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.
Tuesday 29 July 2008
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.
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