Long before Jack Straw did us all a massive disservice by enshrining the European Charter of Fundamental Rights into our Law, the average person had a fairly clear idea of what did or did not constitute right and wrong.
For instance, under English Common Law the idea that crime begat punishment went unchallenged for a thousand years.
Behaviour towards others was, for the most part, covered by the ten basic laws that Moses handed down to the children of Israel. If one wanted a settled, orderly society it made pretty good sense not to steal, or covert your neighbour's ox or his wife. Stealing, likewise, was proscribed for the very good reason that it tended to upset the victim. Of course, the first four Commandments are not particularly relevant in our increasingly secular society. But, the other six provide a fairly straightforward framework for civilised behaviour.
So, we ticked along for a milennium and built a pretty reasonable legal system around these relatively few basic ideas. Because the rules were so few and easy to grasp, there was never any real doubt when lines were being crossed. If you stole, killed, lied about your neighbour or coveted his goods and chattels you were going to be held to account. It was easy to distinguish between the victimiser and the victim in the majority of cases.
That is no longer the case. Jack and his lawyer chums have altered the basic rules with the introduction of their human rights legislation.Six simple commandments have been replaced by 54 Articles, creating a whole new stratum of legal argument. This may be great for the lawyers, but it takes the legal process several steps further away from most people's instinctive sense of what constitutes right and wrong.
In this new Human Rights wonderland, for instance, judges see nothing odd or insensitive in refusing to deport a convicted terrorist back to Iran because the possible threat of torture would breach his Human Rights. As he can't be deported, he has to remain in this country. He has no job and, having spent the last 28 years incarcerated in a British gaol, he's unlikely to have had much opportunity to play the stock markets or build a buy-to-rent empire.
So, the only way he can remain in one of the world's most expensive cities is at the taxpayers' expense.
The judges who reached this great decision would probably tell you that they have to consider the Law as it exists, not the consequences of its implementation. Which is why I hate the Human Rights culture we have fostered. Because, while our ex-terrorist gets to visit the gym, the library, meet his mates and generally lollygag around our capital city, there are old people all over Great Britain who might have to choose this winter between heating their home or eating. Some of them, undoubtedly, will be in their parlous position because they failed to salt something away for their old age. A fair few might have gone through their whole lives scrounging off the state. But the majority will be people who have worked all of their adult lives and, in many cases, through their teenage years as well. They will have paid taxes for forty or possibly fifty years and made National Insurance contributions for a similar length of time. Many would have spent time in the Services.
Now, in their dotage, they have to scrape by on £40 to £100 per week. Of course, these pensioners can always apply for additional benefits but, unlike our Iranian friend, whose every need will be met by solicitous officials keen to ensure that his Human Rights are left unsullied, they will have to fill in copious forms, take various means tests and have their lives generally poked and prodded by nosey officals to qualify for them. This is what happens when you allow the law to become an abstract thing. It might be an amusement to those of a legal bent to debate the nuances of a particular point of Law. But it has as much relevance to Natural Justice as the old religious debate concerning the number of angels that could dance on a head of a pin. It constantly throws up anomalies like our Irtanian terrorist friend and countless others who end up sucking the life out of our benefits system while native British pensioners are left to flounder on the fringes of the system with insufficient money to feed or keep themselves warm.
For them, the only Human Right, apparently, is to live an impoverished but dignified old age until such time as they give up the ghost and quietly fade away.
Tuesday 4 November 2008
Friday 31 October 2008
Ross on Why?
If you read the blog threads on the Guardian and Independent websites, it rapidly becomes clear that there is a certain kind of person that sees the uproar caused by Russell Brand/Jonathon Ross's telephone prank as yet another example of Great Britain lurching to the right quicker than David Beckham in an England shirt. The Brand/Ross supporters, with a few honourable exceptions, regard themselves as distinctively individual with a penchant for straight talking. No doubt they would also describe themselves as liberal; with a lower case l, of course. Politically, they are more likely to favour the extreme left of the political spectrum.
There is no-one quite as illiberal as the confirmed liberal. Come to think of it, there are very few people in this world quite as conformist in their thinking as those who, on the whole, pride themselves on their non-conformist approach to life. To prove just how non-conformist they are, they plaster the walls of the accounts department where they work with posters like; "You don't have to be mad to work here - but it helps."
They are the people who campaign furiously against modern technology and see no irony in the fact that they use Blackberries and lap-tops to co-ordinate their campaigns. They are the people who would vigorously protest against any kind of discrimination on the basis of colour or creed but who happily vilify millions of people base solely on the newspaper they choose to read over their breakfast cereals.
For proof of this, you need do no more than trawl through the comments posted on the Guardian and Indie websites. The first thing that becomes apparent is their uniform belief that the whole furore has been fomented by the Daily Mail to undermine the BBC. The second is the relative paucity and shallowness of their comments.
They are, for the most part, devoid of original thought and lean heavily on strident repetition for effect. Overall, their command of English, their ability to spell fairly commonplace words and parse a sentence correctly diminish in inverse proportion to their level of support for Russell Brand and Jonathon Ross.
The more strident the tone of their postings, the more dismissive of Mail readers, the poorer their command of English. Given the frequency of their posts, many of them must be low level Civil Servants or be marking time between jobs with stints on the computers in the local library.
A common athread running through all of their postings is that only two people complained about the broadcast itself. It wasn't until the bloody Daily Mail took up the cudgels that the whole thing got blown out of proportion. Without the Mail's intervention, the 30,000 that, sheep-like, eventually complained to the BBC would never have been any the wiser.
This is a completely spurious argument. If I don't personally see a murder or a rape does that make my disgust any less valid? If I don't witness people dying in an Asian Tsunami should I care less than those who were actually on the ground when the event took place? Of course not. The fact that I learn about or experience the event through a news medium doesn't make the emotion it stirs in me any less valid.
Equally, the fact that 30,000 people didn't hear the actual show doesn't invalidate their right to feel angry and outraged that it was ever allowed to be broadcast.
Personally, I didn't hear the programme and, having read the transcripts, wasn't particularly offended by the content. What really got up my nose was the sheer juvenile nastiness of what Ross/Brand did. It was the broadcasting equivalent of a couple of playground bullies picking on a smaller kid for having a snotty nose or glasses. It was cruel. It was arrogant. But, most of all, it was distinctly unfunny.
The liberals constantly trot out the old sore that, to be effective, comedy has to have an edge; has to be "relevant" - whatever that might mean - and break the boundaries of conventional behaviour. That's just so much twaddle.
Comedy's only job is to make the audience laugh. It has no higher calling than that. If it fails then patently it's not comedy at all. On that basis alone, the two broadcasters deserved to be given the boot.
There is no-one quite as illiberal as the confirmed liberal. Come to think of it, there are very few people in this world quite as conformist in their thinking as those who, on the whole, pride themselves on their non-conformist approach to life. To prove just how non-conformist they are, they plaster the walls of the accounts department where they work with posters like; "You don't have to be mad to work here - but it helps."
They are the people who campaign furiously against modern technology and see no irony in the fact that they use Blackberries and lap-tops to co-ordinate their campaigns. They are the people who would vigorously protest against any kind of discrimination on the basis of colour or creed but who happily vilify millions of people base solely on the newspaper they choose to read over their breakfast cereals.
For proof of this, you need do no more than trawl through the comments posted on the Guardian and Indie websites. The first thing that becomes apparent is their uniform belief that the whole furore has been fomented by the Daily Mail to undermine the BBC. The second is the relative paucity and shallowness of their comments.
They are, for the most part, devoid of original thought and lean heavily on strident repetition for effect. Overall, their command of English, their ability to spell fairly commonplace words and parse a sentence correctly diminish in inverse proportion to their level of support for Russell Brand and Jonathon Ross.
The more strident the tone of their postings, the more dismissive of Mail readers, the poorer their command of English. Given the frequency of their posts, many of them must be low level Civil Servants or be marking time between jobs with stints on the computers in the local library.
A common athread running through all of their postings is that only two people complained about the broadcast itself. It wasn't until the bloody Daily Mail took up the cudgels that the whole thing got blown out of proportion. Without the Mail's intervention, the 30,000 that, sheep-like, eventually complained to the BBC would never have been any the wiser.
This is a completely spurious argument. If I don't personally see a murder or a rape does that make my disgust any less valid? If I don't witness people dying in an Asian Tsunami should I care less than those who were actually on the ground when the event took place? Of course not. The fact that I learn about or experience the event through a news medium doesn't make the emotion it stirs in me any less valid.
Equally, the fact that 30,000 people didn't hear the actual show doesn't invalidate their right to feel angry and outraged that it was ever allowed to be broadcast.
Personally, I didn't hear the programme and, having read the transcripts, wasn't particularly offended by the content. What really got up my nose was the sheer juvenile nastiness of what Ross/Brand did. It was the broadcasting equivalent of a couple of playground bullies picking on a smaller kid for having a snotty nose or glasses. It was cruel. It was arrogant. But, most of all, it was distinctly unfunny.
The liberals constantly trot out the old sore that, to be effective, comedy has to have an edge; has to be "relevant" - whatever that might mean - and break the boundaries of conventional behaviour. That's just so much twaddle.
Comedy's only job is to make the audience laugh. It has no higher calling than that. If it fails then patently it's not comedy at all. On that basis alone, the two broadcasters deserved to be given the boot.
Thursday 18 September 2008
Random moans and observations
"Getting on with the job" Gordon has recently been ruminating on the privations many people will face this winter when they have to choose between eating properly or freezing to death. His solution to this dilemma is everything that we have come to expect from him and his ilk: dense, both because it is difficult to penetrate and because of its stupidity, inadequate and costly to implement and administer. Doubtless it will keep legions of minor functionaries occupied and well-remunerated but is unlikely to do much for the pensioners and other vulnerable groups it is designed to help.
As ususal, Not -so -flash Gordon is going for complexity at the expense of accessibility. Instead of simply reducing the taxes people have to pay on fuel; instead of clobbering the foreign energy companies who are using the British to subsidise fuel consumers in their own backyards; instead of bringing pensions into line with the true cost of living, Gordon has decided to provide grants for people to insulate their homes more efficiently. In other words, they won't wake up one day and find that the government has given them back some of the money it has previously siphoned out of their pockets. Those in work are unlikely to find a nice little tax refund in their pay slip, either. That would be far too simplistic.
No, what will happen is that a large packet will drop with a dull thud on their hall mats one morning. Inside it will be a glossy coloure brochure with some gerundian heading like; "Making energy work harder for you" written by some 18 year old copy writer whose cutting edge agency will charge the Government £200 per hour for his time and brilliance. There will also be a pious statement by Gordon or Hilary Benn about their commitment to improving the UK's energy efficiency AND making lfe more comfortable for its more vulnerable citizens. Finally, the piece de resistance will be a form that claimants will have to fill in to qualify for the home insulation grant. In common with all other benefits' forms, this will be so eye-wateringly difficult that only those with a BSc in form filling - and Nigerian benefits fraudsters - will be able to complete it satisfactorily. Most will take one look and decide it's too complex. Others will get half-way through, lose the will to live and go to the pub for a pint. The clever ones will do one or other of the above then roll the paperwork into a small log and burn it once the weather turns really parky. It's about the only way that Gordon will provide them with any comfort at all this winter.
Even those who pass GO and manage to get a grant might find it difficult to use it anytime soon. According to the Government's own figures, there could be up to 2 million vulnerable people whose homes need better insulation. The Yell.com website says it has 832 listings for insulation contractors in the whole of the UK. Let's say that, on average, these contractors could handle 20 houses each per week. That adds up to 16.640 between them. If it runs true to form, the weather turn cold enough to represent a threat to vulnerable people in early November. So, assuming the scheme were to get going immediately, by the time that winter starts to get us all in its icy grip, around 100,000 homes might have been insulated; leaving the other 1,900,000 vulnerable citizens, presumably, trying to decide whether to risk turning the central heating on or warming up another tin of baked beans. That's what I call really getting on with the job, Gordon.
You might think that I would be very happy to see the back of Gordon Brown. If that's the impression I give, I apologise. Gordon might be proving to be by some distance the most numbingly inept PM this country has had to endure. But, in all honesty, I would rather he stayed where he is than risk handing the country over to one of his so-called rivals. The thought of David Millimetre making decisions about our collective future only becomes less scary if you replace that image with one of Harriet Harperson in Number 10. Some pundits are promoting Alan Johnson as a safe pair of hands. They either have short memories or are blessed with a gold-plated pension. This is the man, after all, who is so steeped in traditional class hatred that he bowed to Union demands for public-sector workers to retain the right to retire at 60 while the rest of us - lording it up with our fat-cat salaries and pensions in the private sector - are condemned to hard labour until we are 65 now and 68 in the not-too-distant future.
Gordon is, if only by default, the only Prime Minister this country needs at the present. Unless, that is, he calls a General Election. Then he can bugger off with the rest of his chums into another 20 years in the political wilderness.
This country still needs 3 million new homes to accommodate all the extra people we have allowed to settle here in the last 10 years. So, despite the turmoil in world markets, the shortage of mortgages and the impact of the stupid and pointless HIPS on the housing market, house prices are never going to go into complete free-fall. People who, two years ago would have bought a property are now having to settle for renting. Nonetheless, whatever they rent still occupies land and that is a commodity that becomes scarcer every year. As Mark Twain said: " Buy land. They can't invent any more".
As ususal, Not -so -flash Gordon is going for complexity at the expense of accessibility. Instead of simply reducing the taxes people have to pay on fuel; instead of clobbering the foreign energy companies who are using the British to subsidise fuel consumers in their own backyards; instead of bringing pensions into line with the true cost of living, Gordon has decided to provide grants for people to insulate their homes more efficiently. In other words, they won't wake up one day and find that the government has given them back some of the money it has previously siphoned out of their pockets. Those in work are unlikely to find a nice little tax refund in their pay slip, either. That would be far too simplistic.
No, what will happen is that a large packet will drop with a dull thud on their hall mats one morning. Inside it will be a glossy coloure brochure with some gerundian heading like; "Making energy work harder for you" written by some 18 year old copy writer whose cutting edge agency will charge the Government £200 per hour for his time and brilliance. There will also be a pious statement by Gordon or Hilary Benn about their commitment to improving the UK's energy efficiency AND making lfe more comfortable for its more vulnerable citizens. Finally, the piece de resistance will be a form that claimants will have to fill in to qualify for the home insulation grant. In common with all other benefits' forms, this will be so eye-wateringly difficult that only those with a BSc in form filling - and Nigerian benefits fraudsters - will be able to complete it satisfactorily. Most will take one look and decide it's too complex. Others will get half-way through, lose the will to live and go to the pub for a pint. The clever ones will do one or other of the above then roll the paperwork into a small log and burn it once the weather turns really parky. It's about the only way that Gordon will provide them with any comfort at all this winter.
Even those who pass GO and manage to get a grant might find it difficult to use it anytime soon. According to the Government's own figures, there could be up to 2 million vulnerable people whose homes need better insulation. The Yell.com website says it has 832 listings for insulation contractors in the whole of the UK. Let's say that, on average, these contractors could handle 20 houses each per week. That adds up to 16.640 between them. If it runs true to form, the weather turn cold enough to represent a threat to vulnerable people in early November. So, assuming the scheme were to get going immediately, by the time that winter starts to get us all in its icy grip, around 100,000 homes might have been insulated; leaving the other 1,900,000 vulnerable citizens, presumably, trying to decide whether to risk turning the central heating on or warming up another tin of baked beans. That's what I call really getting on with the job, Gordon.
You might think that I would be very happy to see the back of Gordon Brown. If that's the impression I give, I apologise. Gordon might be proving to be by some distance the most numbingly inept PM this country has had to endure. But, in all honesty, I would rather he stayed where he is than risk handing the country over to one of his so-called rivals. The thought of David Millimetre making decisions about our collective future only becomes less scary if you replace that image with one of Harriet Harperson in Number 10. Some pundits are promoting Alan Johnson as a safe pair of hands. They either have short memories or are blessed with a gold-plated pension. This is the man, after all, who is so steeped in traditional class hatred that he bowed to Union demands for public-sector workers to retain the right to retire at 60 while the rest of us - lording it up with our fat-cat salaries and pensions in the private sector - are condemned to hard labour until we are 65 now and 68 in the not-too-distant future.
Gordon is, if only by default, the only Prime Minister this country needs at the present. Unless, that is, he calls a General Election. Then he can bugger off with the rest of his chums into another 20 years in the political wilderness.
This country still needs 3 million new homes to accommodate all the extra people we have allowed to settle here in the last 10 years. So, despite the turmoil in world markets, the shortage of mortgages and the impact of the stupid and pointless HIPS on the housing market, house prices are never going to go into complete free-fall. People who, two years ago would have bought a property are now having to settle for renting. Nonetheless, whatever they rent still occupies land and that is a commodity that becomes scarcer every year. As Mark Twain said: " Buy land. They can't invent any more".
Tuesday 29 July 2008
All men are bastards
Poor old Gordon Brown is probably twisting himself inside out at the moment, trying to figure out precisely why the great British public has fallen so comprehensively out of love with him and his party. While he moulders in Southwold, his army of 12 year old policy planners are casting the runes and trying to solve the same puzzle.
They obsess over his appearance, his clumsiness and his apparent inability to dress down, even when he's beside the sea in Southwold.
Somehow, it never seems to occur to them that people are worried not by Brown's lack of presentation skills or even his sartorial gaucheness. What really gets the collective goat of the electorate is his total disconnection from the realities of their lives. They want positive action to stop foreign-owned energy companies using them as some sort of national piggy bank. They want to be able to fill up their cars without first consulting a Finacial Adviser. Above all, they want to know that the value of their house won't go down the toilet along with what remains of their pensions and personal savings.
What they definitely don't want is yet another set of laws or regulations produced at the behest of yet another single-issue pressure group.
But, thanks to Harriet Harman - a one-woman, pressure group in her own right - that is precisely what has been served up for our consumption.
Mad Hattie's latest wheeze is to make the murder of an abusive partner not a murder at all, even if the perpetrator has spent years planning the deed. The only proviso, of course, being that the person so murdered is a man and the murderer is a woman. The same allowance will not, apparently, be made for male victims of spousal abuse on the wholly reasonable grounds that all men are bastards.
Now, our Hattie like many of her cabinet colleagues, is a lawyer. As I have pointed out before, however, that is no guarantee of any particular ability as a legal draughtsperson; or even of an acceptable level of common sense. In fact, her latest proposal appears to have been drafted by a refugee from a Care in the Community order.
Because what Mad Hattie is forgetting in her myopia is that militant feminism is not the only single-issue game in town. Just, for a moment, try to imagine what is going through the minds of the Human Rights Lawyers' Union even as you are reading this. Consider the narrow definition of the term wife contained in Harman's proposal. For a start, it assumes that the wife will always be a woman and the spouse a man. Bloody hell. That should set the cat among the pigeons of the Gay Power movements, Lesbian Action groups and assorted odd couples who have committed to each other in various forms of same sex marriage and Civil Partnership. How long will it be before they are agitating for the right to be regarded as abused spouses and to be able to seek redress against an abusive "husband" or partner by topping him - or even her, if the partnership is an all-woman affair?
The only upside that I can see is that all of those unemployed lawyers created once Labour lose the next election should have plenty to keep them busy in the future.
They obsess over his appearance, his clumsiness and his apparent inability to dress down, even when he's beside the sea in Southwold.
Somehow, it never seems to occur to them that people are worried not by Brown's lack of presentation skills or even his sartorial gaucheness. What really gets the collective goat of the electorate is his total disconnection from the realities of their lives. They want positive action to stop foreign-owned energy companies using them as some sort of national piggy bank. They want to be able to fill up their cars without first consulting a Finacial Adviser. Above all, they want to know that the value of their house won't go down the toilet along with what remains of their pensions and personal savings.
What they definitely don't want is yet another set of laws or regulations produced at the behest of yet another single-issue pressure group.
But, thanks to Harriet Harman - a one-woman, pressure group in her own right - that is precisely what has been served up for our consumption.
Mad Hattie's latest wheeze is to make the murder of an abusive partner not a murder at all, even if the perpetrator has spent years planning the deed. The only proviso, of course, being that the person so murdered is a man and the murderer is a woman. The same allowance will not, apparently, be made for male victims of spousal abuse on the wholly reasonable grounds that all men are bastards.
Now, our Hattie like many of her cabinet colleagues, is a lawyer. As I have pointed out before, however, that is no guarantee of any particular ability as a legal draughtsperson; or even of an acceptable level of common sense. In fact, her latest proposal appears to have been drafted by a refugee from a Care in the Community order.
Because what Mad Hattie is forgetting in her myopia is that militant feminism is not the only single-issue game in town. Just, for a moment, try to imagine what is going through the minds of the Human Rights Lawyers' Union even as you are reading this. Consider the narrow definition of the term wife contained in Harman's proposal. For a start, it assumes that the wife will always be a woman and the spouse a man. Bloody hell. That should set the cat among the pigeons of the Gay Power movements, Lesbian Action groups and assorted odd couples who have committed to each other in various forms of same sex marriage and Civil Partnership. How long will it be before they are agitating for the right to be regarded as abused spouses and to be able to seek redress against an abusive "husband" or partner by topping him - or even her, if the partnership is an all-woman affair?
The only upside that I can see is that all of those unemployed lawyers created once Labour lose the next election should have plenty to keep them busy in the future.
Monday 28 July 2008
Smoking persecution
Last week, a Brummagen painter & decorator was pulled over by officials from Cerydigion council in Wales and given a £30 fixed penalty notice for smoking in a place of work.
Some newspapers reported the story in a vaguely tongue in cheek manner. Some played it dead straight. Only a small minority questioned what kind of society encourages petty officials to bully the public they are, ostensibly, employed to serve.
Yet, the smoking painter and decorator was just the latest in a long line of ordinary people who have been criminalised and persecuted using laws that were passed in haste to satisfy the demands of a few vocal minorities. Since New labour came to power it has done its level best to honour its manifesto commitments - not to the voting public at large, but to the minority interests that helped it obtain and retain power. Thus, the first laws it rushed through Parliament were designed to satisfy the special interests of the anti-hunting brigade, the homosexual lobby, the Green lobby, the anti-family tendency and the various pressure groups that regards anyone who smokes tobacco products as a prime candidate for euthenasia.
Strangely, for an administration stuffed full of lawyers, its record on law making is pretty pathetic. The Anti-Hunting legislation has proved to have fewer teeth than a 12 year old vixen. Laws intended to enable the security services to monitor potential terrorists have been used mostly by local councils keen to stalk their own tax-payers or, by Labour itself, to eject crusty old dissenters from its party Conference.
Now we have the unedifying story of the painter and decorator being fined for smoking inside his own van. To be strictly accurate, at the point that he was fined it wasn't a workplace since he was using the van to go and pick up a takeaway for dinner.However, that cut no ice with the Jobsworth who issued the fine. So, now it begs the question of what, precisely, constitutes a workplace? Indeed, what constitutes work?
If, for instance, he had been a self-employed doctor, lawyer, accountant or consultant who uses a car for both work and leisure, would the same rule be applied? And, if it does, how far would it stretch?
It is reasonable to assume that most self-employed people work from home. Now, the question is, if they light up a fag while doing the books, are they in breach of the no smoking at work rule? At what point does the house become an office and vice versa? One thing is for sure, there are smoking fascists all over the UK already salivating at the prospect of being able to extend their persecution of smokers into the only place that has so far evaded them; private homes.
Some newspapers reported the story in a vaguely tongue in cheek manner. Some played it dead straight. Only a small minority questioned what kind of society encourages petty officials to bully the public they are, ostensibly, employed to serve.
Yet, the smoking painter and decorator was just the latest in a long line of ordinary people who have been criminalised and persecuted using laws that were passed in haste to satisfy the demands of a few vocal minorities. Since New labour came to power it has done its level best to honour its manifesto commitments - not to the voting public at large, but to the minority interests that helped it obtain and retain power. Thus, the first laws it rushed through Parliament were designed to satisfy the special interests of the anti-hunting brigade, the homosexual lobby, the Green lobby, the anti-family tendency and the various pressure groups that regards anyone who smokes tobacco products as a prime candidate for euthenasia.
Strangely, for an administration stuffed full of lawyers, its record on law making is pretty pathetic. The Anti-Hunting legislation has proved to have fewer teeth than a 12 year old vixen. Laws intended to enable the security services to monitor potential terrorists have been used mostly by local councils keen to stalk their own tax-payers or, by Labour itself, to eject crusty old dissenters from its party Conference.
Now we have the unedifying story of the painter and decorator being fined for smoking inside his own van. To be strictly accurate, at the point that he was fined it wasn't a workplace since he was using the van to go and pick up a takeaway for dinner.However, that cut no ice with the Jobsworth who issued the fine. So, now it begs the question of what, precisely, constitutes a workplace? Indeed, what constitutes work?
If, for instance, he had been a self-employed doctor, lawyer, accountant or consultant who uses a car for both work and leisure, would the same rule be applied? And, if it does, how far would it stretch?
It is reasonable to assume that most self-employed people work from home. Now, the question is, if they light up a fag while doing the books, are they in breach of the no smoking at work rule? At what point does the house become an office and vice versa? One thing is for sure, there are smoking fascists all over the UK already salivating at the prospect of being able to extend their persecution of smokers into the only place that has so far evaded them; private homes.
It takes many more than two to Quango
A couple of weeks ago ( OK, I'm sorry; I've been busy making a living) I passed a few comments about this Government's favourite form of non-government; the quasi-autonomous government organisation - the dreaded QUANGO for short.
I mentioned then that one of the beauties of this particular beast - at least from a minister's viewpoint - is that it takes the decision making process one step away from the ministry to which it is attached. Now, it may seem odd that people who have gagged all their life to grab the reins of power should be so quick and eager to hand them over to someone else. Especially when said people, politicians and top civil servants alike, are always bleating that their enormous talents would be much better appreciated - and rewarded - in the Private Sector. But, the truth is that, for the most part, they are limited intellectually, have little or no practical talents and are really, rather glad to be in a position where blame can be shared while, if they play their cards right, success can be enjoyed in splendid isolation.
That wonderful invention, the QUANGO, was invented for just this purpose. Should one of these bureaucratic monstrosities somehow contrive to stumble over anything remotely like a good idea, you can bet your bottom dollar the Minister ultimately responsible for it will rapidly find his or her way to the TV studios to take the credit. When - as is more likely - they spend our money like a drunken matelot on shore leave and still manage to cock everything up, the same Minister can rapidly distance him or herself from their actions.
The latest example of this elegant method of blame avoidance is provided by the monumental cock-up over the marking of the SATS. Despite the fact that the two bodies charged with setting and monitoring exam results both, ultimately, report back to office of the Child Czar - the wonderfully named Mr. Balls - and despite the fact that they - and therefore he - knew that the US company hired to do the marking would fail to meet its deadlines as far back as June, he has managed to distance himself from the fiasco by placing the blame firmly on the lackeys.
Thus, the QUANGO has fulfilled its main purpose.
Not, as one might reasonably suppose, the creation of an exam setting and marking system that works better and is less expensive than the old one of form teachers marking their own pupils' work.
No, this system costs enough to fund a reasonably large modern hospital. It employs myriad odds and sods and is administered for some obscure reason (but look for the backhander) by a company based in Atlanta, Georgia in the good ole' USA. Not only that, by most accounts, it is so inept at what it is meant to do, it marks down good pupils with an excellent command of English while bumping the marks of those who demonstrate frighteningly little ability to write their native tongue.
What it has done, and very effectively, is place several layers of bureaucrats between the Minister - the eponymous Mr. Balls - and the silver bullet of blame that might, otherwise, have shot him straight out of his very comfortable ministerial chair. In that strictly limited sense, most politicians would probably judge it a raging success.
I mentioned then that one of the beauties of this particular beast - at least from a minister's viewpoint - is that it takes the decision making process one step away from the ministry to which it is attached. Now, it may seem odd that people who have gagged all their life to grab the reins of power should be so quick and eager to hand them over to someone else. Especially when said people, politicians and top civil servants alike, are always bleating that their enormous talents would be much better appreciated - and rewarded - in the Private Sector. But, the truth is that, for the most part, they are limited intellectually, have little or no practical talents and are really, rather glad to be in a position where blame can be shared while, if they play their cards right, success can be enjoyed in splendid isolation.
That wonderful invention, the QUANGO, was invented for just this purpose. Should one of these bureaucratic monstrosities somehow contrive to stumble over anything remotely like a good idea, you can bet your bottom dollar the Minister ultimately responsible for it will rapidly find his or her way to the TV studios to take the credit. When - as is more likely - they spend our money like a drunken matelot on shore leave and still manage to cock everything up, the same Minister can rapidly distance him or herself from their actions.
The latest example of this elegant method of blame avoidance is provided by the monumental cock-up over the marking of the SATS. Despite the fact that the two bodies charged with setting and monitoring exam results both, ultimately, report back to office of the Child Czar - the wonderfully named Mr. Balls - and despite the fact that they - and therefore he - knew that the US company hired to do the marking would fail to meet its deadlines as far back as June, he has managed to distance himself from the fiasco by placing the blame firmly on the lackeys.
Thus, the QUANGO has fulfilled its main purpose.
Not, as one might reasonably suppose, the creation of an exam setting and marking system that works better and is less expensive than the old one of form teachers marking their own pupils' work.
No, this system costs enough to fund a reasonably large modern hospital. It employs myriad odds and sods and is administered for some obscure reason (but look for the backhander) by a company based in Atlanta, Georgia in the good ole' USA. Not only that, by most accounts, it is so inept at what it is meant to do, it marks down good pupils with an excellent command of English while bumping the marks of those who demonstrate frighteningly little ability to write their native tongue.
What it has done, and very effectively, is place several layers of bureaucrats between the Minister - the eponymous Mr. Balls - and the silver bullet of blame that might, otherwise, have shot him straight out of his very comfortable ministerial chair. In that strictly limited sense, most politicians would probably judge it a raging success.
Monday 7 July 2008
Be careful what you wish for
Word is that, while wee Gordie is pretending to be a statesman alongside the rest of the G8 leaders, the other members of the pygmy tribe are plotting aong themselves to replace him. One of the leading contenders, unbelievably, is Harriet Harman.
Harriet - I would not recognise reality even if it siezed me by the throat and shook me - Harperson wants to be the Prime Minister of the country with the sixth largest economy in the world; the country that is fighting serious wars in two very hostile environments and the country that is facing its most serious societal and economic challenges for thirty years.
Harriet who has never had a real job and who, therefore thinks that forcing small businesses to grant limitless leave to pregnant women, mums - of whatever gender -and people with small dogs would not seriously harm their prospects wants, to run our country.
Quick. All of you who raised your hands to the question: Do we want to get rid of Gordon Brown; put them down again. Your wish could come in a package labelled: Harriet Harman.
And while we are talking about women who enjoyed an enormously privileged education, made the right contacts and have parlayed very limited talents into positions of great influence....here's Cherie Blair.
Now Cherie is one of those people about whom political journalists of a certain ilk, i.e. bone idle, cannot help writing without mentioning how clever they are. This applies to Cherie Blair and equally to David Milliband, Ed Balls and Tory Politicians like Michael Gove. At some early stage in their careers all of these people have either personally - or through friends - circulated personal profiles stressing their wit, intelligence, education and suitability for high office. One lazy journalist after another then refers to a clippings file rather than do any research when interviewing or preparing profiles on these people. So, as they move inexorably up the greasy pole, the self-awarded label of super-brain follows them. In a recent profile of Ed Balls, for instance, the lickspittle journalist who wrote the piece referred to his having a brain the size of two planets, even though all the evidence of his actions as Minister for Children etc, would seem to indicate that he barely has sufficient brain power to wipe his own arse unaided.
The same is true of Cherie Blair. Even though the only real ability she has ever demonstrated has been a talent for acquiring free holidays and clothes and doing dodgy real estate deals in equal measure, subservient journalists insist on prefacing any story about her with a rehearsal of the incredible intellectual powers that have got her to the position she occupies today: mother, author, barrister, part-time judge and, oh. yes in case you might have forgotten, wife to some geezer called Tony Blair.
Given her enormous intellectual powers, what are we to make of the awful, trite, patronising garbage that she has written in the Daily Telegraph today on the subject of knife crime?
" The impact of knife and gun crime on victims, families and whole communities is devastating"
Well, there's nothing like stating the bleedin obvious to get everyone's attention. is there? But not too much evidence of thought, let alone anything approaching original thought.
What about this one: "As a mother I am deeply concerned that knives and guns are becoming a part of everyday life for young people.."
What does that mean? That if our Cher weren't a mother she wouldn't be quite so deeply concerned? Or, perhaps what she is saying is that only a mother can feel and express such deep feelings about the role of weapons in modern society? If you are a dad, an uncle, an aunt or completely childless, presumably, you either have no opinion or are not entitled to express one?
The article occupies about a third of a broadsheet page in a quality national newspaper. The sentiments it expresses could be summed up in one, handwringing sentence; something ought to be done. Granted, she does actually recommend a course of action or, to be more precise, inaction because what she wants is yet another commission - or in this case Unit - to be set up by the government to work with "partner agencies to seek to achieve long-term social change". In other words, another talking shop for which she probably already has a friend or old colleague in mind to run it. In the meantime, she can probably parley her involvement into another round of highly-remunerated speeches along the lines of " Knife-crime and how to tackle it." And add another line to her CV emphasising the awesome intellectual power she brings to bear on the situation so that some other, gullible journalist can trot it out all over again at some time in the future.
Harriet - I would not recognise reality even if it siezed me by the throat and shook me - Harperson wants to be the Prime Minister of the country with the sixth largest economy in the world; the country that is fighting serious wars in two very hostile environments and the country that is facing its most serious societal and economic challenges for thirty years.
Harriet who has never had a real job and who, therefore thinks that forcing small businesses to grant limitless leave to pregnant women, mums - of whatever gender -and people with small dogs would not seriously harm their prospects wants, to run our country.
Quick. All of you who raised your hands to the question: Do we want to get rid of Gordon Brown; put them down again. Your wish could come in a package labelled: Harriet Harman.
And while we are talking about women who enjoyed an enormously privileged education, made the right contacts and have parlayed very limited talents into positions of great influence....here's Cherie Blair.
Now Cherie is one of those people about whom political journalists of a certain ilk, i.e. bone idle, cannot help writing without mentioning how clever they are. This applies to Cherie Blair and equally to David Milliband, Ed Balls and Tory Politicians like Michael Gove. At some early stage in their careers all of these people have either personally - or through friends - circulated personal profiles stressing their wit, intelligence, education and suitability for high office. One lazy journalist after another then refers to a clippings file rather than do any research when interviewing or preparing profiles on these people. So, as they move inexorably up the greasy pole, the self-awarded label of super-brain follows them. In a recent profile of Ed Balls, for instance, the lickspittle journalist who wrote the piece referred to his having a brain the size of two planets, even though all the evidence of his actions as Minister for Children etc, would seem to indicate that he barely has sufficient brain power to wipe his own arse unaided.
The same is true of Cherie Blair. Even though the only real ability she has ever demonstrated has been a talent for acquiring free holidays and clothes and doing dodgy real estate deals in equal measure, subservient journalists insist on prefacing any story about her with a rehearsal of the incredible intellectual powers that have got her to the position she occupies today: mother, author, barrister, part-time judge and, oh. yes in case you might have forgotten, wife to some geezer called Tony Blair.
Given her enormous intellectual powers, what are we to make of the awful, trite, patronising garbage that she has written in the Daily Telegraph today on the subject of knife crime?
" The impact of knife and gun crime on victims, families and whole communities is devastating"
Well, there's nothing like stating the bleedin obvious to get everyone's attention. is there? But not too much evidence of thought, let alone anything approaching original thought.
What about this one: "As a mother I am deeply concerned that knives and guns are becoming a part of everyday life for young people.."
What does that mean? That if our Cher weren't a mother she wouldn't be quite so deeply concerned? Or, perhaps what she is saying is that only a mother can feel and express such deep feelings about the role of weapons in modern society? If you are a dad, an uncle, an aunt or completely childless, presumably, you either have no opinion or are not entitled to express one?
The article occupies about a third of a broadsheet page in a quality national newspaper. The sentiments it expresses could be summed up in one, handwringing sentence; something ought to be done. Granted, she does actually recommend a course of action or, to be more precise, inaction because what she wants is yet another commission - or in this case Unit - to be set up by the government to work with "partner agencies to seek to achieve long-term social change". In other words, another talking shop for which she probably already has a friend or old colleague in mind to run it. In the meantime, she can probably parley her involvement into another round of highly-remunerated speeches along the lines of " Knife-crime and how to tackle it." And add another line to her CV emphasising the awesome intellectual power she brings to bear on the situation so that some other, gullible journalist can trot it out all over again at some time in the future.
Tuesday 1 July 2008
When will I be free? di me quango, quango, quango?
Quango - Quasi-autonomous government organisation.
Alternative definition; a tool for by-passing normal democratic procedures and railroading through decisions which would otherwise have been defeated. And, coincidentally, not a bad way to get friends, sycophants and other fellow travellers onto the Westminster gravy train..
Given all of the above, it's little wonder that Quangos are much loved by Stalin's natural heir, Not So Flash Gordon Brown. They combine everything that he most prizes: the potential for the generation of reams of statistics that he can pore over in the wee, small hours when normal people are asleep; the clear evidence that he is "getting on with the job" and, best of all, the chance to impose his statist vision of society on the hapless inhabitants of this country without having to continually seek our agreement or permission.
Take his latest monstrosity, the Planning Reform Bill, which creates a new Quango whose stated function is to ensure that major infrastructure projects are approved and instigated as soon as possible without being subjected to the tedious processes generally associated with planning applications. On the face of it, this is an entirely sensible aim; particularly in a country so bereft of a joined up energy policy that power blackouts could soon be an everyday experience.
But, of course, since this is Uncle Joe Brown we are dealing with, things are nowhere near as simple as they seem. For a start, most of the infrastructure development we are talking about affects only England - not the rest of the UK. Thus, it will affect people living near Sizewell, Windscale and other nuclear sites located in England that have been earmarked for the next generation of nuclear power stations. The population of the counties of Bucks and Berks will bear the impact of a third runway at Heathrow.
So, it is more than slightly wearing that this legislation, whose impact will be to crush democratic debate and scrutiny of planning applications for major infrastructure projects in England, was rammed through the Commons with the help of 72 Scottish MPs, 40 Welsh MPs and a dozen or so from Norn Ireland. As usual, NSF Gordon turned to the Tartan Mafia to nod through legislation that he knows will be as welcome in the English shires as halitosis in a diving suit. His Scottish brethren willingly play along, safe in the knowledge that it will have virtually no negative impact on the people or countryside of North Britain.
Nor is it untypical that, having forced through the legislation in order to kick-start big-ticket infrastructure applications such as nuclear generators, the very first projects that he will use it to rubber-stamp will be the ill-thought-out and hugely damaging Eco-Towns.
Painted a warm and fuzzy green colour to make them seem more appealing, these are just overspill or new towns under another name. They are necessary because, as we have discussed before, this administration has allowed three million or so extra people to settle in this country and now needs to find some way to house them. Since, from choice, most of these newcomers want to be where the jobs and money are - i.e. the South - that is where the housing need is most urgent. But, the government can't admit that one of its almighty cock-ups has led inexorably to another, so some spotty youths in the Policy Department were told to come up with an idea that was both eye-catching and totally misleading. Eco-Towns was the result.
Now, the idea that you can simply plonk new communities in the middle of the English countryside without damaging the environment in every way possible is completely ludicrous. To dress it up in a pretty eco-frock demonstrates a level of cynicism and contempt for the intelligence of the average voter that is almost breathtaking in its arrogance. But then, wee Gordie never was too much bothered about the opinions of the English electorate; especially between elections.
In any event, he has erected a very convenient barrier between him and any negative feedback - his pin-bright, shiny new Quango. Or at least that was the plan. But, as today's demos outside Parliament have demonstrated, planning anything at all is not exactly Wee Gordie's strong suit. Not only are the English revolting - as any Scot worth his salt could tell you - but they are doing it in his back yard. Before the bloody Quango has even come into being.
What he urgently needs now is yet another Quango; one whose sole purpose is to stop Not So Flash Gordon shooting himself in the foot again.
Alternative definition; a tool for by-passing normal democratic procedures and railroading through decisions which would otherwise have been defeated. And, coincidentally, not a bad way to get friends, sycophants and other fellow travellers onto the Westminster gravy train..
Given all of the above, it's little wonder that Quangos are much loved by Stalin's natural heir, Not So Flash Gordon Brown. They combine everything that he most prizes: the potential for the generation of reams of statistics that he can pore over in the wee, small hours when normal people are asleep; the clear evidence that he is "getting on with the job" and, best of all, the chance to impose his statist vision of society on the hapless inhabitants of this country without having to continually seek our agreement or permission.
Take his latest monstrosity, the Planning Reform Bill, which creates a new Quango whose stated function is to ensure that major infrastructure projects are approved and instigated as soon as possible without being subjected to the tedious processes generally associated with planning applications. On the face of it, this is an entirely sensible aim; particularly in a country so bereft of a joined up energy policy that power blackouts could soon be an everyday experience.
But, of course, since this is Uncle Joe Brown we are dealing with, things are nowhere near as simple as they seem. For a start, most of the infrastructure development we are talking about affects only England - not the rest of the UK. Thus, it will affect people living near Sizewell, Windscale and other nuclear sites located in England that have been earmarked for the next generation of nuclear power stations. The population of the counties of Bucks and Berks will bear the impact of a third runway at Heathrow.
So, it is more than slightly wearing that this legislation, whose impact will be to crush democratic debate and scrutiny of planning applications for major infrastructure projects in England, was rammed through the Commons with the help of 72 Scottish MPs, 40 Welsh MPs and a dozen or so from Norn Ireland. As usual, NSF Gordon turned to the Tartan Mafia to nod through legislation that he knows will be as welcome in the English shires as halitosis in a diving suit. His Scottish brethren willingly play along, safe in the knowledge that it will have virtually no negative impact on the people or countryside of North Britain.
Nor is it untypical that, having forced through the legislation in order to kick-start big-ticket infrastructure applications such as nuclear generators, the very first projects that he will use it to rubber-stamp will be the ill-thought-out and hugely damaging Eco-Towns.
Painted a warm and fuzzy green colour to make them seem more appealing, these are just overspill or new towns under another name. They are necessary because, as we have discussed before, this administration has allowed three million or so extra people to settle in this country and now needs to find some way to house them. Since, from choice, most of these newcomers want to be where the jobs and money are - i.e. the South - that is where the housing need is most urgent. But, the government can't admit that one of its almighty cock-ups has led inexorably to another, so some spotty youths in the Policy Department were told to come up with an idea that was both eye-catching and totally misleading. Eco-Towns was the result.
Now, the idea that you can simply plonk new communities in the middle of the English countryside without damaging the environment in every way possible is completely ludicrous. To dress it up in a pretty eco-frock demonstrates a level of cynicism and contempt for the intelligence of the average voter that is almost breathtaking in its arrogance. But then, wee Gordie never was too much bothered about the opinions of the English electorate; especially between elections.
In any event, he has erected a very convenient barrier between him and any negative feedback - his pin-bright, shiny new Quango. Or at least that was the plan. But, as today's demos outside Parliament have demonstrated, planning anything at all is not exactly Wee Gordie's strong suit. Not only are the English revolting - as any Scot worth his salt could tell you - but they are doing it in his back yard. Before the bloody Quango has even come into being.
What he urgently needs now is yet another Quango; one whose sole purpose is to stop Not So Flash Gordon shooting himself in the foot again.
Thursday 19 June 2008
Selective thinking leads to mediocrity
Elites of one kind or another have always dominated society. It's an unavoidable fact of life. Over the centuries, various societies have devised different structures and strictures to limit the power and influence of their elites; whether by legislation, direct action or revolution. Inevitably, however, in displacing one elite group they have merely tilled the ground ready for another to come along and plant itself.
Between the two world wars, over a third of the UK workforce was employed in service; a huge army of worker ants busting their collective gut to ensure that their betters - as they preferred to think of themselves - could enjoy privileges totally disproportionate to their value to society. . Even countries which had turfed out the traditional "toffs"- Russia, China, France ,Germany - rapidly filled the vacuum with their own newly minted versions; party officials, intellectuals and others who were eager to endorse and legitimise the claims of the new rulers. Despite the popular American notion that they enjoy a "classless" society, the same was just as true in the US; and still is today.
Several things changed the status quo, at least in Great Britain. The first was the steady, if not unchallenged, rise of the Trades Union movement between the wars and after WW11. The second was the war itself. The imperatives of war forced the government of the day to turn to women to do jobs that had been the sole preserve of men. Female tractor drivers, pilots, ambulance crew, factory workers and miners filled the gaps left by men dispatched to the front line.
After the war, those men returned to a country and society they hardly recognised; bankrupt, battered and with few prospects for immediate economic recovery. Their jobs had either disappeared or, in some cases, been successfully taken by women. Their homes, if they were still standing, were in a state of disrepair and neglect. Yet, the elite - the monied classes in both town and country - expected normal Service - or more accurately servitude - to be resumed immediately.
Given this scenario, it was surprising only to the elite that the masses responded at the earliest possible opportunity by electing a Labour Government. As Hartley Shawcross is consistently misquoted as saying: "We are the masters now". Of course, the fact that Shawcross was a Baron by inheritance meant that he had always been a master, but you get the point. It was the people who now held the reins of power.
Irrespective of anything else they did, that Labour Government's legacy included two very significant achievements; the provision of universal health care through the National Health Service and through their implementartion of the Tories' Education Act 1944, a secondary education free for all pupils. At the tip of this tripartite system was the selective Grammar School, which opened up the prospect of attainment and advancement to children from even the poorest homes.
A whole generation of children was able to escape the inner-city through a grammar education. Their horizons were expanded dramatically simply through exposure to a higher form of learning. By the Sixties, it was no longer unusual for the brightest and best to make it to Oxford of Cambridge.
Of course, beneath this pinnacle of achievement was the rest of the pyramid; those who, for one reason or another, had missed out on selection. Inevitably, and ironically, Labour's own legislation had created a new elite. Rather than money or heritage this one was founded on education. It wasn't long before the Levellers -epitomised by Anthony Crosland- were plotting to destroy the grammar system because of its "unfairness". Ironically the man who said ""If it's the last thing I do, I'm going to destroy every fucking grammar school in England. And Wales and Northern Ireland" was himself the product of a selective education; at Highgate School and Oxford University.
In that sense, he is not merely the original template for Nu-Labour ministers and apparatchiks but could almost be regarded as their spiritual father.
Virtually every member of the current Labour administration is a product of selective education. Many of them - Harriet Harman, Tony Blair, Ed Balls, the brothers Milliband - were formed in precisely the same kind of mould as Crosland - fee-paying private schools followed by Oxbridge. Under them, the standard of education in Great Britain has been so comprehensively devalued that mediocrity is now the benchmark. Statistically, we have more pupils passing more exams than at any point in our history. Almost 50% of the school-going population gets a shot at a university education. Every year, the propaganda machine gets cranked up. The papers are full of pictures of teenagers ecstatic at discovering they have scored five As at A level. Harman, Balls, the Millibands and even Brown himself will do the rounds of the TV and Radio studios to characterise anyone who questions the exponential rise in examination grades as a reactionary blimp who doesn't appreciate the sheer effort and sacrifice "our kids" have had to make to achieve this amazing level of success.
Conversely, the international league tables for Maths, English, Physics, Geography show that we are slipping, relentlessly, down the educational ladder to share rungs with the likes of Botswana and Estonia. Many of our leading universities are having to provide British pupils with the basic Maths and language skills they need before they can even start their course proper. So a three year degree turns into four years. For poorer pupils, or those that are not so motivated, that extra year of tuition fees might translate into loans and other financial sacrifices they are not able or willing to make.
In case you think that I am reporting this second hand; think again. I work for an international engineering company that has a fresh intake of science and engineering graduates every year. We have not been approached by any British-born graduates of sufficient quality for the last two years.
So, are we take it that the real world we have to deal with every day is wrong? That 22 year old graduates cannot write a proper sentence or do basic arithmetic not through lack of intelligence but shoddy education? Or do we believe the government when it says these young people have enjoyed the benefits of a hugely successful education system? And, therefore, if they can't do basic arithmetic they must, by definition, be terminally thick?
Because the only alternative is to assume that our Government is deliberately and consistently lying to us. And that it is being aided and abetted in those lies by the bulk of the public educational establishment.
If so, what is its purpose?
Well, we are back to the elite again, are we not. The Balls, Harmans, Straws, Millibands have arrived where they are by virtue being better prepared, better briefed and better connected. In other words, they have all enjoyed the fruits of a selective education. Irrespective of the school they went to or its location, their educational environment would have been challenging, invigorating, disciplined, competitive and achievement oriented.
These are the very attributes that they are, systematically, trying to excise from the modern school experience. Children - sorry KIDS - must not be stretched, challenged or forced to compete. Above all,they must not be subject to discipline.
After all, what is the point of becoming an elite if you provide the same opportunities for another fifty million or so people to join you at the top of the greasy pole. Far better for everyone if you dumb the system down, even while denying that you are doing so. Make mediocrity the new gold standard and then only a very few will ever escape the great mass of the ill-educated to challenge your position at the top.
Between the two world wars, over a third of the UK workforce was employed in service; a huge army of worker ants busting their collective gut to ensure that their betters - as they preferred to think of themselves - could enjoy privileges totally disproportionate to their value to society. . Even countries which had turfed out the traditional "toffs"- Russia, China, France ,Germany - rapidly filled the vacuum with their own newly minted versions; party officials, intellectuals and others who were eager to endorse and legitimise the claims of the new rulers. Despite the popular American notion that they enjoy a "classless" society, the same was just as true in the US; and still is today.
Several things changed the status quo, at least in Great Britain. The first was the steady, if not unchallenged, rise of the Trades Union movement between the wars and after WW11. The second was the war itself. The imperatives of war forced the government of the day to turn to women to do jobs that had been the sole preserve of men. Female tractor drivers, pilots, ambulance crew, factory workers and miners filled the gaps left by men dispatched to the front line.
After the war, those men returned to a country and society they hardly recognised; bankrupt, battered and with few prospects for immediate economic recovery. Their jobs had either disappeared or, in some cases, been successfully taken by women. Their homes, if they were still standing, were in a state of disrepair and neglect. Yet, the elite - the monied classes in both town and country - expected normal Service - or more accurately servitude - to be resumed immediately.
Given this scenario, it was surprising only to the elite that the masses responded at the earliest possible opportunity by electing a Labour Government. As Hartley Shawcross is consistently misquoted as saying: "We are the masters now". Of course, the fact that Shawcross was a Baron by inheritance meant that he had always been a master, but you get the point. It was the people who now held the reins of power.
Irrespective of anything else they did, that Labour Government's legacy included two very significant achievements; the provision of universal health care through the National Health Service and through their implementartion of the Tories' Education Act 1944, a secondary education free for all pupils. At the tip of this tripartite system was the selective Grammar School, which opened up the prospect of attainment and advancement to children from even the poorest homes.
A whole generation of children was able to escape the inner-city through a grammar education. Their horizons were expanded dramatically simply through exposure to a higher form of learning. By the Sixties, it was no longer unusual for the brightest and best to make it to Oxford of Cambridge.
Of course, beneath this pinnacle of achievement was the rest of the pyramid; those who, for one reason or another, had missed out on selection. Inevitably, and ironically, Labour's own legislation had created a new elite. Rather than money or heritage this one was founded on education. It wasn't long before the Levellers -epitomised by Anthony Crosland- were plotting to destroy the grammar system because of its "unfairness". Ironically the man who said ""If it's the last thing I do, I'm going to destroy every fucking grammar school in England. And Wales and Northern Ireland" was himself the product of a selective education; at Highgate School and Oxford University.
In that sense, he is not merely the original template for Nu-Labour ministers and apparatchiks but could almost be regarded as their spiritual father.
Virtually every member of the current Labour administration is a product of selective education. Many of them - Harriet Harman, Tony Blair, Ed Balls, the brothers Milliband - were formed in precisely the same kind of mould as Crosland - fee-paying private schools followed by Oxbridge. Under them, the standard of education in Great Britain has been so comprehensively devalued that mediocrity is now the benchmark. Statistically, we have more pupils passing more exams than at any point in our history. Almost 50% of the school-going population gets a shot at a university education. Every year, the propaganda machine gets cranked up. The papers are full of pictures of teenagers ecstatic at discovering they have scored five As at A level. Harman, Balls, the Millibands and even Brown himself will do the rounds of the TV and Radio studios to characterise anyone who questions the exponential rise in examination grades as a reactionary blimp who doesn't appreciate the sheer effort and sacrifice "our kids" have had to make to achieve this amazing level of success.
Conversely, the international league tables for Maths, English, Physics, Geography show that we are slipping, relentlessly, down the educational ladder to share rungs with the likes of Botswana and Estonia. Many of our leading universities are having to provide British pupils with the basic Maths and language skills they need before they can even start their course proper. So a three year degree turns into four years. For poorer pupils, or those that are not so motivated, that extra year of tuition fees might translate into loans and other financial sacrifices they are not able or willing to make.
In case you think that I am reporting this second hand; think again. I work for an international engineering company that has a fresh intake of science and engineering graduates every year. We have not been approached by any British-born graduates of sufficient quality for the last two years.
So, are we take it that the real world we have to deal with every day is wrong? That 22 year old graduates cannot write a proper sentence or do basic arithmetic not through lack of intelligence but shoddy education? Or do we believe the government when it says these young people have enjoyed the benefits of a hugely successful education system? And, therefore, if they can't do basic arithmetic they must, by definition, be terminally thick?
Because the only alternative is to assume that our Government is deliberately and consistently lying to us. And that it is being aided and abetted in those lies by the bulk of the public educational establishment.
If so, what is its purpose?
Well, we are back to the elite again, are we not. The Balls, Harmans, Straws, Millibands have arrived where they are by virtue being better prepared, better briefed and better connected. In other words, they have all enjoyed the fruits of a selective education. Irrespective of the school they went to or its location, their educational environment would have been challenging, invigorating, disciplined, competitive and achievement oriented.
These are the very attributes that they are, systematically, trying to excise from the modern school experience. Children - sorry KIDS - must not be stretched, challenged or forced to compete. Above all,they must not be subject to discipline.
After all, what is the point of becoming an elite if you provide the same opportunities for another fifty million or so people to join you at the top of the greasy pole. Far better for everyone if you dumb the system down, even while denying that you are doing so. Make mediocrity the new gold standard and then only a very few will ever escape the great mass of the ill-educated to challenge your position at the top.
Sunday 15 June 2008
Yet another Brown miscalculation
In typical fashion, Not so Flash Gordon saw the resignation of David Davis as another opportunity to land a blow from his great clunking fist on the opposition. Yet again of course, this man that the political sycophants have always characterised as the consummate politician, has miscalulated. As usual, he took his soundings not from the people who really matter - the electorate - but from the coterie of advisers and clingers-on that pass for his policy advisors. They, crippled by the same kind of narrow perspective as their master, saw in Davis a man who was going against the wishes of his political masters and, incredulously, was willing to sacrifice a high-flying political career on a matter of principle. Of course, to the party of Mandelson, Prescott and Blair, this was such an alien concept that they, gleefully, concluded that he must have lost his marbles.
Accordingly, Brown started an immediate tour of his media lackeys to opine long and loudly that Davis's resignation was not a statement of intent, a stand against the sovietising of our country, but a symptom of the deep divisions in the Conservative Party. Incredibly, the man who had just spent an estimated £1.2 billion of our money to bribe Ian Paisley's motley crew and various dissenting Labour die-hards into backing 42 days detention without trial, labelled Davis's resignation a mere stunt.
From a brief trawl through the weekend's papers, it is already obvious that Brown has backed the wrong horse once again. In fact, not just backed the wrong horse but entered it into the wrong race. The Davis resignation has already achieved one thing that Brown didn't want. It has brought the whole subject of the State, unchecked bureaucracy and our crumbling democracy to the forefront of the political debate. Brown - miscalculating again - then made a snap decision on the Irish Electorate's emphatic rejection of the Lisbon Treaty; namely that it would not alter his mind one iota. Coming hard on the heels of mocking Davis for standing up for our civil liberties and democracy, it only served to highlight NSF Gordon's inherent contempt for the British People and our democratic traditions. He will be gone before long.
If Brown himself were not bad enough, most of the other occupants of the Westminster Asylum - including the media pack that feeds off the offal the politicians choose to throw them - were not far behind; snarling their disbelief at what Davis had done. Their protestations that he is undermining Parliament sound particularly lame coming from a group of MPs who are happy to have most of our rules invented in Brussels and have just voted to hand over what little power remains at the earliest opportunity.
What really scared them of course was not that he had resigned, but the fact that he, apparently, did so as a matter of principle. Good Lord what sort of world are we living in when a man with his snout just a whisker's breath away from the trough of Government and all the perks, prestige and priviledge that entails, willingly gives it all up on a point of PRINCIPLE? What sort of precedent could he be setting? What sort of ideas might it give the constituents of other MPs; next thing you know, they might all start wanting their Member of Parliament to act like the Honourable Member that he or she is supposed to be.
And that would never do, Would it?
Accordingly, Brown started an immediate tour of his media lackeys to opine long and loudly that Davis's resignation was not a statement of intent, a stand against the sovietising of our country, but a symptom of the deep divisions in the Conservative Party. Incredibly, the man who had just spent an estimated £1.2 billion of our money to bribe Ian Paisley's motley crew and various dissenting Labour die-hards into backing 42 days detention without trial, labelled Davis's resignation a mere stunt.
From a brief trawl through the weekend's papers, it is already obvious that Brown has backed the wrong horse once again. In fact, not just backed the wrong horse but entered it into the wrong race. The Davis resignation has already achieved one thing that Brown didn't want. It has brought the whole subject of the State, unchecked bureaucracy and our crumbling democracy to the forefront of the political debate. Brown - miscalculating again - then made a snap decision on the Irish Electorate's emphatic rejection of the Lisbon Treaty; namely that it would not alter his mind one iota. Coming hard on the heels of mocking Davis for standing up for our civil liberties and democracy, it only served to highlight NSF Gordon's inherent contempt for the British People and our democratic traditions. He will be gone before long.
If Brown himself were not bad enough, most of the other occupants of the Westminster Asylum - including the media pack that feeds off the offal the politicians choose to throw them - were not far behind; snarling their disbelief at what Davis had done. Their protestations that he is undermining Parliament sound particularly lame coming from a group of MPs who are happy to have most of our rules invented in Brussels and have just voted to hand over what little power remains at the earliest opportunity.
What really scared them of course was not that he had resigned, but the fact that he, apparently, did so as a matter of principle. Good Lord what sort of world are we living in when a man with his snout just a whisker's breath away from the trough of Government and all the perks, prestige and priviledge that entails, willingly gives it all up on a point of PRINCIPLE? What sort of precedent could he be setting? What sort of ideas might it give the constituents of other MPs; next thing you know, they might all start wanting their Member of Parliament to act like the Honourable Member that he or she is supposed to be.
And that would never do, Would it?
Monday 9 June 2008
The 42 day smokescreen
People who represent a clear and present danger to the security of our country should be locked up for 42 days without trial. That is the message that Jacqui Smith has been peddling so assiduously for the last month or so.
Why 42 days ? Who has actually analysed previous security breaches in such detail that they have been able to calculate the precise number of days the authorities would need to be certain of gaining a conviction in the future? 42 is such an exact number. Why not 50; or 60 days? After all they are equally nice, equally rounded numbers.
The answer, of course, is that the number of days is neither here nor there. It could just as easily be 102 or 12.
The only true purpose of the 42 day detention debate has been to create a smoke screen. Think about it. What is currently wending its way through the entrails of the British parliamentary system that will have a far more dramatic and long-term effect on democracy in this country than any 42 day detention policy?
Identity Cards, perhaps?
No, this is even more serious than Nu Labour's plan to turn each of us into a human bar code.
Then it must be the Police database containing the DNA of over a million innocent people, right?Close, but no cigar.
It's the Lisbon Treaty, stupid.
While Jacqui and Gordon - who would surely have been a white crimplene suited Seventies cabaret act in another life - have been insisting on the need to imprison anyone they want for 42 days without trial, the bill to enable the Lisbon Teaty is about to be debated in the House of Lords having been rammed through the Commons by the battering ram of vested interests known as the Europhile tendency.
It is a strange creature, Europe. Poll after poll demonstrates that the British people are heartily sick of being sucked any further into its web. More people than ever are calling not just for the ties to be loosened but severed completely. Yet, our political elite conspires to bind us ever closer, mocking our protests while denying that we have anything to protest about in the first place.
That elite includes not just the current crop of party leaders but all of their predecessors from the Seventies onwards; including Maggie Thatcher. She, like the rest, knew precisely the nature of our relationship with Europe. She and they have accepted for many years that the eventual aim was a United States of Europe in which Great Britain would become a province with slightly fewer powers than, say, Georgia currently does in relation to the federal government of the USA.
Peter Lilley made this plain in the Commons last week. As he said, over 80% of all the laws and regulations to which we now have to adhere start their life inside the EU Commission. Our Government Ministers like to claim these bits of legislation as their own. But only to maintain the fiction that anything they or anyone else at Westminster does, has any real effect on life in modern Britain.
The truth is, of course, that our feeble, mediocre Parliament is an anachronism. Its members are as relevant as a sail in a submarine; as powerless as the Queen has been for the last fifty years. But, still they go on posturing, posing and conniving in dark corners as if it matters a jot which of them ends up as Party leader or deputy leader. Occasionally, in a moment of lucidity or honesty, one of their number spills the beans. This time it is Peter Lilley. In the past, William Hague has come close to admitting the same thing; that the House of Commons is to Brussels what your local Town Hall used to be to Westminster.
Nobody takes very much notice for the simple reason that every effort is made to divert our attention. Every time a major European story is about to grab the headlines, the media are chucked another, more juicy bone to get their collective teeths into. It's been Nu labour's way of manipulating the news since its very first days in office. The lickspittles otherwise known as political journalists play along happily with the charade; willingly recycling rumours and briefings to keep the pot boiling and everyone's attention from the debate that really matters; what is happening to our democracy as the tentacles of Europa wrap themselves ever tighter around us.
This time is no different. We have been told in no uncertain terms that there will be no referendum. The elite has closed ranks. Doubters have, as usual, been branded Eurosceptics and Little Englanders. Meanwhile, Gordon and Jacqui, abetted by their media chums, continue to do their bit; puffing out billows of chaff about 42 days detention to keep the European question firmly off the radar.
Once the Lisbon Treaty passes the Lords, the fog will clear and we will all be sailing full-steam for the sunlit uplands of Europe. (Unless the Irish chuck a large Celtic spanner in the works of course and chuck the whole idea of the Lisbon Treaty out on its ear. ) Either way, with Lisbon resolved, just watch how quickly Gordon caves in to back-bench demands for a fresh debate on the whole question of detention without trial.
Why 42 days ? Who has actually analysed previous security breaches in such detail that they have been able to calculate the precise number of days the authorities would need to be certain of gaining a conviction in the future? 42 is such an exact number. Why not 50; or 60 days? After all they are equally nice, equally rounded numbers.
The answer, of course, is that the number of days is neither here nor there. It could just as easily be 102 or 12.
The only true purpose of the 42 day detention debate has been to create a smoke screen. Think about it. What is currently wending its way through the entrails of the British parliamentary system that will have a far more dramatic and long-term effect on democracy in this country than any 42 day detention policy?
Identity Cards, perhaps?
No, this is even more serious than Nu Labour's plan to turn each of us into a human bar code.
Then it must be the Police database containing the DNA of over a million innocent people, right?Close, but no cigar.
It's the Lisbon Treaty, stupid.
While Jacqui and Gordon - who would surely have been a white crimplene suited Seventies cabaret act in another life - have been insisting on the need to imprison anyone they want for 42 days without trial, the bill to enable the Lisbon Teaty is about to be debated in the House of Lords having been rammed through the Commons by the battering ram of vested interests known as the Europhile tendency.
It is a strange creature, Europe. Poll after poll demonstrates that the British people are heartily sick of being sucked any further into its web. More people than ever are calling not just for the ties to be loosened but severed completely. Yet, our political elite conspires to bind us ever closer, mocking our protests while denying that we have anything to protest about in the first place.
That elite includes not just the current crop of party leaders but all of their predecessors from the Seventies onwards; including Maggie Thatcher. She, like the rest, knew precisely the nature of our relationship with Europe. She and they have accepted for many years that the eventual aim was a United States of Europe in which Great Britain would become a province with slightly fewer powers than, say, Georgia currently does in relation to the federal government of the USA.
Peter Lilley made this plain in the Commons last week. As he said, over 80% of all the laws and regulations to which we now have to adhere start their life inside the EU Commission. Our Government Ministers like to claim these bits of legislation as their own. But only to maintain the fiction that anything they or anyone else at Westminster does, has any real effect on life in modern Britain.
The truth is, of course, that our feeble, mediocre Parliament is an anachronism. Its members are as relevant as a sail in a submarine; as powerless as the Queen has been for the last fifty years. But, still they go on posturing, posing and conniving in dark corners as if it matters a jot which of them ends up as Party leader or deputy leader. Occasionally, in a moment of lucidity or honesty, one of their number spills the beans. This time it is Peter Lilley. In the past, William Hague has come close to admitting the same thing; that the House of Commons is to Brussels what your local Town Hall used to be to Westminster.
Nobody takes very much notice for the simple reason that every effort is made to divert our attention. Every time a major European story is about to grab the headlines, the media are chucked another, more juicy bone to get their collective teeths into. It's been Nu labour's way of manipulating the news since its very first days in office. The lickspittles otherwise known as political journalists play along happily with the charade; willingly recycling rumours and briefings to keep the pot boiling and everyone's attention from the debate that really matters; what is happening to our democracy as the tentacles of Europa wrap themselves ever tighter around us.
This time is no different. We have been told in no uncertain terms that there will be no referendum. The elite has closed ranks. Doubters have, as usual, been branded Eurosceptics and Little Englanders. Meanwhile, Gordon and Jacqui, abetted by their media chums, continue to do their bit; puffing out billows of chaff about 42 days detention to keep the European question firmly off the radar.
Once the Lisbon Treaty passes the Lords, the fog will clear and we will all be sailing full-steam for the sunlit uplands of Europe. (Unless the Irish chuck a large Celtic spanner in the works of course and chuck the whole idea of the Lisbon Treaty out on its ear. ) Either way, with Lisbon resolved, just watch how quickly Gordon caves in to back-bench demands for a fresh debate on the whole question of detention without trial.
Tuesday 3 June 2008
Long term chaos
Not so flash Gordon has been making the rounds of the TV and Radio studios recently to try out his latest mantra: "busy making the right long-term decisions". You needn't ask what long-term decisions he's referring to. You see, busy making etc is one of those catchall phrases carefully tailored by Gordon's script writers to cover virtually any eventuality. Worried about the state of the economy? Well, stop worrying. Big Gordy is busy making the right long term decisions about the economy that will see this country through the global downturn that is currently affecting not just us but everyone else in the world, too.
Just as worried about violent crime, especially knive crimes involving teenagers? Well, guess what, our Gordon is busy making the right long term decisions to reduce violent crime in our country, as well. Ditto the problems facing the education system, the NHS, the Forces, untramelled immigration and just about anything else people worry themselves sick about.
Now, NSF Gordon is nothing if not steadfast and determined. In fact, according to every Brown profile , those have been two of his defining characteristics since he was a schoolboy in Fife. During the 10 years he spent as Blair's Number 2, his constant refrain was that he was the real power behind the throne. His was the clunking fist on the tiller guiding the great ship of state through choppy economic waters; his vast intellectual power that was brought to bear on such thorny subjects as whether or notto join the Euro. It was his vision of a fairer, more prosperous Britain that Tony Blair played the front man for between 1997 and 2007, before Gordon finally elbowed him out of the way and became the official resident of Number 10 .
Leopards, as they say, do not change their spots. The Gordon of 1997 was the same anal-retentive obsessive that we have to suffer today. So now, 10 years further down the line, the country we live in is almost certainly the product of Gordon's long-term thinking. The pension system for everybody but a select few is knackered; destroyed by class-warrior Brown in one of his first acts of fiscal incontinence. Pensioners are so poor they are having to choose between eating and staying warm in winter. Almost 500,000 of them are eligible for additional credits but find the system of claiming them either so confusing or demeaning - or a mixture of both - that they choose to go without. Meanwhile, with British pensioners on the bread line, we are exporting over £30 million in child benefits to Poland and other east European countries - even though the officials administering the scheme admit they have no way of checking that the kids being claimed for actually live abroad, belong to the parents making the claim - or even exist.
The Jesuits have a saying: "Give me the boy at seven and I will give you the man." Whether you live in a city, small town or village look at the teenagers you see around you. They are ill-educated, over-indulged, undisciplined and, frequently, pissed out of their brains; girls just as frequently as boys.
Eighteen years old now, they were seven when Noo Labour first came into power. Their values, their outlook, their violence, their ignorance and lack of education are a direct result of the social engineering pursued by Labour from their first day in office. They are, in every sense, Brown's children.
Doesn't exactly fill one with confidence, for the long term,does it?
Just as worried about violent crime, especially knive crimes involving teenagers? Well, guess what, our Gordon is busy making the right long term decisions to reduce violent crime in our country, as well. Ditto the problems facing the education system, the NHS, the Forces, untramelled immigration and just about anything else people worry themselves sick about.
Now, NSF Gordon is nothing if not steadfast and determined. In fact, according to every Brown profile , those have been two of his defining characteristics since he was a schoolboy in Fife. During the 10 years he spent as Blair's Number 2, his constant refrain was that he was the real power behind the throne. His was the clunking fist on the tiller guiding the great ship of state through choppy economic waters; his vast intellectual power that was brought to bear on such thorny subjects as whether or notto join the Euro. It was his vision of a fairer, more prosperous Britain that Tony Blair played the front man for between 1997 and 2007, before Gordon finally elbowed him out of the way and became the official resident of Number 10 .
Leopards, as they say, do not change their spots. The Gordon of 1997 was the same anal-retentive obsessive that we have to suffer today. So now, 10 years further down the line, the country we live in is almost certainly the product of Gordon's long-term thinking. The pension system for everybody but a select few is knackered; destroyed by class-warrior Brown in one of his first acts of fiscal incontinence. Pensioners are so poor they are having to choose between eating and staying warm in winter. Almost 500,000 of them are eligible for additional credits but find the system of claiming them either so confusing or demeaning - or a mixture of both - that they choose to go without. Meanwhile, with British pensioners on the bread line, we are exporting over £30 million in child benefits to Poland and other east European countries - even though the officials administering the scheme admit they have no way of checking that the kids being claimed for actually live abroad, belong to the parents making the claim - or even exist.
The Jesuits have a saying: "Give me the boy at seven and I will give you the man." Whether you live in a city, small town or village look at the teenagers you see around you. They are ill-educated, over-indulged, undisciplined and, frequently, pissed out of their brains; girls just as frequently as boys.
Eighteen years old now, they were seven when Noo Labour first came into power. Their values, their outlook, their violence, their ignorance and lack of education are a direct result of the social engineering pursued by Labour from their first day in office. They are, in every sense, Brown's children.
Doesn't exactly fill one with confidence, for the long term,does it?
Tuesday 20 May 2008
A new oxymoron - British Democracy
This is how the Oxford English Dictionary defines DEMOCRACY:
"Government by the people; That form of Government in which the sovereign power resides in the people and is exercised either directly by them or by officers elected by them."
If you entertain the amusing notion that modern Geat Britain is a democracy a few seconds contemplation of that definition should rapidly disabuse you. A couple of weeks ago many people in England and Wales went to the polls to elect local councillors. I was one of them. The fact that I did so was almost a conditioned reflex; as I suspect it was for many of the people who dutifully placed their crosses against their chosen candidates. The truth is, very few of us really believe that the act of voting has anything other than symbolic importance any more. We may, individually and collectively, genuflect in the direction of the democratic ideal but we all know that, for reasons most of us can no longer define, democracy is slipping away from us like a half-remembered dream.
We know how it is meant to work. As the OED says so clearly, it's Government in which power resides in the people and is exercised by them or on their behalf by elected representatives. Or, as the Americans more succinctly put it : Government of the people, by the people and for the people.
"Government by the people; That form of Government in which the sovereign power resides in the people and is exercised either directly by them or by officers elected by them."
If you entertain the amusing notion that modern Geat Britain is a democracy a few seconds contemplation of that definition should rapidly disabuse you. A couple of weeks ago many people in England and Wales went to the polls to elect local councillors. I was one of them. The fact that I did so was almost a conditioned reflex; as I suspect it was for many of the people who dutifully placed their crosses against their chosen candidates. The truth is, very few of us really believe that the act of voting has anything other than symbolic importance any more. We may, individually and collectively, genuflect in the direction of the democratic ideal but we all know that, for reasons most of us can no longer define, democracy is slipping away from us like a half-remembered dream.
We know how it is meant to work. As the OED says so clearly, it's Government in which power resides in the people and is exercised by them or on their behalf by elected representatives. Or, as the Americans more succinctly put it : Government of the people, by the people and for the people.
We also know that our leaders are confirmed disciples of the process because they never fail to tell us so as they send young British soldiers to die and be maimed in the name of democracy in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Few world leaders can emote so sincerely as Blair, Brown or David Millimetre in the name of democracy. Unfortunately, there is a disjunction between their fine words and less than fine actions. The governance of Great Britain in the 21st Century owes more to Vladimir Putin than Thomas Paine. If you don't believe me, consider just a few recent examples.
- The creation of Rowland Hill, the General Post Office was once one of those peculiarly British institutions - along with our education system and NHS - of which we could justifiably be proud. The concept of a delivering an item of mail to anywhere in the land for a set fee was so revolutionary that, in its own way, it was as important to the establishment of democratic government as Universal Suffrage. For the first time, thanks to the penny post, people all over the country were able to exchange news and information as and when they felt like it and not when officialdom in all its guises decided to share it with them. That concept of Universal Delivery survived two World Wars, untold changes of administration, floods and the Great Depression. The one thing it couldn't survive was the dead hand of the European Union. Amid all the debate about Post Office closures, the loss of the second post and the prospect of privatising the Royal Mail, the one fact that the politicians of all stripes have been desperatel to play down is that they can do nothing to turn the situation around. And the reason that they are so powerless is that all of the Post Office's ills are attributable to an EU edict that forced it to open up its services to commercial competition. To cut a long story very short, those competitors fell on the profitable bits of the business like wolves savaging a lone calf, leaving the Royal Mail to struggle along with the not-so-profitable parts. Hence, for the first time in a couple of decades, the business is now haemorraging money. What has this to do with democracy? Simple. When were any of us in this country given the opportunity to discuss, disagree with or refuse the legislation that has crippled our postal service? Answer: NEVER. The EU legislated and our administrators did what they always do when it comes to the EU, rolled over to have their tummies tickled. What makes it worse of course, is that none of the legislators in question was or ever will be elected to their highly remunerated positions. They were appointed by a Commission that is, itself, an unelected body. Government for the people by it's elected representatives? I think not.
- A few weeks ago - a life time in Politics - Not SO Flash Gordon promised that he would drop the pay as you throw taxes for rubbish collection by local councils. He made the promise in the aftermath of his party's mauling at the local elections. Quite what good he thought the statement would be AFTER the event is anybody's guess. Perhaps, his script writer slipped the "No more pay as you throw taxes" speech into the pile after the one about " getting on with the government of this country" but before " making the longe-term decisions that need to be made". Whatever the reason, there is little doubt that Gordon promised to rein in the more over-excitable councils who were handing out fines to rubbish bin sinners like sweets at a children's party. With the elections behind him and no immediate reason to score extra Brownie points, Gordon has now lost interest in the topic. The truth has managed to break through the froth of lies and broken promises that passes for what New Labour calls News Management. And that truth is that, even if Brown wanted to stop the "Pay as you throw taxes" he couldn't. It's the EU again, see. Apparently, on the advice of a group of Professors in Dresden ( ex-East Germany, significantly) the EU has ordered member states to introduce the taxes across the board. And not merely to introduce them but to establish Rubbish Police equipped with SatNav chipped bins and trackers, to enforce the taxes. Exemplifying the EU's unique take on democracy, these professors caution officials faced with disgruntled local residents : ..."lack of consensus should not be allowed to intimidate us into avoiding innovation" In other words, if the locals don't like it fine them until they grow to love the idea. Government by the people etc? As far as the EU and our current rulers are concerned, that's just a load of old garbage
Thursday 24 April 2008
Police State
When and how did Great Britain become a police state?
What were we all doing that was so important that we didn't see this enormous change in our culture creeping up on us? Twenty years ago, the only people with strong opinions about the police were criminals, ex-student activists and TV satirists. If the great bulk of the population had any sort of opinion at all it was probably neutral and tinged with a quiet pride that, in a violent world, a bobby could still police a small village or a great city armed with nothing more than a truncheon, a whistle and, most importantly of all, the support and appreciation of the local community.
In those days, the police were not just visible,they were clearly part of the community they served; frequently living in a police house in a village or local neighbourhood. Police stations were always open. There were blue, Doctor Who police call boxes dotted around and help was a 999 call away. The role of the police was to protect their communities and to nick the villains. Apart from what were called Moving Traffic Violations - speeding to you and me - the chances of most of us having any dealings with the police were pretty remote. It was a situation that suited us and them.
Now, all that has changed.
Political correctness has for the most part forced the police to wear kid gloves when dealing with illegal immigrants, travellers, asylum seekers, the Moslem community and other vociferous minorities. On the other hand, our data-obsessed government continues to set arbitrary targets to feed its need for data about every aspect of our society. So, the police focus their collective attention on the most visible target of all; US.
Thanks to cctv and Gatsos, the police have us in their sights 24 hours a day 365 days a year. There may be several million people, many of them newcomers from Eastern Europe, who fail to tax and insure their vehicles and don't even bother to obtain a driving licence, but they take time and effort to track down. Far easier to use the enormous power of the DVLA database to trace and fine illegal speeders and parkers from the mainstream population.
Travellers can invade and destroy whole swathes of the countryside but the police can't eject them. If they leave , the local community has to pay to clean up the skeletons of cars, the animal and human waste that they leave behind. Nothing can be done to them because travelling and living off society without making any contribution is their human right.
Contrast that with what happened this week when no fewer than seven coppers were despatched to a local bowls club to threaten and eject some pensioners who were occupying the green in a peaceful demonstration against a hefty increase in rent imposed by the local council.
Once upon a time, a local police chief would have thought twice or three times before reacting in such a heavy-handed way against such perfectly respectable tax-payers. But then, once upon a time, the local police chief would have been someone who had worked his way up from the ranks and acquired a great deal of common sense and local knowledge in the process.
His modern day equivalent, by contrast, has probably been fast-tracked to his or her current position having joined the Police straight from University with a degree in one kind of ology or another. Unfortunately, such courses rarely include credits for common sense. Ambitious, educated and with little experience of real life outside of school and college, this new breed of police officer feels totally at ease with his mirror-image; the university-educated politician or career civil servant who has had just as little experience of life beyond academia. Setting and meeting arbitrary targets on arrest levels and crimes solved provides the fuel for both of their careers. The better these figures the better their career prospects. So, in the end, how they obtain them becomes a secondary consideration; all that matters is that the governments' propaganda machine can transmute them into proof of falling crime levels and increasing levels of police success.
It's a scenario in which everyone wins; everyone, that is, except you and me. We are left wondering where our slightly odd, anachronistic police force went to be replaced by a remote, armoured force that is distinctly un-British.
What were we all doing that was so important that we didn't see this enormous change in our culture creeping up on us? Twenty years ago, the only people with strong opinions about the police were criminals, ex-student activists and TV satirists. If the great bulk of the population had any sort of opinion at all it was probably neutral and tinged with a quiet pride that, in a violent world, a bobby could still police a small village or a great city armed with nothing more than a truncheon, a whistle and, most importantly of all, the support and appreciation of the local community.
In those days, the police were not just visible,they were clearly part of the community they served; frequently living in a police house in a village or local neighbourhood. Police stations were always open. There were blue, Doctor Who police call boxes dotted around and help was a 999 call away. The role of the police was to protect their communities and to nick the villains. Apart from what were called Moving Traffic Violations - speeding to you and me - the chances of most of us having any dealings with the police were pretty remote. It was a situation that suited us and them.
Now, all that has changed.
Political correctness has for the most part forced the police to wear kid gloves when dealing with illegal immigrants, travellers, asylum seekers, the Moslem community and other vociferous minorities. On the other hand, our data-obsessed government continues to set arbitrary targets to feed its need for data about every aspect of our society. So, the police focus their collective attention on the most visible target of all; US.
Thanks to cctv and Gatsos, the police have us in their sights 24 hours a day 365 days a year. There may be several million people, many of them newcomers from Eastern Europe, who fail to tax and insure their vehicles and don't even bother to obtain a driving licence, but they take time and effort to track down. Far easier to use the enormous power of the DVLA database to trace and fine illegal speeders and parkers from the mainstream population.
Travellers can invade and destroy whole swathes of the countryside but the police can't eject them. If they leave , the local community has to pay to clean up the skeletons of cars, the animal and human waste that they leave behind. Nothing can be done to them because travelling and living off society without making any contribution is their human right.
Contrast that with what happened this week when no fewer than seven coppers were despatched to a local bowls club to threaten and eject some pensioners who were occupying the green in a peaceful demonstration against a hefty increase in rent imposed by the local council.
Once upon a time, a local police chief would have thought twice or three times before reacting in such a heavy-handed way against such perfectly respectable tax-payers. But then, once upon a time, the local police chief would have been someone who had worked his way up from the ranks and acquired a great deal of common sense and local knowledge in the process.
His modern day equivalent, by contrast, has probably been fast-tracked to his or her current position having joined the Police straight from University with a degree in one kind of ology or another. Unfortunately, such courses rarely include credits for common sense. Ambitious, educated and with little experience of real life outside of school and college, this new breed of police officer feels totally at ease with his mirror-image; the university-educated politician or career civil servant who has had just as little experience of life beyond academia. Setting and meeting arbitrary targets on arrest levels and crimes solved provides the fuel for both of their careers. The better these figures the better their career prospects. So, in the end, how they obtain them becomes a secondary consideration; all that matters is that the governments' propaganda machine can transmute them into proof of falling crime levels and increasing levels of police success.
It's a scenario in which everyone wins; everyone, that is, except you and me. We are left wondering where our slightly odd, anachronistic police force went to be replaced by a remote, armoured force that is distinctly un-British.
Tuesday 15 April 2008
There is no immigration to the UK
It's a common myth that immigration into the UK is out of control. But, it simply isn't true. There are parts of the UK that haven't seen a new immigrant since the Normans popped their heads over the wall almost a thousand years ago now.
The only part of the UK that is drowning beneath a constant stream of immigrants, legal and illegal, is England and even then only that part beneath a line drawn from Norwich in the East to Oxford in the West. People , you see, don't arrive on these shores thinking that they will seek their fortune in Greenock, Wick or Thurso. Granted, some may occasionally take a wrong turn and end up living very happily in Cwmbran or even Glasgow.. But, for the most part, the Land of Milk and Honey they are seeking lies within the confines of the M25 motorway.
That is why, while the population of Scotland is expected to decline by 5% over the next 20 years and those of Wales and Northern Ireland are predicted to rise by a very small percentage, England will see its population explode from around 55 million now to close to 70 million by 2025.
What makes the situation particularly ironic, of course, is that the English people were never consulted before this torrent of immigrants was unleashed on them. They did not choose to have many of their rural towns turned into centres of Polish culture or for up to 40% of Council Housing to be allocated to newcomers from Eastern Europe. Likewise, it was never their intention that vast swathes of Green Belt should be sacrificed to accommodate these newcomers.
No, these decisions were taken on their behalf by people like Gordon Brown, John Reed, Gordon Darling and Margaret Beckett. All of whom, of course, are Scots and therefore extremely keen to share England's bounty with the poor and deprived of the former Soviet empire.
If, in the process, they also managed to regally piss a lot of English bastards off, while providing the Labour Party with a transfusion of potential new voting stock, then so much the better.
The only part of the UK that is drowning beneath a constant stream of immigrants, legal and illegal, is England and even then only that part beneath a line drawn from Norwich in the East to Oxford in the West. People , you see, don't arrive on these shores thinking that they will seek their fortune in Greenock, Wick or Thurso. Granted, some may occasionally take a wrong turn and end up living very happily in Cwmbran or even Glasgow.. But, for the most part, the Land of Milk and Honey they are seeking lies within the confines of the M25 motorway.
That is why, while the population of Scotland is expected to decline by 5% over the next 20 years and those of Wales and Northern Ireland are predicted to rise by a very small percentage, England will see its population explode from around 55 million now to close to 70 million by 2025.
What makes the situation particularly ironic, of course, is that the English people were never consulted before this torrent of immigrants was unleashed on them. They did not choose to have many of their rural towns turned into centres of Polish culture or for up to 40% of Council Housing to be allocated to newcomers from Eastern Europe. Likewise, it was never their intention that vast swathes of Green Belt should be sacrificed to accommodate these newcomers.
No, these decisions were taken on their behalf by people like Gordon Brown, John Reed, Gordon Darling and Margaret Beckett. All of whom, of course, are Scots and therefore extremely keen to share England's bounty with the poor and deprived of the former Soviet empire.
If, in the process, they also managed to regally piss a lot of English bastards off, while providing the Labour Party with a transfusion of potential new voting stock, then so much the better.
Saturday 12 April 2008
The Big Brother world of UK 2008
Many years ago, when the Soviet Union still loomed like a malignant mushroom over much of Eastern Europe, my wife and I went on holiday to the Black Sea coast of Rumania. Still in the grips of the Ceaucescu family, Rumania in those far off days was a model of Soviet idiocy. It had no unemployment because anybody caught walking the streets during the day was simply rounded up, thrown into a lorry and taken to the nearest road works or collective farm.
There was, officially, no poverty or hunger. This was due less to the triumph of socialism over starvation than the fact that all of the peasants who worked the collective farms also grew their own fruit and vegetables on private 1/2 acre plots. It was the bounty from these plots - which contrasted strongly with the arid inefficiency of the huge collectives - that not only fed them but also provided some of the small extras that made life bearable.
Locals sold plums, berries and vegetables at the side of the road, at small street markets and direct from their small holdings. If they could sell to a tourist, so much the better because they could exchange the hard currency they received for up to four times the official exchange rate and that would enable them to buy proper leather shoes rather than the plastic creations that were the regulation issue to the state shoe shops. With a bit of luck, the money might also stretch to a pair of tights for their wife or daughter.
There was no homelessness because, everywhere one looked, blocks of identical, slab-sided apartments were being thrown up. Apart from their monotonous ugliness - imagine Sixties Council architecture and then brutalise it even more - what was most striking about these flats was the fact that, at one end of each storey, there was one unit that was considerably larger than all of the others. I asked our Yugoslavian tour guide if these apartments were for larger families. He laughed at the idea that any such level of human consideration had gone into their construction.
The answer was much more prosaic - and infinitely more sinister.
Our guide explained that the larger flats were for the Government informers who were installed on each floor of each block. Their job - i.e. that of the whole family - was to keep tabs on their neighbours and report any infractions, such as complaints about food shortages, to the authorities so that the miscreants coud be dealt with in the appropriate way. Sanctions included being re-housed in inferior accommodation, the loss of job or travel privileges or, in severe cases, breaking the family up and sending its members to different re-education camps scattered about the Rumanian countryside.
At first I thought it was odd that the government seemed happy for everyone to know precisely who and where the spies were in each block of flats. It was only once I thought about George Orwell's 1984 that I appreciated the sophistication of the methods that the Rumanians - in common with other Socialist Republics - employed to terrorise their citizenry into meek compliance. It was the very visibility of the spies that lent real menace to the arrangement. The knowledge that whatever you did or even thought was being monitored and reported back. I can remember the shudder which greeted this dawning of understanding. It was Big Brother made flesh.
I experienced a similar feeling of revulsion the other day when I read about an ordinary family in Poole, surely the epitomy of Middle England, who had been systematically stalked, shadowed and reported on for three weeks because some busybody in the local council thought they migh be trying to pull a fast one when it came to schooling for one of their children.
I tried to picture some minor council clerk, who years ago would have settled quite happily for totting up how many childen were eligible for free milk, spending his days in some sub-James Bond role, shadowing the family as they moved through their sinister world: from school to Tesco, to work, back to school, to piano lessons after tea, back home and finally to pick up the oldest child from pony riding lessons.
How did this fantasist feel, writing things like, "female subject and three children enter dwelling,. Lights on"? How did his, presumably, intelligent manager keep a straight face when he signed his expenses? The whole scenario sounds so farcical that the temptation is to laugh it off as yet another example of institutionalised stupidity.
But, that would be a mistake. This is much more sinister than that. It is evidence of a fundamental shift in our society. Once we were served by Public Servants whose role, at a local level, was to maintain the roads, dispose of our rubbish and ensure that the streets were kept clean and reasonably well lit. It was never a part of their remit to spy on us, whether in person or via an array of cameras and other electronic gadgets.
Now, the relationship is much more that of the Governed and the Governors. In this new arrangement, it is the State, in all its forms, that regards itself as the font of all our needs. It is the State that decrees not only what those needs might be but who will or will not be entitled to them. And it is the State that demands to kknow everything about us the better - according to its propaganda machine - to protect us from the 0.00001% of the population that wants to blow the rest of us up; or, at the very least , steal our identities and rip off the benefits system.
In the early days of this administration, the Press ran regular stories about our being the most surveilled country in the world. Government ministers poo-pooed the idea while secrectly, I suspect, waiting for the backlash that was certain to come from an enraged and outraged populace demanding an end to the surveillance society. It didn't happen. The famous British hatred of Government interference turned out to be a myth. Cruelty TV shows such as Big Brother, helped to feed our newly-found appetite for nosey-parkering and, no doubt, encouraged the state to extend its own use of electronic surveillance whether through CCTV cameras on every street corner or Gatsos on every dual cariageway and motorway.
Now, the government - whether local or National - makes no attempt to deny that it wants to tag and track the population at large. The idea of a national ID Card hasn't gone away, simply been put on the back-burner until the army of beaurocrats and expensive consultants enlisted to run the project can come up with a system that might actually work. Just today, another little story crept into the broadsheets about the DOT inviting tenders for the development of a vehicle tracking system that would log every car journey made within the UK. The offical line is that, at this stage, it's just an exercise to find out what sort of tracking equipment is currently available. However, there was nothing vehement or even defensive about the disclaimer.
Just like the Rumanians all those years ago, this government has discovered the virtue of letting us all know that Big Brother really is watching us.
There was, officially, no poverty or hunger. This was due less to the triumph of socialism over starvation than the fact that all of the peasants who worked the collective farms also grew their own fruit and vegetables on private 1/2 acre plots. It was the bounty from these plots - which contrasted strongly with the arid inefficiency of the huge collectives - that not only fed them but also provided some of the small extras that made life bearable.
Locals sold plums, berries and vegetables at the side of the road, at small street markets and direct from their small holdings. If they could sell to a tourist, so much the better because they could exchange the hard currency they received for up to four times the official exchange rate and that would enable them to buy proper leather shoes rather than the plastic creations that were the regulation issue to the state shoe shops. With a bit of luck, the money might also stretch to a pair of tights for their wife or daughter.
There was no homelessness because, everywhere one looked, blocks of identical, slab-sided apartments were being thrown up. Apart from their monotonous ugliness - imagine Sixties Council architecture and then brutalise it even more - what was most striking about these flats was the fact that, at one end of each storey, there was one unit that was considerably larger than all of the others. I asked our Yugoslavian tour guide if these apartments were for larger families. He laughed at the idea that any such level of human consideration had gone into their construction.
The answer was much more prosaic - and infinitely more sinister.
Our guide explained that the larger flats were for the Government informers who were installed on each floor of each block. Their job - i.e. that of the whole family - was to keep tabs on their neighbours and report any infractions, such as complaints about food shortages, to the authorities so that the miscreants coud be dealt with in the appropriate way. Sanctions included being re-housed in inferior accommodation, the loss of job or travel privileges or, in severe cases, breaking the family up and sending its members to different re-education camps scattered about the Rumanian countryside.
At first I thought it was odd that the government seemed happy for everyone to know precisely who and where the spies were in each block of flats. It was only once I thought about George Orwell's 1984 that I appreciated the sophistication of the methods that the Rumanians - in common with other Socialist Republics - employed to terrorise their citizenry into meek compliance. It was the very visibility of the spies that lent real menace to the arrangement. The knowledge that whatever you did or even thought was being monitored and reported back. I can remember the shudder which greeted this dawning of understanding. It was Big Brother made flesh.
I experienced a similar feeling of revulsion the other day when I read about an ordinary family in Poole, surely the epitomy of Middle England, who had been systematically stalked, shadowed and reported on for three weeks because some busybody in the local council thought they migh be trying to pull a fast one when it came to schooling for one of their children.
I tried to picture some minor council clerk, who years ago would have settled quite happily for totting up how many childen were eligible for free milk, spending his days in some sub-James Bond role, shadowing the family as they moved through their sinister world: from school to Tesco, to work, back to school, to piano lessons after tea, back home and finally to pick up the oldest child from pony riding lessons.
How did this fantasist feel, writing things like, "female subject and three children enter dwelling,. Lights on"? How did his, presumably, intelligent manager keep a straight face when he signed his expenses? The whole scenario sounds so farcical that the temptation is to laugh it off as yet another example of institutionalised stupidity.
But, that would be a mistake. This is much more sinister than that. It is evidence of a fundamental shift in our society. Once we were served by Public Servants whose role, at a local level, was to maintain the roads, dispose of our rubbish and ensure that the streets were kept clean and reasonably well lit. It was never a part of their remit to spy on us, whether in person or via an array of cameras and other electronic gadgets.
Now, the relationship is much more that of the Governed and the Governors. In this new arrangement, it is the State, in all its forms, that regards itself as the font of all our needs. It is the State that decrees not only what those needs might be but who will or will not be entitled to them. And it is the State that demands to kknow everything about us the better - according to its propaganda machine - to protect us from the 0.00001% of the population that wants to blow the rest of us up; or, at the very least , steal our identities and rip off the benefits system.
In the early days of this administration, the Press ran regular stories about our being the most surveilled country in the world. Government ministers poo-pooed the idea while secrectly, I suspect, waiting for the backlash that was certain to come from an enraged and outraged populace demanding an end to the surveillance society. It didn't happen. The famous British hatred of Government interference turned out to be a myth. Cruelty TV shows such as Big Brother, helped to feed our newly-found appetite for nosey-parkering and, no doubt, encouraged the state to extend its own use of electronic surveillance whether through CCTV cameras on every street corner or Gatsos on every dual cariageway and motorway.
Now, the government - whether local or National - makes no attempt to deny that it wants to tag and track the population at large. The idea of a national ID Card hasn't gone away, simply been put on the back-burner until the army of beaurocrats and expensive consultants enlisted to run the project can come up with a system that might actually work. Just today, another little story crept into the broadsheets about the DOT inviting tenders for the development of a vehicle tracking system that would log every car journey made within the UK. The offical line is that, at this stage, it's just an exercise to find out what sort of tracking equipment is currently available. However, there was nothing vehement or even defensive about the disclaimer.
Just like the Rumanians all those years ago, this government has discovered the virtue of letting us all know that Big Brother really is watching us.
Wednesday 2 April 2008
The Humming Chorus
Despite the title of this blog it has nothing to do with Puccini or opera - unless you regard the long-running saga of the Brown administration as a soap opera in itself. Personally, I am more inclined to regard it as a cross between a Farce and a Tragedy.
The Humming Chorus refers to those old stagers on the Labour Front Bench - Straw, Harman, Brown, Browne, darling et al - who really, really know the game is up but stubbornly refuse to accept the fact. Every time they get caught in a lie or face a difficult situation,they behave like children; hugging their knees and humming loudly to shut out an awkward parent or teacher. Yesterday, for instance, a group of fairly savvy Peers with not inconsiderable experience of running companies and countries, delivered its verdict on the net effect of immigration on the UK. They did so having studied the subject in some depth for the previous six months and taken evidence from various groups, officials and academics who specialise in immigration. Their considered view was that immigration has zero beneficial effect on the economy of this country; that, indeed, for many working people it has a negative impact because it is their jobs and small businesses that the flood of cheap labour threatens. And that, contrary to the government's claims that immigrants contribute £6 billion to the economy, once the cost of housing,educating and caring for them is factored in, we are probably paying them for the privilege of their being allowed to live and work here.
Guess what. No sooner had the report been published than up popped Liam Byrne on the radio to provide the government's answer. He did so in the now time-honoured fashion of any Labour minister caught out being economical with the truth - he put his hands over his ears, refused to answer any direct questions and then repeated the self-same £6 billion claim that their Lordships had so comprehensively demolished in their report.
Little Liam was followed by Hummer Number 2; that venerable bass baritone Jack Straw, of whom it has frequently been said that no man was more appositely named. Straw was there to put the government's position on law'n'order. A stream of callers made it clear that they were both frightened and bemused by the levels of violent crime in this country. Straw's response was - you guessed it - to clamp his hands firmly over his ears and start humming a string of statistics that proved the complete opposite. It didn't matter which part of the country the caller was from, Straw had the statistics to prove that their town, parish, borough, manor, demesne or county had never been so crime-free;its citizens able to walk the streets in perfect safety, leave their front doors unlocked and their children unguarded.
That this was utter bollocks was proven most effectively next day by pictures of Harriet Harman (or should that be Harperson?) walking the streets of Peckham, accompanied by a set of beautifully diverse police officers, but still sufficiently frit to be attired in a Kevlar stab vest. This act, surprisingly enough, did not have the reassuring effect her advisers had told her it would. In fact, many Peckham residents probaly wondered where they could obtain their own police escort and stab vest so that they could stroll just as insouciantly through their native borough. Of course, once the idiocy of this stunt had been explained to the dim-witted Ms Harman - presumably by another adviser with more than just pea-soup for brains - she hurriedly did the rounds of the radio talk shows to explain her actions. When it became obvious that she had made a prat of herself and no one was going to be persuaded otherwise, she did the hand over ear thing and started humming somewhere in the register between alto and tenor.
By the end of the day,there was such a hum coming from my radio that it had started to sound more like an old crystal set than a state-of-the-art DAB digital. Fortunately, the whine disappeared altogether once the last politician had gone about their business.
The Humming Chorus refers to those old stagers on the Labour Front Bench - Straw, Harman, Brown, Browne, darling et al - who really, really know the game is up but stubbornly refuse to accept the fact. Every time they get caught in a lie or face a difficult situation,they behave like children; hugging their knees and humming loudly to shut out an awkward parent or teacher. Yesterday, for instance, a group of fairly savvy Peers with not inconsiderable experience of running companies and countries, delivered its verdict on the net effect of immigration on the UK. They did so having studied the subject in some depth for the previous six months and taken evidence from various groups, officials and academics who specialise in immigration. Their considered view was that immigration has zero beneficial effect on the economy of this country; that, indeed, for many working people it has a negative impact because it is their jobs and small businesses that the flood of cheap labour threatens. And that, contrary to the government's claims that immigrants contribute £6 billion to the economy, once the cost of housing,educating and caring for them is factored in, we are probably paying them for the privilege of their being allowed to live and work here.
Guess what. No sooner had the report been published than up popped Liam Byrne on the radio to provide the government's answer. He did so in the now time-honoured fashion of any Labour minister caught out being economical with the truth - he put his hands over his ears, refused to answer any direct questions and then repeated the self-same £6 billion claim that their Lordships had so comprehensively demolished in their report.
Little Liam was followed by Hummer Number 2; that venerable bass baritone Jack Straw, of whom it has frequently been said that no man was more appositely named. Straw was there to put the government's position on law'n'order. A stream of callers made it clear that they were both frightened and bemused by the levels of violent crime in this country. Straw's response was - you guessed it - to clamp his hands firmly over his ears and start humming a string of statistics that proved the complete opposite. It didn't matter which part of the country the caller was from, Straw had the statistics to prove that their town, parish, borough, manor, demesne or county had never been so crime-free;its citizens able to walk the streets in perfect safety, leave their front doors unlocked and their children unguarded.
That this was utter bollocks was proven most effectively next day by pictures of Harriet Harman (or should that be Harperson?) walking the streets of Peckham, accompanied by a set of beautifully diverse police officers, but still sufficiently frit to be attired in a Kevlar stab vest. This act, surprisingly enough, did not have the reassuring effect her advisers had told her it would. In fact, many Peckham residents probaly wondered where they could obtain their own police escort and stab vest so that they could stroll just as insouciantly through their native borough. Of course, once the idiocy of this stunt had been explained to the dim-witted Ms Harman - presumably by another adviser with more than just pea-soup for brains - she hurriedly did the rounds of the radio talk shows to explain her actions. When it became obvious that she had made a prat of herself and no one was going to be persuaded otherwise, she did the hand over ear thing and started humming somewhere in the register between alto and tenor.
By the end of the day,there was such a hum coming from my radio that it had started to sound more like an old crystal set than a state-of-the-art DAB digital. Fortunately, the whine disappeared altogether once the last politician had gone about their business.
Sunday 9 March 2008
Sports journalism
I spent the whole of Saturday watching Rugby. First I watched Wales outplay Ireland at Croke Park. Then I watched as England and Scotland give Rugby Union an d the Six Nations a bad name at Murrayfield. Finally, I rounded off the day with a Premiership match between Gloucester and London Irish.
Almost six hours of continuous telly watching invariably makes me grumpy. But my grumpiness was stoked up considerably by the dross I had to watch - and listen to - on the BBC.
Wales versus Ireland was no classic. In fact, given the dire nature of the first half the Gaelic Sports Association might have felt vindicated in their decision to ban Rugby Union from Croke Park for all those years. Fortunately, the rugby improved considerably after half time. Unhappily, the same could not be said for the commentary of Nick Mullins. If ever there was a commentator who needed to be taken to one side, beaten soundly and then forced to listen to tapes of Bill McLaren commentating on Rugby or Richie Benaud on cricket, it is surely Mr Mullins.
His non-stop verbalising almost ruined the game. If he wasn't explaining, for the most part incorrectly, what caused a breakdown leading to a scrum, lineout or penalty, he was filling any tiny breaks in the soundtrack with factoids of unrivalled vacuuity. At simes, he sounded so much like the bloke that does the voice-over to the National Lottery draw that I fully expected him to tell us just how many times Ronan O'Gara had been selected by Guinivere this season.
From Dublin, we moved to Edinburgh where Brian Ashton produced a game plan of such mind-numbing stupidity for England that they managed to get beaten by the weakest team in the Six Nations. Admittedly, Jonnny Wilkinson had probably his worst game in an England shirt. But, the fact that Toby Flood followed his example and kicked any and all posession straight down the throats of the Scottish back three would seem to indicate that they were doing it to the coach's orders. That it wasn't the right strategy should have been patently obvious to everyone concerned after about fifteen minutes. Phil Vickery didn't react, but he at least has the excuse that he spends most of his time with his head shoved up other people's arses. Neither Wilkinson or Flood tried to vary the approach or try anything as outlandish as move it through the Backs' hands. Given that they are considered two of the more tactically-aware players in the team, this would seem to indicate that they were sticking very strictly to an agreed game-plan. So, that just leaves the coaches, all three of them, watching the game from the stands.
Hang on though. I only saw two coaches. Brian Ashton and the forwards coach, John Wells. And they weren't talking to each other. In fact, from the body language you could have, quite reasonably, assumed that they were supporting different sides. Where Mike Ford, the third member of the triumvirate was, is anybody's guess. Perhaps he was in the changing rooms polishing up his application to join Gatland and Edwards in Wales?
Whatever, the team and the game drifted. The Scots gratefully accepted the ball from England's wayward kicking and returned it with more accuracy, generally probing deep into England's territory in the process. When Ashton did decide something had to be done, it was as if he had been taking lessons from Gordon Brown. The changes were eye-catching in that he removed both his captain and chief play-maker at the same time but they achieved nothing of note. The fact that Charlie Hodgson - another player noted for his intelligence - kicked the ball, and England's last chance for meaningful posession, away with just thirty seconds remaining on the clock indicates that he was also sticking to the same dis-credited game plan.
Ashton has been bad for England. His approach is amateurish at a time when Rugby is becoming ever more professional. Had it been Wasps and not England involved, you can bet your boots that Cipriani would not have been caught out in the same way. Wasps, in the shape of Ian McGeechan and Shaun Edwards would have very clear policies in place; curfews even. As would have England during the Clive Woodward era. By contrast, Ashton leaves everything vague and wooly and then throws a hissy fit when Cipriani misinterprets or misjudges the boundaries.
After England had given the Jocks another twelve months' worth of celebration, I switched over to Sky Sports to watch Gloucester play London Irish at Kingsholm. What a revelation. The game was played in exactly the same conditions as the two Six Nations contests. The rain slashed down. The wind drove it almost horizontally and the pitch looked as if a flock of native porkers had been rooting around on it. No matter. Passes were made and caught. Kickers took account of the conditions and restricted themselves to clever little grubbers and chip kicks into open spaces. James Simpson Daniel used the dodgy conditions underfoot to slice throught the London Irish centres. The conditions became part of both team's experimentation. They were not used as an excuse for arid conservatism and lack of ambition. In fact, the game was a refreshing antidote to the turgid stuff that had been served up in the name of International rugby ealier in the day.
And, to cap everything else, the commentary by Will Greenwood and someone whose name I have, shamefully, forgotten, was sharp, incisive without being intrusive and thankfully devoid of Nick Mullins and his statistically fixated colleagues at BBC Sport.
Almost six hours of continuous telly watching invariably makes me grumpy. But my grumpiness was stoked up considerably by the dross I had to watch - and listen to - on the BBC.
Wales versus Ireland was no classic. In fact, given the dire nature of the first half the Gaelic Sports Association might have felt vindicated in their decision to ban Rugby Union from Croke Park for all those years. Fortunately, the rugby improved considerably after half time. Unhappily, the same could not be said for the commentary of Nick Mullins. If ever there was a commentator who needed to be taken to one side, beaten soundly and then forced to listen to tapes of Bill McLaren commentating on Rugby or Richie Benaud on cricket, it is surely Mr Mullins.
His non-stop verbalising almost ruined the game. If he wasn't explaining, for the most part incorrectly, what caused a breakdown leading to a scrum, lineout or penalty, he was filling any tiny breaks in the soundtrack with factoids of unrivalled vacuuity. At simes, he sounded so much like the bloke that does the voice-over to the National Lottery draw that I fully expected him to tell us just how many times Ronan O'Gara had been selected by Guinivere this season.
From Dublin, we moved to Edinburgh where Brian Ashton produced a game plan of such mind-numbing stupidity for England that they managed to get beaten by the weakest team in the Six Nations. Admittedly, Jonnny Wilkinson had probably his worst game in an England shirt. But, the fact that Toby Flood followed his example and kicked any and all posession straight down the throats of the Scottish back three would seem to indicate that they were doing it to the coach's orders. That it wasn't the right strategy should have been patently obvious to everyone concerned after about fifteen minutes. Phil Vickery didn't react, but he at least has the excuse that he spends most of his time with his head shoved up other people's arses. Neither Wilkinson or Flood tried to vary the approach or try anything as outlandish as move it through the Backs' hands. Given that they are considered two of the more tactically-aware players in the team, this would seem to indicate that they were sticking very strictly to an agreed game-plan. So, that just leaves the coaches, all three of them, watching the game from the stands.
Hang on though. I only saw two coaches. Brian Ashton and the forwards coach, John Wells. And they weren't talking to each other. In fact, from the body language you could have, quite reasonably, assumed that they were supporting different sides. Where Mike Ford, the third member of the triumvirate was, is anybody's guess. Perhaps he was in the changing rooms polishing up his application to join Gatland and Edwards in Wales?
Whatever, the team and the game drifted. The Scots gratefully accepted the ball from England's wayward kicking and returned it with more accuracy, generally probing deep into England's territory in the process. When Ashton did decide something had to be done, it was as if he had been taking lessons from Gordon Brown. The changes were eye-catching in that he removed both his captain and chief play-maker at the same time but they achieved nothing of note. The fact that Charlie Hodgson - another player noted for his intelligence - kicked the ball, and England's last chance for meaningful posession, away with just thirty seconds remaining on the clock indicates that he was also sticking to the same dis-credited game plan.
Ashton has been bad for England. His approach is amateurish at a time when Rugby is becoming ever more professional. Had it been Wasps and not England involved, you can bet your boots that Cipriani would not have been caught out in the same way. Wasps, in the shape of Ian McGeechan and Shaun Edwards would have very clear policies in place; curfews even. As would have England during the Clive Woodward era. By contrast, Ashton leaves everything vague and wooly and then throws a hissy fit when Cipriani misinterprets or misjudges the boundaries.
After England had given the Jocks another twelve months' worth of celebration, I switched over to Sky Sports to watch Gloucester play London Irish at Kingsholm. What a revelation. The game was played in exactly the same conditions as the two Six Nations contests. The rain slashed down. The wind drove it almost horizontally and the pitch looked as if a flock of native porkers had been rooting around on it. No matter. Passes were made and caught. Kickers took account of the conditions and restricted themselves to clever little grubbers and chip kicks into open spaces. James Simpson Daniel used the dodgy conditions underfoot to slice throught the London Irish centres. The conditions became part of both team's experimentation. They were not used as an excuse for arid conservatism and lack of ambition. In fact, the game was a refreshing antidote to the turgid stuff that had been served up in the name of International rugby ealier in the day.
And, to cap everything else, the commentary by Will Greenwood and someone whose name I have, shamefully, forgotten, was sharp, incisive without being intrusive and thankfully devoid of Nick Mullins and his statistically fixated colleagues at BBC Sport.
Thursday 6 March 2008
Gordon is proven to be a moron - again
Unwarranted because this is the man who announced immediately he entered office in 1997 that gold no longer had any intrinsic value and was gob-smacked when a lot of savvy rich people promptly took tons of it off his hands at knock-down prices.
Those words are from the blog I posted on the 20th February. At that time, I already knew that the price of gold had reached new record highs. I didn't realise - because I am not an avid follower of the markets - just how much it was now worth. Without boring the pants off anyone, let's just say it's climbing inexorably, according to those in the know, towards $1000 per ounce. Some experts are predicting that it might double again during the course of 2008. All of which must be a tad embarassing for our dear aunt Prudence Brown, the allegedly brilliant erstwhile Chancellor of the Exchequer, who flogged off the bulk of our gold reserves for around $200 per ounce when he came into office in 1997. By some estimates, his "prudence" has cost everyone in the country around £100 or, put another way, a round £6 billion to you squire and would you like that bullion nicely gift wrapped before you take it back to the Emirates ?
Add that £6 billion to the odd £50 billion his crassness has cost the private pensions sector since 1997 and you would have to be terminally stupid or a devout disciple of Prudence Brown to continue to believe that his reign has been anything other than a disaster for this country. Were he the CEO of a publicly quoted company he would have been packed off into a decently funded retirement long ago.
Instead, he's a career politician with the reputation of a heavy weight intellect: A reputation whose origins could probably be traced back to the man himself. Because, despite his protestations of modesty, our Gordon is not the shy, retiring violet that he likes to portray himself as; something that would probably come as a bit of a surprise to many people who regarded him as Dr. Jekyll to Tony Blair's Mr. Hyde.
Consider, if you will, his performance last week at the Labour Conference where he referred to himself, with obvious relish, as the Great Clunking Fist; his favourite sobriquet after The Iron Chancellor. Never mind that when Dave Cameron challenges him at PM's Questions the great clunking fist shakes like a recalcitrant schoolboy forced to decline an irregular verb for the benefit of a vinegary old Latin master. Or that he chose to skulk into Lisbon while everyone else was at lunch to sign the iniquitous Treaty that hands Great Britain on a plate to his masters in Brussels. In his mind, he is Flash Gordon. Not just another super hero but a class warrior and representative of the oppressed and needy the world over. In other words, he is as much a fantasist as his straight kinda guy predecessor, but without the redeeming feature of being able to play the guitar.
The truth is, with his record over the last 11 years, Not So Flash Gordon would struggle to get a gig running a Punch and Judy show, let alone the economy of the fourth, fifth or sixth ( depending on the relative values of the pound and euro) wealthiest country in the world. Which is, perhaps, why he is lying so desperately through his newly enamelled teeth to force the Treaty of Lisbon through Parliament without the undoubted inconvenience of a referendum or similar democratic artifice. There has to be a nice little earner in it for him in the shape off a comfortable EU sinecure or some lucrative consultancy work ,once he has lost the next election.
.
Those words are from the blog I posted on the 20th February. At that time, I already knew that the price of gold had reached new record highs. I didn't realise - because I am not an avid follower of the markets - just how much it was now worth. Without boring the pants off anyone, let's just say it's climbing inexorably, according to those in the know, towards $1000 per ounce. Some experts are predicting that it might double again during the course of 2008. All of which must be a tad embarassing for our dear aunt Prudence Brown, the allegedly brilliant erstwhile Chancellor of the Exchequer, who flogged off the bulk of our gold reserves for around $200 per ounce when he came into office in 1997. By some estimates, his "prudence" has cost everyone in the country around £100 or, put another way, a round £6 billion to you squire and would you like that bullion nicely gift wrapped before you take it back to the Emirates ?
Add that £6 billion to the odd £50 billion his crassness has cost the private pensions sector since 1997 and you would have to be terminally stupid or a devout disciple of Prudence Brown to continue to believe that his reign has been anything other than a disaster for this country. Were he the CEO of a publicly quoted company he would have been packed off into a decently funded retirement long ago.
Instead, he's a career politician with the reputation of a heavy weight intellect: A reputation whose origins could probably be traced back to the man himself. Because, despite his protestations of modesty, our Gordon is not the shy, retiring violet that he likes to portray himself as; something that would probably come as a bit of a surprise to many people who regarded him as Dr. Jekyll to Tony Blair's Mr. Hyde.
Consider, if you will, his performance last week at the Labour Conference where he referred to himself, with obvious relish, as the Great Clunking Fist; his favourite sobriquet after The Iron Chancellor. Never mind that when Dave Cameron challenges him at PM's Questions the great clunking fist shakes like a recalcitrant schoolboy forced to decline an irregular verb for the benefit of a vinegary old Latin master. Or that he chose to skulk into Lisbon while everyone else was at lunch to sign the iniquitous Treaty that hands Great Britain on a plate to his masters in Brussels. In his mind, he is Flash Gordon. Not just another super hero but a class warrior and representative of the oppressed and needy the world over. In other words, he is as much a fantasist as his straight kinda guy predecessor, but without the redeeming feature of being able to play the guitar.
The truth is, with his record over the last 11 years, Not So Flash Gordon would struggle to get a gig running a Punch and Judy show, let alone the economy of the fourth, fifth or sixth ( depending on the relative values of the pound and euro) wealthiest country in the world. Which is, perhaps, why he is lying so desperately through his newly enamelled teeth to force the Treaty of Lisbon through Parliament without the undoubted inconvenience of a referendum or similar democratic artifice. There has to be a nice little earner in it for him in the shape off a comfortable EU sinecure or some lucrative consultancy work ,once he has lost the next election.
.
Thursday 28 February 2008
Parliament is not a private members club
Last week twenty or more labour MPs queued up to clap Speaker Michael Martin into the Chamber of the House of Commons. Their support for the Speaker was touching. It demonstrated a form of tribal loyalty not seen much outside the ranks of football supporters and street gangs these days. They clapped and cheered Speaker Martin and he returned their good wishes with winks and nods of appreciation.
It was all so very heartwarming - until you looked beneath the all-for-one, one-for-all mateyness. Greg Dyke once complained that the BBC was hideously white. It might be said of the bulk of Speaker Martin's supporters that they were, uniformly, hideously Scottish; and lowland, working-class Scottish at that. If ever there was a symbol for what ails our country at the moment, it was their clubby little demonstration of fielty. Because they weren't demonstrating loyalty to Parliament, its institutions or history. They were, essentially, trying to protect what is probably the best and most exclusive private members' club in the country.
Oh yes, they made loud noises about the integrity of the House and its essential need to police its own members and activities - as if the involvement of the rest of us begins and ends with shovelling money into the place and electing its inmates.
And yes, they generated a lot of noise, banging on about the ancient sovereignty of Parliament to resist external pressure and interference. But, it was nothing but the clanging of empty vessels; signifying nothing. How could it when most MPs, including Martin's loyal band of brothers, are studiously ignoring the heaviest and most sustained assault our Parliamentary democracy has ever suffered, in the shape of the Treaty of Lisbon?
Even the presence of a couple of thousand protesters demanding a referendum failed to infiltrate their lemming like minds. While the crowds were protesting , their MPs were busy sitting on their hands and allowing the very sovereignty not just of Parliament but of Great Britain to be cededto the EU.
The truth is they circled the wagons around the Speaker:
a. Because he is manifestly one of their ain folk and
b. because they are terrified that, were he forced to stand down, a new Speaker might want to restore some probity and rectitude to the institution of Parliament. And the obvious place to make a start would be in the Augean stables currently labelled MPs allowances.
If, however, they manage to maintain the staus quo and Martin stays in post for the foreseeable future, prospects for MPs of all parties look infinitely brighter. They might concede so many powers to the EU Commission as to turn Parliament into little more than a very ornate rubber stamp. They might so diminish the status of the House of Commons that voting at General Elections takes place in a public phone box but, hey, they get to keep the second home, the secretary/wife/partner allowance, the free travel, Air Miles and all the other freebies AND can can continue nursing the ambition of making it into a much enlarged European Parliament or Commission where, if recent reports are to be believed, the perks and benefits are, by UK standards, super-sized.
It was all so very heartwarming - until you looked beneath the all-for-one, one-for-all mateyness. Greg Dyke once complained that the BBC was hideously white. It might be said of the bulk of Speaker Martin's supporters that they were, uniformly, hideously Scottish; and lowland, working-class Scottish at that. If ever there was a symbol for what ails our country at the moment, it was their clubby little demonstration of fielty. Because they weren't demonstrating loyalty to Parliament, its institutions or history. They were, essentially, trying to protect what is probably the best and most exclusive private members' club in the country.
Oh yes, they made loud noises about the integrity of the House and its essential need to police its own members and activities - as if the involvement of the rest of us begins and ends with shovelling money into the place and electing its inmates.
And yes, they generated a lot of noise, banging on about the ancient sovereignty of Parliament to resist external pressure and interference. But, it was nothing but the clanging of empty vessels; signifying nothing. How could it when most MPs, including Martin's loyal band of brothers, are studiously ignoring the heaviest and most sustained assault our Parliamentary democracy has ever suffered, in the shape of the Treaty of Lisbon?
Even the presence of a couple of thousand protesters demanding a referendum failed to infiltrate their lemming like minds. While the crowds were protesting , their MPs were busy sitting on their hands and allowing the very sovereignty not just of Parliament but of Great Britain to be cededto the EU.
The truth is they circled the wagons around the Speaker:
a. Because he is manifestly one of their ain folk and
b. because they are terrified that, were he forced to stand down, a new Speaker might want to restore some probity and rectitude to the institution of Parliament. And the obvious place to make a start would be in the Augean stables currently labelled MPs allowances.
If, however, they manage to maintain the staus quo and Martin stays in post for the foreseeable future, prospects for MPs of all parties look infinitely brighter. They might concede so many powers to the EU Commission as to turn Parliament into little more than a very ornate rubber stamp. They might so diminish the status of the House of Commons that voting at General Elections takes place in a public phone box but, hey, they get to keep the second home, the secretary/wife/partner allowance, the free travel, Air Miles and all the other freebies AND can can continue nursing the ambition of making it into a much enlarged European Parliament or Commission where, if recent reports are to be believed, the perks and benefits are, by UK standards, super-sized.
Wednesday 20 February 2008
Gordon is not only a moron; he’s a liar and a bully, too.
When Gordon Brown anointed himself Prime Minister of Great Britain last June, he was at great pains to point up the differences between himself and the erstwhile incumbent, T.B. Liar.
His regime, Gordon assured us, would exemplify probity and honest, open government. He was, after all, a son of the manse, a pillar of Scottish rectitude stuffed chock-full of the traditional British values of democracy, fairness, tolerance and fair-play.
Not for him the cronyism endemic in the Blair regime: Or Blair's preference for lying even when the truth would have been an easier option. No sir. Under Honest Flash Gordon, spin would be left to Monty Panesar. His open government would be one of “all the talents”, a veritable brains trust which, with Gordon’s light but sure touch on the tiller, would steer the great ship of state into tranquil seas of unbounded prosperity and righteous happiness..
Well, he came into power on the back of a great big whopper and has managed to out-Blair Blair with the spinning he has done ever since.
One of his big themes was respect for individual liberty and privacy. He was going to make it a personal crusade to restore the liberties so systematically eroded by you-know-who over the course of the preceding decade.
So, it’s rather odd that this session of Parliament will see the introduction of over a dozen new items of legislation which will grant bureaucrats at local and national level ever more rights to enter our homes: So much for an Englishman’s home being his castle.
Where personal liberty has gone, democracy will rapidly follow. Not So Flash Gordon and his gang regard democracy as some antique conceit which suits the likes of Iraq, struggling to slip the chains of dictatorship, but is far too unwieldy and clunky for a modern, sophisticated society like the YooKay. They dutifully posture about democracy for the benefit of a global political audience. At home, they pay lip service to the concept while doing their utmost to dilute it.
While most of the Press has been distracted by tawdry tales of MPs fiddling their expenses, NSF Gordon has been busy stealing our country from under our noses and tying it up with a nice, neat bow ready for delivery to his fellow commissars in the Soviet Republic of Europa.
The first step was to renege on the promised referendum on the new EU Constitution. Never mind that Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and Giscard D’Estaing said that the Lisbon Treaty and the Constitution were manifestly one and the same. Gordon simply said that they weren’t. When people protested, he did what this administration has done – superbly – ever since it gained power: he lied, stalled and cavilled in the certain knowledge that the next, big story would blow the whole controversy off the front pages. And he was right.
Along came Northern Rock, crooked MPs and feral yobs to dominate the media and bury the EU treaty debate in the news hinterland.
Gordon’s satisfaction with this state of affairs demonstrates more clearly than anything his very real contempt not just for democracy but for the British population at large. Now he has tinkered with the way the Bill enabling the Treaty of Lisbon goes through Parliament. NSF Gordon has got together with henchmen such as the Speaker, Mick Martin, and devised a system whereby MPs get to examine bite size chunks of the Treaty at single sittings, leaving very little time for examination of the fine print, debate, or any form of opposition.
Since there has been no squeak of outrage from either David Cameron or Nick Clegg, we must assume that, like their predecessors, they have been shown the shining light at the end of the European tunnel and the places their acquiescence will guarantee them at the communal trough.
But even if our nominal leaders have been finessed into acquiescence, where is the concerted roar of disapproval from MPs of all stripes, kicking against this official betrayal of Parliamentary democracy. Since everything has, so obviously, been well and truly stitched up perhaps they see very little profit in making waves and have simply decided to make the best of the situation.
Once the EU assumes complete control of our administration, all MPs will have plenty of time on their hands. They could use it to kick against the pricks; or, more usefully, spend it concocting new ways to employ wives, girlfriends and significant others, pay off their second mortgages and otherwise enrich themselves.
Only if the great unwashed get wise to the fact that MPs' work and influence decreases in inversion proportion to the amount of money they earn, might they finally decide that enough is enough and storm the Houses of Parliament to send the whole lot of them packing.
I digress once again: although perhaps not as much as it may seem. Because, surely, the state of Parliament, the Civil Service, the Police and the country at large is simply a reflection of the Government we have had to endure for the last eleven years?
What that reflection tells us is that this administration is rotten to its very core. And that core is – and has been for a decade – Gordon Brown. Never mind that he was “only” the Chancellor of the Exchequer under Blair. He never lost an opportunity to make it clear that nothing happened under Blair without his specific agreement. He can refer to “previous administrations” as often as he likes in an attempt to distance himself from the Blair years. But none of us will forget his contribution as the Iron Chancellor, the Great Clunking Fist and the other tough-guy sobriquets in which he so clearly delighted - and which are strangely at odds with his mincing, Frankie Howerd walk and simpering smile.
In some ways he has always been a cross dresser. Tough Flash Gordon could, in a bound, become Prudence Brown; a maiden aunt keen to lecture us all on the virtues of watching the pennies. It was the second persona that enabled him to garner a completely unwarranted reputation for financial savvy. Unwarranted because this is the man who announced immediately he entered office in 1997 that gold no longer had any intrinsic value and was gob-smacked when a lot of savvy rich people promptly took tons of it off his hands at knock-down prices.
It's the same man who cancelled the dividend tax relief earned by pension funds and destroyed a Private Pensions system that had for many years been the envy of the world. At a stroke he created a generation of elderly people forced to carry on working, not for the fun of it or to buy a few extra luxuries but simply to keep poverty at bay. Many of their children will find themselves in similar, straitened circumstances, unless of course they are MPS, Civil Servants or our Gordon himself, all of whom have made sure that their own index-linked pensions have been well and truly ring-fenced.
And yes folks, it was the same Incapability Brown who created a tax credits system so complex and ill-conceived that the only people who understand it are illegal immigrants with doctorates in welfare fraud. All it has done for most low-earning Britons is to make them much worse off than their counterparts in virtually every other developed country. To fund this bureaucratic nightmare, he has sucked money out of middle-class wallets which has simply vapourised in the slip stream of any number of useless job creation schemes.
His most recent stroke of genius was to appoint another dour Scot as Chancellor of the Exchequer. To give Brown his due, he probably didn’t appoint Darling because of cronyism. It was the latter's obvious lack of balls and anything remotely resembling experience of either business or economics that appealed to Gordon most. Gordon knows that, at some point, the day of reckoning for his ineptitude will arrive with a bang. Dear Alastair is the useful idiot who will do as he is told and deflect the flak from Gordon long enough for him to distance himself from the unavoidable crash. A peerage after the next election seems Darling's most likely reward for playing Archie Andrews to Gordon’s Peter Brough.
Most economists now regard the UK economy as a basket case. Brown though is in denial. According to him, we are still the strong man of Europe, punching consistently above our weight thanks to his financial brilliance and our low levels of unemployment. His optimism flies so much in the face of reality that it is tempting to wonder if he is actually unhinged.
All of the evidence points to decline. We have low unemployment because we pay almost five million people not to go to work for one reason or another.
There are 2 million young men between the ages of 16 and 18 who don’t work, have never worked and, if the truth be known, are probably incapable of work thanks to years of Noo labour’s version of education and training. Yet, we have given away almost precisely the same number of jobs to economic migrants.
It now looks as if we will be spending over 40% of our GNP every year making interest payments on the National Debt. Debt that, for the most part, was used to fund huge gouts of public spending that have left no discernible improvements in education, health care, infrastructure or prosperity as we now enter the long goodnight of a severe economic downturn.
Not So Flash Gordon refuses to listen to such talk. He is too busy, in his own words, getting on with the job of governing this country. He is always moving on, always announcing new initiatives in the hope that the froth he creates will obscure the damage his policies have caused.
We now enjoy a level of violent crime unseen since pre-Victorian days, perpetrated by drunken youths who are a direct product of child-centred education policies. Unschooled, functionally illiterate and innumerate, but with a sure understanding of their rights and entitlements, these yobs are a physical reflection of another central plank of the Blair/Brown era: bullying.
There has never been another administration that has so revelled in throwing its weight about. Over the last decade, psychological pressure and moral blackmail have been used to crush anybody brave enough to put their head above the twin parapets of political correctness and multiculturalism. Brown, Blair, Mandelson and Campbell took delight in demonstrating that might is right; that all opposition can be obliterated as long as it’s done with maximum speed and force. All our current crop of teenage terrorists has done is to translate that mentality from the salons of Islington and Notting Hill to the streets and alleys of our town centres.
So, our beloved leader, Not so Flash Gordon Brown, these have been your achievements. You have helped to create a country that is devoid of grace, culture and humour, where force rules OK; a country that is prone to severe fits of navel-gazing, self-loathing and depression; one that hectors and lectures those it considers inferior while quaking with little-boy terror and reacting with debilitating indecision when any real problem or threat raises its head.
My god, Gordon, you have managed to recreate us all in your own image.
His regime, Gordon assured us, would exemplify probity and honest, open government. He was, after all, a son of the manse, a pillar of Scottish rectitude stuffed chock-full of the traditional British values of democracy, fairness, tolerance and fair-play.
Not for him the cronyism endemic in the Blair regime: Or Blair's preference for lying even when the truth would have been an easier option. No sir. Under Honest Flash Gordon, spin would be left to Monty Panesar. His open government would be one of “all the talents”, a veritable brains trust which, with Gordon’s light but sure touch on the tiller, would steer the great ship of state into tranquil seas of unbounded prosperity and righteous happiness..
Well, he came into power on the back of a great big whopper and has managed to out-Blair Blair with the spinning he has done ever since.
One of his big themes was respect for individual liberty and privacy. He was going to make it a personal crusade to restore the liberties so systematically eroded by you-know-who over the course of the preceding decade.
So, it’s rather odd that this session of Parliament will see the introduction of over a dozen new items of legislation which will grant bureaucrats at local and national level ever more rights to enter our homes: So much for an Englishman’s home being his castle.
Where personal liberty has gone, democracy will rapidly follow. Not So Flash Gordon and his gang regard democracy as some antique conceit which suits the likes of Iraq, struggling to slip the chains of dictatorship, but is far too unwieldy and clunky for a modern, sophisticated society like the YooKay. They dutifully posture about democracy for the benefit of a global political audience. At home, they pay lip service to the concept while doing their utmost to dilute it.
While most of the Press has been distracted by tawdry tales of MPs fiddling their expenses, NSF Gordon has been busy stealing our country from under our noses and tying it up with a nice, neat bow ready for delivery to his fellow commissars in the Soviet Republic of Europa.
The first step was to renege on the promised referendum on the new EU Constitution. Never mind that Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and Giscard D’Estaing said that the Lisbon Treaty and the Constitution were manifestly one and the same. Gordon simply said that they weren’t. When people protested, he did what this administration has done – superbly – ever since it gained power: he lied, stalled and cavilled in the certain knowledge that the next, big story would blow the whole controversy off the front pages. And he was right.
Along came Northern Rock, crooked MPs and feral yobs to dominate the media and bury the EU treaty debate in the news hinterland.
Gordon’s satisfaction with this state of affairs demonstrates more clearly than anything his very real contempt not just for democracy but for the British population at large. Now he has tinkered with the way the Bill enabling the Treaty of Lisbon goes through Parliament. NSF Gordon has got together with henchmen such as the Speaker, Mick Martin, and devised a system whereby MPs get to examine bite size chunks of the Treaty at single sittings, leaving very little time for examination of the fine print, debate, or any form of opposition.
Since there has been no squeak of outrage from either David Cameron or Nick Clegg, we must assume that, like their predecessors, they have been shown the shining light at the end of the European tunnel and the places their acquiescence will guarantee them at the communal trough.
But even if our nominal leaders have been finessed into acquiescence, where is the concerted roar of disapproval from MPs of all stripes, kicking against this official betrayal of Parliamentary democracy. Since everything has, so obviously, been well and truly stitched up perhaps they see very little profit in making waves and have simply decided to make the best of the situation.
Once the EU assumes complete control of our administration, all MPs will have plenty of time on their hands. They could use it to kick against the pricks; or, more usefully, spend it concocting new ways to employ wives, girlfriends and significant others, pay off their second mortgages and otherwise enrich themselves.
Only if the great unwashed get wise to the fact that MPs' work and influence decreases in inversion proportion to the amount of money they earn, might they finally decide that enough is enough and storm the Houses of Parliament to send the whole lot of them packing.
I digress once again: although perhaps not as much as it may seem. Because, surely, the state of Parliament, the Civil Service, the Police and the country at large is simply a reflection of the Government we have had to endure for the last eleven years?
What that reflection tells us is that this administration is rotten to its very core. And that core is – and has been for a decade – Gordon Brown. Never mind that he was “only” the Chancellor of the Exchequer under Blair. He never lost an opportunity to make it clear that nothing happened under Blair without his specific agreement. He can refer to “previous administrations” as often as he likes in an attempt to distance himself from the Blair years. But none of us will forget his contribution as the Iron Chancellor, the Great Clunking Fist and the other tough-guy sobriquets in which he so clearly delighted - and which are strangely at odds with his mincing, Frankie Howerd walk and simpering smile.
In some ways he has always been a cross dresser. Tough Flash Gordon could, in a bound, become Prudence Brown; a maiden aunt keen to lecture us all on the virtues of watching the pennies. It was the second persona that enabled him to garner a completely unwarranted reputation for financial savvy. Unwarranted because this is the man who announced immediately he entered office in 1997 that gold no longer had any intrinsic value and was gob-smacked when a lot of savvy rich people promptly took tons of it off his hands at knock-down prices.
It's the same man who cancelled the dividend tax relief earned by pension funds and destroyed a Private Pensions system that had for many years been the envy of the world. At a stroke he created a generation of elderly people forced to carry on working, not for the fun of it or to buy a few extra luxuries but simply to keep poverty at bay. Many of their children will find themselves in similar, straitened circumstances, unless of course they are MPS, Civil Servants or our Gordon himself, all of whom have made sure that their own index-linked pensions have been well and truly ring-fenced.
And yes folks, it was the same Incapability Brown who created a tax credits system so complex and ill-conceived that the only people who understand it are illegal immigrants with doctorates in welfare fraud. All it has done for most low-earning Britons is to make them much worse off than their counterparts in virtually every other developed country. To fund this bureaucratic nightmare, he has sucked money out of middle-class wallets which has simply vapourised in the slip stream of any number of useless job creation schemes.
His most recent stroke of genius was to appoint another dour Scot as Chancellor of the Exchequer. To give Brown his due, he probably didn’t appoint Darling because of cronyism. It was the latter's obvious lack of balls and anything remotely resembling experience of either business or economics that appealed to Gordon most. Gordon knows that, at some point, the day of reckoning for his ineptitude will arrive with a bang. Dear Alastair is the useful idiot who will do as he is told and deflect the flak from Gordon long enough for him to distance himself from the unavoidable crash. A peerage after the next election seems Darling's most likely reward for playing Archie Andrews to Gordon’s Peter Brough.
Most economists now regard the UK economy as a basket case. Brown though is in denial. According to him, we are still the strong man of Europe, punching consistently above our weight thanks to his financial brilliance and our low levels of unemployment. His optimism flies so much in the face of reality that it is tempting to wonder if he is actually unhinged.
All of the evidence points to decline. We have low unemployment because we pay almost five million people not to go to work for one reason or another.
There are 2 million young men between the ages of 16 and 18 who don’t work, have never worked and, if the truth be known, are probably incapable of work thanks to years of Noo labour’s version of education and training. Yet, we have given away almost precisely the same number of jobs to economic migrants.
It now looks as if we will be spending over 40% of our GNP every year making interest payments on the National Debt. Debt that, for the most part, was used to fund huge gouts of public spending that have left no discernible improvements in education, health care, infrastructure or prosperity as we now enter the long goodnight of a severe economic downturn.
Not So Flash Gordon refuses to listen to such talk. He is too busy, in his own words, getting on with the job of governing this country. He is always moving on, always announcing new initiatives in the hope that the froth he creates will obscure the damage his policies have caused.
We now enjoy a level of violent crime unseen since pre-Victorian days, perpetrated by drunken youths who are a direct product of child-centred education policies. Unschooled, functionally illiterate and innumerate, but with a sure understanding of their rights and entitlements, these yobs are a physical reflection of another central plank of the Blair/Brown era: bullying.
There has never been another administration that has so revelled in throwing its weight about. Over the last decade, psychological pressure and moral blackmail have been used to crush anybody brave enough to put their head above the twin parapets of political correctness and multiculturalism. Brown, Blair, Mandelson and Campbell took delight in demonstrating that might is right; that all opposition can be obliterated as long as it’s done with maximum speed and force. All our current crop of teenage terrorists has done is to translate that mentality from the salons of Islington and Notting Hill to the streets and alleys of our town centres.
So, our beloved leader, Not so Flash Gordon Brown, these have been your achievements. You have helped to create a country that is devoid of grace, culture and humour, where force rules OK; a country that is prone to severe fits of navel-gazing, self-loathing and depression; one that hectors and lectures those it considers inferior while quaking with little-boy terror and reacting with debilitating indecision when any real problem or threat raises its head.
My god, Gordon, you have managed to recreate us all in your own image.
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