Harman - a clown without pity

If anyone read an earlier version of this, I apologize for the literals and grammatical errors. Some variety of English-hating gremlin seemed to have infected the text and seriously mangled it. I hope the version below - suitably edited - makes more sense. Of course, if it does not even though I have wrought my magic on it, I'm seriously buggered.
The Elephant

Whatever happens after the election, whichever of the two lookalike parties we are left with, the legacy of Labour's 13 years of mis-rule will haunt us for many years to come.
Of course, the greatest part of this legacy will be the lack of one. Gordon Brown has made sure of that, taking the fourth largest economy in the world and single-handedly transforming it into an economic basket case, scrabbling around in the dust with the likes of Greece.
He has taken whatever inheritance we thought we might have amassed and pissed it up the metaphorical wall ..
In this he has been aided and abetted by an acquiescent House of Commons that, apparently, did not mind what he did as long as its members could continue living like lword's bastards at our expense.
Then we have the various nonentities who have, theoretically, been in charge of UK energy policy down the years. I think there have been eight so far, although most have had so little impact that it's far easier to forget their names than to remember them .
At the end of the 90s, the UK was more or less self-sufficient in energy. There were clear signs that this happy state of affairs would not persist for too much longer but nothing so alarming that some foresight and sensible planning couldn'y mitigate.
Unfortunately. the response of the various Guardians of the energy portfolio was to turn their faces against the idea of anything as sensible as nuclear power and clean-burning coal fired plants and bet the house on renewables like wind turbines. As part of this inspired planning, they sold off the UK only contractor capable of designing and building a modern nuclear generator. The result is that we are now a net importer of energy, dependent on the likes of the French to build the new nuclear generating capacity we desperately need, the Russians to provide the gas we will have to burn in the interim simply to stay warm in winter and a gaggle of energy suppliers who use UK consumers to subsidise customers in their home markets in France and Germany. Their almost childish belief in hippy style, subsistence-level energy production will gnaw away at our fabric and our Exchequer long after Lord Adonis and Milliband Minor have left to write their memoirs.
And yet, neither of these two comes close to matching the corrosive influence of Harriet Harman on British society. She has infected us with a poison that we may never clear out of the national bloodstream, a steady, unrelenting drip of billious policies that has chipped away at our natural, instinctive tolerance.
Harman is frequently portrayed as a Joyce Grenfellesque character; slightly dotty but intrinsically decent and well-meaning for all that.
She is not. She is from the same old-money, new class warfare stable as Tony Benn, Michael Foot and the late but unlamented Tony Crosland: all of them people brought up with such a silver spoon in their mouth that they end up choking on it.
Just as Benn voluntarily diminished himself (from Viscount Stansgate To Sir Anthony Wedgwood Benn to Anthony Benn to plain old Tony Benn) so Harman has done the same; resolutely honing her estuary accent - complete with the occasional glottal stop - and acquiring a trade unionist husband to obscure her highly privileged background. But, despite these outward manifestations of ordinariness, she can not quite slough off the aristocratic mindset. Like her uncle, Lord Longford, she instinctively knows what is best for people and is determined to improve them, wHeth they want her to or not.
Thus, she is burying us in an avalanche of legislation to force us to be nicer to people she regards as in urgent need of her patronage and our money. Reflecting its creator, the new society she is creating will be fair only ona selective basis and only to those people Harman deems to be especially deserving; immigrants, assorted minorities, homosexuals and women.
It seems to have gone unnoticed by her that, without any prior intervention on her part, the UK was already one of the most tolerant societies in the world. That is part of the reason why people in their millions have tried - and frequently succeeded - to migrate here. The result of her ill-considered new law will be that this tolerance is stretched and tested to breaking point. Our fractured society might end up so badly broken that it can not be put back together again.
The latest tear in the fabric was reported today.
Children as young as five are being monitored and reported for hate crimes at school. Legions of right-on teachers, teaching assistants and ordinary parent are being encouraged to spy on and monitor their charges for any hint of racial, religious or gender bias.
Those found guilty will be placed on a Hate Criimes Register..
One of the first victims of this hateful snitches 'charter is a ten year old boy from Somerset who, in a playground tussle, referred to his opponent as a gay boy.
He is now, and presumably will be forever, tagged as a homophobes. That record will follow him through his educational career and, who knows, into his adult life. It might even affect his employment prospects.
In the modern UK, he would have been far better off taking the other boy to some wasteland, sexually abusing him and then battering him to death with some broken bricks as Venables and Thompson did to Jamie Bulger when they were the same age.
Mind you, he is not alone in being marked out in this way. According to one report, he is just one of 40,000 children whose names are being added to this hate crime record every year.
So, the country whose legal system is based on the simple precept that someone is innocent until proven guilty, has now convicted 40,000 young people of hate crimes without the benefit of any formal legal representation..
If this young lad - and others like him - grow up with a profound dislike of homosexuals, ethnic minorities and authority, Horrible Harman and her acolytes will be the only ones who will be surprised.

No representation without taxation

Peter Mandelson, AKA Lord Mandelson of Hartlepool and Foy and our esteemed Business Secretary, has been all over the media again today.
He is incensed with the fact that another Lord - Ashcroft of that ilk - has finally revealed that, although he is the biggest source of finance for the Conservatives, he is actually a non-dom. This may sound somewhat like a dyslexic prophyactic but all it really means is that he chooses to live somewhere other than the UK. Labour's beef with this is that Ashcroft does not pay tax - or at least not enough of it, to the UK exchequer. In a reverse of the colonial American principle of No taxation without representation, Mandelson thinks that, In Ashcroft's case,there should be no representation without taxation.
Fair enough, too, I am inclined to say. If Ashcroft wants to play a major part in determining who is going to rule this country he should at least live and suffer here along with the rest of us. But, if that is the rule we are going to apply then let's do so across  the board. At a stroke, we would eliminate all of the little apparatchiks in Brussels and Strasbourg who blight our existence with theior interminable rules and regulations Then, we would do away with any MEP's who are not actually UK domiciled. Next on the list would be professional nationalists like Sean Connery and Billy Connolly who choose to live in the sunshine but like to come back every now and again, to swan around and stick their noses into our domestic affairs. Last on the list would be Rupert Murdoch and the rest of his clan who probably have more clout than the rest of the above put together through their UK media empire. It is still likely that Sky News and the Sun will play a larger part in deciding who reigns over us in the future than Lord Ashcroft or Mandelson ever will.