The Radical Blues

Tatchell has his say on Ken

2012-02-09T14:21:00.002Z

After all the hysterical nonsense, here is an interesting and coherent statement from Peter Tatchell which challenges the idiotic claims of Ken's homophobia as well as recognising his errors of judgment. I quote it in full.

'Ken Livingstone is not homophobic. His use of the word riddled has to be judged in context. It was clearly not used with any homophobic intent. All parties have lots of gay and bisexual MPs, as Ken noted. He is right to state that there were many gay MPs in the Tory party, from the backbenches to the cabinet," said human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, who has helped spearhead campaigns for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) equality since the early 1970s.

'After Labour's election victory in 1997 many gay Labour MPs came out, while gay Tories remained in the closet and continued to vote against gay equality. Ken was making a simple statement of fact.

'Ken is correct to suggest that in the 1980s and 90s the Conservative Party was avowedly anti-gay, while having many gay MPs. Lots of Tories opposed gay equality, despite their own homosexuality. They were hypocrites and homophobes. Ken is right to point this out.

'In recent years, the Conservative leadership has embraced gay equality, which is commendable. However, only two weeks ago it was reported that 100 Tory MPs intend to block David Cameron's plan to end the ban on same-sex marriage. They still oppose gay equality.

'Ken was very wrong to invite the sexist, homophobic cleric, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, to City Hall in 2004 but he should be judged on his overall record, which on gay rights is exceptionally good.

'In the early 1980s, as leader of the Greater London Council, he pioneered gay rights policies that most MPs opposed at the time. It took many of them another 20 years to embrace gay equality. Ken supported the lesbian and gay community at a time when most other politicians did not. He deserves great credit.'

Tories try to set a riddle

2012-02-08T23:37:00.006Z

To Riddle

1 MAKE HOLES IN to damage something by making a large number of small holes in it

2 AFFECT EVERY PART to affect every part of something, eg by spreading through

They are the first two definitions of the verb according to the dictionary on my desk.

I don't think it can be argued Ken Livingstone's use of language wasn't clumsy, but the fake rage is really quite ridiculous.

Jemima Khan, the associate editor of the New Statesman, interviewed Ken, who is at the best of times glib with the press, and he said a few daft, possibly thoughtless things.

Ken launches a fairly blunt attack on what he sees as the hypocrisy over gay issues which has certainly existed within the Conservative Party.

When the topic of privacy came up Ken said; ‘(the public) should be allowed to know everything, except the nature of private relationships – unless there is hypocrisy, like some Tory MP denouncing homosexuality which they are indulging in it.’

Labour MPs had all ‘come out’, Livingstone said.

‘As soon as Blair got in, if you came out as lesbian or gay you immediately got a job. It was wonderful. You just knew the Tory party was riddled with it like everywhere else is.’

It's quite clear Ken's attack is directed at those Conservatives who supported measures like Section 28 while secretly being gay but to jump on half a sentence is dull and stupid. Tories grow up.

Dull Tories Angie Bray and Mike Freer, both London MPs, swiftly wrote to Ed Miliband calling for the remarks to be retracted, claiming they were the ‘sort of offensive remarks we hear all too often from Labour’s candidate for mayor. Ed Miliband should condemn these outragoues comments and get him to apologise immediately’.

Ken was clumsy but even a cursory examination of his record shows he isn't homophobic. Funny how they never got angry when Boris Johnson wrote this:

'If gay marriage was OK – and I was uncertain on the issue – then I saw no reason in principle why a union should not be consecrated between three men, as well as two men; or indeed three men and a dog.'

Or Roger Helmer said this:

'What I was saying was that the word homophobia has no meaning. I have never met anyone with an irrational fear of homosexuals, it is just a propagandist word created by the militant gay rights lobby.'

Indeed, Helmer has also made these comments (courtesy of LibCon):

'And while we’re mentioning semantic issues, let me point out that the neologism “homophobia” is not so much a word as a political agenda. In psychiatry, a phobia is defined as an irrational fear. I have yet to meet anyone who has an irrational fear of homosexuals, or of homosexuality. So to the extent that the word has any meaning at all, it describes something which simply does not exist.'

And

'“Homophobia” is merely a propaganda device designed to denigrate and stigmatise those holding conventional opinions, which have been held by most people through most of recorded history. It is frightening evidence of the way in which political correctness is threatening our freedom.'

The less we hear from lecturing Tories with their faux-outrage, the better I reckon.

Veto beer

2012-01-10T19:49:00.002Z

Just spotted in Wetherspoons in London Victoria. How utterly predictable, though I presume the brewery will soon also make Isolationist beer & Little Englander ale.

Health and Safety is 'pointless time-wasting'

2012-01-05T17:58:00.007Z

It is clear David Cameron couldn’t resist an easy bit of headline grabbing when he said his New Year’s resolution was to ‘kill’ Britain’s ‘health and safety culture’.

His choice of language is somewhat odd – though I presume they're somehow deliberate – as deaths are precisely what the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act was designed to prevent when it was introduced. To that end, it has proved an undoubted success. Last year, for every 100,000 employees, there was a fatal injury rate of 0.5, down from 2.9 in 1974. Non-fatal injuries fell from a total of 336,701 in 1974 to 80,479 to 2010/11.

On the basis of such figures, health and safety sounds like something we should celebrate; indeed the fact that more than 80,000 people suffered injuries at work last year might suggest some more work needed to be done.

But not according to the Prime Minister. His government is now ‘waging war against the excessive health and safety culture that has become an albatross around the neck of British businesses’.

‘I want 2012 to go down in history not just as Olympics year or Diamond Jubilee year, but the year we get a lot of this pointless time-wasting out of the British economy and British life once and for all.

‘Killing off the health and safety nonsense for good is not something government can do alone. It needs a change in the national mindset.

'We need to realise, collectively, that we cannot eliminate risk and that some accidents are inevitable. We need to take responsibility for our actions and rely on common sense rather than procedure.’

So far from being a good thing, the legislation enacted since 1974 to improve safety at work and cut out deaths is ‘pointless time-wasting’. Accidents happen. Deaths are regrettable but mustn’t be used to shackle businesses with any sense of corporate responsibility or duty of care.

There is no doubt health and safety gets unnecessarily blamed for a whole host of petty regulations. From the banning of games of conkers in the playgrounds, to cheese rolling, to holding street fairs, but in almost all cases the reality is the restrictions owe little to health and safety legislation. More often it’s the fault of petty local bureaucracy, misunderstood bylaws or just plain stupidity.

Richard Jones, the head of policy and public affairs at the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health, is not impressed. He said:

'Labelling workplace health and safety as a monster is appalling and unhelpful, as the reason our legislative system exists is to prevent death, injury or illness at work, protecting livelihoods in the process.

'The problem identified by the Government's own reviews is not the law, but rather, exaggerated fear of being sued, fed by aggressive marketing.'

I fear that is far to complex an argument for our Prime Minister who has one ear open for the lobbyists of private firms, while the other is closed to criticism.

The one thing of which to be grateful is since coming to power Cameron and others in the coalition have spoken a lot about cutting out red tape while in effect achieving nothing. One can only hope the government applies itself with consistent efficacy on this occasion.

Free advertising for supermarkets

2012-01-03T17:18:00.002Z

The government unveiled its latest weapon against obesity yesterday. It features four million recipe cards, a website of cheap, cheerful (and distinctly uninspiring) recipes and a free book by Ainsley Harriott. And, the government crowed, three supermarkets had agreed to sell health ingredients at a discount; Aldi, Asda and the Co-operative had, it said, signed up to the Change4Life deal.

The plan got off to an inauspicious start when Public Health minister Paul Burstow appeared on the Today programme and demonstrated that, despite the government spending £1.4million on the campaign, it had little idea of what exactly it involved. He admitted the government had no idea what offers the supermarkets were going to provide as part of the programme at all. He couldn’t even deny an offer might simply be ‘a penny off an apple’. And the government received no commitments from the supermarkets as to how much they would contribute to the campaign in terms of bargains

And now it has emerged Aldi isn’t really participating in the deal at all. Today the supermarket has issued a statement saying they are providing no offers as part of the campaign at all

A spokesman for Aldi said: ‘Aldi is one of the few supermarkets to offer consistently low prices and great value; therefore no exclusive offers have been created for this partnership. Aldi works hard to offer everyday low prices that shoppers can trust. We maintain exceptional supplier relations, and we are committed to sourcing products locally where possible. This helps to ensure excellent levels of product quality and value.’

So, what in fact appears to have happened is the government has spent £1.4m producing leaflet details, encouraged hard-up shoppers to go to these particular supermarkets and given a significant publicity boost to Ainsley Harriott, presumably the chief who’s career would benefit from a government advertising campaign. So I think it’s only right that the PR merchants for these supermarkets get a hearty pack on the back for convincing this gullible government into doing their job for them.

Aidan Burley's apology

2011-12-21T19:27:00.008Z

In a brief return to blogging, having been buried with work and much else recently, I observe the Tory MP, who appears to have something a fetish for Hitler, has resurfaced.

Aidan Burley, who was sacked in his role as a political bag carrier to Transport Secretary Justine Greening, has posted a lengthy apology for his involvement in a stag party in which his friends dressed as Nazis, enjoyed a few ‘Seig Heils’ and chants of ‘Hitler, Hitler, Hitler’ – all possibly illegal in France where the party occurred – while he stood on and grinned.

In his lengthy, self-pitying, missive, Mr Burley writes: ‘I want to take this opportunity to express my deepest regret at the shame I have brought upon Cannock Chase in the local, national and international media over the last ten days.’
He admits there were ‘no excuses for my foolish behaviour’ which has ‘caused so much distress to so many people’. And he says he made a ‘bad error of judgement’ and the people of Cannock Chase, his constituency, deserve better from their local MP.

‘Being involved in a stag party where an SS uniform was worn was wrong and offensive. It was the wrong decision on my part; crass and insensitive. I am deeply sorry, and want to take this opportunity to offer the people of Cannock Chase an unreserved, wholehearted and full apology for the terrible offence this incident has undoubtedly caused.’

So far, all well and contrite. But then he decides to make ‘one thing very clear’.

‘Being involved in a fancy dress party does not mean you endorse, tacitly or explicitly, the actions and philosophy of the person that is being impersonated. In fact, quite the opposite is true. I have no sympathies whatsoever with Nazism, racism or Fascism.

‘I also wish to make clear, as the Mail on Sunday did, that I personally did not participate in any alcohol-fuelled attempted toasts by other guests to the Third Reich. Nor did I participate in any chants, offensive or otherwise. As the video showed, I left the restaurant immediately when that inexcusable behaviour by other guests started.’

I’m sure all of that is perfectly true - althought the 'left immediately' claim is open to question - but it’s not much of an excuse. He’s right to say it was ‘crass and insensitive’; it’s hard to think how he could have made it worse. It might not show endorsement to be at such a party, but it clearly shows complete insensitivity and failure to grasp the sheer offence which might be caused.

Aidan Burley has refused to say whether or not he hired the suit in question and if he did alarm bells should surely have ringed loudly in his head.

A councillor would have been sacked by his party very swiftly and it’s slightly mystifying why Burley’s case has moved with such slow progress. He remains under investigation by the Conservative Party, forcing his deselection would not be ‘political correctness gone mad’, but simply appreciating that taking part in an occasion which celebrates a mass killer is not something a professional politician can really get away with.

PS: All the above would apply equally to any left wing politician celebrating the life and times Pol Pot and similar figures.

UPDATE: And so it comes to pass, the French authorities have today confirmed they are launching a criminal investigation into Aidan Burley and the antics which occurred at the Nazi-themed stag do.

The Last Dictator

2011-12-12T11:29:00.002Z

In the absence of any blogs currently - time is just too pressing - this advert for Nados is rather clever.

H/t Parlez_me_nTory

It was right to target the tram racist

2011-11-28T19:01:00.012Z

It was interesting seeing the varied reaction to the Twitter hunt for a woman captured on film unleashing a ferocious tirade of racist abuse upon other passengers of a Croydon tram who just happened to be a different colour.

There appears to be a remarkable number of objectors, particularly on the left, to there being outrage at the video at all. Certainly some have gone over the top, calling for the return of the death penalty, or saying ‘throw away the key’, but a police investigation into the incident seems entirely warranted.

Now, freedom of speech is of course vital. But this shouldn't be confused with a person's right to simply subject individuals to a shower of abuse. The two are utterly different. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean a police investigation is warranted.

A mob mentality did take hold of parts of Twitter, which isn't a pretty sight. But to suggest someone has suffered ‘trial by Twitter’, as the writer Claire Fox earlier tweeted, is frankly absurd. Any extenuating circumstances will emerge in the fullness of time.

But in this instance it appears the British Transport Police have just done their job responding to genuine public concerns and complaints. What alternative did BTP have? And while it's undeniably true that many unpleasant characters get away with this level of abuse, and worse, on a daily basis, is no reason for others to go unchallenged.

Note: Emma West, 34, has been charged with a racially aggravated public order offence under section 4 of the public order act, and was remanded in custody 'for her own protection'.

She appeared at Croydon Magistrates’ Court, crying throughout the hearing. She entered no plea and the hearing was adjourned until December pending reports.

The government's housing policy in full

2011-11-25T07:50:00.002Z

Grant Shapps just put in an appallingly mealy-mouthed performance on Radio Four's Today, relying on simple abuse and empty promises to try and defend government's failing house building policy.

Unlike Graham Chapman above, Shapps managed to answer the questions in a high-pitched whine throughout the interview.

Herman Cain resorts to racism

2011-11-23T18:10:00.004Z

I know one shouldn’t expect too much from any of the prospective Republican candidates, but they have an astonishing talent for saying the most stupid things.

It’s clearly a competition in which the competitors each bid to say the most outrageously idiotic comment; one week it’s war with Iran, another ups the stakes and takes a pop at China, while another calls for all primary school children to be armed with Kalashnikovs (ok, I admit one of those is made up).

But Herman Cain, the chap who was hitherto most famous for denying even knowing a woman who accused him of sexual harassment (that’s a claim which could return and haunt him), has really out down other riders.

Reports from the US reveal that Cain recently made an appearance at a Jesus-themed amusement park in Florida (which sounds terribly tasteful) where he spoke to the crowd which had gathered there below. And he recounted a story about his doctor during chemotherapy, a certain Dr Abdullah:

"I said to his physician assistant, I said, 'That sounds foreign — not that I had anything against foreign doctors — but it sounded too foreign.'
"She said, 'He's from Lebanon.' Oh, Lebanon! My mind immediately started thinking, wait a minute, maybe his religious persuasion is different than mine! She could see the look on my face and she said, 'Don't worry, Mr. Cain, he's a Christian from Lebanon.'"
"Hallelujah!" Cain says. "Thank God!"

So simple, casual racism is this Republicans latest campaign tactic.

Burning Barack Obama

2011-11-23T13:19:00.002Z

Young Conservatives have never enjoyed the best of reputations. From loud hoorays wearing ‘Hang Nelson Mandela’ t-shirts in the 1980s, to the John Bercow Guide to Understanding Women, they have long been seen as crass, insensitive and thoughtless. And despite the best efforts of leaders from William Hague to David Cameron, it appears little has really changed.

In St Andrew’s last Friday, the university’s Tory group gathered together and thought it would be a spiffing lark to spark up a bonfire, upon which they would dump an effigy of Barack Obama. ‘Ah ha, what hijinks’, they might have cried, ‘let’s keep warm by this model of the burning corpse of the first black president of the United States’.

It’s hard to know where to begin with this lot. While the group might protest their intention was not racist, it is not necessarily the way in which it might be interpreted. They may have got away with burning effigies of Gordon Brown and Hazel Blears in the past – extremely tasteless but sadly par for the course. But Barack Obama? It is not even as though they have the defence he has done anything to St Andrew’s Tories to provoke such a reaction. It can only have been done because here is an internationally admired politician who is not of their political persuasion. Maybe the laughable Tea Party movement, and their ludicrous claims that the US president is in some way a socialist, has subverted its way into the gullible minds of these young Tories.

And all of that is before we get to the potential damage in relations between David Cameron and Barack Obama. I doubt the US president will be particularly pleased to learn that youngsters from the Prime Minister's own party have been indulging their wilder instincts with such glee.

It doesn’t require a great mind to realise the impression this might make and it’s hard to credit that not one of those present had the wherewithal to suggest it might not be very clever.

Speaking to the BBC, president of the association Matthew Marshall admitted it was a ‘stupid thing to do’.

‘President Obama is an important ally to the British Government. It was a stupid thing to do and we apologise for any offence caused.’

I’m glad the penny has finally dropped and the dimwit has acknowledged what a stupid thing it was to do. Unfortunately for him, the matter has not just been closed. The university authorities are investigating the event and Sam Fowles, the director of representation at the union, said: ‘I do not believe this was a racist act but I don’t believe that it makes it any less disgusting. Student representatives have shown that the vast majority of St Andrews students are much better than this sort of puerile and offensive behaviour.’

We'll see what happens.

Postscript: I've heard it suggested that the actions of this group is no worse than those who say they will dance on the grave of Margaret Thatcher. Firstly, it should be acknowledged that this is a tasteless and offensive thing to say, but it is a metaphor. People won't actually dance on her grave and, indeed, there would not be space for all those who have expressed the sentiment to physically carry it out.

An effigy of Barack Obama was actually burned. Of course, I doubt any of these Tories would actually want to burn Obama to death but the echoes of lynchings are hard to escape.

I would argue the Thatcher barbs, and the creation of sites like this http://www.isthatcherdeadyet.co.uk/ owe more to the savage satire of figures like Pope, Swift, John Wilkes, Hogarth and Gillray.

Time to harvest the pizza tree

2011-11-16T19:38:00.009Z

A vegetable yesterday

If you’re feeling peckish, but want to keep healthy, what could be better than a rummage in your freezer, grabbing a slice of pizza and sticking it in the oven? Hey presto! In a few minutes you will have your healthy snack, steaming, juicy and moreish. Don’t worry about the lashings of hot, dripping, melting cheese, the thick, spicy slices of pepperoni, the tiny slivers of vegetables cooked within an inch of their lives, the thick dough base. For remember, between the bread and the cheese, topped by your favourite flavours, is a thin layer of tomato paste. And that, according to Congress, is a vegetable and can count towards one of your five a day.

Now disregarding the somewhat pedantic discussion of whether a tomato is a fruit of vegetable (for my money the tomato is a fruit), this is precisely what Congress in the United States is set to rule. President Barack Obama knows the US has one of the worst child obesity rates in the world and when he was elected to office he and his wife Michelle made it clear that trying to improve diets would be one of his missions. Where better to start than with children?

So, in his Spending Bill it contained provisions as to what should and what shouldn’t be served to the nation’s children at school. But, inevitably, big businesses were not happy.

President Obama wanted to see the promotion of grains, pulses and more healthy options pushed ahead of food pizza. No more slices served up at breakfast was the hope. Under Obama’s plans it was going to be ruled that half-a-cup would be counted as a vegetable, which would have been too much for pizzas.

And wading into the debate, armed with nothing but their blatant self-interest, came the American Frozen Food Institute (doesn't that fill you with confidence, clearly a purveyor of fine foods). These are the people who have spent $5million lobbying certain individuals, namely Republicans, trying to persuade them that their processed, high fat, salty, junk food is actually healthy.

And the Republicans bought it. Obviously getting funds from lobbyists is much more satisfying than actually trying to deal with a real and serious health issue which seriously threatens the long term prospects not just of the people themselves, but also the United States itself.

These selfish corrupt Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee said the changes would ‘prevent overly burdensome and costly regulations and to provide greater flexibility for local school districts to improve the nutritional quality of meals’. Although there is no evidence that such flexibility has led to such a rise.

Potato limits have also been blocked so children can have chips with their pizza too.

If this comes to pass - it still has to be signed off by Barack Obama who might protest - I'm happy to predict there will not be an increase in choice for America's school children when they go to the canteen. They will be stuck with the same junk; pizza, chips, processed food, all ready and waiting to stuff down their pasty, fat faces while their belt buckles strain under the pressure.

Two fingers from the Baroness

2011-11-14T18:14:00.003Z

This redoubtable lady clearly doesn't suffer fools gladly. Despite Lord Tom King of Bridgewater sitting on her side, she wasted no time in telling him what she thought of him when the subject of her age came up.

She's 89 by the way.

'The End of History?'

2011-11-03T23:44:00.005Z

Francis Fukuyama famously declared the ’End of History’ after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the old eastern bloc. It was hyperbolic nonsense of course. But one argument did end: capitalism defeated socialism as the primary economic and political model for much of the planet.

The right have not exactly been shy in trumpeting this achievement. For the last couple of decades rarely has an opportunity drifted by without some right-leaning figure popping up and reminding everyone that capitalism was victorious.

And yet, I’ve lost count of the number of times, since the economic collapse of 2007/2008, that I've been told the fault lies with socialist economics.

There's no doubt left leaning governments across the planet made errors. But so have the right wing administrations. Where there is Papandreou, Berlusconi appears in the mirror. It's not an issue of dogmatic politics; every government in Europe works on an internationally accepted model of capitalism. Then they add their own, often daft, little quirks. Capitalism remains the primary force.

There's nothing socialist about the Greek economy. The state might be huge but it's not a democratic decision, it's just simply corruption. Low tax yields were always a problem in Greece regardless of the administration. Italy has comparative levels of corruption but has the benefit of actually having assets and industry. Under Berlusconi, who has probably irretrivably corrupted his nation, Italy will struggle to avoid collapse.

A universal seam is companies are encouraged to avoid tax, for their shareholders, while their wider social responsibility appear irrelevant. It's not all capitalism's fault either. The guilt lies with the bastard child of capitalism and state-led corruption. That is Rosemary's Baby.

In truth, politics barely enters into this. It's about corruption, incompetence and idiocy. Ideology is utterly irrelevant.

The democratic problems of Europe

2011-11-01T23:27:00.004Z

It’s hardly surprising there is fury amongst European countries after the Greek prime minister suddenly announced the much vaunted rescue plan could only go ahead if it got the backing of a public vote.

Through tortuous negotiations never, it appears, was the prospect of a referendum mentioned by George Papandreou, so the anger is perhaps understandable.

But in a very real sense, the reaction underlines one of the major problems of the entire European Union project: its appalling lack of democratic accountability. As European states struggled to come to terms with the enormity of the problem, Nicolas Sarkozy said something instructive; ‘To give a voice to the people is always legitimate, but the solidarity of all the Eurozone countries cannot be exercised without everyone consenting to the necessary efforts’. The deal thrashed out last week is the only one on the table, the French president insisted.

And in many ways he is right. Polls suggest the Greek population are deeply unhappy at the stringent austerity measures which are being imposed upon them, the invasive scrutiny which oversee their progress and the years of stagnant growth which will inevitably entail. So their response in a referendum seems unlikely to fit into the plan mapped out by Europe’s rulers. Thus the entire future of the economic union has been thrust into uncertainty.

It’s certainly true that the Greek government consistently lied about the security of their finances. Though there should have been sensible suspicion of the pretty blatant untruths. It’s not exactly secret that corruption is widespread and tax revenue is hopeless. And the British government, but especially their European colleagues, have been spectacular in their reckless inability at solving the problem, which raised its head months ago.

But despite taking factors such as these into account, the actions of the vast majority of Greeks did nothing to lead their country to its current predicament. Why, they ask, should they be punished for the reckless actions of others?

As the European Union grown and gained power over the last couple of decades, democratic accountability has fallen by the wayside. And I write this as, essentially, a pro-European. Commissioners are appointed, decisions are made. Meanwhile, a paltry number of people bother to appear at the election booths to mark their voting cards for European elections. Members are too remote, too unknown, too irrelevant and, frequently, disgracefully money grabbing.

Putting votes to the people has simply not been part of the plan. On the occasions when referenda have been out to voters, if the wrong result occurs, new votes have taken place until the right result is given.

Prime Minister Papandreou has no legitimate mandate for the measures to which his government has agreed; that’s pretty clear from the reaction of the population. But this brazen act of democracy has thrown the security of the whole set up into doubt. For many good political reasons, if the referendum went ahead it would be the wrong debate at the wrong time.

The knock on effects could be catastrophic. Italy’s borrowing rates have soared dangerously up to 6.3%, and other countries are likely to follow.

But perhaps, Greece will be cut free and others might follow; a slimmed down economic union with greater checks and balances might emerge from the wreckage. I still think it unlikely the Euro will die as a currency. Too many political interests are tied up in its success. And let’s not forget it remains a youthful currency with some hugely wealthy and influential countries involved; despite the crowing of the eurosceptic, and still mainly looney, right, it is likely to remain a major power, especially while Germany is involved.

Chaos under Ken

2011-11-01T19:29:00.004Z

While the Eurozone economy stands on the edge of the precipice, as way of idle distraction I’ve just had an peak at the completely incoherent prisons policy of this coalition.
In the coalition agreement the government said it believed ‘that more needs to be done to ensure fairness in the justice system’. Of course this can mean almost anyone to anybody depending on their definition of fairness but it does rather mean the coalition’s justice policies are – to steal that daft phrase of Ed Miliband’s – a bit of a ‘blank page’.

With such a policy vacuum it’s hardly surprising the Ministry of Justice, and Ken Clarke in particular, are all over the place. Let’s just look at the last week

Part one

On Tuesday, October 26, he publicly criticised government plans to introduce mandatory sentences for teenagers carrying knives. It would be ‘a bit of a leap for the British justice system’, condemned it as a bit ‘American’, and warned it would be a ‘totally different system of sentencing juveniles’.

And he warned that such political interference in the work of the judiciary would only make judge try and find ways around such sentencing restrictions. ‘This is a game that should not go on between parliament and the courts and needs to be considered with great care,’ he said.

Part two

The following day Ken Clarke set out plans to introduce mandatory life sentences for crimes other than murder. A new offence for 16 and 17-year-olds threatening anyone with a knife would come with a mandatory sentence - even for this administration that was a speedy u-turn. And he defended the new automatic life sentences saying they would apply in cases where someone had committed two ‘probably near murderous attacks’. Such loose, vague talk coming from a trained lawyer is not exactly reassuring.

Part three

Today, Ken Clarke announced indeterminate sentences for serious criminals should be scrapped. ‘What we are putting in place is protection for the public, far more rational, determinate sentences, much more in line with how we think the British system should behave,’ he told the Commons.

And yet, isn’t that exactly what he warned against just a week ago? Suddenly a tool of judges is to go. The sentencing freedom Clarke was so stoutly defending last Tuesday has been limited by the man himself.

This is not a point about whether any of these measures are good or bad; today’s proposals, for example, have their supporters and critics on both sides of the House. It’s about coherence. In just one week we have seen the same arm of government behaving in an utter schizophrenic fashion.

It's well documented that the prison population is too high. Too many people are locked up for far too many offences - mainly, but not all, the result of successive Labour Home Secretaries competing to be the most illiberal.

We have already seen how Ken Clarke's plans to cut the prison population were swiftly shot down by the Conservative right. Now it's clear the government is making up its justice policy on the hoof. And it's a right mess.

NB Sorry for the very poor lack of blogging in recent months. It’s simply due to a heavy work schedule. To quote a school report, ‘MUST DO BETTER’.

A parliamentary waste of time

2011-10-24T21:26:00.008+01:00

I had considered writing a serious piece about how this is the wrong time for a referendum in the EU debate but it's really not worth it.

There are many problems with the European Union. It is a democratic basketcase, with unelected commissioners, spurious dictats and money is wasted on staggering scale. And I say this as, basically, a pro-European.

But today's debate is a stunning waste of time. If it was binding it would be interesting. The only fascination is the bizarrely kamikaze tactics deployed by David Cameron in his approach to whole affair.

The government has been held hostage by a damn stupid petition website which was always going to be exploited by those with pet hates, prejudices and agendas. It was never going to be constructive. It wasn't about giving people a voice, it was about pretending to give people a voice. Rarely have I been so contemptuous of our politicians.

And so here we have an entirely redundant debate. Rarely has so much hot air been expelled for so pointless a reason. The vote will fail (oh look, it did). And even if it didn't, there wouldn't be a referendum.

Meanwhile, the European economy is on the verge of collaspe, the British economy is stagnating and on neither issue has there been a proper debate. There are huge matters to discuss and this stupid House of Commons doesn't bother.

Today's debate has been a massive episode in self-indulgence.

Gaddafi is not the first dead tyrant

2011-10-20T17:38:00.006+01:00

It's quite hard to believe that we are now in a world without Colonel Gaddafi. But these moments are always quite hard to grasp in their immediacy. But, bringing the reality very close to home, perhaps the most explicit and convincing footage of a dictator's demise has been broadcast and published by the media today. He is dead. Of that we can be sure.

But the scenes have certainly prompted anger and disquiet. I've seen several people expressing their upset at seeing the visceral images of Gaddafi's demise and it is gruesome. Even a tyrant like Gaddafi deserves dignity in death. Newspapers and the media should not be broadcasting and publishing such upsetting images.

Well, possibly true. But he didn't get dignity in death. He was hauled from a sewer, filmed by mobile phone and at some point executed. And his brutal death, and its public broadcast, isn't something new.

Here is Benito Mussolini and his mistress:

And there's Ceausescu:

And most recently Saddam Hussein:

So while the images are appalling, they are bound to be published and mark a moment of history. Sometimes upset is the appropriate action.

UPDATE: While I defended the use of papers to print gruesome pictures of a dead Colonel Gaddafi, the Sun has pushed boundaries of taste just too far. Their hack in the country decided it would be fun to be photographed with the old tyrant's bloody corpse. And then they published the picture. And I shamelessly provide the link:

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/3889160/Dead-Dog.html

I wouldn't be surprised his beggars and hangers on carefully shaved and ear off as a trophy after the picture was taken.

Quite terrifyingly tasteless and deplorable.

Cafe versus Crossrail

2011-10-07T13:06:00.006+01:00

One of my favourite magazines dropped through my letter box earlier this week. You will find little mention Allegedly Hot News International on the internet and will only find it at the odd jazz gig or record shop, but every quarter subscribers across the world let out an exclamation of glee when this magazine arrives. Put together in a very traditional cut and paste way by Soho stalwart Dick Laurie, the leader of the Elastic Band, it combines jazz news, whimsy, dodgy jokes and dodgier cartoons. Altogether it is a delight.

Anyway, the latest edition features this advertisement (below) for the Star Cafe, in Great Chapel Street, Soho. Founded in 1933, this institution is facing one of its gravest threats as work continues on Crossrail. It's turned a once vibrant Great Chapel Street into an alleyway but Mario Forte, son of the cafe's founder, doggedly works on. Hence the defiant message 'We survived World War Two, We survived Mrs Thatcher, We'll survive Crossrail'.

Whereas a nearby Tesco Metro has been allowed to post a sign on the temporary wall, which hides the Crossrail constructions from view, informing shoppers where to find the store, the Star Cafe has been prevented from doing so. It seems this independent cafe has less clout within the corridors of Westminster City Council and Crossrail than the depressingly all-pervasive shopping empire.

So I would encourage all who can to hunt out this terrifically old fashioned cafe and support it through these difficult times.

And you never know, you might find a copy of Allegedly Hot News International to entertain you while dine.

Update: In a previous incarnation, Boris Johnson's deputy mayor, Kit Malthouse served for many years as Westminster City Council's cabinet member for finance. One of his party pieces towards the end of his tenure was to boast about the security of Westminster's coffers. The economy of Westminster is bigger than the whole of Wales, he would claim, and he would frequently express the ambition that he would steer the council into the first place in the country to have zero Council Tax (save for the Mayor of London's precept). Needless to say it never happened and now Westminster's finances are not looking so rosy.

A consequence, a correspondent has pointed out, is the recently announced parking charges for evenings and weekends to hit the centre of London from Christmas. The council, inevitably, insists it is not a money grabbing operation but prudent controlling of traffic. Balls of course. Westminster Council earns more money from parking charges and fines than any other place in the country. The 4.80 pounds it plans to charge an hour are a simple but blunt method of raising much needed cash. It's anticipated the council will raise 7million pounds a year from the new charges. Yet another obstacle for poor Mario at the Star Cafe, and thousands of other businesses, have to overcome in these difficult times. And just thing, this is all under a Tory-led government which claims it is cutting red tape.

The assassination of Rory Weal

2011-09-29T00:31:00.006+01:00

Woe betide anyone wanting to become a politician. Any eager teenager keen on life as a minister better be prepared to a full and exhaustive trawl through their private life. It matters not whether they have have left school. And one more piece of advice, after the bullying, tribal attacks on 16-year-old Rory Weal, if you happen to hold left-wing view, make sure you’re on the bread line.

Following in the well-known footsteps of William Hague, the then hairy Thatcherite youth who appeared at the Conservative Party conference in 1977, Rory Weal rose up earlier this week at the Labour Party conference to defend the welfare state.

Before a gripped conference he said: ‘Two and a half years ago, the home I had lived in since birth was repossessed… I owe my entire wellbeing and that of my family to the welfare state. That is why I joined the Labour Party. That very same welfare state is being ruthlessly ripped apart by a vicious, rightwing Tory-led government.’

Powerful stuff. The Labour faithful loved it and gave him a standing ovation as the 16-year-old stalked off stage, ever-so-slightly chuffed by the reception. And he was lauded. He spoke with passion, conviction, fluency and anger. Whether it is true really doesn't matter. Even Ladbrokes pencilled in the odds of him becoming Prime Minister by 2040.

But there’s a long way to go yet. After all, the right wing press have only just got started. Seemingly affronted by the sight of a coherent, lucid 16 year-old leftie, the tribal Tory media, with their Lib Dem lapdogs, have gone into overdrive with an extraordinary campaign of character assassination. It turns out that Rory once went to a private school and even now goes to a grammar. His father was once a millionaire. How dare he talk of the welfare state, they froth, seemingly forgetting it's there for everyone and not just the destitute. If you have money, it seems, you can't be left wing.

And the circumstances of his life seem to have been ignored and forgotten. As a 13/14 year-old he lost his childhood home and his family disintegrated. I don't know what services he relied upon but something worked. Here is a kid who, despite personal trauma, has secured good GCSEs and has a very promising future. But, the right choose instead to try and besmirch his character instead.

The predictable hacks were out in force. The despicable Guido Fawkes took a pop, commentators on the Daily Telegraph and the egregious Melanie Phillips had a go.

In fact, I think you would struggle to find a more explicit example of the terrible, irresponsible power of the media than her column. Vindictive, bullying, and utterly unreasonable, it reveals nothing but the inadequate nature of Melanie Phillips. Her article, under the quite paranoid headline of 'The Labour Mantra of hate finds a new star in 16-year-old Weal', can be found here and an excellent critique by The Guardian's Zoe Williams here.

On Twitter, the conversation has followed similar lines. Rory Weal has faced severe personal attacks. Oddly, his actual points have rarely been challenged. I had a long debate with a couple of Liberal Democrat supporters about Rory and both were convinced he misrepresented his position. Neither, of course, could realistically defend such an argument as they know so little of his personal details. Had attacking his arguments been the focus that would not have been an issue.

Instead, we've had the very ugly spectacle of tribal Tories and loyal Lib Dems attack and question the life of a 16 year-old boy simply because he had the temerity to speak fluently, attack their political positions and not be poor enough.

As Owen Jones fluently argues in Chavs, the real class warriors are Tories. How true he is. Only now the Lib Dems have joined them.

'I dream of a recession'

2011-09-26T21:30:00.002+01:00

The above is an eye-opening appearance from trader Alessio Rastani today (September 26) on the BBC. On Twitter he describes himself as an ‘Experienced Stock Market and Forex trader. Keynote speaker on share trading. Mentor and dedicated to helping others succeed.’ And he came across as charming, competent and utterly ruthless. In one brief segment he explicitly demonstrated the arrogance, utter lack of morality and appallingly unfettered power of the markets.

Governments were not in charge, he told viewers, Goldman Sachs was. As far as the Euro was concerned, and with it the European economy it seems, it was 'toast'. On this, I'm close to agreeing. But unlike most of us, he desperately pines for a recession.

‘Personally I’ve been dreaming of this moment for three years,' he said, to the obvious consternation of the presenter.

‘I have a confession which is I go to bed every night and I dream of another recession.’

The Great Depression of the 1930s had been a wonderful opportunity for those who knew how to make money. Sod the rest of the world, it seems. But, he insisted, he didn't want the benefits for the 'elite' he told us; anyone can make this fast and guilty bucks, but it's hard to think many people really have the expertise of someone like, say, George Soros. The best thing people could do was prepare, was the best he could say.

It was, I must admit, a tour de force from Mr Rastani; impossible not to admire. But it confirmed like nothing else why the notion of a free market is in reality anything but and would strip power away from so many completely innocent people.

Blood diamonds. Pah! Who cares?

2011-09-23T17:07:00.001+01:00

It's hard to think of anything that could be more tasteless than this diamond encrusted pendant I've just spotted in a jewellers off Hatton Garden.

The diamonds are most likely to be of the blood variety though their provenance, of course, is unknown. But stamped on the front are the words 'Oil Money Gang' and around them in a ring it reads 'Libreville Respect Loyalty Honor Family'. I don't know how much this Gabonese piece of bling is, but judging from the zeroes on display in the rest of the shop window, it can safely be assumed thousands.

I'm sure it's the ideal decoration for some wannabe crook.

The killing of Troy Davis

2011-09-22T07:11:00.007+01:00

So despite all the doubt, the last minute pleas from clemency from the Pope, a former FBI director, Jimmy Carter, the mass criticism of governments across Europe, the concerns over the evidence, the vigils in London, Paris and outside Georgia's death chamber, Troy Davis was executed at 11.08pm local time.

In a tortuous last few hours, his lawyers made last ditch appeals to the Supreme Court for the lethal injection to be commuted but they refused and there was no intervention from President Barack Obama. This barbaric blood lust in a country which claims to be civilised has been sated for now. Indeed two executions took place last night. Along with Davis, white supremacist killer Lawrence Brewer was also killed; a hateful man no doubt, but the death penalty in all cases is wrong.

Davis had been on death row in since 1989 when he was convicted of the murder of Mark MacPhail, an off-duty policeman who, while working as a security guard, was shot three times before able to pull out his gun when he went to the aid of a homeless man who was being attacked. MacPhail's family welcomed the execution but until the last Davis protested his innocence.

It was the fourth time Davis has been scheduled for the lethal injection since 2007 and on the previous three occasions last minute pleas have been listened to. Not this time.

The questions over the evidence have been aired over and over again but they deserve reiterating and Ed Pilkington at The Guardian lists them clearly here. But that from nine witnesses, seven have withdrawn their evidence already casts enough doubt on the conviction.

Georgia has an odd relationship with the death penalty. Since 1976 51 people have been executed but it was in 1972, in the Furman v Georgia case, in which the Supreme Court deemed death penalty laws to be 'cruel and unusual', effectively outlawing the practice across the country. But in 1976, state executions in Georgia resumed after a re-drafted death penalty law was nodded through by the Supreme Court.

Currently, there are 103 people on death row in the state and according to Davis' lawyer Thomas Ruffin, 48.4 per cent of those are black in a state where they make just 15 per cent of the population.

Unusually, Georgia is just one of five states in which the governor cannot intervene to stop an execution; instead the decision lies with the State Board of Pardons. And as each application to stop Troy Davis' killing has been refused, each time the Board has refused to address publicly the many questions over the validity of the conviction. Political accountability for state sponsored killing has thus been effectively removed.

But there have been attempts to make the situation even worse. In February this year State representative Bobby Franklin introduced a bill which would criminalise miscarriages, make all abortion illegal in the state and make both 'crimes' potentially punishable by death. According to the words of the bill, women who suffer a miscarriage would be required to prove there was no 'human involvement whatsoever in the causation'. The bill, which you will be surprised to learn is shockingly anti-science, would also make women responsible for the foetus from 'the moment of conception'; a pretty tough thing to establish. There's more information on this ludicrous bill here.

Franklin also suggested women who claim to have been raped should be referred to as 'accusers' rather than 'victims'. This charming man was clearly a bit of a loony. He also had proposed the abolition of income taxes and once called for all transactions to be paid with gold and silver. In July this year he was found dead in his bed and his appalling bills appear to have died with him.

Ironically, upon Franklin's desk was a framed copy of the Ten Commandments; he, like so many pro-lifers who are oddly so very keen on the death penalty, appears not to have heeded 'Thou shalt not kill'.

Is there more for Osborne from the GQ curse?

2011-09-12T14:09:00.002+01:00

An entertaining little snippet from today's Media Monkey on the chancellor's embarrassing appearance at the GQ awards last week.

The article suggests GQ's curse hit Osborne rather quickly after he displayed his juvenile sense of humour. It adds: 'Last year's men of the year included Martin Amis (quit Britain six months later bemoaning personal criticism and "moral decrepitude"), Ryan Giggs (soon engulfed in multiple sex scandals) and Simon Kelner (lost his job as Independent editor).'

Perhaps, though, Osborne has not escaped the curse so lightly after the fascinating allegations emanating from the US. More details available here http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/09/took-cocaine-osborne-rowe

Of course the allegations do concern the high-jinks of a young man and we shouldn't be too judgmental. But, if true, they do confirm all of one's opinions about our chancellor.

George Osborne lowers the tone

2011-09-08T13:59:00.001+01:00

The chancellor does of course lower the tone when he enters any room, but his appearance at the GQ Awards where he inexplicably won Politician of the Year was extremely crass.

Very few politicians well and George Osborne certainly isn’t one of the talented few. But I wish he didn’t have the day job to fall back on.

And what is with David Mitchell’s beard?

Nadine's latest foray on Today

2011-09-05T19:50:00.003+01:00

The egregious Nadine Dorries appeared on the Today programme this morning to push her anti-abortion agenda. Together with her tag team partner Frank Field, the MP for Mid-Bedfordshire, has put forward an amendment to the Health and Social Care Bill which, if successful, will prevent organisations like Marie Stopes and the British Pregnancy Advisory Service from providing abortion patients with counselling.

It would be generous to credit her campaign as sneaky but her showing on Today was really quite extraordinary as she was able to make allegations about BPAS’ procedures without facing a challenge.

In the world of Dorries, apparently BPAS’ biggest clinic, in London, has the ‘largest through-put of women’ but offers just ‘one hour of counselling per week’. If that was not available the woman would have to wait a week or, being a London patient, have to travel to Richmond.

Presenter Sarah Montague then asked Ms Dorries if she thought organisations like BPAS had a profit motive.

Nadine responded by saying that in the job descriptions of BPAS’ business development managers they talked about wanting ‘to increase their market share so one could say that’.

But simply, her message was that the moment a woman walks into a clinic it was a ‘fait accompli’ and all she and Frank want to do is increase choice and counselling.

Even as I listened to this, as I clambered on a Boris Bike this morning, I could scarcely believe the claims to be true. And why, I wondered, had no one from BPAS been put up by the BBC to rebut her comments? Not knowing the inner workings of Today, no answer was available but before the end of the programme Sarah Montague read out their reply.

Nadine's claims, according to BPAS, were ‘categorically untrue’. Instead of just one hour available to all women per week, all women in fact ‘are offered as much counselling when they are going for an abortion as they wish’.

Ms Dorries might have found more about BPAS’ service had she contacted them. But no, that’s a step too far for the Conservative MP.

BPAS continued: ‘Nadine Dorries has never contacted BPAS to find out about how care is provided. BPAS is a not-for-profit charity with no financial incentive to increase the number of abortions.’

It’s still shocking the BBC didn’t get someone from BPAS to counter Ms Dorries’ claims in person but it is possible even they were not ready for her deliberate misinformation. One might have thought, however, her word is not particularly reliable especially as she has confessed her blog to be ’70 per cent fiction’.

Channel 4’s Factcheck has gone to town on Dorries’ latest exploits. In it, BPAS say that far from being their biggest clinic, their London base is small and while there is one hour set aside for one-one the service if ‘flexible enough to provide more such sessions as and when they are requested’.

Unusually for Factcheck they harshly judge Dorries’ behaviour, saying making such misleading claims wouldn’t ‘befit a nurse, let alone an MP’.

I can do no better than agree.

The perils of autocorrect

2011-09-02T00:51:00.004+01:00

It seemed like a wonderful opportunity. Dear Wife was stuck at work and though it was drizzling enough to make west Wales proud, London was open for exploration; where should I go?

In the event I took the London Overground from Penge West to Wapping, partly because of the many decent pubs in the area, but also because East London remains much of a mystery to me. And what would be more fun, I thought, than to take the odd photograph and tweet the odd comment.

After about half an hour, with the rain pretty incessant, I tweeted the something on the lines of the following: 'The only people joining me on this rainy Thamesside walk are joggers and a lonely woman flat hunting'. With that done I continued with my very satisfying day of exploration traversing East London and the City.

A couple of days later a dear friend of mine wondered why I had been tweeting about 'niggers'. I hadn't I assured him. I would never do such a thing. But, once presented with the evidence, there on my Twitter feed was the passage: 'The only people joining me on this rainy Thamesside walk are niggers and a lonely woman flat hunting'.

Appalled, the tweet was deleted immediately and I made apologies on Twitter (and another one here).

But how had it happened?

I looked at my phone and keyed in the word joggers and, depressingly enough, the default for the keys I was pressing was 'niggers'. I hasten to add it's not a word I have ever used in any circumstances. I hope and presume anyone who knows me would know it's not something I would ever say, think, use or abuse.

Yet there it was.

I can only think the word had been typed at a factory somewhere when the phone was being tested or something along those lines. A call has been made to manufacturers HTC though I'm yet to hear the result.

But, with hindsight, I am ultimately at fault and anyone offended, who missed my tweets, I am sorry. I must read my comments more carefully, even in the rain, in case other unfortunate defaults are within my phone.

I shudder to think what might happen if I go punting on the Cam.

Justice: Two cases of youthful indiscretion

2011-08-18T01:07:00.004+01:00

Consider two statements:

'I just behaved very, very badly. I was on an exchange in Germany and I drank far, far, far too much. I was a teenager. I lost it, really.

'They had this beer brewed in monasteries near Munich. Kloster Andechs. Unbelievably strong. Which clearly I couldn't take.

'We didn't know what we were doing. We were teenagers, we'd drunk too much much - frankly, we did behave appallingly, irresponsibily, criminally'.

And the second:

'She has never been in trouble before and on the night in question she was at a friend's address and they knew about the riots in Peckham. A decision was made to see what was happening.

'She went into [the] store that had already been looted and took a bottle of Lucozade from the counter at Poundland. She did not fully appreciate the serious of her actions.

'She gave a full and frank interview to police.'

In the first case arsonists burned down the collection of a chap who had spent a lifetime travelling the world gathering exotic cacti.

In the second, a 17-year-old churchgoing girl, who had never previously been in trouble with the police, stole a bottle of fizzy pop from a looted store.

Again, in the first case, conversations were had and no criminal charges were pressed. The boys responsible were instructed to dig a flower bed.

In the latter, the girl is languishing in jail somewhere after a judge told her she faced a 'lengthy prison sentence'.

In the first case, one of the boys and the chap quoted was Nick Clegg, then 16, when he was a pupil at Westminster School.

In the second, the girl is from Peckham.

Mob justice follows mob violence

2011-08-16T19:53:00.004+01:00

Any lingering hopes the coalition might see the restoration of civil liberties and follow a more sensible sentencing policy after Labour's excesses, have been well and truly dashed this week as the courts dish out vengeful and excessive sentences on rioters and the government plots such draconian measures as no-go areas and controls over social media.

A major drain on this country’s finances is a prison system which locks far too many people up. It’s now only going to get worse.

Already it is clear the government is putting pressure on magistrates to deal with looters severely. Yesterday, Novello Noades, the chair of the bench at Camberwell Green Magistrates’ Court, told the assembled gathering magistrates had been ordered to pass jail sentences on all those involved in last week’s violence. She said: ‘Our directive for anyone involve in the rioting is a custodial sentence.’

Downing Street spent much of yesterday trying to persuade newspapers they weren’t trying to influence the decisions of independent courts, after all the government intervening in independent court procedures is a serious claim. But the front pages, from The Guardian to The Daily Telegraph, show they had little success. Downing Street’s argument was rather undermined by David Cameron himself. As he climbed up on his hind quarters in the House of Commons last week to give his emergency statement, the Prime Minister said: ‘Anyone charged with violent disorder and other serious offences should expect to be remanded in custody, not let back on the streets; and anyone convicted should expect to go to jail.’

As a consequence of this febrile atmosphere courts across the land are now acting with an efficiency and ruthlessness which wouldn’t be out of place in a tinpot dictatorship. The mobs which roamed our streets should be punished but now courts are being fuelled by a misplaced sense of mob vengeance which terribly undermines the justness of our courts.

So we now see cases where a 17 year-old girl, who has never been in trouble with the law before, facing a jail sentence after admitting stealing a bottle of Lucozade during the riots. The churchgoing teen, who hopes to sign up for a health and science course at college, went down to the riots and Peckham to see what was going on and took a bottle of Lucozade from a looted Poundland. She is now being held in custody with District Judge Tan Ikram considering ‘a lengthy period of detention’. Apparently, he took her guilty plea into consideration.

Elsewhere, a court heard about another character who also has never been in trouble with the law before also faces jail, despite there being no evidence against him. Anthony Leckey, 26, called police and tried to hand back the goods he nicked from a Comet store in Croydon, only to find they had already been stolen by someone else. Again, he’s in custody awaiting sentence.

And this evening we hear of the pair who have been jailed for four years each, not for rioting, or thieving, but posting comments on Facebook which incited rioting. That any rioting failed to occur seems not to be relevant. Jordan Blackshaw, 20, and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22, were arrested by police after they established the Facebook pages ‘Smash Down Northwich Town’ and ‘Let’s have a Riot in Latchford’ respectively. It can certainly be said these two are pretty stupid and considering the state of the country last week can expect a reaction by the state, but four years each is absurd. Both, Chester Crown Court heard, were of previous good character.

So while we have the courts behaving in this manifestly knee-jerk and unthinking fashion, it appears the government are trying to compete.

The families of rioters who live in council homes face being evicted and losing their benefits. I wondered to a colleague what secondary punishment a home owner convicting of rioting should receive and the only suggestion was they should be moved into the now vacant council homes.

Theresa May wants to increase police powers to combat rioting. We can ignore headline seeking gimmicks such as having water cannons on 24-hour standby – after all what use is a water cannon 24-hours after a riot. But the government is seriously considering introducing wider curfew powers for the police, to introduce ‘no-go areas’. This is an impractical policy more in keeping with apartheid South Africa not a mature democracy.

And the government is seriously considering adopting powers which would allow the authorities to shut down social networking sites like Twitter. Already the proposal has got the support of the Chinese authorities. In today's China Daily, their editorial spoke gushingly of the idea.

The newspaper said: ‘The British government, once an ardent advocate of absolute Internet freedom, has thus made a U-turn over its stance towards web-monitoring.
‘We may wonder why western leaders, on the one hand, tend to indiscriminately accuse other nations of monitoring, but on the other take for granted their steps to monitor and control the Internet.
‘The Internet is also a double-edged sword that cuts both ways. For the benefit of the general public, proper web-monitoring is legitimate and necessary.’

Earlier, Nadine Dorries appeared on the Today Programme to defend the idea. She is no government spokeswoman but no senior figure has appeared to dismiss such an obviously reactionary, interventionist measure.

One keeps hoping a mature democracy would react in a mature fashion in the face of such a crisis, but no. Instead, the Tories have reverted to their default hang 'em and flog 'em position, while the Lib Dems continue their impotence. Mob violence is being followed by mob justice and it will do nothing to help pull the country out of this dark period.

A place to escape the riots: the E4 bunker

2011-08-11T12:48:00.002+01:00

It's not new or accurate or fair but it's quite apt and timely. And pretty funny. Still won't watch E4 though.

Sean Boscott's jokes

2011-08-10T15:25:00.013+01:00

UPDATE 5:

I've decided to remove the post featuring jokes from Sean Boscott's Twitter account from this blog because, while they reveal the singular unpleasantness of whomever wrote them, their posting no longer serves its purpose.

Mr Boscott claims his Twitter account was hacked for seven months and he wasn't responsible for the jokes. It's a claim I don't believe for a moment as his account was linked to Facebook pages and it was only after people started noticing months worth of these nasty oneliners that this feeble excuse emerged. All of a sudden, despite interacting with his followers just days ago, his Twitter feed became private, endless topless photographs vanished and Facebook pages were altered.

I dislike mobs and initially I posted the jokes to point out to those who were joining his Facebook page what sort of character was behind it. It wasn't a great political point, just an interesting nugget as far as I was concerned.

I know nothing about the people who signed up to the page, which included some of my personal friends, but while I gather there is some unpleasant racist material featured I'm sure the vast majority simply signed up in reaction to the appalling violence on England's streets we have recently witnessed.

But now there are Facebook pages calling for Sean Boscott to be arrested for the nasty jokes; clearly an overreaction and another demonstration of mob justice I dislike so much.

So blogpost removed. If anyone wants to read the jokes and be offended all over again other blogs have put them together with much more dedication. I've still got it of course as well as about a month's worth of @SeanBoscott's Twitter feed, should it ever prove useful. And I'll leave the discussion below for people to argue if they should so wish.

The gaoling of Jonnie Marbles

2011-08-02T17:52:00.010+01:00

It’s now clear that there is a growing mood amongst the judiciary that political protests should now be punished with increased severity. Warnings must be handed out it seems.

Jonnie Marbles, the distinctly unfunny fool who tried to thrust a shaving foam pie into the face of Rupert Murdoch and missed from less than a yard, has been sentenced to six weeks in jail for his stunt. Yes he interrupted the workings of a parliamentary committee but the length is ridiculous. Protest is a vital part of democracy and did Marbles actually hurt anyone? No. His comedy videos are more painful. One wonders whether the length of the sentence is related to the amount of embarrassment suffered by incompetent Parliamentary police. Another extraordinary aspect of this case is even Rupert Murdoch himself did not support a charge of assault but the Crown Prosecution Service decided to continue along regardless.

During the hearing at the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court Jonnie Marbles admitted assaulting Murdoch. Prosecutor Malachy Pakenham said Jonathan May-Bowles (Marbles' real name) smuggled the foam pie into the building in an old shirt which he discarded in bins in men's toilets. As the committee was drawing to a close he climbed out of his seat and walked towards the tycoon, pulling the pie, on a white paper plate, from a black plastic bag. He then pushed it into Murdoch's face. Murdoch confirmed the shaving foam touched his skin and clothes. That was the extent of the 'assault'. Not a punch, head butt, spit, slap, kick or bite in sight.

Even worse was poor Charlie Gilmour who was sentenced to 16 months for violent disorder for his actions during the student fees protests last December. Here was an intelligent young man who had suffered enormous personal trauma, had turned to drink and drugs, and done something stupid. While Prince Charles’ car did suffer damage - though it was swiftly repaired - no one was injured and now he is, according to his mother, spending 23 hours a day locked in his cell. Whether Cambridge University will allow him to resume his course once he is released is not yet known but at least he’s learning a new trade. His mum wrote: ‘Pickpocket has offered tutelage but shortage of pockets on prison uniforms’.

The authorities were also clearly very keen to pursue charges against the UK Uncut protesters who went into Fortnum & Mason in March and sat down causing no damage at all. Police Inspector Claire Clark described their protest at the time as non-violent and ‘sensible’. But sadly for them the Crown Prosecution Service dropped all charges against 109 of them saying they were not in the public interest.

It’s hard not to compare the fate of Marbles and Gilmour to the sentences handed to the fox-hunting idiot Otis Ferry who, along with seven others, stormed the House of Commons back in 2002 causing considerably more disruption to the parliamentary process than Mr Marbles. Ferry and his seven animal torturing pals were convicted under the Public Order Act 1986, fined £350 and given 18-month conditional discharges.

Mrs Wickham also happened to be sitting when Father 4 Justice protester Ron Davis appeared in court for his part in the May 2004 ‘condom-bomb’ protest in which saw Tony Blair bombarded from the public gallery. Although the chamber had to be evacuated amidst fears it might have been a biological weapons attack, Mrs Wickham was feeling distinctly more lenient. Davis was given a two-year conditional discharge and a £500 fine while his accomplice Guy Harrison was fined £600 by a different judge.

Marbles’ lawyer later reappeared in court to say they were appealing the sentence arguing it was ‘excessive’. But the egregious Mrs Wickham refused to grant bail pending the appeal so simple Jonnie is in jail tonight starting his outrageous sentence.

A megaphone for dupes

2011-07-29T06:06:00.001+01:00

Since the start of the last general election campaign the petitions page on Number 10's website has lain dormant. It was always a cheap gimmick but even calls for Gordon Brown to quit were met with a response from the seat of power.

Finally, the coalition is to resurrect the site. The government which likes to pretend it's listening - and for the latest evidence just look at Philip Hammond's announcements during the High Speed 2 'consultation' - is going to host a website where it can pretend yet further.

The new website will be a 'megaphone' for people to make themselves heard. What truly ghastly terminology.

According to the Leader of the Commons Sir George Young any campaign on the site which receives 100,000 signatures would trigger consideration for debate in Parliament.

This of course doesn't actually mean anything. If someone has a good idea for government no matter how many signatures it receives it is likely to be considered. Similarly, if 200,000 sign up to a campaign which the government doesn't like it will be summarily ignored.

Dear old Sir George, the patrician's patrician, seems to think the website will make parliament 'more accessible and transparent'. As an intelligent man he must know he's spouting drivel.

If there is one thing worse than a government which doesn't listen, it's a government which has such utter contempt for the electorate that it thinks it can get away with pretending to listen. New Labour consistently exhibited such behaviour since the run-up to the war in Iraq; it didn't take this shabby coalition nearly as long to catch up.

Alec Baldwin speaks on #Hackgate

2011-07-20T15:13:00.006+01:00

I'm getting utterly bored of #Hackgate but one character who is still showing quite enthusiastic interest is the actor Alec Baldwin.

The Departed star has been busy keeping his more than 200,000 Twitter followers up to date with his opinions on the matter. Here's a sample from the last 24 hours:

Alec Baldwin
Cameron should resign. England is FILLED with people who could do a better job.
17 minutes ago

Alec Baldwin
@HTownClown1...if Soros did this? How would that even be possible? Diff between Soros and Murdoch is the diff btwn K. Graham & Hearst.

Alec Baldwin
@HTownClown1 ...Rogue employees? You're talking about a criminal conspiracy here. Police, govt, media. This isn't about ticket scalping.
21 minutes ago

Alec Baldwin
@riggirobot ...Jahn, I'm in a hotel with very heavy drapes and everyone has an accent!!! Can Claudia come rub my feet? They're killing me!!!
25 minutes ago

Alec Baldwin
Cameron yammering on about overreactions hurting a free press. It's not about that. It's about criminality.
32 minutes ago

Alec Baldwin
Meet the head of Murdoch's legal team: huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/18/hyd…
14 hours ago

Alec Baldwin
A good primer here for those who want it: huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/18/mur…
14 hours ago

Alec Baldwin
This scandal is like Watergate insofar as SO MANY important carers in journalism, law, media and govt. are or will be shattered to pieces
15 hours ago

Alec Baldwin
Let me tweet thee again...Murdoch: as if Nixon owned a newspaper.
18 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

AlecBaldwin Alec Baldwin
If @piersmorgan hacked phones, it's the Pie for him!!!
21 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

Alec Baldwin
@piersmorgan ...if Murdoch scandal were here, at hearing's end, Mitch McConnell would make Murdoch head of the FCC
21 hours ago

Alex Baldwin
@piersmorgan ...Is Murdoch a crook? You ARE kidding? He's like J. Edgar Hoover. Worse than a crook, as his wealth/power makes him seem sane
22 hours ago

Alec Baldwin
@piersmorgan..."Westminster Fashion Nightmares" aside, I hope the Brit govt and people show more spine about this than US ever would...
22 hours ago

And Steve Martin's been having his pennyworth too:

Steve Martin
So glad to hear that Rebekah Brooks just didn’t know anythang ‘bout no hackin’.
20 hours ago

Steve Martin
I will feel so bad if I’m not one of the celebrities on the hacked list of the News of the World.
18 Jul

Personally, I struggle to agree with all their points, but at least they are taking an interest.

Jon Stewart on #Hackgate

2011-07-20T10:19:00.004+01:00

To celebrate being able to post links to the Daily Show at all, as it has not been possible at all, and to see a different view of yesterday's events, here is Jon Stewart on #Hackgate's day of ridiculous proportions.

Dangerous waters for the prime minister

2011-07-18T09:01:00.007+01:00

No matter how much David Cameron might wish it was not the case, the waves of the phone hacking scandal are washing ever closer to the misleadingly sturdy black door of Number 10 Downing Street. The resignation statement from Sir Paul Stephenson included a ferocious and personal attack upon the Prime Minister which government figures have repeatedly struggled and failed to swat away.

Whereas Sir Paul had no reason to suspect Neil Wallis, the former deputy editor of the News of the World arrested last week in connection with the scandal, when he was appointed a PR consultant back in 2009 to the Metropolitan Police, that was not the case with Andy Coulson and his Downing Street job. Sir Paul said: 'Unlike Mr Coulson, Mr Wallis had not resigned from the News of the World or, to the best of my knowledge, been in any way associated with the original phone-hacking investigation.' Ouch!

The prime minister risked being 'compromised' by his association to Andy Coulson.

'Once Mr Wallis's name did become associated with Operation Weeting, I did not want to compromise the prime minister in any way by revealing or discussing a potential suspect who clearly had a close relationship with Mr Coulson.'

It's become increasingly clear Sir Paul was under immense pressure from Mayor of London Boris Johnson and figures in the government following the revelations of the commissioners' stay at the luxury health spa Champneys and the Met's association with Mr Wallis. Boris was 'hacked off' by the revelation he told the Today programme this morning and it is hard to exaggerate the idiocy of Sir Paul's decision to spend weeks at the resort. There is lots of sympathy for the commissioner and his recent bout of ill health and the resort obviously might do an excellent job but with a salary of more than £250,000, Sir Paul could afford to pay for the stay himself. Accepting it as a gift clearly puts him in a deeply compromised and conflicted position. While admittedly unlikely, what would happen if Champneys itself faced a police investigation?

It's worth adding at this point the position of Assistant Commissioner John Yates is now untenable after his role in the initial pathetic investigation into hacking. He should have resigned last week. I expect him to be gone by the end of play today.

So where does this leave the prime minister? It is surely too early for any speculation about his position but voices from unlikely sources such as the Conservative-supporting Daily Telegraph and Tory blogger Iain Dale have raised concerns.

Today’s Telegraph editorial finishes with the following paragraphs:

‘For nearly a fortnight now, Downing Street has had to have information dragged from it about the closeness of the Prime Minister’s relationship with News International and, in particular Rebekah Brooks, who became the latest News International executive to be arrested yesterday.

‘Ever since Mr Cameron made the fatal error of appointing Andy Coulson, the former News of the World editor, as his press spokesman, the waters of this murky affair have been lapping at his feet. They show no sign of receding. If anything, they are rising.’

Iain Dale, meanwhile, pondered whether David Cameron might be next.

‘I can’t believe I am even writing this, but it is no longer an impossibility to imagine this scandal bringing down the Prime Minister or even the government.'

And the prime minister does appear to have acquired the unfortunate habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time throughout this affair. When it all erupted he was on a major press trip to Afghanistan and returned home struggling to keep pace with the story. As Sir Paul Stephenson read out his resignation speech, David Cameron was on a plane to South Africa. Accompanying him on his trip is Bob Diamond of all people. Theresa May rather laughably suggested the government reacted quickly in setting in motion inquiries into the whole affair but she is the only one who could possibly think such a thing.

The government has been playing catch-up since day one, constantly hampered by its associations with Andy Coulson and with what Peter Oborne has dubbed the ‘Chipping Norton set’. It’s certainly not yet fatal for David Cameron but he has been severely damaged and he has much work to do to reestablish his authority.

UPDATE: And John Yates has as I predicted earlier walked the plank. He couldn't survive and should have gone sooner. The Met is in an enormous crisis.

Former Assistant Commissioner Yates is going to make a statement on his resignation and the whole affair later today. I think it’s safe to predict it will feature ferocious and bitter comments targeting the press, politicians and his former colleagues.

'It's because they're crazy people'

2011-07-17T17:38:00.005+01:00

The acerbic Bill Maher has a ferocious pop against the desperately silly Sarah Palin and the ridiculous Michele Bachmann and nailed both of them.

I know it's a bit like shooting fish in a barrel but it's worth frequent and funny reminders like this just to it's not forgotten how daft the pair are.

Not 'codswallop' after all

2011-07-06T20:16:00.004+01:00

Ever eager to maintain a to maintain a populist line, Mayor of London Boris Johnson weighed in on the issue du jour this afternoon with this statement:

‘It is unbelievable that victims of some of the most odious crimes in recent years might have had their suffering prolonged and intensified by such blatant intrusion into their lives.

‘If true, it suggests there was no limit to the callousness of the journalists and private investigators involved. And if some police officers were indeed paid as part of this process, there is only one word for this, corruption.

‘It doesn’t matter that this happened many years ago, under a different commissioner and indeed mayoralty. Even if only a small number of people were implicated, there allegations have to be taken extremely seriously and investigated ruthlessly and openly.’

And the Mayor assures Londoners that he has spoken to Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson who is he tells us ‘equally determined to clear up any doubts on this issue’.

A bold and strong statement it seems. But it is in stark contrast to what he had to say about the hacking activities of the News of the World and the police’s investigation into the matter last September.

‘Codswallop’ was what the Mayor told London Assembly members during a question session on September 15, 2010 when asked about concerns over phone hacking. Indeed he dismissed the entire affair as being ‘whipped up by the Guardian and the Labour Party’.

And he was happy with the police’s investigation.

‘To the best of memory, I was satisfied with the police position, which was that no new information had been substantively revealed and therefore nothing more was going to be done.’

In April this year, Boris wrote in his Telegraph column a ‘truth and reconciliation’ commission should be established to look into the whole of Fleet Street which was a welcome change of tune.

But he still couldn't really take the issue seriously as he wrote flippantly that it was ‘getting to the stage where it looks embarrassing for any self-respecting celebrity that they haven’t been taped or hacked or somehow illicitly probed by the gentlemen of the Screws’.

He added: ‘Across London, actors and slebs are ringing up their agents in a quivering fury.’

Having changed his tune so dramatically I think Boris will stick firmly to his voter-friendly script from now on.

UPDATE

Here's Boris floundering on his 'codswallop' comment from BBC London News. Sadly the reporter lets him off the hook (ht LabourList).

'It's not our fault' bleats the government

2011-07-05T18:00:00.008+01:00

It's a great shame that Bombardier confirmed today it was to cut almost half its workforce in Derby, many of which are a direct result of the government's decision not to award the contract for new Thameslink trains.

Philip Hammond, like most of his government, simply shrugs his shoulders and blames the previous Labour administration or Europe. It's so much easier blaming everyone else than actually taking responsibility for something. And I've heard some question the quality of workmanship at the Derby plant but this seems, at best, to be sour and more likely to be efforts by the right to excuse the decision with spurious misinformation.

What ever, Iain Duncan Smith's appeal for British firms to employ British people made in Madrid just days ago sounds pretty hollow now.

Anyway, an interesting insight into the lost jobs and the decision on the contract landed in my inbox earlier today from John Forkin, the managing director of Marketing Derby, an organisation tasked with promoting the Midlands city.

He wrote that he felt as though he had suddenly found himself in the middle of an 'absurd' episode of Yes Minster of the Thick of It.

'Three months ago the Prime Minister brought his full cabinet meeting up to Derby and praised its manufacturing, hi-tech based, economy as being an example of what they have been given to call a ‘balanced economy’.'

Despite such high praise the Department of Transport announced it had awarded the £1.2bn contract to build the 1,200 Thameslink trains to Siemens in Germany.

'The DfT claimed that the bid offered better "value for money for the tax payer" than Bombardier’s submission to build the trains in Derby. They added that EU law gave then "no choice".'

But this claim, Mr Forkin notes, unraveled pretty quickly.

'First, in a masterpiece of joined-up government (not), the DfT admitted that their assessment of tax payers’ value for money did not consider the impact on the wider economy or even a future without a UK train builder and its impact on the balance of payments.'

The wider impact of course is that not only will these jobs at Bombardier go, the knock-on will hit thousands of other jobs.

'Then it became clear that other EU countries somehow managed to award 9 out of 10 of their train contracts to be built within their national borders whilst sticking to EU law – apparently, only the UK goes beyond the requirement of the EU.'

He then makes the point the problem is not just the current government as Labour too awarded a £7.5bn contract to Japan and or course Gordon Brown too made stupid claims about 'British jobs for British workers'.

He goes on:

'Meanwhile, the UK’s last train builder cannot see the point of staying and so is reviewing its whole operation. This week the process to make thousands of people redundant in Derby is likely to begin. If Bombardier do pull out, government estimates that up to 30,000 jobs across the UK will be lost. Value for money?'

And in a final touch he adds:

'Remarkably, on the day of the original announcement, our Phil found himself not in SW1 but in Luxembourg of all places discussion the future of Moldavia of all places. A clear example of taxpayer VFM? Mr Hammond had left his colleague Theresa Villiers to take all the glory on the day…nice one Phil.'

Like Sheffield Forgemasters before the bitterness will linger long and made all the worse by the government's continual refusal to take responsibility for its actions.

UPDATE: There is an excellent dissection of the government's decision on Bombardier and the threat to the British train-building industry by Christian Wolmar in today's Guardian. Full link here

IVF is not a lifestyle choice

2011-07-04T20:43:00.013+01:00

Once upon a time there was a columnist called Cristina Odone who gave the impression of being a vaguely sane and reasonable person. She would appear on programmes like Question Time, Newsnight and news programmes and profer her opinion on matters of the day with calm and a little thought while, admittedly, never saying anything particularly interesting.

But this, it seems, was a misleading impression. Not for a while has she appeared vaguely reasonable. Today, in her blog on the Daily Telegraph, she wrote the following about NHS funds, that 'the Government (and the next one, and the one after that) has to do is redirect some funding from NHS 'lifestyle' operations to elderly care'.

'Lifestyle operations include pinning back ears, nose jobs, breast reduction and yes, IVF. In a perfect world, with overflowing coffers, perhaps the NHS could once again offer IVF.'

Now I can't comment on pinning ears back, nose jobs, breast reductions (though breast reductions for women suffering severe back pain hardly seems like a lifestyle operation), but I can on IVF.

And it is not a lifestyle choice.

No one is owed a child by the government, or automatically has the right to a child. But the desire to have children is not a choice either. Asking a woman, or indeed a couple, who are struggling to have children to simply shrug their shoulders and say 'c'est la vie' is simply not possible. The notion of having children is something engrained within people from an early age. The failure to have a child can easily lead to a whole host of other problems such as depression or separation.

My dear wife (DW) and I have been embarking upon IVF treatment for the last few months and I'm very happy to say none of the above are likely to happen should we fail. For three months we have both given up tea, coffee and alcohol but for the odd glass of wine. We have tablets to take, everyday DW has a nasal spray to take. And, as we enter the crunch phase, each evening, before we go to bed, I'm obliged to 'stab' (her word) my wife with a needle.

This isn't a lifestyle choice. Cristina Odone doesn't know what she's talking about and in future I'll be happy to show scant disregard for her comments.

Hacking inquiry calls cannot now be resisted

2011-07-04T17:30:00.005+01:00

It’s well known that journalists can be cruel bastards but the latest revelations published on The Guardian this afternoon are, if true, breathtakingly staggering.

According to the report, (here) with the help of investigator Glenn Mulcaire, the News of the World hacked into the voicemail of Milly Dowler to listen to, and later delete, her messages just days after the teenager went missing in March 2002.

Off the top of my head only the behaviour of reporters after the murder of Damilola Taylor comes close to such despicable actions. Back then, I was living in a room in Peckham on a road opposite the school which Damilola attended and a housemate was teaching there. In the days just after his stabbing reporters were frequently seen trying to push cash through the gates of the school towards pupils in a bid to get some inside story. But this is something special.

To heap more agony upon the Dowler family it seems messages on Milly’s phone were deleted by the Screws in order to leave space for more messages during the first few days of her disappearance. The police kept her phone topped up in order for messages to be left. Family members and friends left imploring messages for her to return safely; messages it now appears were listened to by Screws reporters.

With messages from her voicemail being deleted after it became full, there was renewed hope for Milly’s family. Who else, after all, would delete messages? It couldn’t possibly be a newspaper could it? Indeed, who would have imagined it would have been a newspaper which later got an exclusive interview with the Dowler family. And shockingly, their actions could have impacted upon the police's investigation.

If this report proves to be true it reveals how much of a casual routine it was for reporters at the News of the World to hack into the voicemail of anyone who might be unlucky enough to feature in its pages. It wasn't just celebrities or royals targeting, it's clear pretty much everyone was fair game.

Time was when a reporter’s crucial tools were a pen and a notebook; clearly the first thing a Screws hack did was hack a phone. This was a newsroom run by editor Rebekah Brooks and deputy editor Andy Coulson. It’s simply impossible to think they might not have known what was going on.

Quite how the Screws are going to apologise for this I really can’t imagine. Their reputation could be torn to shreds. And, whilst accepting there is currently a judicial process underway, it’s hard to see how calls for a public inquiry can now be resisted.

Guardian falls for churnalism

2011-06-20T13:42:00.006+01:00

Has the Guardian fallen victim to churnalism? It certainly appears so.

A curious story filled page three of today’s copy. The report tells readers that the social networking site BeautifulPeople.com has been targeted by a ‘Shrek’ virus has enabling more than 30,000 people to be ‘wrongly admitted’ to the site. Whereas membership to this self-proclaimed ‘exclusive’ site normally costs $25 a month and is designed to be the sole preserve of the beautiful, its screening process had apparently been brought down.

‘We got suspicious when tens of thousands of new members were accepted over a six-week period, many of whom were no oil painting,’ Managing Director Greg Hodge said.

‘We have to stick to our founding principles of only accepting beautiful people – that’s what our members have paid for. We can’t just sweep 30,000 ugly people under the carpet.’

Now the Guardian likes to pride itself as the high-priestess of investigative journalism, eschewing press releases for high minded reports from Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe and anywhere else where the voice of the oppressed needs expressing. So why, then, did the paper fall for what appears to be such an obvious advertising ploy?

The story dropped on the Press Association wire before midday yesterday, embargoed until 0001 Monday June 20. That it was embargoed certainly should have raised suspicions. Why would such an announcement need a delay? I can't imagine Facebook doing anything similar were they targeted by a virus.

The PA story appears to have been written from a press release. Indeed, here is said release. It comes from just one source and only Greg Hodge and an anonymous spokesman are quoted. No computer security expert is quoted in either the PA story or the Guardian’s piece.

But Graham Cluley, from Sophos, has had his penny's worth in a very believable comment today. Here's his main gist:

'It's a fantastic piece of chicanery, of course, designed to boost awareness of the dating website, get them many thousands of pounds of free publicity with little risk of damage to their reputation.

'The website explains that it hasn't needed to inform any computer security firms about the malware as it is being "investigated internally", and a "former employee.. placed the virus before leaving the team" and "despite wreaking havoc with the application process, member privacy and security was never breached."

'Phew! So, lots of publicity for the website but nothing for current or future members to worry about then. How convenient!'

You can't fault Beautifulpeople.com. They've come up with a vaguely plausible story with believable figures and case studies to back it up. But surely a hack at the Guardian, after Nick Davies' furious efforts, would be acutely trained to spot such a devious ploy?

UPDATE: I should, of course, be fair and acknowledge the Guardian were by far from the only media source to report this spurious tale. The Mirror have featured it, as has Sky News and the BBC, though in the last case with a little more scepticism.

Brian Haw: They never got him down

2011-06-19T14:29:00.007+01:00

It’s no surprise to hear Brian Haw, the veteran peace campaigner who has doggedly clung to his demonstrator's pitch in Parliament Square for the last ten years, has died in Germany after losing his fight against lung cancer. A decade of protesting on the streets, constantly surrounded by the exhaust fumes of millions of vehicles would do ravages to the body of the strongest person. And Brian’s health could not have been helped by the rolled-up cigarettes clamped tightly between his fingers which were his constant companions.

Time was when I found myself in Parliament Square on an almost weekly basis chatting with Brian, and his erstwhile companions, Maria Gallestegui and Barbara Tucker. Either that or he was in Bow Street or Westminster Magistrates, barracking which ever unfortunate JP might find themselves sitting.

Brian wasn’t an easy man to interview. His determination and commitment to his cause was unshakeable every day of his vigil since it began back in June 2001. Inspired as much by his strong religious conviction as his abhorrence at the ‘slaughter of innocents’ which were the inevitable consequences of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Brian’s spittle-flecked conversation was punctuated by heartfelt, passionate swearing. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever met a Christian who swore so much. His targets were the politicians who ordered the wars, safely ensconced in deeply more comfortable circumstances than the spartan conditions he enjoyed.

Looking back at a few old cuttings from our meetings, apart from his unwavering devotion, the common theme is how much time and effort our politicians spent trying to shift him.

Westminster Council were the first, trying to prosecute him for obstructing the pavement in 2002, only for their case to fail spectacularly as the court ruled the pavement wasn’t blocked.

During Tony Blair’s administration a section of the Serious Organised Crime Act was introduced specifically with the aim of shifting Brian from his site. The Act made it an offence to start a protest within half a mile of Parliament without prior police authorisation. But despite the hours spent by politicians discussing the measures, and all the hard work by beavering civil servants checking and rechecking for loopholes, Brian was able to stay on unmolested. The High Court ruled that as Brian’s protest began prior to the law he was exempted. Home Office lawyers blamed a 'drafting error'. While the law was amended, Brian stayed in put.

In September, 2005, Westminster Council ruled that Brian should not be able to use a loudhailer, deciding only the emergency services should have such a privilege. The poor dears in Parliament were, it was argued, disturbed by the constant noise from the angry Mr Haw. Councillor Audrey Lewis, who was then Westminster’s licensing chief, said at the time: ‘Were we to have granted his application there would undoubtedly be applications for other protesters to do the same.’ Brian continued to use his loudhailer and crowds of other shouters did not join him.

Yes Brian was awkward. Yes, he could be unreasonable and his display might not have been pretty, though it contained enough to inspire Turner Prize-winning artist Mark Wallinger to recreate it in its entirety at Tate Britain. But his long vigil was a permanent and explicit reminder to the politicians who passed him every day the inescapable consequences of their actions. And it was a visible, sometimes shocking, display of democracy in action.

In a strange way, Brian reminds me of Scorsese’s vision of Jake La Motta in Raging Bull. Pummelled half to death by Sugar Ray Robinson, every inch of his face coated with blood, La Motta is still standing up, swaying against the ropes. He jeers, half smiling through the blood, and taunts Robinson saying: ‘Hey, Ray, I never went down, man! You never got me down, Ray! You hear me, you never got me down’.

And Brian never went down. Westminster Council, Ken Livingstone, Boris Johnson, Tony Blair’s government and the coalition government, all threw their best punches. And Brian never went down.

The best story of the day

2011-06-15T23:50:00.006+01:00

Forget the war in Libya. Who cares about thousands dead in Syria?

Ha! Were you really interested in Ed Miliband getting one over David Cameron at Prime Minister's Questions today? (No, me neither)

The best story of today came from the Press Association wire who, it seemed, had exclusive access to the wedding of Nicholas Batchelor and Kate Champion, who were married at St. Mary's Church in Wootton-Under-Edge in Gloucestershire today.

To be honest, I don't know how the papers missed it. Believe it or not, according to PA, this happened:

'Minutes after the happy couple emerged from the church, high winds plucked the veil from the bride's head.
'Performing a dance in the air, the veil floated up and down the side of the church and it seemed would be gone for good.
'But as the wind took a sudden change of direction the veil plummeted back towards the ground and landed straight into Mr Batchelor's hands, to a round of applause by guests.'

Phew. What a relief. Just imagine what might have happened had Mr Batchelor's hands been elsewhere. A wedding veil might still be drifting somewhere in the ether.

Thankfully, the groom's father was on hand to put things into focus.

Barry Batchelor, former photographer for a certain Press Association (could there possibly be a relation?), revealed: 'There were lots of oohs and ahhs and [even] gasps, and one of Nicholas's friends had run across to try and grab it, but then by magic it landed back in Nicholas's arms.'

Just in case anyone wasn't fully amazed by this stunning story, he added: 'There were big cheers and it became the talking point of the day.'

Yep. It seems the blow-away veil was the hot topic. Who says romance is dead?

Anyway, one wishes the couple a very happy future together.

h/t aidanrad

Archbish swings his crozier

2011-06-09T17:44:00.007+01:00

Sky News today ran a poll on whether the church should get involved in politics in the wake of the intervention from the Archbishop of Canterbury in the latest edition of the New Statesmen. The last time I saw the results, 47 per cent of voters had said yes, with 52 per cent saying no. But despite Alastair Campbell’s maxim to Tony Blair, that ‘we don’t do God’, it is impossible to divide the two.

There is a fair amount of consternation from the government side after Dr Williams’ attack. The Archbishop is not a man to use language loosely and many of the criticisms have stung, whether the government thinks them unjust or not.

The prelate voices the suspicion that many of the reforms being chaotically pushed through parliament are being done for ‘opportunistic or money savings reasons allows many to dismiss that there is of a programme for “big society” initiatives’. The ‘Big Society’ term itself ‘has fast become painfully stale’, he adds. This might appear controversial but is really stating the obvious considering David Cameron himself has tried to revive this flagship, but vacuous, programme on at least five occasions and the Big Society tsar himself has quit his post.

(It’s worth noting that Christine Odone, in a predictably knee-jerk reaction, is so worked up about the Archbishop’s attack, she even manages to misquote him. Consider this sentence from her Daily Telegraph blog: ‘Even the Big Society, surely the most compassionate initiative launched in recent years, is dismissed as “stale”, steeped in a Lady Bountiful condescension towards the “deserving poor”. There are two mistruths here. Dr Williams does not say the concept of the Big Society is ‘stale’, but the term itself. Odone also misplaces quotation marks around the ‘undeserving poor’. Dr Williams does use the phrase but crucially only ‘deserving’ is in quotation marks, referring to a comment by IDS, not poor; a crucial, if pedantic, difference)

Dr Williams’ critique of the Big Society thoughtfully observes that while no one can imagine the coalition’s ‘commitment to localism and devolved power is simply a cynical walking-away from the problem’ he does question how others are supposed to pick up the pieces with such a paucity of resources. He poses the valid question that if ‘civil society organisations are going to have to pick up responsibilities shed by the government’ what guarantees need to be made about provision and how are such ‘absolutes’ underwritten? ‘What is too important to be left to even the most resourceful localism?’ And to deny there is ‘plain fear’ within large sections of society is simply fatuous.

Even the most zealous advocates of the Big Society must recognise these are vital questions which remain unanswered. It’s not party political to ask such questions. And if they government want the Big Society to be a success, rather than continue as the vacuous gimmick it currently appears, it must rely on the Church of England more than most organisations. David Cameron himself recognises this as was clear when he joshed a few weeks ago that church leaders would be ‘absolutely right’ to claim Jesus founded the Big Society 2,000 years, adding ‘I’m not saying we’ve invented some great new idea here’.

But the passage which has furrowed the brow of many a Tory today is this: ‘With remarkable speed, we are being committed to radical, long-term politics for which no one voted’.

Haughty old Roger Gale, perhaps the ruddiest of ruddy Tory backbenchers, harrumphed: ‘Dr Williams clearly does not understand the democratic process. If he did, he would appreciate that elected members of the House of Commons are not mandated. We are sent to Westminster by our constituents to face and address the situation as we find it, to use our brains and to endeavour to act and to legislate in the best interest of those that we represent.’ It’s clear the preposterous Mr Gale has never paid much heed to any manifesto to which he has put his name.

There is a genuine point here, one with which even Norman Tebbit, hardly an obvious ally, agrees. No one party won a majority at the general election and in lieu of a manifesto, this government is relying upon the Coalition Agreement, signed after a few frantic days of negotiation to form a government last May. Certainly, the agreement has never faced a vote so it can be argued there is a question of legitimacy.

If we just look at the NHS, while the agreement states the power of GPs will be strengthened ‘by enabling them to commission care on their behalf’, it does not say Primary Care Trusts themselves would be abolished and 80% of funds be handed to private GP consortia. On the contrary, the Coalition Agreement actually states: ‘We will ensure that there is a stronger voice for patients locally through directly elected individuals on the boards of their local primary care trust (PCT). The remainder of the PCT’s board will be appointed by the relevant local authority or authorities.’

So not only did no political party campaign during the election on a platform of such massive change within the NHS, the Coalition Agreement itself states that no such change was going to occur, hence the huge shock when Andrew Lansley’s proposals emerged.

For those who think this is simply a party political attack, Dr Williams makes the acid attack on Labour’s very obvious failing currently as he remarks ‘we are still waiting for a full and robust account of what the left would do differently and what a left-inspired version of localism might look like’.

It’s not the first time an Archbishop has taken aim at those in power and nor will it be the last. Robert Runcie clashed with Thatcher’s administration over her failure to impose sanctions on South Africa, the Falklands War and the Miners’ Strike. George Carey questioned the Major government’s prisons policies and Dr Williams before has raised questions over Britain’s involvement in the invasion of Iraq.

Sky News’ coverage of Dr Williams’ intervention has mainly centred on whether he should have entered the debate at all. It misses the point. He might not have been elected but as the leading clergyman in the country and member of the House of Lords, the Archbishop of Canterbury has an absolute, and perhaps duty, to intervene when he feels he must. David Cameron, to his credit, offered a more intelligent reaction, welcoming Dr Williams’ comments while ‘profoundly disagreeing’, as one would expect him to do.

The musical coalition

2011-06-05T09:58:00.003+01:00

This is rather fantastic. It's the music video for Tinderbox, one of the numbers from forthcoming musical NICKED, all about the coalition.

And if this is anything to go by, it cold be a bit of a treat.

I await further developments with interest.

Would you trust a Jehovah's Witness with blood transfusions?

2011-06-01T22:26:00.004+01:00

There was much hoo-hah last week when it emerged the British Pregnancy Advisory Service was excluded from the Sexual Health Forum, the government's new sexual health advisory body.

While BPAS was isolated after giving 40 years worth of medically based advice, anti-abortion charity Life secured a precious spot.

The chief executive of BPAS Ann Furedi has today written a very acid article on Spiked accusing the government of excluding the group after a recent court battle and questioning the wisdom of Life's inclusion on the panel.

She writes:

'While Life might have a place on a pregnancy forum, it is hard to extend that concession to a forum advising on sexual health. Life’s pregnancy counselling centres do not provide contraceptive services and they do not provide testing for sexually transmitted infections. They could not refer to abortion services, even if they wanted to, because they are not included on the Department of Health’s register of Pregnancy Advisory Bureaux. Inclusion on this register ensures that pregnancy advice, counselling and care meet approved standards and that women are genuinely provided with accurate information on all their options and are not steamrollered into a decision.

'Life’s contribution to the discussion on sexual health seems to be limited to telling people not to have sex.'

Before venomously adding:

'It seems a bit like including Jehovah’s Witnesses on a panel to discuss how to improve blood transfusion services.'

Life's inclusion on the panel 'alters the consensus that discussion on policy should be informed by scientific fact and medical evidence'.

Her passionate attack goes on:

'Life does not accept that abortion is a legitimate and safe choice for a woman. When a woman requests an abortion, Life counsellors believe it to be in her interests to dissuade her – so they do their best to persuade her it’s a bad idea. They may concede that it is a legal option, but they are clear that it is a worse option than continuing the pregnancy: having the baby, in their view, is always the preferable option.

'By contrast, BPAS does not "promote" abortion as a preferred option. The charity does not exist to encourage abortion as Life encourages motherhood; BPAS exists to promote and enable a women’s choice. It’s all a matter of providing the information, and the space, to allow her to make the decision that is right for her at this time.'

Ann Furedi's piece is an angry, powerful piece, vividly exposing the mendacity of the government's decision, in my opinion. Not everyone will agree with her, of course, but it is definitely worth reading. The full version is here.

The party leaders go cooking

2011-05-31T16:25:00.006+01:00

While it's not a magazine I have ever read, today's edition of Sainbury's inhouse rag features the recipes apparently favoured by our political leaders. While I'm sceptical, it's worth a bit of a look.

David Cameron, he of the two kitchens, offers us 'Italian sausagemeat pasta'. I quote the recipe in full below:

David Cameron’s Italian sausagemeat pasta
Serves 4
With thanks to The River Café Cook Book – this is my own shortened and simplified version.
Prep 10 mins Total time 45 mins

2 red onions, chopped
olive oil
6 spicy Italian sausages
1 sprig rosemary, needles finely chopped
1 red chilli, deseeded
and diced
a large glass of red wine
2 x 400g tins chopped
plum tomatoes
300g pasta, preferably penne
50g parmesan
300ml double cream

1 Fry the red onions with a splash
of oil in a deep frying pan. Add the sausagemeat, discarding
the casings. Add the rosemary and red chilli.
2 Increase the heat and break up the sausagemeat with a wooden spoon. Once the meat has browned, pour in the red wine and reduce by half. Add the chopped tomatoes and reduce the sauce, uncovered, for about 30 minutes. Cook the pasta according to packet instructions.
3 Grate the parmesan in a bowl. Drain the pasta and stir into the sauce with the parmesan, double cream and some seasoning.

I can understand why he credits the River Cafe Cook Book as it is entirely borrowed from the recipe on page 76. Yet, he claims his version is shortened while it isn't. Our Dave uses more sausages and cooks the dish for longer. Otherwise, it's just been lifted.

Now, Nick Clegg offers claims he loves 'baking with my children, but things to get quite messy'.

His offered recipe is 'Pasta with peas and bacon', claiming to be enough for 4, 'dad and three hungry boys'. What Miriam is eating is not clear.

He confesses to 'not being a very good cook, but this cheap, quick and uncomplicated dish is impossibly even for me to get wrong'. Well no, I gather it wouldn't, on account it's desperately easy and you probably have not cooked it for your 'three hungry boys' for years.

Anyway, he goes on. 'I prefer to use crème fraîche rather than cream because there's no chance of it curdling'. Ah! He's absolutely right of course. While I have never had double cream curdle, crème fraîche has a certain tart solid quality which works so well. And his endorsement of such a French product reassures any pro-Europeans reading.

For those interested the recipe is below:

Prep 5 mins Total time 15 mins

400g dried pasta, preferably spaghetti
olive oil
200g bacon, chopped (or lardons work just as well)
2 cloves garlic, crushed
300g frozen peas
100ml crème fraîche or double cream
cheddar cheese, to serve

1 Add the pasta, a dash of oil and a pinch of salt to a pan of boiling water. Cook according to packet instructions.
2 Meanwhile, prepare the sauce. In a separate pan, fry the bacon for a couple of minutes with a tablespoon
of olive oil. Add the garlic to the pan with the frozen peas, then fry for a further 4 minutes until the peas are tender. Add the créme fraîche or cream and let it simmer for a minute or so.
3 Drain the pasta, then tip it into the sauce, mix together well, season and grate some cheddar cheese over the top.

And what about Ed Miliband, he of the soaring opinion polls but ineffectual leadership. Well he comes up with a tuna melt which is designed for two but is great for '1 greedy person'.

He can 'usually make this in about 10 minutes, which is exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for if I get back from the House of Commons late at night'. Yes, true. That and it's God awful. His recipe upset me just reading it.

Prep 5 mins Total time 10 mins
4 thick slices brown bread
1 x 200g tin tuna steaks in water, drained
2 tbsp mayonnaise
a squeeze of lemon juice
a dash of Tabasco (optional)
2 spring onions, trimmed
60g cheddar cheese
Worcestershire sauce (optional)

1 Toast the bread and preheat the grill to medium. Meanwhile, make the tuna filling. In a bowl, mix the tuna with the mayonnaise and a squeeze of lemon juice, adding a dash of Tabasco, if using. Chop up the spring onions and add them to the tuna mixture. Stir well.
2 Spoon the mixture over two slices of toast, then grill for 2-3 minutes. Meanwhile, grate the cheese. Remove the tuna toast from under the grill and sprinkle with the cheese. Put the slices back under the grill for 1 minute, or until the cheese starts to bubble. Make sure it doesn’t burn.
3 Remove from the grill and add a splash of Worcestershire sauce to the topping, if you like. Top with the remaining 2 slices of toast to create sandwiches and grill for a final 30 seconds. Cut diagonally and serve.
507cals; 24g fat (9g sat fat); 32g carbs; 3g total sugars; 1.8g salt

Four slices of bread? If he is going to eat that much after a late return from the House of Commons, this seems to me to be far too much carbohydrate for anyone sober. Before long he'll look like Eric Pickles or John Prescott.

And tinned tuna? Dear me, there are few things more environmentally irresponsible.

His pathetically simple, disgusting, dish, requires more instructions that either the depressing efforts offered by Clegg or Cameron. Is that a metaphor I wonder?

Dear Ed adds: 'Thankfully, my sons are a bit too young for this kind of food, so I don’t have to face any tough reviewers quite yet.' Don't for the love of God, feed your children this crap. Leave it to newly wedded Justine, who must have more common sense than you.

The political leaders have been included in the latest edition because of Sainsbury's Dishy Dads campaign which aims to 'encourage the nation's fathers to start cooking'.

I somehow doubt these predictably poor recipes will encourage anything of the sort.

For my part, the whole episode made be long for a decent glass of Bordeaux, washing down snails, confit de canard and creme brulee.

Westminster Council caught telling porkies

2011-05-26T17:19:00.005+01:00

Interesting news from Westminster City Council where it appears senior cabinet figures have been telling a load of porkies.

Earlier this month, the flagship Conservative council announced it wanted higher earners to pay increased rent and to support its argument it claimed that more than 2,200 of its social housing tenants earned more than £50,000 a year. It also said that two hundred apparently earned more than £100,000 .

‘We believe the overall system should be changed and that councils should have greater freedoms to set rents,’ Phillipa Roe, Westminster’s cabinet member for strategic finance, said at the time.

‘At the moment we have a one-size fits all system which does not take into account any change in circumstances.’

Certainly, it would be hard to argue that such wealthy council tenants should not pay higher rents. And it was dutifully reported, in suitably shocked tones by the usual suspects.

In the Daily Mail, Phillipa Roe said: 'There are people living in highly subsidised housing here who you could not describe as vulnerable any more.'

Even more shockingly, she claimed: 'Some of these people have a second house in the country or a villa in Spain.'

But it turns out that these figures are, erm, entirely false.

According to figures released by the council’s Chief Executive, there are in fact just 406 council tenant households earning more than £50,000. Of those, 38 per cent contain up to five wage earners – an average wage of about £10,000 then. Another 38 per cent contacted up to two wage earners - £25k each – while 23 per cent contained up to three wages (£17k a year). While the exact numbers of earners is not revealed, it many cases, perhaps most, individuals will be hardly huge salaries.

The 2,200 figure itself comes from a shifty bit of counting, by simply adding over 1,800 housing association households to the council’s figures. Westminster Council, of course, has no power at all in setting their rents.

The claim that two hundred tenants earn more than £100,000 is also nonsense. The accurate figure is zero. Absolutely no Westminster Council tenants earn more than £100,000. All are housing association tenants and 89 per cent of those contain four wage earners.

Will the intemperate Eric Pickles tick off Westminster over its shabby lies? I doubt it.

Ken Clarke dozes off

2011-05-25T18:03:00.003+01:00

Is Ken Clarke spending too long in Ronnie Scott's these days? He appears to have dozed off again during Barack Obama's speech to the Houses of Parliament today in Westminster Hall.

I can't imagine his frequent public dozes will help his long-term career prospects.

A TfL Royal giveaway

2011-05-24T17:13:00.003+01:00

Transport for London made quite a song and dance when they launched their Royal Wedding themed-Oyster Card with the image of William and Kate emblazoned on the familiar blue plastic travel pass.

But it doesn’t appear they have proved to be a particular success.

I had need to visit a Tube station to today to get a replacement annual travel card and Gold Card (stupidly, I had not, until recently, realised how fantastic and valuable these things are). As the chappie at the counter and I went through the form - ‘you showed me a driving licence as ID didn’t you?’ he said, as I nodded in agreement, no such licence in sight – he offered me a wedding-themed card.

‘No thank, you,’ I replied, feeling almost guilty at refusing his generous and public spirited offer.

‘I’m glad to hear you say that,’ he grimaced. ‘TfL are trying to get rid of all of these cards and we’re obliged to ask everyone who gets a new card. Why anyone would want one with these two on, is beyond me.’

To his side he had a drawer full of the things. Clearly I wasn't the only one to spurn such a generous offer.

What no buffet car?

2011-05-20T12:29:00.002+01:00

I'm currently sitting on a train heading towards London. It is an East Midlands Trains' service from Nottingham and I've just discovered to my horror the new food company operating on the line has axesd the buffet car.

The physical carriage still remains but its shutters user down and won't reopen. Instead of the pleasure of a little stroll down the train as we race across the countryside, I'm expected to sit and wait until a trolley, offering a pathetic range of rubbish reaches me.

It seems the option of standing in the buffet car, drink in hand, chatting with other cheery passengers is being designed out by some soulless, private company that wouldn't know how to enjoy a train journey if it was thrust on the Orient Express with a magnum of champagne in its hand. The idiots who run this company clearly have no sense of romance and should not be let anywhere near a train. The demise of the dining car was bad enough, but this really is a depressingly shocking and casual bit of nasty cost-cutting.

I think a letter of complaint will need drafting this afternoon.

Evening Post's Dear Jon letter

2011-05-20T11:53:00.002+01:00

While Labour might have been disappointed with their overall performance in the elections the other Thursday, in Nottingham, from where I am returning today, the party enjoyed a landslide victory.

Out of 55 councillors, 50 are now Labour members putting it in a very powerful position.

There is much in the city to enjoy: the universities; the variety of shops; restaurants and bars galore; the facilities and transport network. But like everywhere, aspects are obviously suffering as the economy continues to flatline.

But on the front page of today's Evening Post is published an open letter to council leader Jon Collins congratulating Labour on its victory and calling for the party to follow its manifesto and concentrate on job creation.

That's all well and good. But towards the end of epistle it also calls for the council to 'comply with the Government directive to publish details of all spending above 500 pounds'. Nottingham is, I believe, the only council to be resisting this ridiculous directive.

For a government which wants to reduce red tape, it is a remarkably insulting and petty bit of bureaucracy which other councils would have done well to ignore. Public accountability is fine, but it is in no one's interests to have this level of scrutiny. It is simply a waste of money when we are apparently living in times of austerity.

So I hope Nottingham City Council sticks to its guns, ignores the Evening Post's call, and goes on disregarding Eric Pickles' idiotic directive.

Governing by chaos

2011-05-18T17:28:00.008+01:00

Did anyone in Government not make an arse of themselves today?

For a government which is habitually incoherent, today was pretty exceptional with cabinet ministers galore seemingly going out of their way to behave like demented exhibitionists.

Ken Clarke

Without doubt, the gaffer in chief, the serial gaffer, was the Justice Secretary, so addicted to gaffes that he managed to appear on at least four different programmes digging his whole deeper each time. Ostensibly, Ken was doing the rounds to defend the government’s plans to cut sentences by half if a defendant pleads guilty at the earliest possible opportunity, revealed by junior justice minister Crispin Blunt in the House of Commons yesterday. Considering the state of our full-to-the-gills prisons it’s not necessarily a bad idea. But being the jovial, plain speaking sort of chap he is, Ken Clarke tackled the issue with all the subtly of a typical Boris Johnson football tackle.

First up, Ken appears on BBC Radio Five Live where he claimed the tariff for ‘a serious rape with violence and an unwilling woman’ was much longer than the average five year sentence handed out by judges. Immediately, Paul Waugh of Politics Home tweeted his comments and the firestorm grow. Isn’t all rape serious people demanded? Rape is violence. Does a woman get willingly raped? Presenter Victoria Derbyshire interjected saying: ‘Rape is rape, with respect’, prompting Clarke to reply ‘no, it’s not’.

Now, of course, Clarke is right to an extent as the severity of an offence is recognised in law by different sentences, but to suggest some forms of rape were not serious is crass at the very least.

According to Adam Boulton, Number 10 advised Ken Clarke not to do any more interviews, already fearing a hostile response, but Ken was just getting into his stride and seats in Sky News and BBC 24 studios beckoned. Date rape, we learned, did not appear to count as a ‘serious’ rape either. Later he said ‘rape has been singled out as an example mainly to add a bit of sexual excitement to the headlines,’ forgetting the issue only arose after Crispin Blunt’s comments in the Commons.

And Ken kept on digging. He couldn't apologise instead expressing astonishment that anyone could find offence within his comments.

He doesn’t do contrition. Ken blusters and barges his way through with life with little concern as to what others think of him. And it’s stood him in pretty good stead having been in the Commons over 40 years and the only person in government to have served as a cabinet minister under Thatcher.

The plea for David Cameron to sack Ken, from Ed Miliband, was never likely to happen and perhaps demonstrates his lack of experience at this level, but the genuine anger at Ken’s supercilious, high-handed tone, will linger.

Chris Grayling

An unfortunate casualty of Ken’s antics was the poor Employment Secretary Chris Grayling. There he was going on to the Daily Politics, armed with a good story about unemployment figures going down and all he was faced with was a stern faced Andrew Neil quizzing him on Ken’s comments. The poor chap looked as though he had swallowed a vigorous bee, the whole experience made considerably worse by the smug, self-satisfied Margaret Hodge claiming the moral high ground sitting next to him. All Grayling could bleat was he hadn’t heard the full comments as Neil read them out.

Theresa May

The poor Home Secretary got an almighty kicking when she appeared before the Police Federation today. Amid job losses, the spectre of pay cuts and pension reductions, the police were furious and didn’t hold back. The policeman who was shot in the face by the gunman Raoul Moat made an appearance to ask Ms May: ‘I was paid £35,000 last year Do you think I’m paid too much?’

And he warned the police would go into ‘meltdown’ over the cuts. While Sarah Adams, a federation member from Derbyshire Police said: ‘Home Secretary, how can you expect police officers and the communities we serve to ever trust you or this government again?’

Theresa May, to her credit, went the conference, took the blows and stood her ground, but her speech was met with stony silence from the audience. She was mauled, all the more shocking after just one year in office.

Chris Huhne

While there was much gnashing of teeth at Ken’s insensitive comments, it is more likely Chris Huhne will be the next cabinet minister to walk the plank. Not for his original crime, which appears to have been getting someone else to take speeding tickets for him, but because he tried to cover it up. Lies are always worse than the original offence.

And to think it only cropped up at all because his people let it be known he might challenge Nick Clegg after the Lib Dems disastrous performance in the local elections and there was an embittered wife in the background waiting to get her revenge.

David Laws

I know he’s not in the cabinet but now police are looking into his expenses after a complaint from a Labour MP. Just when he thought it was all over.

Nick Clegg

Last night the Liberal Democrat leader met his party and decided it was about time he would do something about the NHS debacle and he let it be known he is opposing the key element of the reforms which would allow the regulator to promote competition. Instead the regulator should encourage collaboration within the NHS.

He told his party's members last night that he would 'never let the profit motive get in the way of the essential purposes of the NHS'.

'I have come to the conclusion that we must not make this change.'

Now while I'm pleased he has finally found a bit of spine, it's completely ludicrous position as the Lib Dems have already backed the Bill in the House of Commons.

Backbench Conservative MP Peter Bone told the BBC that Clegg had 'signed off the reforms and voted for them'. He went on:

'Why now is he changing his mind and what's happened to collective responsibility?

'If it was a Tory minister that was opposing government policy in such a way he would undoubtedly have been fired.'

So while the answer to my original question has to be yes, not everyone in government made an arse of themselves today, it's been very messy. Cameron was clearly shaken by Clarke’s comments but probably right not to sack him over them. And at least Andrew Lansley kept his head down.

But a dismal chaotic mess nonetheless.

'Bono should be banned from the White House'

2011-05-17T22:04:00.001+01:00

With recent rights changes it's pretty much impossible to get clips of Jon Stewart's excellent Daily Show on the web in the UK these days, so it is a pleasant surprise to see him here tear apart Bill O'Reilly's loony protests about the visit of controversial US rap artist 'Common' visiting the White House.

The rap star's visit has upset rightwingers for his ditty about Assata Shakur, a Black Panther member who was found guilty for killing a policeman in 1973, escaped from jail in 1979 and now lives in exile in Cuba.

But as Jon Stewart points out if we followed that line Bono, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and many others should also be forbidden from meeting the president.

Logic has never visited the brain of Bill O'Reilly.

Peers set to defeat latest nonsense Lords reform

2011-05-17T17:34:00.004+01:00

So having lost one attempt at changing the constitution with the recent farcical Alternative Vote referendum, it appears Nick Clegg is eager to fail again, this time with the House of Lords.

I must say it's very clever of David Cameron to let Clegg front all the idiotic bits of the government's programme.l

Today the Liberal Democrat leader presented his plans to reform the upper house and introduce the first direct elections, envisaged to start on 2015. The White Paper sets out a range of options, including a 100 per cent elected House, voted in under a proportional representation system.

The model which the Clegg appears to favour would see the House of Lords reduced to a rump of just 300 members serving 15-year terms, with rolling elections every five years. Now I know there are complaints that the Lords is currently overburdened with more than 800 peers. David Cameron has stuffed the upper chamber with more beggars and hangers-on at a faster rate than any previous prime minister so the place could do with a bit of trimming. But to slash the numbers down to just 300 would seriously challenge whether it could operate properly as the scrutinising chamber it currently is.

Writing in the Guardian in 2009 David Cameron pledged he would ‘replace bureaucratic accountability with democratic accountability’. He went on:

‘If we’re serious about redistributing power from the powerful to the powerless, it’s time to strengthen parliament so it can properly hold the government to account on behalf of voters. The House of Commons should have more control over its own timetable, so there is time for proper scrutiny and debate.’

MPs should be ‘more independent’ he cried. And who could disagree with such aims. And yet, this government is reducing the democratic accountability of the House of Commons. The number of MPs is set to be cut by 50 members to 600, they want to enshrine fixed-five year terms into our governmental system, making a government more unpopular than Brown’s or Major’s able to cling to power. And now the House of Lords is a target for neutering.

And while there was a referendum over the relatively minor constitutional adjustment of AV, these dramatic constitutional changes will, it is hoped, be simply pushed through parliament.

But thankfully, we can expect a few hitches on the way.

To get a Bill through parliament the government hopes the joint committee which is examining Lords reform will report by February, but this might not happen. And that’s before it gets to any committees and debate stages.

There is already considerable opposition to the reforms proposed in the House of Lords. According to a ComRes poll released today a ‘large majority of Peers’ oppose the suggested reforms.

The survey found 78% of Peers would vote against a Lords consisting of 300 new senators (ugh) elected by PR, 68% were against a hybrid House with one-third being elected, one-third appointed from civil society and one-third getting in through political nomination.

Thankfully, 63% would vote against changing the name of the House of Lords to the Senate. Such a suggestion is supported by 55% of Lib Dems. Have they got no sense of history?

And 78% believe it is unlikely for any ‘major’ House of Lords reform to be passed during the current Parliament.

It is deeply ironic but yet again it looks likely unelected Peers will do more to maintain the scrutinising power of the House of Lords and accountability of the government while their elected counterparts in the Commons put forward the most damnably stupid suggestions.

Nine-year-old not pulled over for drink driving

2011-05-17T12:56:00.003+01:00

On Monday, newspapers screamed with horror at the news a nine-year-old boy had been pulled over in Cumbria for drink driving.

The Sun’s headline exclaimed: ‘Boy, 9, nicked for drink-driving’. The Daily Mail meanwhile, ever the voice of prim disapproval, spat: ‘Boy, aged NINE, caught drink driving… but police let him go because he can’t be held responsible’.

Similar headlines echoed across the national press on Monday. And you can see their point. It’s a shocking story and one in which the right wing press in particular can claim encapsulates all that it is wrong with ‘Broken Britain’.

But they were all, it now turns out, completely wrong.

A somewhat sheepish statement has emerged from Cumbria Police this morning, in which they admit there was a records mix-up. The nine-year-old was in fact a 19-year-old man. His date of birth had been inputted incorrectly into the police’s custody system.

‘The information used in this article came from a Freedom of Information request that was submitted to Cumbria Constabulary regarding the number of people under the age of 18 involved in vehicle-related crime,’ a spokeswoman for Cumbria Constabulary said today.

‘Unfortunately, the data provided by the constabulary about a nine-year-old drink driver was incorrect. This error occurred because the male’s date of birth was initially recorded on our custody system incorrectly, but this was later amended to his correct age of 19. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.’

I somehow doubt we will see headlines of a similar size correcting the error.

'Wimmin, know your place'

2011-05-14T06:43:00.004+01:00

While Barack Obama received much of the plaudits for his decisive authorisation of the mission which led to the killing of Osama Bin Laden, it's safe to assume that, as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton must also have played a role.

Indeed, the photograph which captures Obama and his closest aides watching the mission unfold before their eyes, it is Hillary who adds much life and humanity to proceedings, her hand gently cupping her mouth, covering an inevitable gasp. But her presence does appear to have offended some people.

The orthodox Hasidic newspaper Der Tzitung, based in the US, like every other newspaper in the world, ran reports on the operation which killed Bin Laden. But unlike every other newspaper, it appears to have been disapproving of the presence of women. So Hillary and Counterterrorism Director Audrey Tomason were photoshopped out of the photograph released by the White House. They were rubbed out, much like Bin Laden himself in a way.

They took this extraordinary action because its editorial policy stipulates pictures of women should never be published as they might be considered sexually suggestive.

According to the Washington Post, the editors of Der Tzitung defend their decision and make the somewhat preposterous claim that removing women from the photograph:

'in no way relegates them to a lower status.... Because of laws of modesty, we are not allowed to pub lish pictures of women, and we regret if this gives and impression of [being] disparaging to women, which is certainly never our intention. We apologize is this was seen as offensive'.

It would appear, in fact, that by erasing these two women from the pages of history, the newspaper was actually pointing out that its male readership is so inadequate and desperate that the sight of Hillary Clinton, fully clothed, at work and involved in the most dramatic forty minutes of her life, might reduce them to gibbering, simpering, horny idiots.

So that's alright then.

Gordon Strachan is not a coke-snorting bisexual

2011-05-12T17:23:00.000+01:00

Red faces over at the Press Gazette today after they printed this tale following a Press Complaints Commission ruling.

'The Daily Mail has been forced to publish a series of amendments to articles claiming Scottish football manager Gordon Strachan was bisexual, had an affair with a male aide to the royal family and had a cocaine habit.

'Strachan complained to the Press Complaints Commission that the articles – published in 2007 and 2008, and which remained available on the newspaper’s website – contained numerous inaccuracies.

'Strachan said the newspaper was wrong to refer to him as bisexual and that he was “heterosexual and has never had anything other than platonic relationships with men”.

'Strachan also said the paper was wrong to have suggested he had a regular cocaine habit and had pretended to be dead to avoid paying a woman – Laura Gosling, the source for the story – money she claimed he owed her.

'He also said it was untrue that he claimed his father was a New York judge, had bragged about spending £15,000 on clothes per month, used to cut the labels out of designer clothes to sew them into his own, and was in arrears in respect of rent payments and had “barely a penny to his name”.'

There was some consternation in my office as we had somehow not noticed tales in the Mail claiming Strachan was snorting coke with his boyfriends. Why would the manager seriously claim his dad was a New York judge? Is he really into designer clothes? How had we missed all this juicy gossip?

All was later revealed as Press Gazette rather hastily printed a corrected version. The PCC ruling actually concerned Ian Strachan, a 'Scottish socialite'. All trace of the original post appears to have been erased from the web and sadly I didn't take a screen grab. They also tweeted their own correction: 'CORRECTION: PCC bisexual affair claim story should have stated Ian Strachon - NOT GORDON STRACHON'[their spelling].

(HT Aidanrad)

Kadyrov's Liverpudlian prostitutes

2011-05-12T08:45:00.000+01:00

So Steve McManaman, Robbie Fowler and Craig David prostituted themselves yesterday when they appeared at an all star football game to mark the opening of a new stadium in the Chechen capital Grozny.

Both former Liverpool players appeared on #r4today to claim they were simply there to play football and were not concerned with propaganda. Why then was Chechnya's murderous, gangster leader Ramzan Kadyrov allowed to waltz through a 'lackadasical' all stars team to manufacture a 5-2 win?

The potbellied killer was credited with four assists. But in recent years he has been more famous for the assisting in the abduction and killing of thousands of people, the trafficking of women, his personal entourage guilty of rape, murder and terror. The game was supposed to be an attempt to show to the world how the country has changed. The war might have ended but it's still a gangster state.

And these stupid, grubby footballers turn up to claim they are there to simply play football? They are just the extension of a killer's propaganda machine.

Will the Big Society save King's Stairs Gardens?

2011-05-10T19:33:00.003+01:00

There is a very good test coming up to see whether or not the coalition’s much-talking about Big Society amounts to anything or is just a vacuous exercise.

Thames Water is very keen to build a new super sewer, the Thames Tideway Tunnel, along the Thames to relieve the pressure Joseph Bazalgette’s Victorian masterpiece currently faces. It’s a perfectly laudable project but it poses some problems. The scheme would be an enormous engineering undertaking and would destroy King’s Stairs Gardens in Rotherhithe.

For those who have not been there, King’s Stairs Gardens is a delightful little bit of greenery in Rotherhithe on the Thames’ South Bank. By the river there is the lovely Angel pub which has a wooden balcony with great views of the Thames and the whole area appears to be full of decent, well-maintained council housing. It’s a wonderful place to while away long summer afternoons by the river.

But this could all be destroyed if Thames Water gets it way. In order to build this sewer it needs to excavate a giant shaft to access the tunnelling works and erect an enormous jetty and conveyors to remove large quantities of waste and spoil. And King’s Stairs Gardens, because it could be acquired relatively cheaply, is their preferred site.

All vegetation in the area would need to be removed, including the felling of an avenue of mature trees, to make way for this shaft which would measure 100 feet wide and 250 feet deep; quite a big hole then. Large quantities of waste would have to be stored on the site as it is gradually shifted off, with ‘foul-smelling slurry’ being ‘pumped into settlement tanks’.

The work would last seven years and at the end of it a 45-foot high sewer ventilation shaft would mark the spot of the shaft as well as a large sewer building on the riverside. What is currently a public park would be reduced to an industrial estate; all the time thousands of people will be living within a stones throw of the work.

Donna Spedding, who chairs the Save King’s Stairs Gardens campaign group, said:

‘The use of King’s Stairs Gardens for these works would be a community and environmental disaster and scar the heritage of this area. Thousands of people would lose an absolutely essential amenity for seven whole years, and a generation of local children will lose their play space. After the work is finished in 2020, the park will be despoiled by Thames Water’s permanent sewage venting tower, service building and concreted parking areas.’

And the publican fears he will be forced out of business too.

The campaign group has already pulling together a petition with more than 5,000 signatories and has garnered the support of prominent figures including local MP Simon Hughes, David Bellamy, Sir Patrick Stewart and Annie Lennox.

Now some might argue that these people campaigning against this scheme are simply Nimbies, standing in the way of progress. But there is more to it. The villain of the piece, Thames Water, has not been entirely unthinking and has bought a former industrial site a few hundred yards away that would appear to be perfect for the job. In a similar position, Chambers Wharf would appear to solve Thames Water’s problems. It has no developments which need clearing, is a brownfield site and has no residents on site.

The latest development is the Open Spaces Society (OSS) has written to Eric Pickles, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, as well as Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman, in response to their stated commitment to ‘develop proposals for a new designation to protect green areas of particular importance to local communities’.

The OSS, Britain’s oldest national amenity organisation, highlights that King’s Stairs Gardens is ‘one of the green spaces specifically identified which urgently’ needs this designation.

So now the government has a gilt-edged opportunity to put the Big Society into action. Let’s see the local community win over Thames Water and let King’s Stairs Gardens be saved.

To see more information on the Save King’s Stairs Gardens, visit their excellent website, featuring videos, the full, shocking, plans, the petition and local articles about the plans. It can all be found here.

Kite-flying from David Willetts

2011-05-10T09:36:00.006+01:00

The announcement by David Willett’s that rich families might be able to bypass the university quota system is an interesting bit of kite flying.

On the face of it, assuming a candidate passes the entrance requirements, the money they pay goes directly into university coffers, their presence frees up access for poorer students, it is not altogether a crazy idea. After all, employers can already sponsor candidates and this would just open up the system further.

It is a concern that only the wealthiest universities would benefit. It could well encourage further a Premier League of universities who can expand courses by cherry picking the bright offspring of David Beckham, Alan Sugar, Nadine Dorries etc (I know, poor examples), leaving other, less glamorous universities less able to compete.

But the question has to be asked, why would the wealthy bother? Would their need be so pressing that their children must start university in a particular year? I can understand an employer paying for a place in a particular but if rich pupils are qualified to enter Oxford, and are only offered an ‘off-quota’ they can surely simply refuse, go elsewhere, or even take one of those increasingly rare things, a gap year.

UPDATE:

Well that was quick. I said David Willetts' idea was a piece of kite-flying and it didn't fly very far. Downing Street is obviously worried about the image that the rich might be able to buy their way into university.

Already Mr Willetts has had to issue a clarifying statement saying students couldn't 'buy' places. He said:

'We will only consider allowing off-quota places where it contributes to the coalition commitment to improve social mobility and increase fair access.'

But it does seem a jittery David Cameron, already trying to sustain Andrew Lansley and Vince Cable, is getting his scissors out for this plan

Can we really trust the police?

2011-05-09T19:05:00.007+01:00

Today the Home Secretary Theresa May gave a speech about police reform in which she said it was about time to ‘trust the police’.

By complete coincidence legal papers released under the Freedom of Information Act today have shown that Scotland Yard has paid compensation to 67 people who were arrested in an ‘intelligence-led’ operation executed after G20 riots.

The arrests were made during a raid on a squat in Earl Street, near Liverpool Street Station, the day after the G20 demonstrations in which PC Simon Harwood needlessly pushed over non-protester Ian Tomlinson who died a short while later.

Inside the Earl Street property the squatters, thought be police to be ringleaders of the riots, were making a late breakfast. Police armed with Tasers stormed in and rounded them all up. The activists later all gave a pretty coherent story as to what occurred and it involved liberal use of the baton. For the benefit of the media cameras who had accompanied the police raid, the squatters were then made to sit out on the pavement in handcuffs.

In total the Met has £237,135.70 to 67 individuals for matters such as ‘false imprisonment’ and assault’. Every suspect arrested on the Earl Street squat has received compensation of between £3,000 and £5,000. And the figure also includes almost £90,000 in legal bills. In one case one man has received £30,000.

Such was the level of 'intelligence' used by the police not one of the 67 has ever faced any charge as a consequence of the raid.

The FOI was registered by Paul Andrews on February 14 this year and Mr Andrews received the standard acknowledgement the following day from the Met, which included the line ‘You will receive a response within the statutory timescale of 20 working days as defined by the Act’.

But nothing happened. Unhappy with this (unsurprising) response, Mr Andrews sent a letter of complaint on April 2. After a bit more toing and froing, A response was finally forthcoming from the Met on May 5.

Their letter said:

‘As at 18/4/2011 the MPS has settled 67 claims arising from the G20
policing operation in 2009, as follows:

'1 claim for assault (excessive force) from April 2009 was settled with a
payment of Damages for £30,000 and Costs of £50,000’

And it ends:

‘The grand totals for all 67 claims are:
Damages £237,135.70 and Costs (to date) £139,051.19.
All claimants employed a solicitor.’

It's yet another example of why it is so difficult for people to trust the police. The shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes was the result of a botched operation, followed by lies and obfuscation. In the Tomlinson case it's hard not to think there was a wilful, and complicit, cover-up.

So I'm afraid until the IPCC gets some teeth and the police face the proper consequences of their actions, it will be pretty difficult for people to 'trust the police'.

'Paranoia, greed, racism are fun'

2011-05-08T18:17:00.002+01:00

The acerbic Bill Maher questions why anyone would want to vote Republican.

AV explained for cats

2011-05-04T17:06:00.003+01:00

Fed up with First Past the Post? Not yet sure about the Alternative Vote? Is your brain too small to understand the concepts behind AV, as the No2AV campaign frequently asserts?

Well, this video should help all. AV explained for cats. (ht Liberal Burblings)

Osama or Obama is dead

2011-05-02T06:51:00.008+01:00

After ten years of military action, mountains of coverage and heaps of speculation, this television anchor did not appear to be fully prepared to announce the death of Osama bin Laden.

It's hard not to feel sorry for him as it must be one of the most spectacular live gaffes imagineable.

Update: It seems Fox News seem to be confusing Osama and Obama too. (h/t Political Scrapbook

Simon Jeffer's comedy

2011-04-30T14:10:00.001+01:00

It's hard not to feel sorry for the red haired pedantic Simon Heffer, the laughably humourless prig on the Daily Telegraph. Today he complains about comedians on Radio Four. Apparently they are too left wing. While this is possibly true, it's hard to think of many funny right wing comics. And of course most comedians are simply sceptics and just observe the absurdity of the world.

Mr Jeffer's suggestion, however, appears to be that we should have been chuckling to Bernard Manning and Jim Davidson all along. Referring to niggers and pakis, as well abusing the little woman in the kitchen is in Me Heffer's world, the height of humour.

What a silly bunt.

AV vote fails to capture minds

2011-04-28T13:10:00.002+01:00

It might be a very important issue and a unique opportunity to reform our stupid voting system but both #no2av and #yes2av have run terrible, uninspiring campaigns. This cartoon from Private Eye is rather apposite.

Tories are 'institutionally' sexist

2011-04-27T18:12:00.009+01:00

Today there were two delightfully informative examples of the Conservative's attitude towards women.

Firstly, and most egregiously, was the Prime Minister’s extraordinary comment during Prime Ministers’ Questions. The incident occurred as Angela Eagle, Labour’s shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, tried to correct David Cameron as he made a factually inaccurate comment about former Labour MP Howard Stoate. It was an innocuous enough mistake, the Prime Minister claimed Dr Stoate had been defeated by a Tory candidate, when in fact he had stood down.

But rather than riding out the shouted correction from Ms Eagle, Mr Cameron invoked the image of Michael Winner, leaning over the Dispatch Box not unlike Terry Thomas, and uttered the telling phrase ‘calm down dear, calm down. Calm down and listen to the doctor’.

It may be a joke, it might be a quotation. It remains, nonetheless, extremely patronising. It’s no great shock to hear the Prime Minister being rude, he resorts to being offensive every time questioning is not going the way he would like

The government has tried to portray the Labour Party as screaming, humourless prigs, but in fact their response has been pretty moderate. No official request for an apology has been submitted. And Ed Balls perfectly reasonably acknowledged it as a joke on the World at One but he made the point that had he said the same to his wife Yvette ad home ‘she’d have clocked me one’.

Indeed, had Mr Cameron said ‘calm down dear’ to my mother, I shudder to think what state the Prime Minister would be in this evening.

Rather more seriously than the Prime Minister’s unfortunate joshing, is the case of Payam Tamiz, who until recently was a Tory candidate for Thanet council. The Evening Standard discovered he was listed as a member of a Facebook group called ‘Girls in Thanet … you are all slags, hoes, brasses and bheads’. For the record, I’ve no idea what a ‘bhead’ is.

Sadly for the unfortunate Mr Tamiz, his political career, which last week included a bit of campaigning with the ridiculous Baroness Warsi, has come to an end pretty swiftly after the paper found ‘derogatory references to women’ on his personal pages. One comment read: ‘Girls who comment under facebook pics boasting to their slutty friends about guys they’ve f***** and had one-night stands with are as low as they come!’.

The charming Mr Tamiz resigned and is no longer a candidate

There is an inate sexism within the Conservative Party which, despite the efforts of David Cameron at his most charming, have not gone away. The assumption that a woman's place is either at home or standing supportively at a man's side holds strong. Women take non-jobs within the cabinet, save for Theresa May who is the token senior woman and is kept well away from the inner core. The Prime Minister's dull faux-irony at PMQs is simply testament as to how deeply the prejudice lies.

Finally, the Daily Telegraph posted perhaps the worst possible blog today, based on PMQs. I can't claim it's sexist as it was 'written' by a woman, but it is breathtakingly stupid. It's here in all its glory. Writer Lucy Jones, in a stunning example of humour, has told the 'po-faced Twitter brigade' who have had the cheek of questioning her standards, to 'calm down, dears'. The Daily Mail's bitchiest writers must be jealous at the vacuity displayed by Ms Jones. Maybe she's punting for a job.

Update: PA helpfully gave Michael Winner a bell this afternoon to see what he made of the whole furore. Referring to Harriet Harmen, the charmless, film director said: ‘Does she not know that this phrase which I created 10 years ago has become a part of the nation’s language’.

It’s enough to make one weep.

Trump peddling myths about Obama

2011-04-26T09:44:00.004+01:00

It's gratifying to see Donald Trump, that absurd, toupee-wearing oaf, is planning to concentrate on the big issues as he tries to secure the Republican presidential candidate.

Rather than centring his campaign on a sensible issue like the economy, or foreign wars, or unemployment, what does this ridiculous man think is important? Barack Obama's student record.

'I heard he was a terrible student, terrible. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?' he has asked today. He goes on:

'I'm thinking about it, I'm certainly looking into it. Let him show his records. I have friends who have smart sons with great marks, great boards, great everything and they can't get into Harvard. We don't know a thing about this guy. There are a lot of questions that are unanswered about our president.'

Blimey, is Mr Trump suggesting there might be some decades old conspiracy, involving politicians, civil servants, political fixers, colleges, lecturers and teachers, to get Obama into the Oval Office? Er, yes, he would appear to be.

Reassuringly, the White House have declined to comment on the issue, treating it with the contempt it deserves but Trump is unlikely to simply drop the issue. After all, he is a big kahuna in the 'Birther' movement, the group of nutters and conspiracy theorists - all of whom appear to be Tea Party supporters - who are yet to be convinced Barack Obama was born in the United States. He conveniently ignores the fact the birth certificate was published online in June 2008 (and can be seen here).

So does Mr Trump have any evidence or reason to be suspicious over the president's college record? Er, no. Not a jot. He has not revealed which dickey-bird claimed Obama was a 'terrible' student, neither has he said why this might be an issue worth pursuing.

Trump is, of course, displaying an increasingly popular tactic of ignoring any actually important issues - perhaps because he's changed his stance on so many of them - and simply trying to muddy the water. Why bother actually engaging in sensible debate when it's so much easier to peddle conspiracies, lies and misinformation?

Knee-jerk nonsense from the TPA

2011-04-20T22:32:00.004+01:00

The Taxpayers' Alliance are a predictable bunch. Never does the phrase 'well that's a good use of taxpayers' money' pass their lips. In the journalistic world, they are like a tap. If a struggling hack wants to gather an intolerant quotation about any form of government expenditure, be it local or national, a quick call to the Taxpayers' Alliance is all that is required. Tap opens, knee-jerk quotation pours out and all is solved.

But surely, amongst the many nonsensical reports they have published, this must rank as almost the most petty and small minded.

'Police authorities spend over £1m on publications' the top of the press release shouts, for their report which came out this morning.

The release goes on with the frankly stunning line 'Police authorities across the UK are spending over £1 million pounds on like glossy magazines and leaflets, according to new research by the TaxPayers' Alliance'.

Yes, that's right. This ridiculous organisation, which claims to be independent and 'grassroots' but is clearly a right-wing Libertarian pack with ludicrously close links to the Tory Party and tax-avoiders, is upset that the police force, across the entire country, is spending the grand total of £1m on leaflets.

Was it really worth the effort of a report at all?

They claim it is 'just one example of non-frontline spending that could be cut'. And yet what does this money actually produce? Well, even according the TPA itself the money was spent on 'local policing summaries in the 2010-11 financial year'.

So, in fact, this money was spent on telling people what their local police were doing. Informing them. Keeping them in the loop. Only the most insular and idiotic person could possibly think this was a waste of money.

The TPA suggests the information could be released online for free. Firstly, the idea publishing this would be free is clearly nonsensical and secondly not everyone is connected to the internet, particularly the elderly, who would frequently be the most keen on knowing what their local bobbies have been up to.

According to Matthew Sinclair, the director of the TPA, the continued publication of such documents is costing 'the earth'.

Well, maybe if the TPA is so worried such an expense it should ask one of its wealthy, offshore, donors to stump-up the cash instead to fund this useful service?

Women seek men

2011-04-15T19:10:00.002+01:00

Now I should make it clear I am very happily married and not looking for any other excitement. But on the way home today from Borough Market, with Dear Wife by my side, I did have enormous fun reading the personal ads in the Evening Standard.

Hear are the highlights:

Little Miss Perfect Pretty lady, 24 yrs, East London, loves going out, having fun etc. WLTM kind genuine male, any age, looks unimportant

Yep, she's happy with a 70-year-old, gangrene-infected, smoking addicted, Quasimodo. As long as he's kind and genuine.

Then there is the terribly unfussy:

Party Girl, Female, 25, professional, likes nights out, socialising, seeks male

One wonders why she's bothered spending money on an advert considering all she's after is a 'male'.

My personal favourite, however, was the coffin chaser:

Sexy Chick Beautiful, slim, sexy female, 22, seeks older, distinguished gent, 65 plus for friendship/relationship

Only desperate geriatics need apply.

Is No to AV scared of debate?

2011-04-14T14:16:00.006+01:00

Is the No to AV campaign actually scared of a sensible and reasoned debate on political reform in this country? Or are they desperately using bullying tactics to maintain the status quo?

The No to AV been accused of intimidation after several charities have withdrawn their support for political voting reform. Organisations including British Muslims for Secular Democracy, Urban Forum and Independent Academic Research Studies have ended active involvement with Yes to Fairer Votes after receiving letters and Freedom of Information requests from campaigners who want to retain the First Past the Post system.

The claims are published in the latest edition of charity magazine Third Sector. One unnamed charity director told the magazine:

‘We dissociated ourselves from the referendum because the no campaign was incredibly aggressive from the outset. Understandably, it is fighting tooth and nail about it, and it has effectively shut down the debate.’

According to the piece in the April 12 edition of the magazine, when the Yes to Fairer Votes campaign got going, it had support from several charities including Friends of the Earth, Urban Forum, Bassac, British Musilms for Social Democracy, as well as think tanks New Economics Foundation and Independent Academic Research Studies, both registered charities.

However, most have now ‘dissociated themselves from Yes to Fairer Votes’ by withdrawing their logos from supporting literature and websites and excusing themselves from active campaigning.

According to the magazine, William Norton, the referendum agent for No to AV asked the Charity Commission whether the law permitted charities to take sides in the AV debate. In turn the commission wrote to all the charities connected to Yes to Fairer Votes about the matter. In their official guidelines, drawn up in January, the commission said some charities ‘which exist to promote good citizenship might want to encourage people to participate in the process’.

But it warned trustees that they must consider ‘how they will ensure that they maintain their independence and neutrality’. And it added: ‘In exceptional circumstances charities may consider that the outcome of referendum is likely to directly affect, positively or negatively, the delivery of their charitable objects.’

But, the magazine argues, this is a bit of grey area. It says:

'So if a charity's objects state specifically that it exists to campaign for the introduction of AV, there is clearly no problem, as No to AV points out. But the dilemma for charities is that their objects are rarely so specific and it is arguable whether their objectives include electoral reform.

'On a wide interpretation, a charity whose objects included promoting citizenship and democracy could campaign for AV; on a narrow interpretation, it could not.

'The dilemma for charities is that there is no way for them to obtain a definitive ruling in advance..... Faced with possible censure from the commission and the courts many decide to back off.'

The effect of the warning was, according to the magazine, ‘chilling’. Toby Blume, the chief executive of community charity Urban Forum, said:

‘Most have quietly withdrawn. We took our logo down because it was unclear whether we were entitled to support the campaign and it was not worth the fight. Charities should be prepared to make the case, but many of them, like us, find the odds are stacked against them.’

At the same time, according to Titus Alexander, convenor of Democracy Matters, No to AV submitted Freedom of Information requests to public bodies that funded charities, asking them for details of their links to charities connected to the yes campaign.

‘People should be able to take part in the debate without fear,’ he said.

Third Sector lists five charities which withdrew their support or connections to Yes to Fairer Votes as a consequence of this pressure. Two of them, British Muslims for Secular Democracy and Urban Forum, explicitly state they dropped their support because they lacked the ‘resources’ to fight their cause.

Friends of the Earth stuck to their guns. They have deep pockets of course. Craig Bennett, head of policy and campaigns, told the magazine:

‘We told the commission in March why we feel supporting AV is entirely consistent without charitable objects and we don’t see any problem at all.’

Greenpeace and the World Development Movement have also continued their association.

Now, oddly not a single charity, according to the article, has come out in support of the No to AV campaign. This, of course, has nothing whatever to do with their heavy-handed tactics against charities who might happen to oppose their cause. A No to AV spokesman told the magazine:

‘I know it might look like this benefits us because the charities don’t support us.

‘But it’s about what is acceptable by law and in the eyes of charities’ supporters.’

And of course, it's nothing to do with wanting to stifle intelligent debate.

What do dead doctors think of the NHS reforms?

2011-04-13T12:54:00.006+01:00

The coalition is facing some pretty difficult times ahead as it tries to persuade people its NHS reforms are for the best and not, in fact, the wrecking job they clearly are.

So tricky, it seems the government is now trying to harness the power of the dead.

To try and persuade people David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Andrew Lansley have embarked on what has been called a ‘listening tour’. Really, it's PR stunt with Cameron smoothly playing the role of salesman, Clegg his earnest junior and Lansley the comedic foil. So spectacularly inept have their efforts been their Bill is even more unpopular than before they commenced their efforts.

But today, Clegg deployed his latest argument. His grandfather would have supported the reforms. Old Hugh Clegg certainly had healthcare experience being a GP and sometime editor of the British Medical Journal. So far, so good.

Sadly, he has been dead since 1983 which, I would have thought, makes his support, whether true or not, somewhat irrelevant.

Clegg and Cameron were speaking to voluntary groups in a desperate attempt to get their support to try and con people into thinking this is not the privatisation of the NHS.

And Mr Clegg old the audience that grandpappy Clegg 'would have recognised a lot of what we're taking about'.

Is this the first time a politician has tried to invoke the spirit of a dead ancestor to support controversial legislation?

And why stop with Dr Clegg? What does Dr John Snow, of cholera-curing fame, think? Does Dr Edward Jenner have an opinion he wishes to share?

Perhaps a decent spirit medium with a large Ouija board can be found so a British Medical Association of Dead Doctors can hastily be organised to gauge their opinion of the government's NHS reforms.

Update: A thought was suggested to me: would dead heroic nurse Florence Nightingale have supported RCN's no-confidence motion today or supported Andrew Lansley (Tosser)?

A few thoughts on Simon Milton

2011-04-12T19:10:00.004+01:00

It was quite a shock to hear of Simon Milton’s death late last night. I knew he had not been well over the years but his passing at the terribly young age of 49 leaves a huge hole.

His influence at City Hall, serving as Mayor Boris Johnson’s Chief of Staff, was clear to all. He brought a professionalism which was sorely needed and a quiet determination to get things done. The tributes at his passing from across the political spectrum are testament to the respect in which he was held.

In recent years, we have not had much contact but when I last saw him at a reception in City Hall he was courteous and welcoming as ever.

But for more than six years I reported Westminster Council’s politics and during that time Sir Simon Milton was the Leader of the Council. Having survived the scandals of the Dame Shirley Porter years, he became leader in 2000 and we spoke on a on almost weekly basis.

In the early 2000s, with his steady, confident hand at the helm, Kit Malthouse as Deputy leader and finance chief, and Carl Powell as planning supremo, the city council had an immensely powerful triumvirate at the top. These three turned the council into the Conservative’s flagship, boasting comparatively low council tax and pioneering the outsourcing of services. Such reforms might have been controversial or popular with all but they are the sort of changes the government now wants to see emulated in councils across the country as savings are sought.

His capabilities were clearly much needed by Boris who now has a huge hole to fill. But all thoughts should be with Robert Davis (pictured above with Sir Simon) tonight, a Westminster councillor himself, and to whom Simon had a civil partnership in 2007. His comments in tonight’s Evening Standard are gut-wrenching:

‘My life is going to be horrendous. He was such a great companion, we did everything together. It is going to leave a gaping hole in my life and London will be bereft.’

Is it really liberal to ban the Burqa?

2011-04-11T22:57:00.006+01:00

A woman was issued with a ticket in a Parisian shop centre today as the French police get to grips with the new law which prohibits the wearing of a full veil in public. The 27-year-old woman now has a 150Euro fine or face citizenship classes within a month

Many have claimed the introduction of the ban is a great achievement for the secular, liberal West and there have been frequent calls for Britain to emulate the legislation.

But is it really 'liberal' to ban the Burqa? Or should we allow people to wear the clothes they choose?

France has made its decision. Wearing the Burqa is not, apparently, compatible with the French way of life. Onions, garlic, wine, 'bof' are all fine. Wearing a hood with just a slit for your eyes is not good enough.

I have an inbuilt reaction when anything is banned and while I might look pretty odd, I'm tempted to don a Burqa myself.

First, I should say I find the sight of women in the full veil pretty appalling. It is a political act, a manifestation of male power abusing religious doctrine. This is most keenly felt in a country like Saudi Arabia where the systemic abuse of women is all pervasive. And successive British governments do little to challenge such abuse.

Rather than avoiding attention, a woman in a full veil attracts attention like a fly flitting around a flickering light; she sticks out on a high street like the proverbial sore thumb.

But the number of women in recent years wearing the full veil has increased. This is hardly surprising considering the succession of wars in Muslim countries: Afghanistan; Iraq; and now, of course, Libya. The ostracisation of Muslims in society grows exponentially. It is rare a day passes without the Daily Mail, Daily Express, Daily Star, Sun raising the terrifying prospect of some element of Muslim life posing an appalling danger to an aspect of British life. Sharia law, we are told, is close to sweeping the country bringing along its barbaric medieval practices.

In the face of such pervasive persecution it is hardly surprising so many more women seek to publicly emphasise their religious identity. They might be wrong, they might be misguided. But, in many cases, wearing the full veil has simply been their choice. It is a statement of identity.

So while it can certainly be argued it is liberal to ban the Burqa, being, as it is, a symbol of female oppression, at the same time it is illiberal as it impinges upon an oppressed individual's right to choose.

There is an assumption that the values of the West, our liberal, secular, values, are morally superior to those which impose a veil on half the population. But such superiority should surely be persuaded and not forced? We should be able to demonstrate and convince women who wear the burqa why they would find it more empowering to lift the veil and throw it away. By simply banning something which we find uncomfortable the West is surely admitting failure. It admits failure to assimilate, failure to understand, failure to persuade.

Mr Clegg's porkies

2011-04-07T12:44:00.006+01:00

On Monday, during a typically boisterous episode in Deputy Prime Minister's Questions, Nick Clegg made this claim in response to a question from Harriet Harman, who had the temerity to point out universities appear keen to charge £9,000 tuition fees:

'What is typical is that the right hon. and learned Lady is jumping on the latest bandwagon without checking her facts. Less than half the universities that have published figures so far have said that they will seek to charge £9,000 for some courses [my bold], but there are still several weeks-in fact, two or three months-to go before the Office for Fair Access provides its consent to those plans, which can go ahead only if those universities provide much greater opportunities for disadvantaged children to gain access to those universities.

Can this really be true? Are 'less than half the universities' who have thus far declared their fees going to charge £9,000. Er, no. It's a complete fiction. Either Nick Clegg was poorly briefed or he deliberately told porkies to the House of Commons. Whatever his excuse, he is guilty of misleading the House and should be called to apologise.

According to the latest figures, of the 34 universities who have declared their fees, 24 of them intend to charge £9,000 for their courses. This includes top establishments such as Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Nottingham and former polytechnics such as the latest to declare, Oxford Brookes.

Now, I'm no mathematician, but even I know 24 out of 34 is a majority.

Mr Clegg goes on, in his response, to claim it's several months before the 'Office for Fair Access provides its consent to those plans' on the basis of universities providing greater access for 'disadvantaged children to gain access to those universities'.

Now, I can do no better than refer to Channel Four's excellent Factcheck blog (full post here) which has already examined similar claims made by the Prime Minister:

'The PM insists that setting fees is a matter for the Office for Fair Access to decide. Rather worrying then, that the Offa’s own director has denied responsibility.

'Sir Martin Harris said at a conference in London last month: “The Treasury made assumptions…they thought that Offa was going to be in a position to have legal powers to impose certain fee levels.

'“How they came to that view I cannot say because it was obvious to me from Day One that (Offa) didn’t (have the authority). Now the government is in some difficulty in limiting expenditure to the levels that the Treasury has assumed.”

'Indeed, a spokesman for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) confirmed to FactCheck: “Universities set the fees they would like to charge”.'

That seems fairly definitive then. More porkies from Mr Clegg.

The Google name game

2011-04-05T15:06:00.006+01:00

Type a name into Google and the search engine these days offers a choice of popular options. So, in a quiet moment, let’s see what people search about political figures.

Starting with the Prime Minister, typing ‘David Cameron is’ leads to these suggestions:

.... 'a donut, evil, racist, Jewish, a nob, scum, common, a bastard, a liar, a prick'.

Many of these are fair comment, some are accurate, others frankly weird. Very few people could imagine Dave the Old Etonian is common; those that do are probably descended from some fallen Royal throne, a Habsburg perhaps.

How does Nick Clegg fare? Well, 'Nick Clegg is a Tory' and 'Nick Clegg is a traitor' come top, not altogether unsurprisingly. They are followed by Nick Clegg is 'finished, hot, a snake, gay, a prick, an idiot' and 'a bastard'. Perhaps the most surprising aspect is that they are not all negative.

Ed Miliband does not do very well in this Google game at all. The Labour leader is 'an idiot, a joke, a disaster, Wallace, a Jew, a baby' and finally, and more prosaically, 'the MP for'.

Former Prime Ministers also suffer. Gordon Brown is 'gay, awesome, bulbasaur, a moron, a prick, my shepherd, an idiot, a liar' and 'finished'. Again, like Nick Clegg, the only real surprise is that the searches suggested are not all negative. And whomever Googled 'Gordon Brown is my shepherd' must be deeply weird. And a bublasaur is apparently a Pokemon reference, whatever they happen to be.

Typing 'Tony Blair is' into Google prompts this response: 'an idiot, gay, a criminal, the antichrist, a freemason, evil, a liar' and more oddly 'a political figure in France'. Generally, these searches appear to reference the anger over Iraq and conspiracy theories.

Searches for Margaret Thatcher generally alternate between those who think she's 'evil' and those who think she's 'a hero' and whether she is still alive or not.

Most tragically, no searches at all are suggested for poor old John Major, a reflection on the disaster of his premiership and even more plaintively, typing in 'Clement Attlee is' merely elucidates the question 'Who is Clem Attlee?' Who indeed?

It's April Fools' Day - Hooray

2011-04-01T00:08:00.006+01:00

Over the course of several days I must have received well over a hundred April Fools' suggestions. They were all, without exception, awful.

But the one below was most appalling, failing on every point; it's racist, offensive and worst of all not funny.

'A revolutionary new cosmetic procedure that could simultaneously eradicate both UK’s obesity crisis and starvation in the third world is being offered to British patients for free by leading cosmetic surgery practice the Klaxon Institute;

'For a limited period, patients of the Klaxon Institute, based in London’s Harley St, will be able to register their interest in a free course of reverse-liposuction.

'This process, developed by Klaxon Institute founder Dr Herod Richards, involves the surgical removal of excess fatty tissue from patients, as with the standard liposuction process.

'But this fat is then stored and flown to the third world, where it is injected into the bodies of people suffering from starvation, allowing them to survive for months without having to struggle to feed themselves.

'And now with reserves of fat running low, for a short time we are offering the service for free. In these tough times, liposuction won’t cost you a penny – but it will change a life.

'So, if one of your New Year’s resolutions is to shed some pounds, why not lose that weight and gain the appreciation of someone worse off than you, by signing up for the reverse-liposuction procedure?'

Dr Richard H. Klaxon, the founder of the Klaxon Institute added:

'Our techniques here make liposuction an opportunity to change yourself and the world for the better. It is my hope the public will take up this unique free opportunity and help themselves and others.

'It is said that give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day. Well, I say that by skipping the actual fish, a man would not need to be fed for months – and nor would he need to be taught how to fish.'

I do feel sorry for the PRs who have to send out this drivel.

The 'genetic traits of women' not up to politics, apparently

2011-03-30T19:29:00.006+01:00

The egregious Toby Young is highlighted in a delightfully entertaining piece in the new edition of Private Eye. It provides ample proof, if any more were needed, of the idiocy of the man and refers to a letter written by the Spectator columnist to friend Harry Phibbs, now a Hammersmith and Fulham councillor and 'cabinet member for community engagement, whatever that is supposed to signify. The pair are currently plotting Toby Young's ridiculous free school destined to be in a building which once housed voluntary groups.

Penned 29 years ago, when Toby was a schoolboy at north London school William Ellis and Phibbs was a ‘noisy Tory schoolboy… attracting media attention’.

According to the Eye, the young, presumably fashionably coiffed, Toby Young wrote:

‘Here is a brief history of my political carreer (sic). Having been a victim of a bohemian upbringing, and living in a small, socialist community in Devon surrounded by feminists and hippies of every (unspeakable) description, I decided to set up a provocative organisation which I suitably named “Combat Communism”.'

Mr Young goes on:

‘Recently I started up a political discussion group called the “the Young Apostles”, and we hold regular meetings where topics such as disarmament, feminism, culture, education, the media, the constitution and international finance are discussed. I originally banned females from taking part, partly because I don’t believe them equipped with the ability to discuss things and partly because I don’t know any bright females. Much to my horror some local saggy-titted feminists (Greenham Gremlins) found out about this discussion group and its high membership standards, and picketed the first meeting.

‘Naturally they weren’t prepared to listen to my arguments about the genetic character traits of women and just ranted and raved… so I was forced to enlist the services of the local constabulary in order to dispose of them.’

Mr Young invites the young Phibbster to these soirees where cigars and whisky were helpfully provided and signs off ‘Yours sincerely, Honourable Toby D M Young’, adding the title due to his father’s peerage.

It’s so delightful to know how the genetic defects which afflict Toby Young so terribly in middle age were so clearly evident when he was a mere sapling.

Vince Cable turns into Baldrick

2011-03-28T16:43:00.007+01:00

If Vince Cable went into Government with the express purpose of being humiliated and exposed on a frequent basis, then he is proving to be one of the most successful cabinet ministers of our age.

One the other hand, if he had hoped to reign over a powerful and influential department, nudging the policy of the coalition government towards the his own social democratic roots, then he can only judged as an abject and terrible failure.

His latest embarrassment follows his appearances on the airwaves and television yesterday when he suggested, in his increasingly muddled way, the 50p tax rate could be replaced by a revamped version of the Liberal Democrats’ much derided pre-election idea of a mansion tax.

Speaking to John Pienaar on Five Live, Mr Cable said:

‘It needs to be a change which is fair overall and does take into account of the fact that the wealthy have got to pay their share. And the emphasis may well have to shift from high marginal rates of tax on income which are undesirable, to taxation of wealth, including property.’

It’s not what he is saying which is really the problem, although when it was first mooted, the mansion tax had less credibility than Jeffrey Archer and Alan Clark at a monogamy convention, it's the sheer futility of what he is saying.

No sooner had the suggestion been made, David Cameron’s spokesman himself poured scorn upon the idea and basically told the doddery Mr Cable to quiet schtum. In a brief, but inescapably haughty, aside, his spokesman said: 'Tax is a matter for the Chancellor and he makes statements about tax in the Budget.’

Before icily adding: ‘There was one of those last week.’

Yes Vince, did you fall asleep like old Gout-hand himself, Ken Clarke?

Before the General Election he was widely feted as St Vince, an economic sage who could pierce Conservative and Labour economic policies with an acute and pithy putdown. Here was a politician who had predicted the crash and he regularly appeared at the top of opinion polls when people were asked who they would prefer to be Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Less than a year after the election he is something of a pathetic site; not so much a shadow of his former self, more a fraudulent impostor. Gone are the witticisms, the self-deprecating humour, the cunning, the savvy. Being in government is obviously tough but none have found it tougher than Vince – save perhaps the increasingly haggard and isolated Nick Clegg. The tango-dancing coot was stripped of practically all his power after effectively being seduced by a couple of pretty young things from the Daily Telegraph, tricked into loose-talk about Rupert Murdoch. If he had been a Tory cabinet minister, he would have been sent to the backbenches, never to be seen again. As a Lib Dem, he provides a useful fig leaf for this Tory-led government.

Cable vanishes from our screens for weeks on end, presumably locked in a cupboard to prevent him doing himself more mischief before the press (he appears to share the cupboard with Baroness Warsi). But each time he emerges, he goofs again and is promptly shut back away.

When he appeared on Marr yesterday, Cable defended the 50p tax rate as something little more than a symbolic gesture designed to con people in thinking it’s not just middle and poor earners who are being the brunt of the coalition’s cuts. ‘Look’, he essentially said, ‘the rich are being stung too. I know they use any old ruse to avoid paying tax, and indeed the rate is not raising more tax, but it looks good’.

No Mr Cable. If it’s not raising the money, it’s a pretty worthless gesture. Either get rid of it now, replace it or introduce measures to combat tax avoidance.

If he hadn't betrayed so much of what he has campaigned for over the years, and his party's supporters, I'd almost feel sorry for him. As it is, one of the most cunning politicians of our age has been reduced to the level of Baldrick, and treated by his colleagues with as much respect.
Vince Cable

Andrew Lansley, Tosser

2011-03-24T19:40:00.002Z

The title says it all.

'THREE CHEERS FOR COLONEL GADDAFI'

2011-03-24T12:40:00.004Z

Not my words, but those of Father Neil Horan, the nutty defrocked Catholic priest who captured the international headlines so spectacularly in 2003 when he thought the best place to perform his peace dance was in the middle of Silverstone during the British Grand Prix.

He later repeated his jib at the Epsom Derby in 2004 and the marathon at the Summer Olympics in Athens in 2004. He was defrocked in 2005 but still continued as the the self-styled Dancing Priest and somehow managed to appear on Britain's Got Talent in 2009; his complete lack of talent being, of course, no bar to appearing on the show.

Anyway. Fr Horan, whom I used to see occasionally when living in Nunhead, his neck of the woods where he was always dressed in his bizarre green apron like a very camp Robin Hood, sent me a letter this morning offering his exultations for Muammar Gaddafi. And it was simply too entertaining not to share.

It reads:

'THREE CHEERS FOR COLONEL GADAFFI
- For standing up to the arrogant and bullying West
- For you past support for the Palestinians
- For you past support for hijackers
- For you splendid achievement at Lockerbie
You were appointed by Christ
You were a traitor when you gave up your weapons to the UN: Now is your chance to make up for it by rearming quickly.
May Allah be with you, Colonel.'

He does go on for a bit, but the gist is Libya will find itself in alliance with Iran and Russia in the Third World War against the West before finishing with the following offer:

'Dear Colonel, I would be delighted to come to Tripoli, at my own Expense, and perform my Peace Dance for: You, Your Family, Your Government, and the People of Libya.'

Now, I'm quite keen on eccentrics but I'm really not sure Fr Horan is going to persuade many people to convert to his form of Christianity with this kind of appeal.

And in other news: Fred Titmus RIP

2011-03-23T18:00:00.004Z

AUSTRALIA V ENGLAND

Your browser does not support iframes.

Elizabeth Taylor may have died, the egregious George Osborne has taken his school briefcase to work and delivered his Budget, we might be at war in Libya, and Japan could well be struggling with the aftermath of a terrible tsunami and possible nuclear fallout; but I think it's worth paying tribute to Fred Titmus.

The great England allrounder died today and above is footage featuring his bowling during the Melbourne Ashes test in 1963.

The footage is from British Pathe.

So is Gaddafi a legitimate target?

2011-03-21T13:31:00.003Z

Opinion appears divided.

What does Defence Secretary Liam Fox think? He certainly seems to think killing off Gaddafi would be perfectly reasonable. When being interviewed over the last couple of days he certainly hasn’t ruled it out saying ‘it all depends on how people behave’.

And a ‘senior military source’ has told Sky News Gaddafi is a ‘legitimate military target’.

The Americans, though, don’t seem keen. Vice Admiral William E. Gortney said in a press conference their aim was not to kill Gaddafi: ‘At this particular point I can guarantee that he’s not on a targeting list’.

And today General Sir David Richards, the Chief of the Defence Staff, said Gaddafi is ‘absolutely not’ a target, adding: ‘It is not allowed under the UN resolution and it is not something I want to discuss any further.’

William Hague, meanwhile, finds the fence the most comfortable place to sit, saying the mission was ‘nothing more or nothing less’ than enforcing the UN Resolution 1973.

The resolution itself doesn’t really help. While it allows ‘all necessary measures’ to be taken to prevent Gaddafi’s forces it fails to mention him by name one, except for the list of those members of his regime who are subject to travel bans, asset freezes and other sanctions. Of course, if Gaddafi happens to inspecting a missile site when a missile lands, no one will be weeping.

But no wonder there are already jitters within the coalition of countries who have so swiftly taken action against Gaddafi. In many ways, the resort to war (yes, I know some will claim it’s not a war, but it is) has been admirable. There is manifestly a justification in defending the people of Libya who rose up against Gaddafi’s rotten regime. They demanded change and it was the mad Colonel who effectively turned the situation into a civil war to cling to power.

But the confusion over whether Gaddafi is a target underlines the problem of this enterprise. How do we know when we have won? If Gaddafi does go, who steps into his place? What do we do if and when the situation descends into internecine warfare?

Some governments want to force Gaddafi from power but regime change does not appear to be endorsed by the UN resolution. The United States has stated it wants to see Libya remain a united country, to avoid Balkanisation and tribal warfare. But if Gaddafi and his clan are shifted from power it is hard think they will just slink off and hide in a corner sulking.

And where do we draw the line? In Yemen 45 civilian protesters have been killed by the authorities there. When is that no-fly-zone going to appear?

Update:

Both David Cameron and Ed Miliband made excellent speeches in the House of Commons in the debate that currently drawing to a close on the situation in Libya. But neither were able to say how and when the operation can be claimed to be a success. David Cameron repeatedly said the aims of the mission was to fulfil the words of the UN resolution; it really didn’t answer the question.

Miliband framed the issue within three requirements: ‘Where there is just cause, where there is reasonable action that can be taken, where there is international consent’.

And currently, the mission certainly has such support. Russia and China only abstained on the resolution, rather than using their veto, and vitally the Arab Union support the no-fly-zone. But targeting Gaddafi could spectacularly dismantle this alliance. Already Putin has condemned the campaign as a ‘crusade’ – although his opinion can be relatively safely ignored at the moment. More worryingly, especially as the US want Nato to take control of the campaign, Turkey have deep reservations. Maybe they can be persuaded.

But this isn't about whether intervention is right and wrong. For the record, I think it probably follows in the line of justifiable interventions exemplified by Kosovo and Sierra Leone. And Cameron is clearly keen to distance himself from the terrible legacy of the mid-1990s Tory government which stood by while a million people were massacred in the 1994 Rwandan genocide and repeatedly refused to intervene in Bosnia.

Former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw made a telling contribution in this evening's debate.

'Doing nothing in the face of evil is as much a decision, with consequences, as doing something about that evil.

'This resolution is of historical significance - not just in its terms but because it is the first occasion in which the Security Council acted decisively upon the words relating to the 'responsibility to protect', which were agreed in the General Assembly in 2005.'

But without a clear idea of what defines the success of the war, there is a horrible danger of mission-creep with Cameron, Miliband and Straw have done nothing to assuage.

Will Boris finally shift Brian?

2011-03-17T17:39:00.002Z

Is time nearly up for Brian Haw?

The dogged peace campaigner has been in Parliament Square since 2001 defying repeated efforts to shift him from his spot. MPs have condemned his placard bestrewn demonstration as an eyesore, as if looking pretty was more important than upholding an ancient democratic tradition of the country. Westminster Council has tried an assortment of means to prize him from his pavement but to no avail. Amongst the last Labour government’s shameful attempts to move him was the introduction of a law banning demonstrations in Parliament Square and Whitehall without permission from the police. Under this law peace protesters Maya Evans and Milan Rai gained a criminal records for simply reading about the names of the war dead and ringing a bell opposite Downing Street.

Yet barnacle-like, Haw has determinedly hung on.

But today, Mayor of London Boris Johnson won his latest bid to evict Brian from his spot. The High Court has decided Brian and his ally Barbara Tucker, who is normally dressed a pink fairy, are interfering with the rights of others.

‘Parliament Square Gardens is not a suitable location for prolonged camping; such camping is incompatible with the function, lawful use and character of the PSG and it is also inconsistent with the proper management of the area as a whole.’

So there we have it; Brian’s peace camp is hampering the management of Parliament Square so he must be shifted.

He will inevitably appeal and has until March 28 to do so but it does appear we are entering the end game. After all, Boris and the government want him shifted in time for the Royal Wedding. Brian himself was not at today’s hearing as he is currently in Germany receiving treatment for lung cancer; no doubt his condition has not been helped by such a long vigil in the middle of what is effectively a multi-lane roundabout.

I have not spoken to Brian for several years but for a time interviewed him regularly, dropping by his encampment after working in the West End. As an April Fool’s Day joke once, the paper where I was then working suggested a statue of Brian should be erected on the empty fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square.

He is irascible. He swears, endlessly smokes slender roll-up cigarettes, shouts and abuses. But all in a cause; his dedication to ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are absolutely genuine. If the Labour government had not done such a damn stupid thing as invade Iraq in the first place he might well have left his pitch years ago. He is a true British eccentric and rather than being vilified, he should really be cherished.

With any luck his appeal will be successful and his vigil will continue. One thing that would make the royal wedding vaguely entertaining would be the sight of Brian hollering his slogans through a loud-hailer as Wills and Kate arrive at Westminster Abbey.

I hope, in many years to come, when Brian Haw has shuffled off this mortal coil, some mark will be left at the site of his heroic protest. An artist’s realisation of his stark, unforgiving placards, would certainly be a marked contrast to the staid conservatism of nearby statues.

It's too late for Gaddafi rebels

2011-03-16T19:12:00.000Z

As the full extent and horror of the disaster in Japan became only too real and apparent, the cry went out ‘Don’t let Gaddafi use this as an excuse to murder his own people’. The world’s attention, inevitably, would move from the dramatic revolutions of the Middle East and North Africa to the terrible human suffering caused by the earthquake, tsunami and now nuclear panic.

But if anything, it is the West who have used the disaster to enshroud their procrastination over what to do about the Libyan despot. It was also obvious what Gaddafi would do, fight back. But how would the West respond?

As the protests in Libya escalated and Gaddafi’s power shrivelled to what was little more than a clan rump, world leaders were eager to portray themselves as statesmen of international standing.

The British government was extraordinarily chaotic. We had the embarrassing sight of Foreign Secretary William Hague, confusing Twitter with a branch of MI6, declaring to the world that ‘Mad Dog’ had already fled and was heading to the safe clutches of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. The less said about the SAS debacle the better, though the grovelling phone call of Britain's Ambassador in Libya, where he claimed they were apparently looking for a hotel is worth another listen:

David Cameron raised the prospect of military intervention, pretended he didn’t and then did so once again. The belligerent Nicolas Sarkozy called for a no-fly zone, while Germany resisted. Unsurprisingly Russia and China don’t want any international intervention, insisting the situation is an internal matter. If they took any other stance, they would get nervous about the crimes against humanity they have both committed in places like Chechnya and Tibet.

What Barack Obama has been doing is unclear. One thing to be grateful about the Obama's White House is they consider the situations before acting upon them - so unlike the previous administration. Yet, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that this deliberative thoughtfulness is indecision on this occasion.

The conversation is continuing at the United Nations today but by the time anything is agreed it will be too late for the people of Libya. Gaddafi's most high profile son, Saif al-Islam, has said today it will 'all be over in 48 hours'. And it's hard to disagree. A disorganised bunch of men, lightly armed and increasingly desperate, the fighters in Benghazi are hardly likely to be able to put up much of a fight against the superior firepower of Gaddafi's army.

And we will almost be back where we started. Libya, once again, will be under the control of a rogue leader, isolated from the world but he will undoubtedly be readmitted to the international fold; after all, Libya's got very good oil.

Of course, knowing what to do in these situations is horribly difficult. A no fly zone is not an easy answer and could well have been the start of a fully-fledged war but even calls to arm the Gaddafi opposition have fallen upon deaf ears.

Yet after the genocide of Rwanda politicians across the world said 'Never Again'. So far, it's happened again in Congo, Darfur, Somalia, Chechnya and others. Can we now add Libya to this shameful list?

Lembit in the stocks

2011-03-16T13:00:00.005Z

For those of you who have yet to tire of Lembit Opik's amateur dramatics, there is an opportunity to pelt the prospective Liberal Democrat Mayoral candidate with rotten fruit* tomorrow as he is going to be held in the stocks at the Tower of London.

Ever willing to make a prat of himself, he is taking part to promote a computer game and in aid of Comic Relief.

But after his recent campaign video (below for those who have missed it), will this really help raise his profile to mount a decent challenge Boris or Ken?

Lembit will be in the stocks from 10am on Thursday March 17.

*It's possible this is a bit of an embellishment.

Japan disaster 'a message from God'

2011-03-16T09:37:00.007Z

God wants this, apparently

Time was when you could rely on loons like Pat Robertson to come out with insane divine messages telling the world the latest catastrophe was a message from God.

Haiti, he told us, had the earthquake coming because they made a 'pact to the Devil' to secure their independence and the rest of the world shook its collective head in horror at the simple idiocy of the man.

Well, he's been a bit quiet of late but there is a ready made replacement in Glenn Beck. He started his career as a Fox News media commentator, much in the mould of Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity. But now he has drifted down a more messianic path and it is not hard to see him heading in the same way as David Icke and David Shayler.

Anyway, the quake and tsunami in Japan are, Beck claimed on his radio show yesterday, a 'message being sent' from God:

'I'm not saying God is causing earthquakes... What God does is God's business. But I'll tell you this, whether you call it Gaia or whether you call it Jesus, there's a message being sent.

'"'Hey, you know that stuff we're doing. It's not really working out. Maybe we should stop doing some of it.' I'm just saying.'

Why God does not simply send an angel to deliver his message rather than resorting to using devastating shifts of tectonic plates, the spectacular idiot Beck does not reveal.

One can only hope such comments usher a swift end to this appalling man's career.

Fred Goodwin the Banker

2011-03-10T22:10:00.004Z

There is a lot of hoo-hah today about the superinjunction taken out by Sir Fred Goodwin. The only reason news of the superinjunction has become known in the first place is Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming raised the issue in the House of Commons where he has the benefit of Parliamentary privilege. Thus its existence can be reported.

Mr Hemming told the Commons:

'In a secret hearing, Fred Goodwin has obtained a super-injunction preventing him being identified as a banker.

'Will the government have a debate or a statement on freedom of speech and whether there's one rule for the rich like Fred Goodwin and one rule for the poor?'

But this palpable nonsense because Sir Fred Goodwin clearly is a banker, a notorious banker, a banker who brought RBS, an enormous international bank, to its knees. No one is going to think, ah, Fred Goodwin, that's the chap famous for the pleasant period house in Edinburgh.

It is, sadly, completely impossible to say why this superinjunction has been sought or, indeed, what it's terms are.

But just to repeat, the superinjunction does not prevent Sir Fred being called a banker. In fact, it's one of the most polite things many will ever say about him.

Arise Prince Edward (GCVO)

2011-03-10T12:57:00.004Z

Can I be amongst the first to congratulate Prince Edward, the Earl of Wessex, following his appointment to the Royal Victorian Order.

Yes, his mother the Queen has recognised that such are his achievements over his life, and his devoted service to her, he deserves to have been made a Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order (GCVO).

Founded in April 1896 by Queen Victoria as a way of rewarding personal service to her, the award is entirely her decision and ministers do not get involved. Quite what services Prince Edward has performed for Her Majesty I have no idea and don't really care.

It means his full title now reads, if I have it right:

His Royal Highness The Prince Edward Antony Richard Louis, Earl of Wessex, Viscount Severn, Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order, Honorary Member of the Saskatchewan Order of Merit, Aide-de-Camp to Her Majesty

Quite a mouthful. It actually sounds like he might have achieved something in his life apart from poor documentaries about Real Tennis.

And it puts me in mind of other great figures of the world stage and their full titles.

Mass killer and kleptomaniac Mobutu with a friend

We have, of course, Joseph Desire Mobutu who later became Mobutu Sese Seko Nkuku Wa Za Banga, which translated modestly means 'The all-powerful warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, will go from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake'.

And Idi Amin, whose full title was 'His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular,' as well, of course, the King of Scotland.

It should be swiftly said I am not, of course, comparing the characters of Prince Edward to either of these killers, but what is it about ruling families and their penchant to give themselves stupid titles.

Perhaps my wife and I should spend an evening and plot what titles we should bestow upon ourselves in the warmth of our little south London cottage?

SHOCK NEWS: Smoking kills

2011-03-09T17:07:00.007Z

Smoking is bad for you apparently. That is the message coming from the government today as they announce their plans for tobacco to be no longer displayed in shops.

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has been convinced, after years of careful study no doubt, that puffing on ciggies is not a particularly clever idea if someone wants to maintain their health. In the official statement released by the Department of Health, Mr Lansley said:

‘Smoking is undeniably one of the biggest and most stubborn challenges in public health. Over eight million people in England still smoke and it causes more than 80,000 deaths each year. Smoking affects the health of smokers and their families. My ambition is to reduce smoking rates faster over the next five years than has been achieved in the past five years.

‘We want to do everything we can to help people to choose to stop smoking and encourage young people not to start smoking in the first place.’

Crikey. 80,000 deaths a year. Smoking sounds really dangerous. Shouldn’t we just ban cigarettes entirely if we want to save lives?

Er, no.

According to HMRC figures, last year the Treasury benefited to the tune of £10.5billion in tax revenue from the sale of cigarettes. Not an amount of money to be sniffed at and thus we are left with this complete mess of a plan. For the record smoking costs the NHS about £50million a week – £2.6bn a year – so the tax raised more than pays for the health damage caused.

Instead, to tackle this health scourge shops will have to remove or hide their tobacco; those eight million people who still smoke will just have to ask for cigarettes in a fashion not unlike spotty teenagers who once shiftily tried to buy Penthouse before the age of the internet.

Now, despite my almost complete lack of scientific knowledge, over the years I had miraculously picked up that smoking wasn’t a good idea. I have also learned drinking too much alcohol isn’t great either. Heroin, crack, cocaine, etc etc, also have some pretty detrimental side effects. Advertising campaigns and government initiatives have no doubt had some impact at disseminating this message.

And I should declare at this point I don’t smoke, having given up as a teenager after feeble attempts with Marlboro and Camels. I have tried cigars and love the smell of pipe tobacco, but the actual act of smoking, I decided, was disgusting. Having said that I did not support banning the smoking of cigarettes in pubs. This was not because of my concern over the health fears of passive smoking, or the acrid cloud hovering in smoke-filled pubs. Instead, I feared the romantic atmosphere swirls of smoke, the sort captured by John Deakin in 1950s Soho, would be gone forever. And I was right. The Coach and Horses is not the pub it once was but there is little doubt, despite wanting to cling on to such romantic cliché, I was ultimately wrong. Pubs and restaurants are far more hospitable places with cigarettes kept safely outside.

Lansley, one of the biggest jokes in a cabinet full of unintentional humorists, has come up with a patronising solution no one wants. He claims he wants to see the numbers of people smoking fall faster than it has done over the last five years; of this there is practically no chance. These proposals don’t even fully come into force by 2016. It's very hard to see how this target - yes, this government does targets too it seems - is going to be achieved.

If the government was truly concerned about the health implications they would surely get up on their moral high horse and lump cigarettes and alcohol in the same box as illegal drugs and ban them outright. And it's not about awareness because there cannot be a single person in the country who is not aware of the damage fags and booze can cause, not only to themselves but to others.

But the government wants and needs the tax revenue from both and it's perfectly clear that the decades old 'War On Drugs' has been a costly and ineffective disaster.

While anti-smoking charities are pleased to an extent, they continue to campaign for cigarettes to be sold in plain packaging, a measure on the backburner for the time being. The major cigarette manufacturers and large wholesale sellers will face little impact from these measures; it will be the small shops, the independent tobacconists and newsagents, who will really bear the brunt of this pointless measure. High streets will lose one of the most characterful, and already rare, shops and ghastly homogenisation will continue unabated.An

How do you sleep at night?

2011-03-09T11:16:00.002Z

A question many of us would like to ask Mr Cameron.

H/t Political Scrapbook

Can the Big Society solve Old Firm tension?

2011-03-08T17:32:00.005Z

Thank goodness for that. After the violent scenes at last week’s Old Firm derby the Scottish government has a solution; it’s going to invest more than £500,000 to tackle sectarianism.

And with this push, centuries of Catholic/Protestant tension in Glasgow, as well as the hate-filled rivalry displayed by fans of both Celtic and Rangers, will be a thing of the past. It just needed this push to finally end such disgraceful contretemps. Never again will Ally McCoist and Neil Lennon square up along the touchline after one of them said something derogatory about the other’s mum.

The £527,250 which will be spent is going to be split between seven charities who are already involved in ‘rooting out sectarianism’: Sense Over Sectarianism; Nil by Mouth; Show Racism/Bigotry the Red Card; the Iona Community; Youth Community Support Agency; Bridging the Gap; and Supporters Direct in Scotland.

Welcoming this momentous announcement Fergus Ewing said:

‘As our record shows, the Scottish government greatly values the excellent work carried out by organisations to tackle the scourge of sectarianism wherever and whenever it occurs –be that on the terraces, in the street or at the workplace.

‘Each of these organisations awarded funding today have been making very positive progress over the past 12 months and we want that good work to continue.’

Now I don’t mean to mock this as there is a very real issue here, but this is surely throwing good money after bad. All these charities, I am sure, do excellent work in their fields and should be encouraged, especially in these dark days of the Big Society.

But it really does appear to be an example of the government wanting to be seen to be doing something, while, at the same time, avoiding the real issues. How will this £500k reduce the soaring levels of domestic violence, fuelled by aggression and alcohol, which occurs during these games? Will the behaviour of players, fans and coaches somehow improve?

While I know the Scottish government is no real friend of the shabby coalition in London, they do seem to have opted for a very Big Society-style solution, rather than using harsher tactics such as changing match times, not broadcasting the games or games played in an empty stadium.

I hope to be proved wrong but what’s the betting we see similar scenes the next time Celtic and Glasgow Rangers meet?

Pouting Duglere - a rare recipe

2011-03-06T22:31:00.009Z

According to some, even seals turn their noses up when a fisherman lobs a dead, willing pouting into the water adjacent. Nah, I won't bother, the seal says, hoping for a some decent cod fillet with mushy peas on the side. And yet, this morning's News of the Screws proclaims pouting as the fish to go for; Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has given it his blessing saying:

'Pouting is a fish I love to catch and eat - it's a highly underrated close rlative of cod, and just the kind of fish we should be eating more of.'

Now, I'm not one to contradict Mr Fearnley-Whittingstall; indeed my wife and I have recently enjoyed a great meal at his HQ. But pouting, I'm sure Mr Fearnley-Whittingstall will agree, has a mixed reputation.

And yet. And yet. A few weeks ago I found myself in the wonderful fishmongers in Beckenham; not a shop open for long but one which is already valued. One morning I popped along and an offer was on the board outside proclaiming the value of whiting. By the time I had got there, it was no longer whiting, in fact the sign wasn't there at all. The poor fishmonger had misheard on the telephone hearing whiting, but ending up with pouting; and they were not selling very quickly.

Loaded with my two pouting, I had little idea what to do and scoured the internet and found practically nothing. So, after scouring a couple of books I plumped for a whiting recipe, mainly because both fish share an -ing. Nevertheless, it was delicious and as there are so many News of the Screws who read this blog and now buy pouting this is the recipe courtesy of Ginette Mathiot's 'I Know How to Cook':

For six

'Ingredients: 50g butter, 50g onion, 20g shallot, tablespoon of fresh parsley, 250g tomatoes, salt and pepper, 6 pouting fillets, 400ml white wine, 30g flour, juice of 1 lemon, 2 tablespoons of creme fraiche.'

'Preheat the over to 220 degrees and grease a flameproof dish with butter. Mix the onion, shallot, parsley and tomatoes in a bowl, spoon into the prepared dish and season with salt and pepper.

Put the pouting on top and pour the wine over them. Bring to the boil over a high heat, then cover with buttered greaseproof paper, transfer to the over and bake for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, mix the butter with the flour to a paste in a bowl. Transfer the fish to serving dish and keep warm. Bring the cooking juices to the boil and boil until reduced, then gradually stir in the pieces of flour and butter paste, making sure that each piece is fully incorporated before adding the next.

Et voila.

Save My Birthday

2011-03-04T07:42:00.005Z

The government today has unveiled plans to scrap May Day and replace it with some vague Bank Holiday in either April or October.

This is a travesty and should not be allowed to happen. Not only is May Day International Labour Day, it also marks a historic celebration which has occurred in Britain for centuries; the May Queen, the May Pole and Morris Dancers should not just be destroyed by a knee-jerk whim by this appalling coalition.

Whatismore, it will ruin my birthday. For 33 years I have been relatively disinterested about when the date of my birth - May 3 - falls; Monday, Wednesday, Sunday, it's all the same to me. This is because I have been secure in the knowledge that a long weekend, the May Day weekend, is adjacent to the occasion ensuring adequate celebrations - at least three days - can be secured to celebrate the event.

And now, in what appears to me to be a deeply personal attack, this shabby coalition, this brutal amalgam of Tories and Lib Dems, has cooked up an idea which will see all this swept away. I don't remember anyone voting for this; where is the mandate?

Some find it frustrating that the English do not really celebrate St George's Day on April 23, while the Irish find it ridiculously easy to put on a silly hat, drink Guinness and spill all over the streets on St. Patrick's Day. But our National Saint is stupid. Probably born in Palestine, never came to this country, never killed a dragon and has less credibility than Nick Clegg.

As for marking Trafalgar Day, I know Conservatives like being rude to the French, but isn't it enough having won the battle in the first place? Agincourt, Trafalgar, Waterloo, they are finished, we were victorious. Let's just be happy in that knowledge without trying to rub their noses in it. Knowing we won and being sporting in victory is surely the British way?

Have the Conservatives forgotten what their name means? They are meant to 'conserve' things. May Day is a great British tradition and yet because of their dislike of anything which concerns workers, they want to try and erase it from the calendar. Think of the Morris Dancers, the cider drinkers, the boys and girls who get tangled in the May Pole. Think of Me.

And then the Lib Dems. So far have they travelled from their social democrat and liberal roots they appear happy to associate themselves with his hard right government.

I say no. My birthday needs protecting. Say no to this terrible proposal, fight it at the ballot box, fight it in the streets, fight it where ever you can and shout YES to my birthday.

Arrrghhh, Widdy's doing panto

2011-03-02T21:54:00.005Z

Oh, the horror, the horror. Ann Widdecombe has signed up for panto.

Yes, the former Home Office minister, screeching harpie, hardline Christian moralist, is going to get all togged up and appear on stage this Christmas, apparently to entertain children. It's hard to imagine quite how appalling this will be. Surely mankind should be spared such wanton cruelty?

Despite saying she had no intention of a 'showbiz' career after appearing as the comedy dance mule in Strictly Come Dancing, the haridan will appear in Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs at the Orchard Theatre in Dartford. I suppose it doesn't really qualify as a 'showbiz career', but it's too close to comfort. Thankfully the theatre is far enough away I won't have any trouble avoiding it like the plague.

Her role, I gather, is to be the servant to the Wicked Queen, played by Revel Horwood (who he? who cares?), dubbed Widdy in Waiting.

She will be inflicting her appearances on audiences for three weeks.

It's perfectly clear what an appalling piece of miscasting this is. She would be far better as the Wicked Queen; after all, she has had a lifetime practising for the role.

NB: The picture above, while not connected, seemed sadly only too appropriate.

Can Mike teach George to talk?

2011-03-01T23:13:00.004Z

I haven't seen The King's Speech yet, but I hope it's as entertaining as this, the President's Speech.

Pretending to starve the homeless won't help

2011-03-01T17:46:00.001Z

Westminster City Council has really not done themselves many favours. Over the last couple of days something of a furore has built up over plans by councillors to ban soup kitchens and rough sleepers around Westminster Cathedral and its piazza. Labour Uncut posted a somewhat fiery and knee-jerk reaction to the proposals here

It does appear to be hard-hearted but not particularly outrageous mainly because it will have practically no effect. Rather than attacking it for being some hard-hearted Tory plot, it would have been more productive to have highlighted the utter pointlessness and ineffectiveness this new policy, if it goes ahead, will have.

For several years I worked for a paper which covered the West End, including this area of Victoria, and WCC introduced a variety of plans to try and clear the area by the cathedral of rough sleepers. Their ideas went from the downright nasty, including spraying people who loitered under the nearby archways for too long during the night with water to proposals very similar to these. They all failed. (I should point out, Westminster Council never put into action their automatic spray dispersal plan, from memory there was considerable horror at the brutality of the idea, especially as it was approaching winter).

The reason is Westminster Council, along with many other councils, consistently and wilfully undercount the number of homeless on the streets. Eric Pickles almost admitted as much yesterday in the Commons as at his regular questions, he said there were 1,768 people on the streets in England during the night, instead of the 440 previously claimed by the Labour government. I would suggest both these figures are wildly inaccurate. Councils of all political persuasion undercount the numbers of homeless; and why wouldn’t they? No council would want to come up with a figure disproportionate with neighbouring boroughs.

Westminster Council’s cabinet member for society, families and adult services, Daniel Astaire, claims that ‘soup runs have no place in the 21st Century and it is wrong and undignified that people are being fed on the streets’.

He is absolutely right but it doesn’t mean such a practice is unnecessary. It is, as he says, appalling to see such things in an apparently rich country. Absolutely, but pretending it doesn't exist isn't going to help.

While Cllr Astaire might claim his council have ‘a range of services that can help them off the streets’, their provision simply isn’t sufficient.

On board, Westminster Council have two charities, Thames Reach and St Mungo’s, both of which do good work and can help steer the homeless towards accommodation services. It’s obviously better for such organisations to be engaged with homeless individuals but neither would claim their work is 100 per cent successful. The piazza has attracted the homeless for a long time; the charitable works of the Catholic cathedral and other religious bodies cannot be ignored here.

Also the actual homeless who gather in the area tend to be the long-term homeless, the alcoholics, the distracted and disturbed, who have been out of the system for too long or too difficult to handle. They really don't need encouragement to remain on the streets, as Cllr Astaire claims soup runs do, for many it is the only life they now know.

The soup runs, the food hand-outs from Pret-a-Manger, the support they get from the cathedral is quite vital to them. And regardless of the consultation and any subsequent bylaw introduced, these characters will still gather and congregate. If a bylaw is passed, police might move them along for a bit but they will lose interest swiftly enough.

And Westminster Council have now run into more trouble from the Methodist Church. Reverend Tony Miles, the acting superintendent of Methodist Central Hall, which falls within the proposed exclusion zone, isn’t happy.

‘I would never support the criminalisation of rough sleeping through the implementation of what seem to be draconian measures. It is vital we care for those who are homeless and poor.’

Indeed, Rev Alison Tomlin, the president of the Methodist Conference, has gone further and described the proposals as ‘disgusting’. She also said:

‘This by-law punishes people solely for their misfortune and belongs in a Victorian statute boo, not in the laws of a decent 21st century community’.

Effectively Westminster Council have wanted to come across as tough on a problem but instead have simultaneously revealed themselves to be impotent. Rough sleepers who gather in the area might be briefly moved on but they will not receive fines or anything similar as the intended targets have no money with which to pay such penalties.

And if Rev Alison Tomlin joins Rev Tony Miles on a night's soup run down on the Piazza, is Westminster Council going to have them pursued through the courts? A council takes on charity and church volunteers using the strong arm of the law?

I would seriously doubt it.

Meet the 'Nectophrynoides Deloittei'

2011-03-01T12:42:00.006Z

There is something I find innately distasteful to discover a new species of frog has been named after giant auditing and finance firm Deloitte.

In days of yore it was the responsibility for freelance botanists and naturalists to go and seek out rare and new species of animal or plant. Scientists and explorer types like William Dampier and Charles Darwin would trap the wondrous things they found in far flung exotic places, stick them in a cage and display them before the great and the good of London’s scientific community.

But with the naming of the ‘nectophrynoides deloittei’, a frog found in the rainforests of Tanzania, it appears as with almost everything else, botany is in danger of becoming a marketing commodity.

It is a bit harsh on Deloitte of course. They are damned if they do, damned if they don’t. So I suppose I should congratulate them on actually investing money in rainforest projects in Tanzania at all.

For the record, according to their press release, as a founder of the United Bank of carbon, Deloitte helped broker a partnership with the African Rainforest Conservancy (ARC) to work in the region as part of the Deloitte Rainforest Conservation Project. Over the last year they have raised £200,000 going towards the 'on-going conservation of the entire mountain and forest range in the Rubeho region and helping to ensure the local community can earn a sustainable living from the forest'.

But no amount of cheeriness in their press release can really cheer me up and nothing can prepare me for the grim day when I wake up to read about the JP Morgan Trumpet Orchid, the Lesser-Spotted Blue KPMG woodpecker or the yet to be found Nobbly-Nosed PwC Rhino.

Bah Humbug!

UpDate:

On a far more cheery note, I heard today that a new species of shrimp is being named after the scientist who discovered it. Dr Alan Jamieson, from the University of Aberdeen, found the 6cm white shrimp on the floor of trenches in the world's deepest ocean while working on a HADEEP project.

The Princaxelia jamiesoni were filmed and caught in the Japan Trench in 2008 at a depth of 7,703 metres.

He described his find as: 'In terms of crustaceans it's definitely the most exciting discovery I've made'.

Now I can't get particularly excited about crustaceans unless wearing an apron in the kitchen but it's reassuring to know others have a more academic outlook. And it is only right and proper it is his name to adorn the newly found creature and not, say, the university's name. Romance is perhaps not dead.