Patronage

This morning the lady in my newsagent presented me with a thought-provoking question (it probably wasn't her intention but shoot me...)

'What did that man mean' she asked me.

'Huh' I asked, raising my head from perusing the great and the good of the alleged centre-left displayed across the days papers under headlines such as The rich list

'He said he liked to patronise local shops - what did he mean?'

I had to do a bit of a doubletake here as a menacing post-modern irony trap appeared to gape before me in the light of the fact that I'd never considered the shop-owners english to be any less comprehensive than my own for all that (or perhaps because) her accent betokened a possible trip to the UK from Uganda some years back and an origin in the sub-continent.

'The word patronise, what does it mean when he uses it in that way?' she clarified (emphasising that my concerns over the potential for minor ironic debacle were, while theoretically well-founded, yet completely un-founded in this instance)

'It means use, like regularly I suppose, like you patronise your local pub or restaurant' I improvised 'It's got two different meanings - that one and the one that now means condescend to' I was late, but this was intriguing, she seemed to get me and I would have liked to kick it about a bit more, she could already see the funny side particularly given the slight pomposity of the previous customer's delivery... 'It comes from being a patron of, buying something from someone...' I concluded.

And my morning had completed one full circle already.

I walked towards the tube thinking that I wished I had time today to research when the term to 'patronise' became linked to condescension - my instinct is that the answer lies in the rise of the middle class in the nineteenth century.

In the sense that this was the point at which the dominant language became the property of a new self-made merchant and manufacturing class for whom the notion of patronage was an archaism. A term redolent of a time when the only means of advancement for their forefathers were at the whim of a member of the aristocracy.

This in a sense is why Tony Blair's notion of Victorian charity is rather different from that of the Victorians. Your Victorian wants everyone to know what he gives and indeed for those who recieve that charity to understand from whence it came.

Tony likes a little less clarity over what we are getting for his money.

Joined Up Government

Remember 'Joined-Up Government'

Well there's a quick question I was thinking about as I listened (yes I know) to woman's hour (but it IS worth listening to this report) on Forced marriages ...

Jasvinder Sanghera, Director of Asian women's group Karmen Nirvana, was on but especially worth listening to was Shazia Kayoom, victim of a forced marriage.

Lisa Bandari, Head of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office Forced Marriages Unit was also on the programme discussing (sensibly) the pros and cons of criminalising the families responsible (ie would it make people forced by their families into marriages more or less likely to come forward if they were criminalising their families, against the need to make it clear that this is criminal in order to discourage it happening... etc)

One aspect much-commented on was the need to comunicate with children in school about the fact that they could not and should not be forced into such unions ...then it hit me:

This must be why the government is promoting more faith schools

Go Tony! .. AS in GO, Tony.

Witch?

Apparently Chester Cathedral has cast out the "heretical" Unitarian Church and banned its ministers and members from holding their annual service - the high point of their General Assembly - there.

The decision by the Dean and Chapter, which consists of laity as well as clergy, has caused dismay among Unitarians. One said: "In the entrance to Chester Cathedral there are signs saying 'welcome' in 26 languages. A Unitarian could be forgiven for doubting their sincerity."

I don't know about you, but I'd never heard of the Unitarian Church which, according to the Times, was founded in the 17th century, has no creed and rejects the doctrine of the Trinity and the divinity of Christ.

Which all sounded pretty sensible to me, so I thought I'd find out more. I ended up at Hampstead Unitarians who say their religion is a spiritual journey and each one of us is an explorer. Reason is our map and conscience is our compass.

Our Chapel seeks to provide a loving community in which to explore, question and celebrate the meaning and value of life, without creed or dogma.

Apparently all sorts attend their services, including athiests and humanists! More to the point, these harmless heretics helpfully include on their website a Beliefomatic test to find out if you share their beliefs.

It's quite good fun even, I suspect, for "those of no faith". Anyway my top ten was:

Neo-Pagan (100%)
Reform Judaism (92%)
Sikhism (85%)
Unitarian (80%)
Liberal Quakers (80%)
New Age (80%)
Scientology (73%)
Mahayana Buddhism (70%)
New Thought (69%)
Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (65%)

So, I'm a total witch (or a wizard) which will come as no surprise to some. I found it quite a relief that at the bottom of my league table came Jehovah's Witness at 14 per cent, though slightly disconcerting to discover I'm more of a Scientologist than C of E!

Who's Choice is it Anyway?

On Tuesday George Bush said that Iraqis have to choose "chaos or unity".

He may just as well have said that workers at the World Trade Center have to choose between remaining 1,000 feet in the air or hitting the ground very fast.

First-time non-voter

I've been thinking about who I'm not going to vote for at the next general election for a while now. I think it was the debacle over Kennedy that may have finally pushed me into the arms of the UK's largest political wing, the None Of The Above I mean.

Up until 2001 I had always voted Labour. Post-Iraq I began shopping around and at the last election voted Lib Dem because they reminded me... well of the people I thought I was voting for back in 1997.

But the nastiness over Kennedy, the pomposity of Ming, mendacity of Hughes, the opacity of Who seem all too familiar to someone already let down by Labour. Charlie-boy may have been a genuine Whig but his replacements all look like the rest of our parliamentarians - reactive Tories of one hue or other.

So what's left then?

Respect: a mix of everything that was wrong about Old Labour along with a nasty streak of anti-Semitism/ fascism courtesy of their MAB bedfellows. Headed by a moustachioed firebrand, they would probably be better re-branded The National Socialists... well, they're national and they're socialists, aren't they?

The Greens: running a close second to the Conservative Party among graduates of agricultural colleges, they're really just a bunch of aristos who hark back to the days when the toffs ruled the countryside, there were none of these nasty corporate johnnies getting the best seats at the opera and their tenants knew their place. In short: Zac Goldsmith.

Speaking of which: Camonblair... well the name says it all really.

So why not go back to a post-Blair Labour Party? Because Brown will be the same but worse. Because Labour are already kept in power by a bulwark of Scots MPs who do to the English what the English used to do to the rest of the world: impose laws that have no force in their own land while soaking up English taxes to fund educational and health services denied to those south of the border.

The last thing we need is a Scottish PM whose only real interest will be to keep the milch cow chewing the cud while exercising the kind of brutish rule on the English (remember PPP on the Tube?) he would never dare impose at home.

Now the economic argument is over the only socialist bone left in the government's body is its least attractive one: authoritarianism.

While we can be grateful it failed in its first attempt to restrict our freedom of speech, don't forget it succeeded second time around. As the case of the Nat West Three illustrates, thanks to 2003 legislation Britons can now be extradited by a foreign power with no requirement of habeas corpus (a step the Americans would never dream of taking). Meanwhile octogenarian protestors at Labour Party conferences are arrested under anti-terror legislation and peaceniks at the Cenotaph under laws barring protests within hearing distance of Parliament (you really couldn't make that one up could you - no dramatist would have gotten away with it).

Deceit (and deceit and deceit) has become almost a requirement for office, while ministers assure us that we can trust them with new laws that will enable them to amend any legislation without the say of Parliament. This is before one mentions fresh terror legislation, identity cards and the like, some of which may actually be necessary, but can we really trust anything this bunch say?

As Mary Ann Sieghart points out in today's Times, with all the main parties moving to the centre, choice will become more a case of personality than policy. But who would want to vote for any of these monkeys?

Happy holidays

Moving article in today's Times by Danny Finkelsteim on David Irving's imprisonment.

One of Irving's contentions, one that helped to bring him a three-year prison sentence, was that "74,000 (Jews) died of natural causes in the work camps and the rest were hidden in reception camps after the war and later taken to Palestine, where they live today under new identities". Let's examine this for a moment, shall we?

Yesterday my mother told me of the day, as a young girl in Westerbork concentration camp, she said goodbye to her aunt and uncle and to her 14-year-old cousin, Fritz. These much-loved family members had been listed for the Tuesday transport train to Auschwitz. My mother still has the pitiful letter from her aunt promising that "we will meet again". But, of course, they never did. David Irving presumably thinks that Fritz and his parents survived and are living in Israel. In which case, the joke is over: they can come back now, don't you think?

Applying Irving's logic, his three year sentence presumably translates into three months poolside in Mauritius. Enjoy the sun Dave!

They're doomed

An article-by-numbers in the Washington Post celebrating (surely mourning?, Ed) the Decline & Fall of Europe.

These must have been appearing every other year for the past 50 and seem to provide much the same purpose that articles on gormless yanks serve in "Eurabia" (The cartoon controversy has powerfully highlighted the difficulties Europe is having with its immigrants).

But while I may not have been to the States for a decade, I certainly see few signs that continental Europe (the author has the grace to exclude increasingly neo-con UK from his polemic) is on its way to becoming the impoverished shadow of its former self depicted. Indeed, from the cars on the street to the consumer durables in the homes, I can see little difference. And that's before we get on to the supposedly "unsustainable" leisure lifestyle.

Truth is figures will say whatever you want them to and here's some more - 300,000 of the richest Brits now live in France, 500,000 in Spain, and this one, at least part-time, in Belgium. If Europe's doing so bad, then why the hell is it so damn good? Trying adding that one up matey.

While You Were Sleeping...

It was a wierd weekend in the fantasy politics of New Labour.

First Charles Clarke informed us that we had a joint premiership - which has nothing to do with Blunkett's grass laws I assure you - which has nothing to do with foreign nannies I assure you (David) ANYWAY...

Then Gordon announced that he was going to announce a new range of anti-terror measures and we all thought that surely that should be Captain Tony's job, or perhaps that of the rotund jug-eared policeman who usually looks after locking up the enemies of our state.

I suppose that at least explained why it was the jug-eared Charlie who announced our new curiously seventeenth century mode of government, rather than the minister for constitutional affairs.

Then Gordon announced that he was tough on the causes of terror and that civil liberties really must go (on the Today programme) and set up a seemingly hilarious prospect in the process - which is that he might just become a lame duck Prime Minister before he even becomes Prime (as opposed to joint) Minister.

Since, in a most curious turn of affairs, the Captain's plane has been delayed in SouthAfrica and as a result that he will miss the key ID cards vote - well its just one of those things isn't it - after all as we all know the South Africans only have one plane capable of reaching blighty and now that's broke the captain's knackered.. err yeah...

So Gordon gets to lead the government to victory over the backbenches - and dumbass offences like glorifying terrorism are back on the agenda. What a curious coincidence that this oportunity should present itself after a weekend of the Chancellor (finally) flagging his support for Captain Tony's agenda of repression and trying so hard to emphasise that he too puts security first and liberty fifth - after whippets and flowerpot men.

Well only time will tell whether this is a master-stroke to pass the vote and simultaneously end Brown's chances of becoming PM by leaving him smeared with the execrable legislative agenda of his master's choice, or simply another round of New Labour's fantasy politics game.

The thing is that at some point the carousel must stop and a dazed electorate, as much as a confused party, will want an answer over where (on earth) Dorothy-style the wind has dropped us.

Personally, I think Brown's decision to apparently place himself publicly alongside Blair (where he always stood anyway) reveals his weakness - for New Labour it is a barricade strategy - all hands to the wheel as Cameron attempts to position himself as a New Blair with less blood on his hands and less shit in his hospitals. What is good for Labour however may not be good for Brown and thus, at the closing of his day, his light may finally be extinguished not by his opponents but by his own predilection for positioning himself as the ultimate party man.

Furthermore this is not a case of 'Well done Gordon your party valued your contribution' - because the irony is it doesn't and neither do I - so thanks Gordon for your lose-lose strategy: You lose the prime ministership and we lose our civil liberties. Sap.

Whichever way this vote goes Gordon, you come out of that lobby smelling of dirty nappies not bouncing babies.

Fearless Vampire Killers

Her Majesty's Press are of course to be applauded for running the footage of Our Boys beating up defenceless Iraqis, heroically disregarding the increased danger in which it will place our troops. I look forward to our media casting their own concerns about security aside and finally publishing the cartoons that set much of the Middle East aflame.

Joke. Of course their reticence had nothing to do with cowardice.

Playing by the rules

Um...

The spark for his attack on Mr Blair was a question from Labour MP Colin Burgon on whether British policy in South America was shaped by a "rightwing US Republican agenda". The prime minister replied that Venezuela needed to take care when it formed a close alliance with a non-democracy such as Cuba.

"If they want to be respected members of the international community, they should abide by the rules of the international community," he told MPs. "I say with the greatest respect to the president of Venezuela that when he forms an alliance with Cuba, I would prefer to see Cuba a proper functioning democracy."

Mr Chávez said the remarks showed Mr Blair was "nothing but a pawn of imperialism trying now to attack us from Europe". He added that Mr Blair lacked the moral standing to make them.

"You, Mr Blair, do not have the morality to call on anyone to respect the rules of the international community," he said. "You are precisely the one who has flouted international law the most [...] siding with Mr Danger to trample the people in Iraq.

"I'm going to be closely watching what you say and what you do. Because the British government has no moral standing - and even less yourself - to get involved in Venezuela's affairs."

El Presidente could also have added it's a bit rich to slag them off for building alliances with Cuba - which incidentally for any surviving socialists out there has more doctors per head than any other nation - while the UK continues to snuggle up to the likes of Saudi Arabia...

But hey, don't do as we do, right?

Columnist admits mistake

Sadly couldn't find the link, but in So I was all wrong about the drink laws in today's Standard, Will Self admits:

I was among those who thought the liberalisation a bad thing... I now realise that i fell victim to the oldest clouding of judgement there is: prejudice.

Who next I wonder...?

It's good to stalk

Quite a frightening article explaining how to stalk the one you, um, love, courtesy of their mobile phone. Very Spooks...

Hat tip: Linkmachine

Slam drunk

Huge fall in violence as pubs open all hours reports the Standard in a tucked-away inside page 2 column that becomes Violence down despite drink law on the web and loses the quote by a West Yorkshire police spokesman saying concerns about the drink reforms had been "vastly overestimated".

Could this reflect the Standard's own enthusiatic overestimations I wonder?

Tampering with licensing laws will not liberate drunks for sobriety. It will free them to prolong their drinking, multiply the problem and spread the loutish consequences further into the night. All-night drinking means all-night rowdyism, all-night violence, all-night spewing, all-night public defecation and all-night noise.

Now all we need is for Teresa May and the rest of the right-wing press to admit they were wrong.

Yeah, yeah...

Labour's losing whip

Poor old Hilary Armstrong, labour's chief whip has had to suffer not only the embarrassment of losing a vote but the added indignity of being patronised by Dave Cameron. Apparently Dave and the new Tories stole a trick from the west wing and hid in a closet lulling labour into a false sense of security, given recent revelations from the lid dem camp it's surprising there was any empty closet space in Westminster but that's a another matter.

Anyway back to the lost vote on incitement to religious hatred, is it possible that Tony Blair was actually not to bothered about losing this vote, clearly losing a vote is a bit embarrassing, but the cost of winning the vote would have been much worse.

Nick griffn's trial in Leeds shows that prosecutions can be brought without a new law. The case against any new law was widely made, the proposed legislation was clearly badly thought out, illiberal and managed to alienate just about everyone.

Maybe just maybe even Tony Blair realised that this bill simply wasn't worth fighting for and decided to make labour backbenchers feel a bit more empowered.
I really can't see too many down sides for Blair in losing this vote, he can tell the religious types he personally supported the bill but what could he do when faced with the will of parliament? The parliamentary party feels it can reduce the dictatorial tendencies of the cabinet, in short it looks like a victory for parliamentary democracy.

It is probably cock up rather than conspiracy but the final outcome of a lost vote is actually a lot better for Blair than winning, he has not really lost any authority, a crap bill has not become a crap law,freedom of speech remains as it was, in short there is no real loser in this loss.

Hilary Armstrong could be a political master looking like a political knave or more likely she is another over promoted Tony crony.

The Taquito Moment

There is something peculiarly modern about this phenomenon, something aligned with our dark privilege of too much , this consumeriffic culture in which jeans and houses and breasts and ring tones are customizable. Consider it all: geographical dislocation, cities filled with singles, extended childhoods and postponed childbearing, speed-dating, the growing sense that the dating pool is as vast as the 454 men-seeking-women between the ages of 29 and 31 within five miles of your Zip code on Yahoo Personals.

In a world of infinite possibilities, the notion of falling in love, of finding The One, seems itself like the taquito girl, small-town and old-fashioned. Once upon a time, The One would've lived in your village or another one like it. Now, she could be this sweet girl across from you at the dinner table, but she could also be someone you haven't yet met. What if there's another woman somewhere in the world, like this girl, but better? Someone who will snowboard with you, and doesn't do that strange throat-clearing thing?

... Centuries from now, scientists may point to this as the moment in time when the pickiness gene became dominant. In the end, it will come down to one really old, lonely guy and his list.

"She must have blue eyes. She should like animals, but not in a weird way. No thin lips. No lawyers," he'll be writing, just before he keels over and the human race comes to an end.

Remembering the Holocaust

Holocaust Memorial Day today.

The Muslim Council of Britain will once again boycott the Day.

MCB spokesman Inayat Bunglawala was asked on the BBC Radio 4 Sunday programme whether he was not sending a signal by refusing to attend. "We also send a signal by staying away from the Gay Pride march," he said. How could he compare the two, he was asked. "It is a religious principle," he replied.

Gays of course were also gassed, but that's hardly the point. The MCB's official line is:

The MCB has always denounced the monstrous cruelty and inhumanity that underpinned the Nazi Holocaust... After the world vowed "never again" at the end of the second world war, though, we have seen the same barbarism again, against peoples in Vietnam, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Chechnya and recently in Darfur. So we said that our common humanity called upon us to also recognise the crimes perpetrated against other people, and we called for the establishment of an EU genocide memorial day. Such a day would help dispel the - frankly racist - notion that some people are to be regarded as being more equal than others...

The "R" word, used presumably to close any further discussion, though I'm not sure what the EU has to do with the many other crimes against humanity it lists...

While it is a fair to say we should remember other crimes - including the Turkish slaughter of the Armenians, arguably the first "modern" genocide - it seems to me unbelievably petty of the MCB to continue their boycott.

To put it bluntly, I cannot understand why they don't figure: why not let the Jews have their day? To attend would demonstrate our commitment to interfaith dialogue and integration in UK society.

Unhappily they are not prepared to make this leap, leading one to the rather less palatable conclusion that this seemingly media-savvy organisation really cannot bear to be associated with the Jews and actually is the anti-semitic islamist attack dog other blogs often portray.

Given the MCB's sensitivity to any perceived criticism of itself or the people it claims to represent, it might do well to stand with the Jews, Christians, democrats and others who seek to fight injustice and defend minorites, which of course Muslims remain in the UK. Sir Iqbal Death-Is-Too-Good-For-Him Sacranie, might even recall these well-known lines...

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

Pastor Martin Niemoller

A very liberal interpretation of the truth...

After giving two interviews this week in which he declared 'I am not gay' - not to mention at least one last week (and endless others) - Simon Hughes MP explained that this was a politician's answer - which is to say incomplete - as in, Mark Oaten: I am a happily married man ...and also like to do the odd rent boy occasionally oooh go on, in my face big boy; Or Charles Kennedy: I don't have a drink problem ...my drink's cabinet is perfectly well stocked than you very much Or Tony Blair: On 18 March 2003, just before the UK went to war with Iraq, Mr Blair told the House of Commons that it was palpably absurd" to accept that Saddam Hussein "contrary to all history, contrary to all intelligence" had "decided unilaterally to destroy these weapons" - he then turned to fellow ex-lawyer Geoff 'catch me if you can' Hoon and whispered under his breath - "after all you can't destroy what you don't have CAN you now - mmm you can tell these halfwits haven't been to law school, hee hee!"

Anyway as the BBC put it today Hughes explains gay admission - and I can't help thinking that that headline alone somehow puts back the cause of tolerance and equality in our society by at least a few years, say to somewhere around the time a certain Welsh Secretary claimed he had been robbed in Clapham...

What on earth are the liberals DOING? Its still over a month until they elect a leader and at this rate they won't have a party or a reputation left by then.

Green Room Charlie built the party's current electoral strength upon an admirable reputation for speaking plainly about matters concerning which the other parties were not prepared to. Blair wriggled and then blamed the intelligence services and those evil lying Iraqis, the Tories blamed evil lying Tony. Charlie rose above and stuck, so as to speak, to his non-guns.

The British people welcomed this and rewarded the liberals with enough support for it to be reasonable to assume that they might just get to hold the balance of coalition power after the next election has been contested by two right wing atlanticists with an obsession with destroying public services.

Then the right wing atlanticists called up all their mates... or shit just happened, who knows. One thing is for sure while you COULD make it up - you probably wouldn't have assumed quite this level of implosion, quite THIS FAST - my bet is on the phone calls going out. Put it this way, recently there's been a LOT of nasty commentary of a not totally generic nature in the backrooms of the companies serving the village and now it all kind of makes sense - for all that, in Hughes case at least, his shocking admission was 20 year old news to most people.

Cuba isolated - "all your own fault" say Americans

I couldn't help laughing at a report I heard on the World Service at around 3am. Apparently Cuba are building a wall to block out the sight of an electronic message board erected by the USA. World Serice news quoted an American spokesperson as saying that by doing this, Cuba were "isolating themselves from the rest of the world". Hello? American spokesperson? Concerned about Cuba isolating themselves? Shurely shome mishtake?

A matter of life, death... and liberty?

Anne Turner RIP but ...

The Bishop of Oxford, the Right Reverend Richard Harries, told the BBC it was not right to always accede to a person's every request.

"We would not accede to the request of a teenager if they asked for help in killing themselves," he said.

"I know that if a person is old and debilitated and worried about the degenerative nature of their disease that is very difficult.

"But I would want to try to convince them that even if they got into a state where they were very dependent and felt very helpless and useless, their life was still precious."

Bishop Harries said many people had found caring for elderly relatives in the last phase of their life difficult, but rewarding.

"There has been a real deepening of a relationship, or things that have gone wrong in the past have been put right," he said.

"Who knows what good things can come out of the last phase of a person's life?"

Fair point Bish, but what strikes me about the whole debate is that the last poll indicated 65 per cent of Britons were in favour of extending the same mercy they show to their pets to their loved ones and I was left wondering: is this really about God or morality or whatever, or is it simply about power - the power of the great and good to say when we can or cannot end our lives and their fear of our liberty to do so?

It happened there

The ex-Tory leader welcomed news that Canadian Conservative Stephen Harper has ended 12 years of Liberal rule... There were also parallels between outgoing Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and Gordon Brown, he said.

"The defeated prime minister is someone who was finance minister for a very long time, wanted to take over the top job much earlier than he was allowed to and, when he got the top job, proved to be a long way short of a success in it," Mr Howard told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

This worms for turning

Despite Rupert's lukewarm backing for Camonblair (my reading, based on The Insider, is that he still feels a residual loyalty to Tony for the war, which won't extend to Gordon) it hasn't taken much for the Times to start turning the tanker to the right...

The task for the Conservatives now is to come up with an alternative to the outdated economics of Mr Blair and Mr Brown. They have been following a model that other countries abandoned in the 1990s. The average tax burden across the industrialised world was 39% in 1997 - identical to Britain's - but is now 37%. The Labour government is taxing its citizens and businesses more at a time when other countries are doing so less. It is the road to an unsuccessful, uncompetitive economy. Ultimately it is the road to ruin.

Pimps charter

Don't just take my word for it, ask the Chairman of the Metropolitan Police Superintendents Association...

The strategy is naive in the extreme and heralds nothing but a "pimps’ charter". It provides a green light to greater violence, intimidation and exploitation of women in particular.

Whale watch

Watch the northern bottle-nosed whale heading north up the Thames here.

Old Labour, Red Danger? Or: How I won the war and other stories...

Kinnock speaks out against school reforms

Former Labour leader Neil Kinnock has criticised the government's education plans as "at best a distraction and at worst dangerous".

Showing that he's lost none of his old-school waffle-making ability the ginger non-Belgian added "There is a multiple divergence of governance proposed - specialist schools, trust schools and academies - that gives the appearance of choice, but will not be available to many. This whole approach is also not relevant to rural and semi-rural schools."

He's right of course, its the good old 'myth of choice' again. Its a bit like being told that there's a great hospital waiting to operate on your hip in Cumbernauld, all very well and good in theory but unlikely to see much take-up from the shambling masses on hip replacement waiting lists in Cornwall (for arguments sake).

Perhaps more important is that most Heads oppose the latest set of education reforms too.

An interesting spin on this was put across by Steve Richards who saw this as all part of the Iraq war blowback. Blair had to get domestic on our asses to prove he cared. Kelly inherited his latest attack of radicalism and here we are. Hell OK, but why follow through? Well, as Richards' notes, she couldn't just ditch it like the much-lamented and far more sensible Tomlinson Reforms of the curriculum and qualifications, because Captain Tony had made reform and his absence of reverse gears a focus for T3 (that's term 3 by the way not Termination of the third great public service, honest).

Full Tomlinson REPORT ~ for those interested.

What is intriguing about Kinnock is which straw broke his back. Not tuition fees - which apparently pushed him, or steady privatisation and break-up of the NHS which should be pushing him, or the disastrous adventures in Mesopotamia. Still, I suppose he had to get it eventually.

I always felt that the biggest danger of New Labour's reformists was that they believed, ex-marxists virtually to a man as they are, that they had understood the dilemma of choice and waste. In other words that they had come to terms with the market. The problem was that they saw regulators and targets as all that were needed to ensure that the market could deliver social goods.

This tends to leave you with leaky safety nets and second class services for the those who have less market value, or poorer access to the market - whether through lack of understanding of its processes or because they are valued less by its mechanisms. After all who wants a kid in their school whose Dad turns up p*ssed at parents evenings.

Urgh! ...Now that wasn't difficult was it?

The government gets it:

Sex offenders banned from schools
Anyone convicted or cautioned for a sex offence against a child will be banned from teaching in schools.

Like a grunting former Yugoslav tennis player Ruth Kelly has finally managed to return serve and keep the ball in court.

Now this is a relief on a number of grounds but mainly because I hope it means that I no longer have to listen to the Daily Paedo spot on the Today programme.

Today, after listening to one, Donald Findlater deputy director of the Lucy Faithful Foundation, a charity that works with offenders and victims, talked to the programme about sex offenders working in schools

After listening to the offender concerned, who used to be a Deputy Head, I was relieved when Donald echoed my thoughts after hearing the interview, which was that the sad, pathetic but ultimately potentially dangerous individual wheeled out today (whose assumed name for today, so as to speak, was Smith) was certainly not 'fully recovered' as he claimed to believe and that sex offenders 'really should seek alternative careers for themselves away from schools'.

Tuesday had seen William Gibson given a hearing. William was allowed to work as a teacher because he had after all married the 15 year old concerned and she was fifteen and hey you know lads its difficult to tell isn't it (well not usually if you know what class they are in, but whatever, clearly I digress...) I thought William was pretty sad too and given his subsequent fraud convction and schools devolved budgets I thought he should seek another career too... but hey...

Thing is that societies are ultimately allowed to have values, in fact to be societies they have to have values (sociology students, DISCUSS)... and that sometimes means that boundaries have to be defined.

Some tracks are meant not to be crossed and this little bunch are the last people we want playing rubicon hopscotch with the kiddies.

I just hope that these werent the guys Ms Kelly had in mind when she said that there "must be no witch-hunts against hard-working teachers".

I don't want a witchhunt - but I do want teachers who set a good example and I don't think these guys do. On the whole I think 5 (or 10, or perhaps even 15) is a little young to learn that redemption might be possible for perverts - because after all there's always the chance that it isn't.

See that's what happens when someone starts with the Daily Mail links - but seriously they're not ACTUALLY banned from schools yet, are they Ms Kelly?

'In future, the former chief executive of children's charity Barnardo's, Sir Roger Singleton, would oversee the panel on staff suitability to work with children,' Ms Kelly said.

I suppose that is better than an over-worked, potentially befuddled, and potentially personally circumscribed minister at any rate.

Still it all goes to show, grunting notwithstanding, that this whole business IS apparently more difficult than it seems. Allegedly.

Coming soon to a flat near you

Much as I hate to echo the Hugh McKinney, of the National Family Campaign I have to wonder what on earth the Home Office is up to with its new plans to legalise "mini brothels".

I wonder whether any ministers know what is going on outside the Whitehall bubble? Have they been to Harringay lately (precisely the kind of place where your enterprising pimp will be sizing up a string of lets, two to a flat)? Or maybe they just think it unlikely that one of these places will open next door to them?

And while of course I'm being marginally NIMBY, what about the poor women the subsequent explosion of the sex trade will enslave?

I simply do not understand the mind-set of a government which will go to the wall over Iraq or incitement to commit religious hatred, yet opts for harmful half-measures over an issue where they could make a real difference.

Licenced, large-scale brothels, regularly inspected, along with a crack-down on "illegal" forms of prostitution would save tens, if not hundreds of thousands of young women from a life of rape, abuse, addiction and early death. Instead, in a move that seems mostly concerned with sweeping curb crawling under the carpet, they will effectively trigger an explosion in abuse and crime.

No doubt the impact of this perverse policy will be played down. After all, there were hardly riots on the streets following the liberalisation of licencing laws. However, reassurances can be hit and miss: the government also predicted only 5,000 to 13,000 Eastern Europeans would settle in the UK, but 175,000 came in the first year alone. Not a problem in itself, but an indication how complacent government assessments can sometimes be.

When a fight almost broke out in the Salisbury the other night between some Russians and English guys I asked the Eastern European barman what it was all about. 'Don't know,' he said, 'though the Russian did try to sell me his girl a bit earlier'.

So while I'm happy to get my pint pulled, I'd rather not have the sex slaves next door thanks.

Just say no ...responsibility

Ruth Kelly has announced that politicians will no longer decide whether individual sex offenders, or those cautioned for offences which come within the remit of the Sex Offenders Register and List 99 (and yes it appears there was a flake in that), can or cannot teach in our schools.

Instead some faceless bureaucrats will be employed to do the job. This is probably a good thing UP TO A POINT...

And that point is where we draw the line over what is acceptable behaviour with respect to children. And THAT should not be affected by who is making the 'decisions' - in fact, without wishing to sound too Daily Mail-esque, we have all been led to believe that there are few if any decisions to make. This is not something where we should feel the need for leeway. Paedophiles, we are told, are, by the nature of their position and predilections, devious. Our leeway is their highway to heaven - and potentially some child's highway to hell. This is not hyperbole as one can see from a brief perusal of the NSPCC statement on the Soham case

And although William Gibson one of teachers concerned, denies being a paedophile he would still have fallen foul of the recent Sexual Offences Act 2003 which would have put him you know where - beyond the pail and on List 99. Or at least that would be where we would all have assumed he would be.

On the one hand it is shocking that the crazed centralisation of our government over the last 20 years has led us to have ministers deciding which sex offenders get to work in schools - that is madness - as well as, let us say, being open to abuse - given the way most ministers take decisions. A point discussed in more generic terms last week by Steve Richards in the Independent in a well-argued piece entitleddon't want the blame for every fault, they need to revive local responsibility But on another it is, as John Reid said yesterday in one of his occasional bids to be taken seriously as a populist politician and potential leader of the Labour party, more a case of people wanting to be able to believe that an issue is resolved.

People do not want grey areas - they do not want a government response which amounts to: 'Well its not really our fault and in any case its better than it was, but don't for a moment think we havn't got to the heart of the matter - and our conclusion is that if this ever happens again in future it won't be our fault'.

This is simply shifting responsibility when what people actually want is a definitive statement that sex offenders or those cautioned for sexual offences will not be able to work in schools.

Mutterings about the need for legal change and ridiculous efforts to blame past ministers or human rights legislation are just responsibility-avoidance strategies.

It is ironic that a government once famed for its uncompromising comunications and rebuttal ability cannot make one simple statement. The fact that it cannot is not a feature of the absence of a Mr A. Campbell but rather it is because the department responsible feels unable to confirm that it can deliver on such an assertion.

One might almost think that the civil servants in the Dept for Education and Skills are intentionally undermining an unpopular minister who has shown litte respect for their abilities or advice except when looking for someone to blame. However given her dangerous ideological predilections and unsettling ability to place policy before the devilish detail that influences the daily lives of the citizens who elected her, maybe this time the faceless bureaucrats are on the side of the angels.

Liberation for some

Dark age society we may be, but we don't hang 17-year-old rape victims for defending themselves.

Nazanin, who was 17 at the time, had been out with her niece and their boyfriends on a road west of Tehran when two men started harassing them and then tried to rape them after the boyfriends had run away.

"I committed murder to defend myself and my niece, I did not mean to kill him. I did not know what to do because nobody came to help us," the paper quoted her as saying during her trial.

This follows the 2004 judicial murder of 16-year-old Atefeh Rajabi for "acts incompatible with chastity".


The teenage victim had no access to a lawyer at any stage and efforts by her family to retain one were to no avail. Atefeh personally defended herself and told the religious judge that he should punish those who force women into adultery, not the victims. She was eventually hanged in public in the northern town of Neka.


Moral equivalence is a favourite pastime of our post-modern society, but I still wonder how the left - and particularly self-styled feminists - can turn a blind eye to the abuse of their sisters. The sick irony of Socialist Workers marching in step with Islamicists has been addressed at length elsewhere, but I remain perplexed at the relative silence of feminists on the sufferings of their sisters abroad and... at home. Or does one only qualify for liberation if one is Western, Christian and white?

History repeating

Jack Straw claims there is no good reason for Iran to restart its research if it truly only wants a nuclear program for peaceful means.

Well, that's what they call blowback, Jack.

While it is true that the Iranians have been trying to develop a nuclear weapons capability at least since the Iran-Iraq war, they have certainly displayed renewed determination post-Iraq.

Critics of the Administration say Bush's hard public line against the so-called "Axis of Evil," combined with the threatened war with Iraq, have acted as a spur to both Iran and North Korea to accelerate their nuclear programs.

Said Time back in 2003.

"If those countries didn't have much incentive or motivation before, they certainly did after the Axis of Evil statement," says one western diplomat familiar with the Iranian and North Korean programs.

So far, so what?

The accession of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the Iranian presidency, that's what.

The new Iranian president might well be "very niave politically but out of his depth", "sabre rattling", "playing to the home crowd" with his talk of wiping out Israel, sharing nuclear technology with other Muslim states etc etc, as most commentators and politicians say. But what if he is not?

It is the habit of rational people (and even politicians) to presume the people they are dealing with are also rational. But history suggests otherwise. Recent history has had a habit of producing brilliant nutters, from Hitler to Mugabe, via Pol Pot. And each of these leaders have at one point or another been treated as rational men, who can be negotiated with, will seek a reasonable solution and if not, will be deposed in a palace coup by forces of reason. Certainly the epithets attached to Ahmadinejad, would have accompanied Hitler through the early 30s. But time and again he proved his critics wrong.

Indeed, the path Ahmadinejad is treading all too rapidly is certainly one that would come as no surprise to Adolf himself, from his anti-semitic outbursts to the current breaking of the UN seals on the nuclear research facilities - a kind of symbolic remilitarisation of the Rhineland if you like.

I opposed the Iraq war, not because I'm some pinko pacifist. I just considered it folly. But unless the UN acts quickly and decisively I would support military action against Iran, with all its horrendous consequences. I don't believe Ahmadinejad is a reasonable man. I strongly suspect he will not only develop nuclear weapons but he will be prepared to use them, or at least pass them to agencies that will do so. It is not as if Iran has blanched from using terrorism against Western interests before.

For all the likely blowback - and I suspect it would make Iraq look like a tea party - we have to act now. Better this than have our grandchildren survey the ashes of our great cities and think of Bush and Blair not as 21st Century Churchills, but half-baked Chamberlains.

The Rules Have Changed - the Jug Eared B*stards want Summary Justice AND Respect

Charles Clarke was one of the bevy of ministers talking about Respect this morning as a sort of Grecian 2005 chorus to Captain Tony's Robocop.

The Captain's mantra was that as Melanie Phillips recently put it the government had to wrest back control of the streets. Or, as Charles Clarke confirmed in an interview on the Today programe this morning, that the goalpost shifting previously reserved for combatting terrorism must now be applied to anti-social behaviour as well.

In the most bizarre passage of the interview Mr Clarke proposed a fundamental subversion of Britain's property laws as a sensible way of dealing with having noisy students living next door. He explained to a commendably unamused interviewer that he was proposing a new law that would allow even homeowners - yes Melanie HOMEOWNERS - who annoy their neighbours to be exiled from their property for 3 months to teach them a lesson in good neighbourliness.

Listen if you dare here - it was on at 8.10am REALLY - he DID say that!

Mr Clarke failed to explain whether they would spend the 3 months in one of our overcrowded prisons, numbers within which are already at a record high or whether they might possibly be sent at the taxpayers expense to the Costa Del Sol to see some of their mates (oh sorry its the government that was meant to be doing the social stigmatisation isn't it, I do apologise m'lud - WOTCHA-MEAN-AH'M-GOIN'-DARN??!) - on reflection I imagine he'll propose some kind of internal exile - maybe a Prison ship could help house these undesirables - or perhaps those nice CIA flyboys could help out - lets face it 3 months in a camp in Poland is pretty much a free holiday isn't it?

I suppose the interviewer just thought 'look I've been here before and this has as much chance of becoming law as the Koreans have of getting any more cash for research into human cloning'. Still I think we should know.

ALSO what will happen to the property during the exile period - can we keep clerics under house arrest there or will the chanting annoy the neighbours? - Then again I'm told John bird wants to move some homeless people in and some bird wants to move some Johns in, no I'm just confused...

Anyway its all about regaining control of the streets, right Mel? Because in case none of us have noticed its now impossible to even go shopping without being kidnapped in the UK while trying to pop into your local mosque is positively suicidal.

Yes its true Tony really has lost control of the streets - Melanie's right and if I misbehave I hope that jug-eared fat bloke moves his mates into my house to teach me a lesson, fair do's - but one thing I'm not going to do is respect an unbalanced paranoid porker who dresses like a f**king' tramp while he's doing it - for more, in song, just CLICK - after all he is the very model of a modern labour minister..... and that is the problem...

Today's bravura performances are simply more of this government's particularly curious brand of all talk and no trousers populist hysteria. While fine at whipping the right into a frenzy, this is to be frank not so much all stick and no carrot as nothing more than willy waving - and, lets face it, if you're going to wave your willy (or shake your stick) at anyone as demanding as Melanie Phillips eventually you're going to have to give her some.... which I suppose is how we got to the all offences are arrestable section of the... Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005

Still, with David Cameron adopting all his policies, perhaps Captain Tony might just, finally, start to realise that if he persists in perpetually fighting on the ground of the right, eventually they ARE going to wise up and join him...

...So now that David Cameron wants his toys back I think its only reasonable for the rest of us to ask CAN WE HAVE OUR LABOUR PARTY BACK PLEASE?

And finally... while we are talking humour (and we are, because I'm assuming you clicked to see the Home Secretary in his FABULOUS song and dance Revue)... a few gems from the collected wit of the late Mr Tony Banks...

Compensation for some

I was planning to write about how the Muslim Council of Britain (remember - the UK's "official" voice of moderate Islam) is again boycotting Holocaust Memorial Day but naturally Harry's Place got their first.

Continuing the theme however, I notice 7/7 bomber Shehzad Tanweer left a substantial estate. Putting aside the "riddle" about how the part-time chip shop worker got hold of the cash, wouldn't it be sensible to distribute the money to the injured and relatives of the people he murdered rather than handing it to his parents?

Of course there is no precedent for this sort of thing, but then there is no precedent for suicide bombing in the UK. Having said that, a decision on behalf of the victims is unlikely from a government that even shies away from asking foreign-born imams to take extra English lessons.

And awards bigots like MCB chief Sacranie knighthoods.

Look, it SEEMED like a GOOD idea at THE TIME - but then again I was...

Kennedy admits drink problem but oddly says he is standing for re-election in an effort to be the Liberals first openly alcoholic party leader.

In his defence I will merely point out that the Liberals now have nearly 3 times as many seats as they did in Paddy Pants Down's time and that the former Yugoslavia is not exactly a beacon of well-adjusted democracy.

O Lord, Where Art Thou?

Had one of those strange waking moments yesterday - the radio was on, playing the Today show on Radio 4, and I half woke to hear sounds of jubilation, apparently all but one of the miners in West Virginia had been found alive. Cut to clips of friends and relatives "we have been praying so hard for them and God has answered our prayers" etc.

I fell asleep again. One hour later, I woke up, Today still playing. Apparently, all but one of the West Virginia miners had been found dead. There was no mention of God. Perhaps he's only there for the good things in life. Now instead of praying to God, the relatives are talking of sueing the mine owners. For verily, where God fails, Mammon shall find a way!

What's your poison?

Apparently Radio 4's Today programme had to pull the plug on a row between the author of this article on the dangers of political correctness and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. I would have liked to have heard that.

While I suspect that Anthony Browne seeks to advance a somewhat olde world Tory agenda by peppering his case with the usual suspects...

The EU commissioned a report on the rise of anti-Semitism across Europe, but the authors found that the main cause was an increase in attacks from Muslim youths. The Commission binned the non-PC report, and ordered a PC one that blamed the rise on white skinheads instead. But refusing to face up honestly to the true cause of growing anti-Semitism makes it impossible to combat it.

There is some truth behind his implication that our ruling elites deploy PC to avoid addressing inconvenient facts. Browne has a point when he says that because PC was successful in adjusting perceptions about race, sexuality, etc it has now become the lens through which our elite view any opposition to their policies. So opponents of unrestricted immigration become rascists, of Prescotts Homes elitists.

A little less political correctness and a little more old-fashioned honesty, a little less denunciation and a little more open-mindedness, will go a long way to improving the lot of many of the most vulnerable in Britain. None of this is to say that racism, sexism and islamophobia don't exist and should not still be challenged. It's just they are not the whole story. What the PC brigade cannot stomach is that it is the non-PC free thinkers who are in many ways now our true moral guardians.

While "PC brigade" rather gives the game away, that does not mean there is not some truth in his commentary, just as political correctness also had its uses. The mistake is to adopt either as the absolute orthodoxy.

Sounds like a Tory, Looks Like a Tony

In a New Year's message Charles Kennedy reminded us that whatever David Cameron sounds like he is "still a Tory at heart" (let noone ever say Mr Kennedy is slow on the up-take or that he lacks a dry-as-a-bone sense of situationist humour)...

Anyway, Cameron - Tory at heart, right - must be why he leads the Tory party...

Then again Andrew Neil had him fooling Ulrika Jonsson a few weeks back - which makes a change from people fooling with Ulrika. Jonsson was falling for Cameron's 'new politics' hook, line and faux zebra cushion on an even more Daily Mail-man than usual edition of The Week in Politics (or whatever that oddly entertaining late night lubricant-fest Neil hosts with Abbot and Port-a-loo is called...)

So at heart David Cameron IS still a Tory...
and perhaps more importantly at wallet,
at his old (and new?) boys clubs (on second thoughts take a glance at that front bench team - before we even start on the advisers - and lets stick with 'old' boys club),
at private schools (or sorry opted out state schools with 'independent' selection policies - a notable area of agreement with our Prime Minister),
at work...

...You know the list.

You get my drift.

Which is why as Johann Hari points out it is a great relief that our interests are defended in such a robust way by the lovely Mr Tony - who has just ensured that years of
efforts to properly regulate the chemical industry, and the businesses which feed us its products both intentionally and carelessly, have gone up in smoke - or as Johann puts it how Blair has failed to protect us from the 'corporate killers in pin-striped suits'
- he does have such a sense of populist vim lurking under all that sententiousness our Johann that really he is quite wasted on the Indy, but his point is nonetheless sound - and the article is in fact rather better than its title.

I however am even more exercised by a similar example of Mr Tony's great wisdom. This is his well-flagged innovation for the new year of forgetting why he once opposed nuclear power - "Well, err actually, you see I never, err really, as such, opposed nuclear power, more in any case a matter of warheads and that whole labour anti-war thing - all forgotten now, you know, haha, New World Order, threats to liberty, NEW THINKING, global warming, science, advice, industry, realism, solutions not slogans..."- OH SHUT THE F**K UP Tony!

We know Blair gets a masturbatory thrill out of rolling back that delicate pink outer skin of social democracy to reveal the blue blood which apparently throbs in his political head - but surely this is a step too far - this is, after all, not a political issue - is it?

Well the fact is that it has spent much of recent history in the UK as a distinctly left-right political issue. That, if nothing else, should serve to remind us of something about where the loyalties of different political traditions primarily lie (lay? - lets stick with 'lie' - its kind of appropriate).

And this of course is why it has earned the right to be one of the left of centre statues which Tony Blair wants to kick over - but speaking as someone who knows (and has known) a statistically improbable number of people with extremely rare cancers who live(d) near to nuclear power stations and other sources of 'low level' nuclear pollution I would rather prefer if this particular statue could remain a monument to a tradition that puts people before profit and retains a healthy suspicion of what happens when science, finance and industry get together with a big heap of public subsidy, a dressing of official secrets and national interest, and the opportunity to write things down over a ten thousand year half-life instead of a five year amoritisation period.

Billy Bragg has a concert at the RFH in February called Which Side Are You On? - someone should buy Blair a ticket.

Christ - I knew all that populism would get to me eventually!

Spielburg's Munich condemned for "thinking too much"

Sign of the times: Spielburg's forthcoming film about the murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics is receiving mixed reviews in the US...

"Munich" does not, as some critics would have it, make a case for moral equivalency. Instead, Spielberg is simply reiterating that the Old Testament demand of an eye for an eye has left the world blinded and wandering in an endless cycle of reprisal. This is not exactly a philosophical or dramatic revelation, and it leaves "Munich" stewing in its own blood and wringing its hands.

Um... isn't this actually a more complex and honest commentary than the kind of pseudo-solution for which this critic apparently hungers?

In some quarters at least America's post-9/11 learning curve appears to still be hugging the horizontal...

Invasion of the Bodysnatchers - Not my idea of a Brucey Bone-us

OK with a title like that I should be making salacious allegations about Bruce Forsyth's sex life with women many years if not decades his junior, but I'm not... Bruce is far to good at making them himself and in any case most of them are true, which given Bruce's still impressive dancing-ability sheds more light on that business about the male ability to dance being an evolutionary pre-requisite...

No really it apparently is - yesterday's Metro said that scientists said so - or rather that the scientist's PR has spun this tenuous 'Darren Gough is evolutionarily successful' celeb news link to their otherwise rather specialist interest thesis...but whatever, it works for me, at a Metro-level.

So there may yet be some basis for the notion that its actually OK, if slightly eugenic, to say that people who don't appreciate good music should be shot...

Anyway enough of such things, I just thought that the notion that someone is flaying corpses in New York for bone extraction was worth a second look - and was momentarily distracted by the thought that the latest set of perfect teeth in the mouth of say Tom Cruise could be built from bits of Alistair Cooke. No really, you see Alistair Cooke's bones have been 'stolen' well recycled at any rate to be made into dental implants (among other things) - and when I say 'really' that does not apply to Mr Cruise, by the way, that's 'not really' terribly likely - so no newspaper ads denying it please Tom and no lawsuits, there's a good bhuddhist.

What I like is the way his step-daughter gets to the heart (or was that marrow) of the matter. Which is that the people who recieved bits of her Stepfather got a bad deal; rather than complaining that she had a rather lighter than expected urn to scatter in Central Park.

Then again maybe she didn't have any expectations, but just for the record I for one was surprised when I felt the weight of such a container for the first time fairly recently. And I can tell you that that scene in Meet the Parents with the cat is mighty possible if you want to go and use an actual urn-shaped urn - those things have crap centres of balance and their bases are FAR too small for true stability in a cat-imbued environment.

On the up-side though if anyone nicks my relatives bones before they are cremated I hope I will now be able to tell. So get urn lifting my friends unless you think the body snatchers are welcome to the abandoned shells of the recently deceased... Who the hell said Victorian Christmases were out of fashion, huh?

The Ape man cometh...well sort of

Oh to be a crazy dictator. It appears uncle Joe Stalin had a plan up his sleeve to defeat capitalism after all. That's right he planned his very own Planet of the Apes army.

According to archive files Stalin ordered the creation of Planet of the Apes-style warriors by crossing humans with apes.

Stalin reportedly told the scientist: "I want a new invincible human being, insensitive to pain, resistant and indifferent about the quality of food they eat."

Well who doesn't. Cutting down on the food bill was obviously an issue for Joe, what with millions dying after the failure of collectivization in the 1930s. You get the feeling he would have loved Lord or the Rings, wait with the whole ape like army of grunts on the march.

You can see it now. Stalin at the Politburo as he bangs the table "Together my ape men and I will rule the world".


 Die puny capitalist die

Read the full story here.

Rat A TAT TAT - WoT the Fuck was that Jack?

There was a certain irony in the fact that Monday's paper's were plastered with front page pictures of a cloud of black smoke from a burning oil store...

Poison Clouds Hit Tonight yelled the London Evening Standard, though a story inside by Justin Davenport revealed that the front page was off the mark, poison clouds had already hit and Sir Ian Blair knew all about it, "Oh yes he did" Wotcha mean?? "HE'S BEHIND YOU!!"

OK OK lets stop the pantomine pillory or was that the punch and judy politics? I get so confused these days...

Speaking at Together Against Terror (or TAT) Sir Ian announced what we had all seen coming for, well, at least a day (from Hertfordshire): "The sky is dark" - hey, but wait a minute Sir Frodo's Tolkeinistic call to, well, fear, I suppose, had nothing to do with not smoking while filling up your tanker in Hemel - oh no. Oh no?

So what Sauronic threat did we face, if not the combustion of complex hydrocarbon chains in Herts?

Sir Scary Police continued,
"We know there are people in the UK as we speak who are planning to mount atrocities and who will use suicide as a weapon."

He then got all metaphysical and in a particularly Shelley-ian moment announced "We are in a different place than before"

Which at any rate has the virtue of literacy unlike Uncle Tony's claim that he was going to arrest everyone who had too much cash on them in order, as he put it in an interview with BBC News, "To make the bad people in fear" - TO WHAT PM?? - to make the bad people in fear Chris, not the people going about their everyday business - and I've tried it, you know I have, and the normal law just doesn't work - I've tried it again and again and again - for years...
Oh shut up you illiterate, at least your scaremongering namesake top cop can speak english (Jesus!) - but what about this 'abnormal law' business - that almost seems like an admission (at last) of quite what an abominable range of unseemly and abnormal powers your unconstitutional little regime has been accumulating through its various legal innovations since autumn 2001 - whatever next, openly admitting that its now a crime to voice an opinion without asking the permission of the police first?

OK, OK, I know its only a crime if its within the earshot of you or your MPs Mr Prime Minister... whatever - could someone email that smug bastard Peter Hain who was appearing on Radio 4 going on about why he was right to break the law to oppose white only sports tours of the UK during apartheid?

Maybe Peter could explain why he voted for the law that convicted Maya Evans

And maybe one of our Tolkeinistic Blair twins could reveal why it makes sense to imprison supposed Enemies of the state plotting terrorism for four years without bothering to ask (or should I say investigate? discover? confirm?) what they were or weren't plotting

Maybe they're waiting for Jack Straw to go on holiday so that someone can offer them an amazing prize of a free holiday in Poland. See, when someone actually asked Jack (about some similar rapscallions) he said that the fact that you had to buy an over-priced washing machine (or was that put your head in it) in order to claim your free holiday COULD constitute torture and so he went and vetoed the whole holiday?!?

Since then, there have been over 200 free holiday flights full of lucky winners passing through British airports but Jack has had no reason to check the rules of the competitions they won because the lotteries they entered were held under US and other jurisdictions - and in any case none of the holiday camps to which they were flying were on British soil.

In case anyone got a bit lost or disorientated after all that time in the air, the CIA, who were running the competitions (which were about building huge haystack-like sculptures out of tiny needles), kept the doors to the holiday charter planes locked at all times - so noone got to see anything suspicious; as Jack explained in a written answer to parliament and an interview on Today so unconvincing that the interviewer just let him talk - a favourite barristers' trick which an experienced jurist like Jack should really have been wise to.

Apparently there is absolutely no evidence at all to suggest that the CIA have been giving away more free holidays since the start of the War on Terror (or WoT). In fact Jack said it was all pretty much 'normal CIA business' as far as he was concerned.

"Knock, Knock, Rat a-TAT TAT"
What the flying fuck is that?
~ I dunno but I'm pretty sure its dead now

Truths and myths

For once I agree with the Muslim Council of Britain and the Tory party - it really is outrageous not to hold a public enquiry over 7/7.

Can you imagine how New Labour would have responded had they been in Opposition?

Not only does it lay bare the government's fear of being further exposed over Iraq, it also misses an opportunity to really examine the underlying causes of the attack, an opportunity sadly missed by the Home Office Task Force which further embedded extreme Islam into government policy.

While I'm at it, a word on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's "myth" making about the Holocaust.

Although the man's obviously an anti-semitic crackpot whose recent call for Israel to be "wiped off the map" placed him beyond the pale, I do think his observation that...

They have created a myth today that they call the massacre of Jews and they consider it a principle above God, religions and the prophets.

... does not entirely merit the BBC standfirst:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has courted further controversy by explicitly calling the Nazi Holocaust of European Jewry a "myth".

Although the implication in the news headlines is that he is a Holocaust denier (as indeed he probably is, but that is not my point) I think he is correct in observing that in a Barthian sense the West has "mythologised" the Holocaust.

Although it was an act of extraordinary evil, so too was the Turkish slaughter of the Armenians, the Bolsheviks of non-Bolsheviks, and Belgians of over 3 million Congolese, yet the German slaughter of the Jews is set apart.

So what's the difference? Well, for one thing the Turks, Bolsheviks, and Belgians got away with it, while the Germans didn't and the results were captured on film. For another, it happened in Europe and was perpetrated by one of the most supposedly civilised nations in the world. It held up a mirror to the anti-semitic shame of us all, if you like.

A further element of myth is that it transforms the subject matter into something unreal, untouchable. And here we also have evidence - if Europeans really cared about genocide so much, then why did we not lift a finger in Rwanda? Or even closer to home in Bosnia? For me, all the "never again" pieties expressed by our politicians became myths in the blood-drenched fields outside Srebenica.

So although he may be a crackpot, his malevolent crowd-pleasing does challenge our complacency - by mythologising the Holocaust as a unique event, we are encouraged to believe it could never happen again. Rwanda and Bosnia suggest otherwise.

Blair's legacy

Max "Hitler" Hastings on Blair's legacy...

It is hard to imagine any political historian, never mind the British public, attributing our involvement in this shambles to anything beyond the misjudgment of one man, the prime minister. Posterity will be no more impressed by Blair's professed honourable intentions than by those of Anthony Eden in Egypt, half a century ago.

The memory of Blair's government will be dominated by this disastrous foreign war, rather than, for instance, by his maintenance of a successful economy at home and brilliant speeches to successive Labour party conferences.

More than that, though, I suspect that for those who support progressive politics, Blair's legacy may not simply be "Iraq", it could be a Conservative government.

Ticket to oblivion

There seems a kind of grotesque inevitability about Muriel's progression from Belgian teen to suicide bomber...

Muriel... had a long relationship with an Algerian, who converted her to Islam in 2001...

Initially, she wore a hijab, or Islamic veil, but soon started wearing the head-to-toe chador that leaves the face visible...

Finally she wore a burka. She became ever more estranged from her parents. "When we saw them, they imposed their rules. We were at home, but my husband had to eat in the kitchen with Issam while the women ate together in the sitting room... " M Degauque said...

In mid-September they left, telling their landlord they were going to Kenya to try to find Goris's father. "She wore a burka all the time. I never saw her face, only her eyes," [the landlord said]...

Instead of going to Kenya, Muriel and her husband entered Iraq. Days later she had blown herself up, taking up to six US soldiers with her.

She had finally succeeded in blotting herself out.

Too easy to use this excuse?

Sorry, couldn't resist this - a name check on Harry's Place.

The Foreign Minister of China when asked in the 1950's about the consequences of the French Revolution answered "It's too early to tell" . A couple of years on from the toppling of Saddam is probably too soon to start writing the second draft of history but I think some of the broader outlines of that eventual narrative are becoming clearer for those prepared to see them.

Earlier in the post, Marcus quotes Times columnist Gerard Baker's measurement of success in Iraq: ...potential threats removed; future wars that don't have to be fought. It is numbered in the unenumerable: the slow awakening of human freedom; the steady, incremental spread of dignity it brings to people cowed and trampled for decades.

Well, it really is too early to tell, isn't it, but for each of those clauses I could find a reason why the war in Iraq failed, and indeed never should have been fought.

On a personal note some of the thinking behind TETT was for me consistent with what my opposition to the war was about: a profound wariness of ideologically-driven change and its unforseen consequences. For me, war, and particularly offensive war (I'm not a pacifist, sadly) is an essentially evil tool, so it seemed clear to me that only bad was likely to come of it, never mind the good intentions. I can see little in Iraq to prove me wrong, regardless of the muscular efforts of the posters on Harry's Place, ironically one of my favourite places on the web.

Sent to Manchester

Although the article doesn't mention it, I couldn't help wondering if Government plans to merge The Commission for Racial Equality into a Manchester-based equality body, which will also contain the Equal Opportunities Commission and the Disability Rights Commission were not unconnected with chair Trevor Phillips' outspoken criticism of new Labour's pro-segregation agenda. I've got to say, I had always had Phillips down as an arch-Blairite until he got this job. Hell hath no fury, eh?

On the Grauniad grapevine

I suppose I should be pleased the city where I have my second home is finally getting some recognition and Ostend may even begin to become the next, well, East End (as much as I like it, it'll never be Provence).

So why did I sigh when I saw the article? Maybe it was because I had always harboured a dream of writing a film script about Marvin In Ostend, the germ of which has now been exposed to the entire Guardian readership. But mostly, I think, it's because while I may have gone on about how cool it is when greeted with the usual sceptical reaction, I didn't actually want it to "become" cool like its London namesake. Not very likely, I know, but in these novelty-hungry times anything's possible. Babyshambles at the Kursaal anyone?

The insurgency speaks

I was struck by this piece of juxtaposition this morning in The Times. Two stories about the war in Iraq printed either side of a double page spread.

Al-Qaeda 'sorry' for Muslim dead
By Our Foreign Staff

THE head of al-Qaeda in Iraq said in an internet audiotape that the Muslim wedding parties the group bombed last week in Amman were not its target.

And then on the opposite page this piece:

Blast kills 75 worshippers at prayers in Shia mosque
By Richard Beeston, Diplomatic Editor

SUICIDE bombers wearing explosive vests killed at least 75 Shia Muslim worshippers in Iraq yesterday, prompting fears of a new wave of sectarian violence ahead of elections less than a month away.

The insurgency is certainly speaking, and you don't have to read between the lines to know what it's saying. You just have to read.

Use of weapons

Much excitement about the use by US forces of phosphorus weapons in Iraq. These are not banned weapons, but they are deeply unpleasant sticking to anything, including flesh, and burning on through.

US forces have used them chiefly to smoke out entrenched insurgents and apparently they were sporadically used in the battle for Falluja.

Labour MPs and the Guardian are concerned about their use despite phosphorus weapons not being banned. I take it they get that once these people are smoked out that if they don't surrender they will be shot or blown up?

"Since the Guardian columnist George Monbiot highlighted discrepancies in US accounts of weapons used in the bloody battle of Falluja this week, the Pentagon has backtracked on earlier denials by the state department and its ambassador to the UK, Robert Tuttle, that white phosphorus had been deployed.

"The charge was first made by Iraqi insurgents, aware of the potency of the issue in view of Saddam Hussein's notorious use of chemicals against his own people, and taken up by the Italian TV channel RAI."

Okay, yes these weapons are unpleasant, but they are legitimate parts of any army's arsenal – hence the not banned bit. We use them, but again like the Americans that's to clear out enemy positions. They're scary and really that's the point so people generally run. Job done.

Isn't that a good thing? Well it would be if you actually thought that it was right to criticise a group of people who indiscriminately kill and time and time again choose soft targets over military ones.

The anti war lobby, of course, does not criticise these people, but are ready to come down any front possible against the US and British forces and how they prosecute the fight against terror. Yes, of course, we should be open to criticism, but only where it is legitimate and right to do so.

What the anti war lobby would prefer is if American and British forces had one hand tied behind their back and really didn't use live bullets. That would even things up. While that isn't possible they look for other avenues and this is one. A smokescreen designed to eat away at morale and to rob the forces trying to bring democracy and stability in Iraq of the ability to do so.

The bit from the Guardian that really sticks is that the charge was first made by Iraqi insurgents? You mean those people who blow up wedding parties with suicide bombers? Who blow up children or anything other motherfugger they can get a car close to? You mean those people who refuse to negotiate and rarely surrender. They're complaining? Oh come on.

It seems to clearly echo the IRA who would insist they were fighting a war right up to the point that some of the boys were ambushed and killed. At that point there would be calls for an investigation, for a judicial inquiry and for charges to be brought.

How long will it be before the anti war lobby is calling for the rights of insurgents to be protected?

The last ditch

Pleased to see the Tories failed in their attempt to halt the new licencing laws. I'm sure there will be a rise in intemperate drinking, but rigorous application of new police powers combined with the passage of time should make things settle down.

But what I found extraordinary was the language Tory spokesman Theresa May used.

"This is a deeply unpopular law and the volume of evidence urging the government to think again is overwhelming," May said.

"It is sheer lunacy to say to a country gripped by binge drinking that it is okay to drink more and for longer.

"Conservatives have pledged to fight this to the end. This is our last ditch effort and we are determined that every MP should be accountable and on the record for introducing this law.

"We hope that Labour MPs will face up to the devastating impact on their constituents of backing this law and have the courage to vote with us to postpone it."

Golly. We will fight them in the saloon bar, eh? Wouldn't it be great to see a politician use this kind of language about something that really mattered?

Nadia Anjuman

Remembering Afghan poet Nadia Anjuman, 25, "slain for her verse" by her husband. I look forward to its condemnation in The Guardian Comment section.

Take one ghastly dehumanised moron...

Shortly after he was elected, the Mayor said: "Only some ghastly dehumanised moron would want to get rid of the Routemaster."

In the manner of its death, the Routemaster shows how, in modern Britain, something which works and is loved can be replaced by something which fails and is hated, for reasons which are entirely unnecessary.

With friends like these...

So, you're a relatively obscure left-leaning Observer commentator whose controversial cheerleading for Gulf War II - the Toppling of Saddam vaults you to the big time. Soon the letter pages are busy with admonishments and support, your name becomes synonymous with a self-styled brand of "muscular" liberalism and you go on to be made an offer you can't refuse by a certain former Australian who in slimmer, more youthful times you would presumably have placed at the right side of satan, alongside a certain former Prime Minister.

Back to the future and the sitting PM has just faced his first parliamentary defeat. Both his Commons majority and his authority were devastated by the war you played such a key part promoting. Your reaction? Why, it's time for him to go.

Bombs in Jordan

A friend texted me last night. She's going to Bolivia and thought I might know someone who had been. I did a quick bit of maths and came up with zero people. So I called her just to find out what the story was as the only thing I know about Bolivia is that they like to march, but then so do a lot of people.

Its some Christian Aid thing about the water privitisation that all went badly wrong leaving people without water. Who would have guessed?

"I thought I'd ask you as you've been to some dangerous places," she told me.

Not strictly true. I mean I went to South London once and really it was quite scary, and then I guess I'd been to Israel and to Jordan more recently, but that was all five star hotels and lap of luxury stuff. No real sign of danger, although the Palestinian kid at Petra was pretty pushy, but that's about it.

A little later I'm watching the news and the al qaeda Islamofascists blew up three hotels in Amman killing 57 and wounding 117.


 

Those killed included the father of the bride and the father of the groom at a wedding party at the Radisson SAS hotel in central Amman, which in July I spent a couple of days and nights at drinking cocktails and lounging by the pool.

So I guess on reflection that would have shaken my cocktail.

Whose liberty?

As someone opposed to the war in Iraq, I can't say I'm overwhelmed with pleasure at Blair's Common's defeat.

I believe that while a 90 day detention period could be abused by the police, the safeguards introduced before the vote would have provided a reasonable compromise in difficult circumstances.

It's all very well for us to get sniffy about civil liberties, but what of the liberty of the 7/7 dead and injured and their families? The police requested the 90 day time period because the scale of today's threat meant that they would often have to act quickly in order to avert an attack and it could take longer than 14 days to gather sufficient evidence to charge a suspect. In France an investigating judge can order a suspect held for two years before trial, so talk of this being extraordinary in Europe was bollocks. This was not internment.

And no, I don't necessarily believe the police, nor Blair. I don't doubt injustices would result because of this legislation. But surely the risk of a three month loss of liberty, no matter how unfair, is worth it if it saves just one single life?

Arson and forgetting

Back in the UK and the festival of smugness that is the British media on the French riots, I listened to Labour MEP Claude Moraes pontificate on the causes. Apparently France is 20 years behind the UK, where thankfully we don't have anything like this.

So much for two tube attacks and 52 dead then. Personally I would go with a few thousand burned out cars any day.

Shit head(s)

Can I just say FUCK YOU to the shit head who stole the window wiper from my car. Fortunately I noticed it this wet evening en route to get some air put in the tyres and not on a stormy foreign highway...

And while I'm at it, instead of saying "this isn't a playground you know" to the two macho East European youths sounding loudly off and shoving each other boisterously on the way home this evening until one pushed the other into me, meekly minding my business along with the other tube passengers, can I add FUCK YOU TOO.

It's about respect really, isn't it? Where's the progress, Tony?

Winterval

Listened to the head stamp keeper or whatever of the Royal Mail eat humble pie this morning over issuing a Christmas stamp that some Hindus found offensive (straight after an item on Lambeth scrapping Christmas for "winterval"). I wondered why, if the keepers at the Bombay musueum where the image was borrowed from were "delighted" with the image being used, British Hindus were so quick to take offence?