Brown's In His Bunker, All's Well With The World

Gordon Brown today insisted he would reject any moves from within his Cabinet to encourage him to stand down as Prime Minister.

Mr Brown said he would refuse to move aside even if senior Labour figures told him it would help the party retain seats at a general election, arguing that his focus was on tackling the recession and pushing through a programme of constitutional reform.

That about says it all, doesn't it? Full article in the Mail.

UK Border Stasi Twats

The UK Border Stasi now want to turn academics into unpaid snoopers, keeping an eye on overseas students to make sure they attend their courses, and to report anyone they think may be involved in terrorism. Comment from Longrider.

The University and College Union has decided to boycott these new rules. Quite right.

The Border Agency can go fuck itself. I'm certainly not acting as an unpaid little stooge for their nasty little racket.

The People Need Modernising - At Great Cost

From Lincolnshire: Dramatic rise in council bosses on more than £50K.

This is the bit that gets me (and I've yet to get the info on the Council's staff list):

The amount of officials at Lincolnshire County Council earning salaries of more than £50,000 has surged since 2004 by more than 250 per cent, while those earning over £100,000 has also jumped.

That is from the website and is just a precis of the article, which came out on Thursday and makes the figures clearer:

Figures released by the county council show that in 2004 nobody earned £100,000 and just 56 people were on more than £50,000.
By 2008, eight people were on salaries of £100,000 and 145 were earning in excess of £50,000.'

Forget about that the argument that these figures are not 'sky-high' (they are, especially in Lincolnshire) and just consider the speed with which this increase has happened.

And dispense, too, with that old argument that you need to pay this kind of money to attract the best people. When I look around at both the private and public sectors what I see is too many people being paid too much for a doing a bad job or being average at best.

And to cap it all, the last para in the article is a quote from the 'assistant director of people and modernisation' - Christ above, what is that? And surely it means there's another chief above her, the proper director? Both of them, no doubt, on excellent salaries. Bags of paperwork, I bet, and targets and meetings and reports, and buggerall to show for it.

The other question is, did the council dream this load of bullshit up by themselves or are they reacting to regulations imposed by the EU? These days that's often the case.

Barroso Bastardo

Barroso and the millionaire. Obviously no conflict of interest.

Barroso the young Maoist. The EU, ultimate paradise for all those failed lefties of the 70s.

The EU is an empire, according to Bastardo; although Wallstrom likes to think of it as a football team, Solutions United. From the delusionally self-aggrandising to the pathetically feebleminded.

Governed By Vermin

On top of the French insult over the D-Day celebrations, Gordon Brown has no plans for a ceremony in London to commemorate the Normandy landings. He'll be too busy in France fighting with Sarkozy about who should insert themselves first into the Fundament of Obama.

Sarkozy Insertion Obama Fundament D-Day Queen

French President Sarkozy Just Before Insertion Into The Fundament Of Obama

The French, who are organising the 65th anniversary celebrations of the D-Day landings in Normandy, have 'omitted' to invite the Queen. After a little hooha they changed their minds and said Her Majesty is 'welcome'. Gordon The Spawn Brown, of course, has been invited and will be there with utmost alacrity, grinning his febrile psychotic grin and gurning for all he's worth before his final defenestration.

Why?

Because he'll get to be photographed with Obama, who is the real centre of attention of this event. President Sarkozy will be giving the Americans a right royal brown-nosing, in other words.

Mind you, Sarkozy is such a diminutive little shit he'd fit right quite comfortably up Obama's arse without anyone realising he was there.

Links are here, The Mail, and here, Royal Watch.

All courtesy of A Very British Dude, whose splenetic diatribe outdoes anything I could manage at this time of day.

The Big Brother Future The EU Is Planning For You

C/o I Hate Jacqui Smith another powerful and disturbing reason to get us out of the EU: The EU Future Group's plans to put the whole of Europe under total surveillance.

“Every object the individual uses, every transaction they make and almost everywhere they go will create a detailed digital record. This will generate a wealth of information for public security organisations, and create huge opportunities for more effective and productive public security efforts." (EU Council Presidency paper)

Details at Statewatch.

Here is a great example of why the EU actually prefers general ignorance and apathy about its activities. People may think it is irrelevant to their everyday lives. They wouldn't think that if they understood the following:

The EU is responsible for:

the introduction of the Intercept Modernisation Programme which requires the logging of the details of ALL our telephone and internet activity;

the requirement of all first-time adult passport applicants to attend an interrogation centre (at their own expense and in their own time) to prove their identity and, later, to provide fingerprints;

the issuing of driving licences which bear a photograph of the holder, which has to be renewed every ten years (at the holder's expense and under penalty of a fine for not renewing in time);

plans to create an EU Health Card containing all your medical details;

plans to create an EU-PNR system, ie a Passenger Name Record database that records all details of travel by individuals into and out of the EU, but also at some stage all travel within the EU (so much for 'free movement');

plans to issue 'e-government' cards, ie ID cards, which will be necessary for people to access healthcare, library services, benefits, etc.

There's more, of course, but read Tony Bunyan's analysis at Statewatch.

All of this will cost enormous amounts of money - our money, that is, since the EU, like all governments is parasitical and unproductive. It won't work properly (thank God) most of the time because the computer systems won't be up to scratch and no country will be able to employ the enormous numbers of people needed to operate things.

But it will cause immense amounts of inconvenience and cost to us; people will be harassed and wrongly accused; glitches in the system will mean that fines will be sent to the wrong people, that delays will occur, that records will not be updated correctly and in time, that people will be denied healthcare, benefits, bank accounts, etc.

And also that hundreds of thousands of 'professionals' will have access to the most private details of our lives, and that criminals will have a field day stealing data and using it for their own ends.

All for our own good, of course, to protect us from criminals and terrorists.

The other point to remember is that these and hundreds of other such laws and planned laws come down from the EU with either no resistance from our own government, or, worse, with its backing. Once they become directives our government, whoever is in place, has to enact them - the EU is our boss and our politicians are its servants - not ours.

Lights Out Three Day Week Nostalgia

When the Lights Went Out, ie the 1970s.

That's when we had the three-day week, electricity blackouts, strikes, police brutality, especially care of the Special Patrol Group (SPG), shit British cars, inflation, clothing that was far too tight, terrorism (proper, continuous terrorism), fizzy beer, cold winters, a couple of burning hot summers, disco, Punk and New Wave, Tom Baker as Dr Who, the Winter of Discontent - which was completely unnoticeable in Leeds, where the bins got emptied and there weren't any unburied dead piled up in the street - not to forget the National Front, the ubiquitous smoking of cigarettes, pubs that didn't have bouncers, a complete lack of Health and Safety regulation, Latin in grammar schools, beards and droopy Zapata mustaches, terrible hair, flares, expensive jeans (only two brands really - Levi and Wrangler), a public transport system, casual and acceptable racism, nurses who wore little hats, vinyl and John Peel, a Labour party that was Labour and a Tory party that was identifiably Tory, young people who were interested in politics, grants for students and Social security during vacations. Not to forget Party Sevens and vile wine.

Great times.

Vote - But Don't Talk About It For God's Sake

The European elections, of course.

As many people will realise, there's little being said in the media about the 'issues' raised by the EU, but an awful lot of guff about low turnouts and people not considering the EU as important. Could be something to do with the fact that the British media assiduously avoid any serious discussion of the EU.

Matt Wardman rants (partly) about this:

Why are so many people considering voting for UKIP and other parties as a direct result of the expenses scandal? Do people really think they are a more moral type of politician? The polls have UKIP up as much as 10 or more points as a direct result of the scandal. This is a Westminster issue, not a European one. Worst of all, is not people protest voting, but people not voting at all. Turnout will be considered a success if it is over 35%. 35%!? Once again our media and politicians refuse to talk about Europe so why the hell would the masses know anything about Europe and why would they vote?

although he comes up with this little surprise:

Why are we talking about a Westminster problem when we are going to the polls to decide on an institution that decides about 40% of our national policy? (Yes 40%, not the 80% myth peddled by our media and the euro sceptics).

What, ONLY 40%? Phew! that's all right then!

Also picked up by Nosemonkey.

And Ranting Stan lambasts all our leaders since Heath for their lies about Europe.

I have in front of me a copy of the Lisbon Treaty (aka the European Constitution), which I intend to read and annotate (unlike Caroline Flint, Minister for Europe, who was too busy putting on her lipstick and adjusting her thong when it was dumped on her desk).

I also have a copy of The Coming Insurrection by 'the Invisible Committee' (aka possibly the Tarnac 9). One, I think, will follow the other in real life.

UK Climbs EU Hate and Police State Rankings

HT Old Holborn: Britain Comes 5th in International Police State Tables or something like that. Must do better.

PJC Journal has a go at Cameron's speech yesterday.

Ranting Stan does the same re: the EU, the expanding elephant in the room.

The Taxpayers' Alliance comes up with some entertaining results from a poll on the EU:

People are so annoyed by EU rules that 69% want the British Government to start breaking them and disobeying Brussels. Only 28% of people believe Britain should obey EU rules. A majority of Conservatives (78%), Labour supporters (65%), Liberal Democrats (59%) and Others (70%) support disobedience. The policy has overwhelming support across every social class and region of the UK.

And more. How soon before people start defacing EU emblems and flags, etc?

Spawn EU Guff In FT

Gordon Brown, apparently in an effort to switch attention away from expenses to the upcoming EU elections, pens an article for the FT - in which he says...absolutely nothing:

For me, the EU is not just a formal alliance: it is a daily commitment to work together on a range of economic, environmental and security issues. We know that without the action we are taking in the UK, 500,000 British jobs would go. But we also know that we cannot do it alone, because 60 per cent of all of our exports go to Europe. Some 700,000 companies trade with Europe and more than 3m jobs depend upon it.

So we face a choice: to embrace our membership of the EU knowing that committed partnership is the only way to achieve our common aims and protect British jobs, or to accept the Conservative opposition’s approach to British membership, which would threaten many British jobs.

This goon still hasn't learned his lesson about talking about 'British jobs'. All he can do is churn out meaningless data (500,000 jobs - what bloody jobs? what's this got to do with the EU?), non-sequiturs, half-truths and lies. Still, he won't be reaching many of the electorate via the FT, will he?

The man is a disgrace.

Digital Disengagement Minister Government Exhaustion

Tom Watson, recently-appointed Minister for Digital Engagement, will be quitting his job to return to the back benches where he can see more of his two children. Or something like that. Just a line in an article from The Times the other day:

Tom Watson, the Cabinet Office minister wrongly accused of involvement in the Damian McBride smear e-mails, will return to the back benches. He has told friends he is exhausted by government and wants to see more of his two children.

Cameron Broken BBC Politics Goes Post-Bureaucratic

Oh, to be in Blighty:

in Britain today a growing culture of rule-following, box-ticking and central prescription robs people of the chance to use their judgement or to take responsibility for making the right decisions.

And an increasingly Orwellian surveillance state - symbolised by the simultaneously ineffective and intrusive ID cards scheme - reminds people that the powers-that-be don't really trust them.

So this compounds the rage that we feel.

We rage that as we go about our business we are picked and poked and bossed around, annoyed and irritated and endlessly harassed by public and private sector officialdom...

...that treats us like children with rules and regulations and directives and laws that no-one voted for, no-one supports, but no-one ever seems to be able to do the slightest thing about.

No trust. No discretion. No judgment.

Astute words from David Cameron, who seems to have caught something essential in the public mood that is eluding Labour and the mainstream media. But...he's a politician salivating at the prospect of being Prime Minister and he'll promise anything he thinks will get him votes.

As Neue Arbeit Macht Frei points out, the central problem is not properly addressed, ie that to regain our national sovereignty and democracy we must leave the EU. Cameron is kite-flying when it comes to the EU - he's the only UK political leader daring to talk about it openly. If the anti-European powder trail catches fire he may end up with something he hadn't bargained on.

Just watched the BBC 6 o'clock news version of events. No mention of the EU, of course, and, in the interest of 'balance', a deft redirection to the line that all the major political parties are urging reform, then back on to the expenses saga.

Cue also the execrable Straw, defending the government's indefensible track record, inviting Cameron to cross-party talks on the issue. He deserves a punch in the face.

Conservative Change Party EU Referendum

Just received a Conservative Party EU election leaflet through the door. It makes a point about giving us a referendum on the EU Constitution - and they do actually call it that, not the Lisbon Treaty:

Gordon Brown has broken his promise for a referendum on the EU Constitution. Conservatives oppose the Constitution because of the massive hand-over of power it would mean, but we believe that it should be up to the British people to decide either way.

We believe that election promises should be kept: it's a matter of trust.

No mention of the massive hand-over of power that has already taken place. Or the fact that it 's up to the Westminster parliament to hold a referendum, not the bogus EU parliament.

No mention of whether this referendum would be guaranteed irrespective of how many member states have ratified it.

And no mention of what the Conservatives would do if the British people voted against the Constitution (and I don't think there's much doubt that is how they'd vote).

Interesting to see, however, that they are calling it what it truly is - the EU Constitution.

Jacqui's Little Snoopers

Old news but still news: Jacqui Smith's private snoopers - The Community Safety Accreditation Scheme gets noticed by The Daily Mail (it's only been around since last year, when I blogged about it):

A growing army of private security guards and town hall snoopers with sweeping police-style powers is being quietly established, the Daily Mail can reveal.

Under a Home Office-run scheme, people such as park wardens, dog wardens, car park attendants and shopping centre guards receive the powers if they undergo training, and pay a small fee to their local police force.

One thing none of these goons can't do, however, is look after your welfare if you are being attacked. Their orders are to stay out of it and call the police. So much for community 'safety'.

And courtesy of Chicken Yoghurt - ID Cards: 10 things you might not know.

That Jacqui Smith, she's doing a really good job, isn't she?

EU Motorbike British Bollocks Fall Off Test Directive

New rules for motorbike tests are being introduced by the DSA (Driving Standards Agency) - and making things more dangerous for those taking the tests. Also reducing the number of test centres in the UK.

Not something that concerns me but another case of the ever extending interference of the EU and the obstinate idiocy of our officials.

Industry calls for transitional bike test: Bikersweb pinpoints the idiocy of the British government:

“It is extremely telling that only the UK has chosen to create vast and expensive test sites. Belgium for example will be using a test site which is approximately a quarter smaller. This mess has also been partly created because the UK did not argue for a derogation, allowing 50kph manoeuvres to be completed at 30mph – a difference of only 1.06mph. This would have allowed the new test to be conducted on existing facilities or on the highway, as is happening in many other European countries.

So first of all the EU introduces more (unnecessary) regulation. Secondly the UK doesn't ask for a derogation to make things easier (and less expensive) for its citizens.

Just whose side are they on?

Another link, with further background: motorcycle.co.uk.

Proportional Fisking Luton Riot Media

A Very British Dude fisks Will Hutton over his blather about Europe.

Unruliness in Luton. Every day is backlash day in the good old UK.

The mainstream media have been running behind the popular mood vis a vis our politicians and are desperately trying to get ahead of the game. Hence their belated enthusiasm for electoral and political reform. I see proportional representation is back in the news - having been soundly ditched for over a decade, without a mention from the media.

Andrew Rawnsley gets in on the act in the Observer: A climate of loathing towards all MPs is bad for democracy. With regard to the withering away of parliament's powers he even manages to make reference to the EU, but only in passing:

The Commons has been further enfeebled by more than a decade of big majority government, the loss of power upwards to the European Union, downwards to devolved governments and outwards to quangoland and executive agencies.

Unfortunately neither he, nor his paper, nor any of his mates in the media have had much to say about the EU for the last decade, thus allowing that political cuckoo to expand its powers unimpeded whilst destroying ours.

The mainstream media are part of the problem. That's why the internet is so vital to our individual and collective freedoms. That's why the political class and their lickspittles want control of it. That's why you get this kind of interfering, authoritarian stuff from people parading under the banner of liberal paternalism: 10 approaches to digital inclusion. Go away and let people work it out for themselves.

The freedom of the internet is under threat - from government, vested interests, and the EU. We are going to have to fight for the freedoms it brings us.

Two Establishment Tits

Will Hutton is an establishment tit: "Europe might be a better place without the contemptuous, indifferent British". Will thinks the EU is a Good Thing and that if Britain does pull out this will be a Bad Thing for us:

Only living outside the EU as the sceptics want - creating a politically diminished Britain fit for hedge funds, tax-avoiders and asset-strippers - is likely to convince the British majority that the option is a disaster.

Pardon me, Will, isn't that what we've already had got - inside the EU? Do you really think that driving the hedge funds out of business will make any real difference to the economy?

Is Will as big a tit as this bloke? I think not. "Labour MP (Brian Jenkins) Bullies Constituent Over Gurkha Letter" over at Iain Dales' blog and also the Mail.

Labour MP Brian Jenkins feels his reputation has been hurt by the publication of a letter which claims that he didn't acknowledge two letters sent by a constituent. Some Labour trolls on Mr Dale's site seem to think the MP is justified in resorting to the law with such alacrity. Maybe it's just because he's a jumped-up, self-important politico needled by criticism.

Bring These Bastards Down NOW

The Observer headline is "Fury as Commons denied DNA vote", though the word "fury" is probably overdone, considering the supine nature of the Commons to date on any of these surveillance matters.

Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, has been warned that the government risks further damaging the public's faith in politics after it emerged that plans for the police to keep innocent people's DNA profiles for up to 12 years will become law without a Commons vote.

What this action shows is the complete contempt the government has for us and our rights. It's incredible that even in their death throes they are still arrogant enought to push this kind of legislation through.

These bastards have to be removed as soon as possible and it must be made clear to the incoming government that ALL of the authoritarian surveillance legislation introduced by Labour, from RIPA onwards, must be totally scrapped. Otherwise there will be strife.

Lisbon Lickspittles and Labour Elitism

Hatfield Girl demands Cameron Commit Unequivocally to a Rejection of the Lisbon Treaty.

I think it would be a vote winner, especially in the light of the EU's vast waste of (our) money, including on phantom MEPs on full pay.

Peter Hitchens reckons we don't need a general election, because there's just another bunch of neo-liberal, Blairite EU lickspittles:

most Members of Parliament have been purchased by the European Union and the liberal elite.

They know that their absurdly padded lifestyles are their reward for selling their souls to power, for concealing that 80 per cent of what they do is rubber-stamping European law, and most of the rest is pursuing the relentless agendas of political correctness.

They dared not ask us for more pay, because they feared we would enquire too deeply into what they do and what they don’t do.

So they fiddled themselves more money in secret complicity with their true masters.

There should be no General Election until most of them - and I mean most of them - have retreated in shame into private life.

It's a horrible thing to contemplate, but we may end up with a bunch of tossers even worse than the ones we've got now.

And talking of the new intake lining themselves up for ascension, Boris Johnson has an interesting article on the (now failed) attempt of Georgia Gould (23, daughter of Labour privilege) to secure the nomination for a parliamentary seat.

Bloody Blears And The Whole Bloody Lot

A waste of time and resources; A Very British Dude headbuts a van while cycling and finds himself given the runaround by the NHS.

Beware the new political class intake: Don Paskini offers some advice to Labour's 'new' generation; although it should apply to all of them. This was something I alluded to in an earlier post. The poison of a professional political class.

That bloody Blears woman again. And a government audibly collapsing around us.

Wrong Green Gurkha Bloggers In British Line Jobs

Gurkhas win the right to stay in UK. Where's the catch?

Keeping an eye on Matthew: Matthew Taylor is keen to organise political bloggers; he wants them to form a club with rules:

This goes towards strengthening the idea of the blogosphere as a place where people engage with other points of view and where writers develop their skills of argumentation and communication

There it is again, that automatic impulse to take control, to impose a vision, rather than allow people to exercise their own desires and get on with things.

British jobs for British workers: it just won't go away. Wildcat strikes were eventually called of at a number of British oil refineries after disputes over the employment of foreign workers.

The wrong green? A driver was arrested because police thought his MOT was the wrong type of green. No doubt they'll keep his fingerprints and photograph even though he is totally innocent of any crime.

Progressive Poison

The curse of 'progressive' politics and the EU: Ranting Sam has a go.

Useless Surveillance Generation EU Bilge

* Perhaps we should should all chip in some extra cash for MI5 so they can recruit more people to follow up all that data the've been collecting. The fact that they had been watching a couple of the July 7 bombers for a number of years but couldn't afford any spooks to stop them (or be bothered to notify the local police) says a lot about the people running our surveillance society.

Imagine the even vaster amounts of data now being collected and which will be collected if the National Identity Register and ID card set up come on stream. Pointless, expensive and unjustified. You can bet they won't catch any terrorists or criminals as a result but there will be a lot of ordinary innocent people harassed, bullied and wrongly convicted.

* In Euro Fantasy Land Mary Dejevsky reckons her generation has failed to 'promote a vision of Europe'. What a surprise. As I've said before, the EU doesn't really like too much publicity, because if people started to find out the truth the whole project would begin to unravel.

The EU is a new form of organisation, in which a little sovereignty is sacrificed, by consent, to the greater good. We Europeans can live, work and travel with a freedom not experienced except by the rich in the days of the Grand Tour. Most internal EU borders have melted away, while a common sense of security has given each individual nation the security to be itself.

Oh, the wonders of the EU. How could we survive without it?

Snoopy Snoop Snoop ID Moat Cleaning

Local councils encourage child snoopers to spy on people. Let the backlash begin.

For the attention of the media: Aung San Suu Kyi is not the main 'opposition' leader in Burma/Myanmar. She is the properly elected Prime Minister, a post she was prevented in taking up in 1990 by the military scum who have ruled the country since then. She has been held under illegal house arrest by an illegal government.

I for one be will sad to see Douglas Hogg stepping down from parliament at the next election. The continung expenses saga must have played a part in his decision to leave politics after thirty years. It's unfortunate that the brouhaha over his moat has come to epitomise the greed of many MPs. I'm inclined to believe him when he says he did not claim for the clearing of his moat and that he never received any cash for it. Hogg is one of the few decent MPs in parliament. I can vouch for his assiduousness in attending to his constituents: letters and emails are acknowledged, answered and followed up. His voting record is more left-wing and liberal than that of the majority of Labour MPs, even though he's a Tory. Awful taste in hats, though.

Get your fake ID card (HT I Hate Jacqui Smith).

Of course, nothing radical can be done to restore any real integrity to the UK political and social systems until we pull out of the EU.

Garbage Out Garbage In

Happy as I am that Michael Martin has defenestrated himself from his position as Speaker and that a sizeable percentage of current MPs will not be sitting in the next parliament, I am not filled with confidence that the British political system will change radically for the better.

I fear that the new intake of MPs will be even worse than the current lot. Prepare yourself for the influx of a fresh tranche of the Political Class, people with little or no experience outside politics: people who've been to university and then worked their way through a variety of routes - internships, think-tanks, local government, trade unions, PR, the media, occasionally the law.

Unless something is done to change this, the situation won't really change.

Missing Filthy Spawn Smoker Tie

The Filthy Smoker defends fakecharities.org c/o The Devil's Kitchen: Defending the Indefensible.

Don't get your school tie caught in the machinery.

Not seen a lot of The Spawn the last week or so, have we?

Down On Gordon's Farm

This kind of nonsense may not interest the majority of people who live in towns and cities, but the costs get passed along to them one way or another-

EU tells farmers to tag every sheep in Britain. That's 30 million sheep at £1.50 per tag plus costs of equipment, admin, etc.

Farmers could be taxed for foot and mouth outbreaks. This is policy-making by cretins. The source of the last outbreak, in 2007, was the Pirbright laboratory, not a farm.

Babe Rejected For Rotten Parliament

Babe in arms not selected for Labour seat.

Booker on expenses and the decay of governance in the UK.

Henry Porter on reform and responsibility and the continuing disaster of British politics.

Straw Abandons Secret Inquests

Jack Straw ('Justice' secretary) has apparently abandoned plans to introduce secret inquests.

I say 'apparently' because you never know what else the bastard has up his sleeve.

It's More Than Expenses, You Fools

The political class, by and large, and the media continue to ignore the background to the public anger over expenses. I've already linked to John Redwood's point about it but it's worth doing so again.

The anger is a reaction to the increasing arrogance and bullying authoritarianism of politicians and the state. What becomes harder to bear each day is the nauseating spectacle of politicians with their self-appointed assumption of their entitlement to preach and govern (and get paid for it).

In this clip from Channel 4's discussion you'll note that the guy from Demos partly touches on this, but the point is not effectively understood. Matthew Taylor, as UK Libertarian Party says, defends 'hard working' MPs. But it's not enough:

I'm really tired of listening to all these political apologists who keep trying to defend MPs.

People like Matthew Taylor who on Channel 4 last night spouted a load of hot air about hard working politicians, pay cuts and system reform.

Excuses about hard work, etc don't cut mustard. But worst of all is blaming it on the 'system'. It is just plain nonsense.

It's a bit like Stalin blaming the famine on the ideology.

I can accept that many MPs do indeed work hard, but this plea about work is flawed.

Firstly, hard work is no guarantee of anything positive or useful. Plenty of people work hard, with nothing to show for it. The idea underlying this belief is a moral one - that hard work is of itself a virtue - something the idiot Brown keeps mouthing. It's not a virtue. Brown is an example. He works very hard indeed, but morally, he's a mephitic swamp.

Secondly, if we accept these MPs have been working very hard, then what we have we got to show for it? Well, among other things, a knackered economy and banking system, undemocratic government from the EU, a mess of an education system, chaotic health care, masses of form-filling, increasing prohibitions on this, that and the other, the transforming of the country into a huge state panopticon in which every detail of our lives is to be recorded, etc, etc.

It is only gradually dawning among some of the politicos that it is not the country that is 'broken' but the political class itself.

The Balls-Cooper Flip

Not reported on the BBC as far as I can see: Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper 'flipped' homes three times: MPs' expenses.

Eye Plods Under Surveillance

John Redwood: a Tory who understands why we hate the political class: Revenge on the politicians.

And PC Plod should keep an eye on Daily Police Photo just in case there's any illicit, terrorist-like taking of photographs going on.

Henry Porter keeps reminding us not to take our eyes off govt plans to introduce ID cards come hell, high water or a complete collapse of trust with the electorate. And credits one of the blogosphere while he's at it: SpyBlog.

Jacqui Pudding Face No friends

Even the cops hate Jacqui Smith: 'In out, in out.'

Just More Bloody Stuff

Please give 4 weeks' notice before you die: Ambush Predator.

Labour Twitter Czar Tosspottery. The new 'tzar' is Tom Watson who is Minister for Digital Engagement (yes). This new and pointless and expensive post is worth up to £160,000 a year.

And another thing: anyone using that ridiculous bloody phrase 'tsar' ('czar', 'csar', 'tsar', etc) will get a punch in the face. STOP IT!

Pope visiting wherever and offending whoever? Don't care.

Something I forgot to put in the other day - It's not the bankers Labour is watching, it's you, by Larry Elliott.

EU Software Scrote Code With Bent Vegetable Corrections

OK, so what have we got today? MPs' expenses? someone else can do that.

The EU? - always good for (bad) news: EU wants software makers liable for code. This is the sort of thing that shoots under the media radar but is typical of the colleagues:

Software companies could be held responsible for the security and efficacy of their products, if a new European Commission consumer protection proposal becomes law.

So if the code screws up, you can get your money back? A quick way to bankrupt every software company in Europe, I reckon. Pity we can't do that with the EU.

"If we want consumers to shop around and exploit the potential of digital communications, then we need to give them confidence that their rights are guaranteed," Kuneva said. "That means putting in place and enforcing clear consumer rights that meet the high standards already existing in the main street. (The) Internet has everything to offer consumers, but we need to build trust so that people can shop around with peace of mind."

The arrogance and ignorance in that paragraph leaves me speechless.

'We need' you to keep your interfering, incompetent hands out of our lives, Commissioner Kuneva, and not regulate everything in sight.


Open Europe newsletter reports that

The Rural Payments Agency (RPA), an executive agency of DEFRA, has had "financial corrections" imposed by the European Commission, requiring it to pay back more than £200 million since 2004-05, relating to breaches of the UK's Common Agricultural Policy requirements.

'Financial corrections' is also, I believe, the EU term for fines. The Rural Payments Agency contact page on YouGov can be found here. Its description is remarkably blunt and free of the usual cant:

The Rural Payments Agency is an Executive Agency of Defra and provides services such as rural payments, rural inspections and livestock tracing. It also enforces the European Union's regulations on the size and shape of vegetables and fruit sold in shops, by warning and advising businesses.

The last bit is very important.

That old scrote Lord Tebbit has actually said something sensible: don't vote for any of the major parties in the European elections (UKIP, wink, wink).

NHS £350m On Consultants, Bloody Consultants

'The NHS spent £350m on external management consultants in the last financial year, according to an RCN survey.' Read all about it. HT NHS Blog Doctor.

No wonder the NHS is in such good condition.

Mandelson! Elephant! Room! Royal Mail! EU! Elephant, Elephant!

Mandelson reiterates the government's masochistic desire to obey EU diktat and part-privatise ('liberalise') the Royal Mail.

Except he doesn't mention of the EU, of course. Nor does the BBC.

The Internet Is Part Of The Political Solution

The unofficial blog of the Libertarian party draws attention to a comment made by Matthew Taylor, when he was outgoing adviser to Tony Blair in 2006, about the internet 'fuelling a crisis of confidence in politics'.

The reader (all one of you) may recall I have mentioned Mr Taylor a couple of times before, in his role as CEO of the RSA (the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce - though this description has been replaced on the website by the strapline 'Removing Barriers to Social Progress', which I don't think is exactly the same thing).

The article referred to can be read here. Matthew Taylor is a political insider and as such hasn't grasped the fact that there's a vertiginous chasm between people like himself and the rest of us.

His attitude is very much that 'we', ie he and similar-thinking folk, need to be guiding 'us' in the right way to do everything, including using the internet. Hence he opined that:

more needed to be done by the web community in general to encourage people to use the internet to "solve problems" rather than simply abuse politicians or make "incommensurate" demands on them.

Well thank you, Matthew, and fuck off. I think it's up to us to decide how we use the internet. We don't need lessons, lectures or encouragement. Certainly not from someone who was an adviser to one of the biggest shites in modern British politics (only exceeded in shiteness by the present incumbent of Number 10).

The internet is part of the problem for the political class because they don't control it. That's why, for the rest of us, it's part of the solution.

The Great Stink And The Coming Storm

Peter Osborne in the Mail on the furore over MPs' expenses:

It is no exaggeration to say that this is a national disaster of the first order. Nor does this moral and financial corruption merely infect the Government. Voting out Gordon Brown's stinking New Labour administration would not make the faintest difference.

I recommend Osborne's book, The Triumph of the Political Class, for anyone truly concerned about British politics. It describes in trenchant (and depressing) detail what is wrong with our system.

We are at the beginning of a long and painful crisis in this country - not just economic, but political and social as well, and the real public anger over expenses is part of a growing resentment about the way we are governed. New Labour politicians have a great deal to answer for, but so do the other major parties and numerous other people involved in the processes of government. The EU is an integral part of that problem.

There is now a dangerous chasm between those in power and the people they govern, right across Europe. Politicians by and large seem oblivious. They don't seem to understand why we hate and despise them so much. The anger is building up. A few desperate policies here and a couple of cabinet changes there are not going to make any difference.

Interesting times ahead, folks.

Flint Blah Blah Woman Blah Looks Blah Labour Blah

Caroline Flint, Labour pin-up girl and Minister for Being Fucked by Europe, talks frankly to The Observer about the 'pressures of life as a leading woman politician'. Doesn't include reading the Lisbon Treaty.

Blah blah blah.

If she finds herself without a job after the next election I know what line of business she could go into.

Jacqui Halfwit Smith

Marine Hyde calls Jacqui Smith a halfwit. Still too kind.

Loony Broons On TV

From ConservativeHome, a clip of the Spawn being interviewed, having been defeated in parliament twice in two days. Bizarre, worrying, deeply annoying, pathetic. In future years psychologists and historians will use Brown as an example of delusion and affectlessness.

Concerns about his sanity are now a running joke in public. Even Rory Bremner quipped about it the other night on the One Show.

DNA Crap Labour Database Deceit Hang Them From Lampposts

The great DNA database fudge c/o Big Brother Britain & Civil Liberties: lies, prevarications, deceit, bloody-mindedness, authoritarianism, arrogance - all the things you'd expect from the current UK government.

And the funny thing about this colossal database? It doesn't work. It's usefulness has been falling the bigger it's got: The Register.

That sums up everything about the New Labour government.

Old, Mad, Blind, Despised: Surely Not Gordon?

And just to cast a longer, historical view on the current putrescent condition of the British body politic, here is Shelley's poem:

ENGLAND IN 1819

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,--
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn, mud from a muddy spring,--
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,--
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,--
An army which liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield,--
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless, a book sealed,--
A Senate--Time's worst statute unrepealed,--
Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst to illumine our tempestuous day.

It's not kings and princes these days, but Prime Ministers and their ministerial cohorts. Ring any bells?

Matthew Waffle Taylor Waffle Spending Waffle Cuts Waffle

Over on his blog Matthew Taylor, CEO of the RSA, makes waffly sounds about the supposed savings made by cancelling such projects as the ID card scheme:

The costs of dropping a scheme could include money spent winding it down, compensation for cancelled contracts or redundancy payments. These costs are rarely counted in claimed savings.

He seems to saying that a) the amount saved by scrapping 'one-offs' is minuscule compared to the vast debt we're facing and that b) the saving may not be as large as people estimate.

Nothing at all, of course, about the unacceptable nature of the ID card system and its attendant 'one-offs', such as the National Identity Register, ContactPoint, etc.

But there again, Matthew apparently was 'in government' (I thought he was just an adviser to Tony Blair?) and knows about this stuff.

EU Sticky Hitchens Fingers Internet Vote

The grasping, sticky, incompetent fingers of the EU reaching out for the internet...Daniel Hannan on the EU's desire to control it.

Peter Hitchens advises us not to vote Tory - ever - because they're, well, just the same as everyone else and should be destroyed. Only problem is that would let Labour and the mad Spawn back in. Then there would be a revolution. I'm a bit old for barricades but I would happily fill bottles with petrol.

Lisbon Treaty Constitution Cloud Stink Looms Over UK

'Lisbon Treaty shadow looms large over UK elections' - is the headline on Euractiv.com, in a suitably EU-friendly article about Britain's Euroscepticism, concentrating on David Cameron's promise to hold a referendum.

The only practical reason to vote in these elections is to show the EU how much we want out of it.

Tell Them Lies

Our new immigration rules will have to be revised if we do not want to endanger our collaborative research culture, warns Mathias Brust in the Times Higher Education - academics, as well as artists, from outside the EU prison-fortress, are now having difficulties getting into the UK

Matthias' experiences of the Soviet era stood him in good stead and provide a useful tip for travellers:

Owing to a couple of early childhood experiences of travelling from one side of the divided Germany to the other, I must have developed an intuitive knack for border crossings. This may explain why I lied the last time a British immigration official wanted to know my reason for coming to the UK. Rather than admitting that I was a professor of chemistry at the University of Liverpool and owned a house in this country, I said I was coming here to visit friends of mine.

That there was wisdom behind my spontaneous lapse I learnt last Sunday evening when I received a phone call from Immigration at Liverpool John Lennon Airport. They had detained a "female" and wanted to know if her claim that I had invited her to conduct ad honorem research in my laboratory was correct.

With New Labour it would only be a matter of time before it became difficult to get out of the UK. When telling the truth in New Labour Britain gets you into trouble, then lying becomes inevitable and necessary.

Klaus Correct To Veto Lisbon Constitution

The liars in the EU and their supporters continue to pretend that the Lisbon 'Treaty' is not the same as the rejected European Consitution and with the same intentions, ie to create an EU superstate, but some leaders have the courage to acknowledge the truth.

Czech president Vaclav Klaus has said he will not ratify the Lisbon Constitution.

"The Lisbon Treaty is dead for this moment," said President Klaus. "It is dead because it was rejected in a referendum in one member state. Therefore, a decision on ratification of this treaty is not on the agenda at this point."

Ireland plans to hold a new vote later this year on the EU's charter for reform. Yesterday the Czech senate voted 54-20 to ratify the treaty which is meant to simplify decision-making in a union that has grown from 15 to 27 members over the past five years. Mr Klaus and lawmakers among the ruling right-wing Civic Democrats claim that the treaty takes away sovereignty and is a step towards a European superstate.

There's a fuller treatment on the BBC site, with a telling comment from Klaus:

"Our politicians have always found similar cowardly explanations: We are too small, too weak, we do not mean anything in the European context, we must fall into line, although we disagree with it," he said.

"I reject this. Either we regained sovereignty after the 1989 overthrow of the communist regime... or this was nothing but a tragic error," he continued.

The Treaty/Constitution does indeed pave the way for the EU as a federal superstate which takes away national sovereignty (that sovereignty which it hasn't already taken away, that is) and should be destroyed.

The Emetic Blears - Pass The Sick Bag

One of Labour's most emetic politicians, Hazel Blears.

A telling interview with George Monbiot, in which she claims she can think of no issue on which she has or could disagree with the leadership.

Politics, according to her, is not 'simplistic' (as she implies George thinks) but 'complicated', which boils down to her voting for the government, whichever way it flip-flops.

Also mentioned by Chicken Yoghurt and Craig Murray, who gives her a good shafting (metaphorically speaking) over her prevarications about Karimov.

Jacqui Shock Least Wanted LabourList Lisbon Cock-Up

US shock-jock Michael Savage has said he will 'sue' Jaqui Smith for including him on the Home office's list of people banned from entering the UK (the so-called 'least wanted' list)*. I think he won't but it's a nice idea.

Here's peter Bowes on the BBC's Today programme. And an article in The Times and comment from View From Middle England.

Are there no limits to the talents and intellectual reach of our Home Secretary, given her love of ID cards, intrusive surveillance and desire to tell us what to do all the time? Obviously not, given that she has no talent and no intellect.

As for Derek Draper, it looks like he has been defenestrated from LabourList, according to Iain Dale.

Angels in Marble thinks the Conservatives are frightened of talking about the EU and the Lisbon Constitution. A fair comment, given that they'll be compelled to toe the line - which will include part-privatising the Post Office.



* The blacklist includes: Abdullah Qadri al-Ahdal, Yunis al-Astal, Samir al-Quntar, Stephen Donald Black, Wadgy Abd el-Hamied Mohamed Ghoneim, Erich Gliebe, Mike Guzovsky, Safwat Hijazi, Nasr Javed, Abdul Ali Musa (previously Clarence Reams), Fred Waldron Phelps Sr, Shirley Phelps-Roper, Artur Ryno, Amir Siddique, Pavel Skachevsky and Michael Alan Weiner (aka Michael Savage)
list includes:

Jacqui Smith Is An Ethical Vacuum

The intellectual and ethical vacuum that is our Home Secretary, Jaqui Smith, has announced that ID cards will be 'piloted' in Manchester.

It will be interesting to see how many citizens will actually sign up for this 'popular' scheme at £60 a pop. Or will the Labour party be bunging its more braindead local members a sub to make the figures look less than dreadful? That's if any take-up figures are eventually released.

Despite the fact that this rancid government is in a state of putrescent collapse, and the economy likewise, the Home Office is ploughing ahead with this dishonourable, expensive amd dangerous project.

That equally rancid oaf, David Blunkett, keeps adding his bit by pretending that he's now against the very cards he pioneered a few years ago. Instead, he's promoting the biometric passport - in other words, everyone to have a passport rather than a separate ID card. And possibly make himself a few bob if it comes to fruition.

Do we really have to wait a year to get rid of these blood-sucking parasites?

Jacqui Boots, Destroyer Of DNA

Police to destroy DNA profiles of innocent people: the government has been compelled by a judgment by the Court of Human Rights to destroy the 800,000 DNA samples of innocent people. It's not until the sixth paragraph that the Guardian gets to mention this fact.

Jacqui Smith maintains the decision was somehow a purely internal one:

"there has to be a balance between the need to protect the public and respecting their rights. Based on risks versus benefits, our view is that we can now destroy all samples."

Very kind of you, you lying, incompetent bitch. Oh, but what's this?

"the Home Office insists that in deciding to destroy all samples on the database it has gone much further than it was compelled to by the court's ruling."

I think that qualifies as a lie, doesn't it? If it's illegal to hold DNA samples of innocent people then you should get rid of any such samples pronto. Otherwise you're breaking the law. Or is that too simple?

Crap IT contracts with the NHS: the government is notoriously inept when it comes to IT and making deals with business (and just about everything else). This ineptitude is costing us billions.

donpaskini reckons the Tories are crap at the economy:

A historical fact which occurred to me earlier today:

Over the past half century, every time a Conservative government has come to power, it has introduced disastrous economic policies which have plunged the economy into far greater crisis and made their government desperately unpopular.

The last time that a newly elected Conservative government managed even minimal competence was when they were led by Winston Churchill in 1951. The last time they managed this feat with a leader who had no previous experience of being Prime Minister was in the 1920s.

Of course, history is not always a good guide to how a party will govern. But since the current Conservative economic policy is 'ask us after the election', their candidates for parliament are mostly unembarrassed Thatcherites, and many of their highly regarded thinkers spent the past few years urging that Britain should be more like Ireland or Iceland, the signs are that they aren't likely to break their 58 year run of messing things up if they do win the election.

Which makes it all the more important that if Labour is defeated, we work out quickly how we need to change and what the lessons of the past twelve years are, in time to fix the problems that the Tories will cause.

The second paragraph works just as well if you substitute 'Labour' for 'Conservative', to be quite honest. Not once in my 55 years years has the British economy been sound and thriving; it's always been a state of crisis, or immanent crisis or just getting over one crisis in preparation for the next. The truth is, these people (politicians and economists) haven't got the faintest bloody idea what's going on or how to handle it.

Do I expect the incoming Tory government to be any more competent than the current Labour one? Not a lot. But it doesn't change my desire to see New Labour stuffed into a dustbin and pushed over Niagara.

Racist New Labour

They're always keen to label everybody else racist, but nobody's racism is as vindictive or lethal as new Labour's own. We've had the fiasco with the Gurkhas and we've still got the disgraceful treatment of Iraqi interpreters left to their fate after working for the British military.

Spawn Smacked By Kantian Imperative

Daniel Hannan and his Kantian imperative (Could Labour come fourth on 4 June?). I can't help liking someone who can come up with that:

So, if it won't alter the outcome of the election, why bother with all this door-knocking? Two reasons. First, Kantian imperative. Second, because canvassing a representative sample of your constituents serves as a kind of massive rolling focus group. It tells you what people are thinking. And what they're thinking now, at least in Berkshire, is "How do we get rid of that morose, cack-handed, wastrel, incompetent, incontinent, gurning oaf in Downing Street?"

Onset More Swivel-Eyed Spawn Surveillance

Somehow this one escaped me: Onset, another government database, which is

an assessment and referral framework designed by the Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford...launched in August 2006. It identifies whether a child would benefit from early intervention in order to help prevent him or her offending. Onset also helps to ensure the effectiveness of the intervention in any given case by determining the risk factors that should be reduced and the protective factors that should be enhanced.

(The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Bach) in Hansard).

The reply continues:

In 2007-08, the first year for which complete data are available, local authorities' youth offending teams reported to the Youth Justice Board that 22,535 children started on diversion programmes, 12,168 of whom then had an Onset assessment. Data on the numbers of children who had an Onset assessment and who subsequently received a custodial sentence are not collected centrally.

No figures, then, to assess how it's working. Very useful.

Other comment: Power to the People.

Also just come across Statebook, which is a site I shall recommend to everybody. If you want to see the range of surveillance to which we're all subjected in everyday life, there's no better place to look.

ContactPoint Falls at First Contact

Ideal Government picks up on the halting of the government's A-Database-Will-Save-All-Our-Children project, ContactPoint.

The Times reported on it earlier (some useful info on govt snooping legislation there as well):

The DCSF has confirmed that about a third of England’s 150 local authorities have failed to sign off.

This should be dismembered and buried along with Gordon Brown and New Labour.

Swivelling Spawns Spins Crapness

Second defeat in two days for Gordon (Swivelling One-eyed Spawn of the Manse Compass), this time over MPs'expenses.

It was both risible and rather pathetic watching the man try to spin his way out of it in an interview with Nick Robinson. And insulting.

I can't find a clip of that interview on the BBC site: it may be there or not. In the meantime, David Grossman's report is illuminating.

Black is white, defeat is victory in Brown's diseased New Labour world. According to him, he was the man who brought this problem to light and sought to solve it. Of course. Good job we can hear the sharpening of the knives.