. The nigher the better as far as I'm concerned.

Like many other people last night I watched Dispatches' programme How They Squander Our Billions:

As the country enters a nasty recession and we feel the need to tighten our financial belts, journalist and broadcaster Jane Moore examines how the government is wasting billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money each year. Jane investigates a variety of controversial public projects that have had millions, if not billions, spent on them and attempts to discover where the money went, who sanctioned the spending and why so little appears to have been done to prevent massive waste and excess. Dispatches also highlights the findings of a report that details the escalation in government public sector spending and sets out what needs to be done to stop the waste. Public spending wastage is reported to have cost every household nearly £50,000 over the past 11 years.

All of which neatly followed a Party Political Broadcast by the Labour Party. Neat.

More, please, especially on the destruction of our freedoms.

I recommend Squandered by David Craig (Constable, 2008) for more spasm-inducing details on this government's wasteful incompetence.

Henry Porter draws our attention to an e-petition launched by David Gilbertson, a former deputy assistant commissioner to the Met, calling for the repeal of Section 110 of the 2005 Serious Organised Crime and Police Act, which gives police officers the power to arrest anybody for absolutely anything at all.

Sign the e-petition (for what it's worth) at: Number 10. This won't make any difference but I believe that we must put the pressure on by as many means as possible as often as possible, just so they know we're onto them.

And Mandy the Slimelord shows his true colours by telling the British people they're a bunch of lazy gits - Mandelson: Britons Don't Want Jobs. Are these the same people who have been working the longest hours in Europe, putting in millions of pounds of unpaid overtime, etc? It's really not a good idea to badmouth the voters in this way, is it?

EU Crisis Royal Mail Cops Stoned Galloway Egypt Blah Blah

Gisela Stuart acknowledges that the EU is heading for trouble.

Europe is in crisis and many of the critical comments which used to be so typically British can now be heard elsewhere. The traditional response to crisis in the EU is "more Europe" – to force through integration that would not previously have been tolerated. This may happen again, but proponents of further integration and political union are playing with fire.

Europeans will never view the union as the citizens of California and Texas see the American union. Without this, political union in Europe is impossible. If the potential benefits of co-operation between Europe's nation states are to be realised, the EU needs to be closer to the vision of the former West German chancellor Ludwig Erhard, a fellow native of Bavaria: a commitment to free trade, but otherwise much less power to the union and much more for member states.

My own view is that the obvious outcome of continued compulsory unification by Brussels will be increased nationalism and conflict. If the EU goes ahead with the Lisbon Constitution then there definitely will be trouble - may be not at first but not far down the line. In the same way that there will be trouble if New Labour stay in power at the next general election.

And talking of the election - perhaps NewLab are not looking to the middle classes rampaging in the streets in order to invoke the Civil Contingencies Act, but rather our old friends the 'Real' IRA and other assorted murderers and wannabe terrorist heroes.

So, the cops keep a database on protestors? Not really news, though, since they've been doing this sort of thing since they were established. Wouldn't you be more surprised to find they weren't keeping files on everybody?

Reading the letters page of the Observer yesterday concerning Mandelson and the intention to privatise the Royal Mail I noted that none of the correspondents mentioned the EU. None of the paper's own writers ever mentions it either (same for the Guardian). I emailed the following to the Observer to see why their journalists avoid mention of the EU:

Dear Sir,

What a pity that neither the writers published in today's Observer (8/3/09) nor your own correspondents mention the root cause of the Royal Mail's problems, ie EU postal directives, and persist in behaving as if it's all down to the government.

Mandelson, Brown and Co have no option but to obey the EU's directives requiring a fully open ('liberalised') postal market by 2010. Neither do the Tories, which is why they won't be voting against privatisation. No doubt they're hoping that this will all have blown over by the time they get into office.

Without acknowledging this fact all these argument are pointless and dishonest. That suits the government because they don't want electors to know that our ministers are merely lackeys of Brussels and that we are no longer masters of our own postal system.

What I find unforgivable is that the EU dimension is consistently absent from the reporting in both the Observer and the Guardian. Is this because your writers do not know about the relevant directives, or consider them to be unimportant? Or are they deliberately avoiding mention of them? If so, why?

I await satisfaction...

And h/t Blaney's Blarney for this beaut: George Galloway Stoned In Egypt (not, not weed; real stones). Presumably George didn't like the fact that Egypt blamed Hamas for the war.

No Special Relationship Shock Horror Catastrophe

H/T Prodicus for this:

The real views of many in Obama administration were laid bare by a State Department official involved in planning the Brown visit, who reacted with fury when questioned by The Sunday Telegraph about why the event was so low-key.

The official dismissed any notion of the special relationship, saying: "There's nothing special about Britain. You're just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn't expect special treatment."

I am devastated.

The Union Doesn't Mention The Union

The CWU (Communication Workers Union) has placed a full page ad in today's Observer opposing the government's plans for privatising parts of the Royal Mail.

All well and good, except for the fact that it doesn't mention the EU, the cause of all these problems. Something also avoided on the Union's website.

When is everyone going to grow up and face the truth?

Panic! Panic! Panic! No! Therapy! Pills! Panic! Panic!

The British government is so worried that people may become mentally ill because of the recession and not vote Labour in the next election that they're planning to train thousands more therapists and specialist nurses to cure them.

Sorry, that wasn't it. This is what Alan Johnson, health secretary said:

"In the current economic downturn, the potential exists for more people to become anxious or depressed. If someone is feeling down after losing their job, the best solution is a new job and we are helping people find them wherever possible. But, in some cases, depression and anxiety can be a barrier to getting another job."

Although, of course, you would have to be mentally ill to vote Labour in the next election. And if you weren't mental when you voted you would be by the time the next election came round.

On the other hand, it looks like a good time to train as a therapist.

Strange days when I find myself agreeing with a Tory, but John Redwood presents our political situation quite succinctly: It's the politics, stupid.

Anthony Seldon ('leading headteacher and political commentator') complains that "Schools are dancing to Gradgrind's drumbeat of facts, facts, facts and more facts," - which stifles "imagination, individuality and flair".

Perhaps Mr Seldom hasn't taken a look at some of the GCSE exam questions pupils now take. He certainly hasn't had to teach modern undergraduates, who arrive at university well-qualified but knowing absolutely nothing.

Special Delusional Relationship Morality Harris Cant

Nile Gardner:

The president may not yet appreciate the huge importance of the Special Relationship, but when he crosses the Atlantic for the first time as president he will begin to understand the great significance it carries in the hearts and minds of the British people.

A comment which which shows that Nile Gardner is as deluded as Gordon Brown. There is no special relationship and everybody in Britain knows it. It's embarrassing and demeaning for us to see our Prime Ministers behaving like this.

Some bloggers think that Labour MP Tom Harris has seen the light: The return of morality. It strikes me as a load of disgusting hypocritical cant.

The state of British 'education': over at the Libertarian Alliance blog are copies of AQA GCSE exam papers for Biology, Chemistry and Physics. They're even more appalling than I suspected - not just for the abominably low level of information required to pass them but also for the blatant propaganda they contain. I'd like to know what A-level papers are like - anyone got copies?

More Toxic Cockwaffle From New Labour

Laughable but sinister: Cabinet prescribes a dose of optimism.

Why should this bunch of incompetent goons think they "need to be able to say what sort of country this is going to be"? Who says it's up to them? Isn't it our prerogative? Reminds me of the Soviet Union's endless 'five year plans' and the old top-down command economy. That was a disaster. Just like Brown and his government.

Jobs! Jobs! Jobs! More Jobs! Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!

Anyone remember the 100,000 new jobs promised by Brown at the beginning of the year?

Well, he's now promising 400,000 more.

Things are obviously getting better.

Gordon Brown is a miracle worker.

Or insane.

Mandelson Gets Green Gunk In His Slimy Face

Protester throws green custard at Lord Mandelson

Amazing how she wasn't immediately hustled away and disappeared. Or does that happen later? She waffles a bit but I would take one snippet of her justification and use that by itself: "we cannot have people like Peter Mandelson" - FULL STOP.

Cops And Squaddies

I'm as concerned as the next paranoid blogger about the possibility of Brown invoking the Civil Contingencies Act, but the idea that he might do doesn't sit well with Thousands of police to lose jobs as forces feel the pinch or The choice is clear on defence funding. After all, somebody has to charge around in riot gear and snatch Land Rovers; surely he's not going to leave it to the Police Community Support Officers, the TA and those Community Safety Accredited snoopers? Or will he invite our colleagues in the EU to help?

Send Them Packing

Obama sends Churchill packing. Old news, I know.

He'll be doing the same with the loser, Gordon Brown, soon. Except we don't want him back.

Three weeks after news that epidurals are not as dangerous as previously thought, hospitals embark on a campaign to shame pregnant women out of wanting them. Government desire to cut costs merges new-age wibble. A follow up from yesterday's post.

The Dream Of The Spawn - Global Delusionist

It is a sight both risible and terrible at the same time, made all the more frightful by the fact that this deluded man is our Prime Minister: The special relationship is going global.

Mad Harman Natural Ant Bacteria Childbirth In EU Giscard's Stool

Lord Elvis and the New Age/New Labour natural childbirth campaign against painless childbirth. Follow the money (and the dogma).

The brouhaha about Fred Thingy's enormous pension is proving to be a successful distraction by The Spawn and his mates since it lets them off the hook for having taken an active part in the whole fuckup.

Mind you, Ms Harman's mad comments about the 'court of public opnion' have tickled the fancies of the blogosphere. I fear the court of public opinion will not judge her and her colleagues kindly if we are allowed a general election.

On which note, Charlie Brooker seems to have woken up to the abusive relationship we have with our politicians and especially New Labour. He realises now that "We're the ants in their garden. The bacteria in their stools."

John Redwood ('Britain - a special relationship with the EU?') recounts an unpleasant encounter with a bunch of German Euroweenies. As far as the Franco-German Ubermeisters of the EU are concerned Britain is most definitely the ant in their garden and the bacteria in their stool: Giscard d'Estaing made this clear recently in an interview in Le Figaro:

Il y a eu des inquiétudes parce qu'on pensait que la diplomatie française se rapprochait du Royaume-Uni au détriment de l'Allemagne. Ce geste va donc dans la bonne direction car l'entente franco-allemande est le socle indispensable de l'Union européenne. On voit bien que le Royaume-Uni ne souhaite pas participer à l'intégration de l'Europe. L'intégration, c'est l'Europe continentale avec, au centre, ce grand ensemble que constituent la France et l'Allemagne. Le couple franco-allemand est la base historique de l'Union. Tout geste politique permettant de le conforter est positif.

Rough translation of main part:

"the Franco-German relationship is the essential foundation of the European Union. It's quite clear that the UK has no desire to participate in European integration. Integration is about continental Europe with the great bond between France and Germany at its core. The Franco-German partnership is the historical base of the Union. Any political move to strengthen that is positive."

Now we know where we stand, don't we? Makes me think more kindly of the late Nicholas Ridley's comments all those years ago. (For those of you of a younger age, he described Monetary Union as "'a German racket designed to take over the whole of Europe' and said that giving up sovereignty to Europe was as bad as giving it up to Adolf Hitler.")

That'll do for the moment.

Booker Points To EU Postal Elephant

Christopher Booker makes the obvious point about why the Royal Mail is in such a dire condition:

In all the coverage of a possible Labour revolt over Lord Mandelson’s plans to sell off a third of Royal Mail, everyone seems to have forgotten the report from his department last year explaining why our postal service is facing an unprecedented financial crisis. It is no accident that the likely bidders are a Dutch firm, TNT, and a German company, DHL.

The report made clear that the chief cause of Royal Mail’s huge losses was Britain’s keenness to comply with three EU postal services directives, designed to end national postal monopolies by 2010 and to promote “cross-border” integration of the EU’s postal services. As a result Royal Mail had to surrender the most profitable part of its operations, when bulk business mailing was opened up to rival firms. It still has to deliver business mail, for a knock-down price of 14p an item, while the 19 companies that bid successfully for the business of collecting and sorting them cream off all the profits.

This was a major factor turning Royal Mail’s profits into a £179 million annual loss. Driven into desperate cost-cutting exercises, it drastically reduced post-box collections and ended those on Sunday altogether, while making vain attempts to raise revenue, such as its mad “size and weight” pricing scheme. But then EU law kicked in a second time, when our Government was not allowed to make up the resulting deficit under EU state-aid rules.

This was why Nigel Stapleton, head of Postcomm, suggested last year that the only way round the state-aid rules was to part-privatise Royal Mail, thus allowing it to borrow on the open market. No one knows all this better than the great Europhile Lord Mandelson. But it still raises the question as to who would want to invest in a business which EU rules force to run at a loss. The other mystery, of course, is why, in all the coverage given to this vexed issue, no one will explain why it is happening

No chance this info will make its way into the Guardian, the Observer or onto BBC news, is there?

One Baron, Two Baronesses And A Man Of Straw

Andrew Rawnsley interviews Baron Mandy in the Observer; talks about the Royal Mail carve up and still doesn't mention the EU.

Just because you're a professor doesn't mean you can't talk out of your arse: Greenfield doesn't get social networking. Best keep schtum, then, Susan.

Jack Straw demonstrates why he should be hanged, drawn and quartered. Helena Kennedy at the Convention on Modern Liberty yesterday said it was easy for MPs to get into a state of mind where they believed what they were doing to improve national security was good and not to realise how much they were destroying our liberties. There's a certain amount of truth to that but I'm not of such a forgiving mind as the Baroness. There are plenty of individuals who are directly responsible for the deliberate destruction of our liberties and they know it. These are guilty people, guilty individually and collectively. Jack Straw is one of them.