Iran could have barbers by 2010, intelligence chief warns

Calling Tehran "the principal state sponsor of bad hair", US Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte told BBC radio Iran seemed determined to introduce barbers by 2010.

"The estimate we have made is that some time between the beginning of the next decade and the middle of the next decade they might be in a position to get their hair cut, which is a cause of great concern," he said.

Western intelligence chiefs fear shaved mullahs may appear more plausible.

"People may start taking them seriously," said Negroponte. "If they start becoming more presentable, people might actually think they have a point."













The move has been prompted by new President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose recent move to ban Western music from Iranian airwaves was in part attributed to concern about the corrupting influence of Kenny Gee's long curly locks.

















Gee - corrupting influence


In the future all Iranian men will have to be clean-shaven and keep to a regulation short back and sides.

Although some men may suffer, the development is expected to come as huge relief to Iran's women who have been deprived of hair care since the Islamic Revolution. Most are so ashamed of their unkempt barnets they now keep their heads covered.












It has been a 30 year bad hair day for Iranian women


But the move is likely to come in for criticism from traditionalists like Iran's spiritual leader Ayatollha Khomeini who are concerned they won't look so scary without their beards.















Khomeini - less scary?

Death threat

I'm trying to shy away from the obvious these days, but this one from (ok) neo-con website Little Green Footballs did make me laugh - the perils of making a death threat and having it tracked back, particularly if you work for one of the world's leading news agencies...

My Zionist lizardoid ultrasuperpowers tell me that the Reuters IP address 192.165.213.18 has hit our site 134 times since midnight, and it looks like there may even be one or two Reuters people online right now.

Call me an old romantic but...

A Sky News poll is 3-1 in favour of the proposed laws to provide cohabiting couples with similar rights to married ones. Well, we all want equal rights these days, don't we.

But I wonder if this isn't another government initiative that makes a good headline but can have unforeseen consequences?

Yesterday Burnley Council was offering a Mea Culpa over its well-meaning housing policies that just happened to spark race riots. Last week the PM was slagging off the human rights legislation he introduced, and wasn't there a furore some time ago about the legal reforms that happen to have promoted a compensation culture?

Instead of celebrating equal legal rights for living-in-sin, I wonder if a decade on we will be wringing our hands at a commitment-phobic culture whereby men - already wary of the potentially catastrophic financial consequences of a failed marriage - now avoid any semblance of cohabitation for fear of the same? Where once couples would "suck it and see" so to speak, they now keep a (legally-measurable) distance?

On the contrary, according to Sir Roger Toulson, the High Court judge developing the proposals.

More people might marry because partners would no longer avoid financial responsibilities.

Er... up to a point, Sir Roger.

Give this man a job!

Here is the BBC News 24 footage with the chap who went for an interview as an IT bod for the channel and ended up on TV.

The look on his face when he realises what is happening is priceless. He also does a bloody good job in the circumstances.

Amusing too when they cut to their reporter standing outside the High Court who says: "As your Mr Kewney remarked, it's come as quite a shock."

If it walks like a duck...

Human rights groups are raising alarms over a new law passed by the Iranian parliament that would require the country's Jews and Christians to wear coloured badges to identify them and other religious minorities as non-Muslims...

The Iranian parliament, called the Islamic Majlis, passed a law this week setting a dress code for all Iranians, requiring them to wear almost identical "standard Islamic garments."

The law, which must still be approved by Iran's "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenehi before being put into effect, also establishes special insignia to be worn by non-Muslims.

Iran's roughly 25,000 Jews would have to sew a yellow strip of cloth on the front of their clothes, while Christians would wear red badges and Zoroastrians would be forced to wear blue cloth...

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre has written to Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, protesting the Iranian law and calling on the international community to bring pressure on Iran to drop the measure.

Who's who

Hats off to the Muslim Association of Britain's PR team. A representative from the hardline anti-democracy Islamists banned across the Middle East got to posit wither young Muslims to Jon Snow on Channel 4 News alongside Muslim Labour MP Sadiq Khan. Three hours later a group of young Muslims were interviewed by Ashad Ahmed on BBC1 London's News at 10 about whether they would ever sign up to MI5.

Unsurprisingly they all condemned the UK's foreign policy as the main reason they would never dream of such a thing. Among the three men and two jilbab-sporting women was the same chappy who had earlier piped up on behalf of the MAB on Channel 4 News.

C4's item was about why young Muslims were being radicalised.

When TV insists on depicting hardliners as ordinary Muslims, shouldn't the question be exactly who is radicalising who?

Space cadets

A judge rules gun-toting Afghan hijackers can stay in the country as refugees.

They made worldwide headlines in 2000 when they fled the Taliban by hijacking a Boeing 727 on an internal flight from Kabul and forcing the crew to fly to England.

Armed with guns and explosives, they held the plane at Stansted Airport for 70 hours before giving themselves up to police and SAS...

The nine are not allowed to work, but instead depend on state hand-outs and report regularly to the immigration authorities.

The cost to the taxpayer of the whole affair has been unofficially estimated at around 10 million pounds.










Meanwhile another UK court decides that a Crouch End twat caught hacking US computers in search of UFOs can be extradited to America under terrorism laws.

Last year Twat told the Guardian he had carried out most of his hacks in a north London house belonging to his girlfriend's aunt.

He claimed to have uncovered evidence of a secret space army of US "non-terrestrial officers".

In a lengthy judgment, District Judge Evans rejected arguments including the possibility that Mr McKinnon could suffer prejudice at his trial because of his political opinions.

He added: "I readily accept, if convicted in the US, the probable sentence is likely to be appreciably harsher in the US than, in comparable circumstances, it would be in the UK.

"It must be obvious to any defendant that if you choose to commit a crime in a foreign country, you run the risk of being prosecuted in that country."

This Charming Man and the blood on his hands

I was at 10 Downing Street recently, which was interesting as it is a while since I have been able to observe our Prime Minister close up.

For a bit of context I should add that this was before the recent re-shuffle and also before the local election results which this sought to distract attention from, and arguably draw some kind of line under. Though quite how is a mystery, given that those most responsible for the dire results are still in the cabinet (Jowell, Beckett, possibly Prescott, and certainly the Prime Minister himself), while those least so (Straw) are not; for all that the jug-eared reluctant authoritarian, Clarke, is no longer dining at the big boys table.

The timing of my visit to number 10 is relevant because I was moved to comment to a colleague how assured and relaxed Blair still was in his role - far more so in fact than he used to be. While Blair's media friendliness has always been commented on from the moment of his election as Labour Party leader - and he has always given good TV - in person he was often slightly awkward and uncomfortable with informal interactions, whether involving small-talk or indeed unscripted questions on the detail of policy matters.

Emeritus Profesor Hugh Berrington of Newcastle University views that awkwardness, rightly I think, as the slightly distant psychology of one of the perpetually needy over-compensating outsiders who are so often elected as leaders of nations in order to fight their personal battles with low self esteem and compensatory paranoia across rather more substantial battlefields, such as those of the coalfields of the North and the oilfields of the Middle East.

Blair has now turned the remnants of this personal awkwardness into a faux self-deprecatory camp which he uses to great effect on all and sundry (he has probably always done this, but now the originating awkwardness is generally nowhere to be seen). Curiously the matured Blair act is more Prince Charles than Queen Margaret. It is very 'chat show' too, he didn't pull a guitar out on my visit but he was moved to a suggest that 'these days I think all we are good for is photo shoots' before strolling though for some shots during which he variously complemented everything from his audiences triumphs over personal adversity to their weight loss and muscle development.

Blair is at this point very much the finished article, ironically enough just as he is indeed finished. But he is still a performer, indeed a better one than he ever was.

All those in public life and indeed in any communication role have to be. It's important, you have to give attention to people, appear to focus on them, you have to look engaged and indicate that you have noticed them through comment, while also indicating - through thought and pauses - that you are paying attention to what they have to say - and, indeed, to what they represent, as well as to the simple fact of their prescence. This is all good, this is all necessary.

But now to business, as the PM may have thought as he left his photo-shoots to turn his attention to more substantial matters.

Blair's re-shuffle confirmed my reactions at number 10 in so far as it was in no sense the action of a man preparing to hit the US lecture circuit, though, for all that, one must also reflect that this is a man with a big, if not quite Clintonesque, ego and look a little at Clinton's final months in office. It is not in the nature of such egos to ever truly admit even to themselves the imminence of the loss of power and status about to befall them. America with its habit of calling all ex-Presidents 'Mr President' (did someone mention camp? - oh, get over it), building celebratory libraries and offering roving ambassadorships to the world and roles in reconstruction after national disasters such as Katrina, does much to assist the ex-leader in fostering this illusion.

That said Blair's elevation of his lieutenants and cheerleaders and demotion of those who appeared to have begun planning for a post-Blair world, offers little hope to those who would be glad to see the back of him soon enough for Gordon and the party to have a slim chance of re-building and refocusing in time to avoid the hung parliament which appears increasingly inevitable at the next election and which it is quite possible that Blair secretly sees as his true legacy to British politics.

That the likely coalition will be between the liberals and conservatives rather than inviolving Labour is a reality which the rest of the parliamentary Labour Party and what is left of the party in the country is gradually waking up to. Of course in Blair's wettest political dreams it would be between Labour and the Conservatives against the anti-warriors of Liberal Democracy but even Blair's great performances have not so detached Labour from its roots, nor indeed convinced those roots that the path he led us on to war was right.

Education, Education, Education

Salam Pax' former comrade in blogging Raed Jarrar explains (from San Francisco) another of the reasons why the world - and the middle east in particular - will be living with the consequences of the misguided decision to invade and occupy Iraq (as opposed to any of the other possible varients on that phrase which the war's cheerleaders conveniently ignored before the war and claimed not to have been made aware of afterwards) for a very long time.

In his ever-readable blog Raed in the Middle Raed also asks 'Is there an Iran "Dilemma"?'

Freedom

Zeina also shows, in a way that will surely give pause for thought even to those people in Britain who supported the war, how women's lives are being curtailed by the rise of religious fundamentalists who have stepped into the power vacuum. "All the time in the television and the newspapers there is propaganda concerning women. It is really disgusting, it is nothing to do with Islam, but everything to do with taking women back into the home and depriving them of rights."

To show the negative effects of these developments on women, Zeina travels to Basra. It will not come as news to those who have followed developments in southern Iraq that women are being forced to wear the hijab and prevented from living their lives freely. But it brings these developments home when we see young women and their families talking about being sent bullets and death threats because they played sport or did not wear a headscarf. As Zeina emphasises, this kind of experience is new to most women in Iraq, who enjoyed economic and social freedom before the occupation. "A while ago, I was looking at photographs of my aunt in college in the 60s, wearing pants and sleeveless tops, playing sports in the college yard; and then I looked at the photographs of the women in college today, and they are covered in black from head to toe, their faces also covered."

Atwar Bahjat

In February one of Iraq's leading journalists, Atwar Bahjat, was killed by insurgents while covering an attack on a mosque.











At the time, eye witness reports suggested she had been shot but evidence subsequently recovered reveals the grotesque reality of her murder.

Hala Jaber writes:

The voice of one of the Arab world's most highly regarded and outspoken journalists has been silenced. She was 30.

As a friend of Bahjat who had worked with her on a variety of tough assignments, I found it hard enough to bear the news of her murder. When I saw it replayed, it was as if part of me had died with her. How much more gruelling it must have been for a close family friend who watched the film this weekend and cried when he heard her voice.

Opponents of the war who delight in the charnal house that is modern day Iraq and, quietly among friends, derive some satisfaction in the mayhem, should reflect on this killing. But so too should the war's cheerleaders.

It is simply not good enough to take the Euston Manifesto's "war was right, peace was wrong" approach. It denies the inevitability of the one following on from the other - it is, to twist a term used often enough by the self-styled "hard" left, to divorce "right" from "responsibility". Bahja symbolised everything good they must have hoped would come of their war, launched on a wave of ideological wishful-thinking. Her dreadful end says much about its grim reality.

The film Fateless, based on an autobiography of the same name, tells the story of a 14 year old Hungarian Jew sucked up by the Holocaust. Throughout the film, Gyorgy rejects the notion - repeated by fellow Jews - of a shared Jewish "fate" of suffering. When he returns home, someone says to him, thinking to sympathise, 'it must have been the seventh circle of Hell.' 'Hell,' he replies, 'doesn't exist. The camps do.'

Myths drive our culture, but whether conjuring up Heaven or Hell we should be wary of confusing them with the real world.

We choose...

to lose.

Balls

The BBC's security correspondent Gordon Corera figures the latest release from OBL is about aligning the Palestinian cause to... etc etc. Maybe so, but in the light of the video from Ayman al-Zawahiri, itself following hot on the heels of a shifty-looking performance by Musab al-Zarqawi I wonder if the message is more about the medium, so to speak?

Why would global terror's three pin-up boys all be so keen to get their bods on the box in as many weeks?

Is something about to kick off that will really turn up the heat in the next couple of months?

Or do they just want to get business out of the way so they can settle down and enjoy the footie?










I tell you, that was definitely off-side!

Irony, Irony, they've all got it... oh nevermind

The Israeli ambassador is understandably upset that his nation's flags were burned to chants of "Intifada" at yesterday's march to celebrate Italy's liberation at the end of the Second World War.

Many members of Prodi's coalition, which spans from Roman Catholic moderates to hardline Communists, criticized the jeering - but not everyone.

Francesco Caruso, an anti-globalization leader who won a seat in parliament for the Communist Refoundation party at this month's general election, said the protest was justified.

"Whistles are not an act of violence but a legitimate form of dissent," he told reporters.

Communist Refoundation head Fausto Bertinotti was less understanding, saying the jeers were contrary to the spirit of the April 25 commemorations, which mark the day in 1945 when a Nazi occupation army left Milan after a partisan insurrection.

Was a time when anti-semitism was the preserve of the right, but now it seems more at home on the left. There are of course strong arguments against Israel's policies in the Middle East and many of the same kinds of people who now criticise the Jews may once have argued for their homeland - they are the champions of the oppressed if you like.

But one has to ask oneself, if this is really the case, why weren't they burning the flags of Iran - where gays and adulterous women are regularly strung up - China or Zimbabwe or Sudan or... well, you get the idea.

Sadly, I suspect those flag-burners were driven by a deeper, older loathing. Burning a Chinese flag just doesn't provide the same... buzz, you know?














Courtesy of Harry's Place, Jewish Brigade soldiers celebrating Passover in Italy

Woman held over 'nail bomb art' - something about stunts comes to mind

Now I understand what my colleagues in West London were raging about this morning (real lot of raging going on by the way and not about traffic delays either)

Woman held over 'nail bomb art'

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

That's the cue for someone to go 'nah, nah, nothing is off-limits for art'.

Which is fine if you want to go to prison and get hate mail for much of the rest of your adult life.

Yeah all right, I know we should stoically ignore the fool, the oxygen of publicity being the last thing needed, but...

Quote of the day

Ms Temple's boyfriend, lorry driver Barrie Williams, 46, told the Daily Mirror: "I just can't believe that my darling Tracey has been sleeping with John Prescott behind my back."

Hysteria? Immigration, New Labour and the BNP - Why New Labour isn't coming up smelling of roses

'Most Britons support BNP policies' reports the ever-so- liberal 'This is London News' online edition of the Evening Standard.

Over at Harry's Place the sites progenitor has been kicking around the nature and causes of BNP voting with the sites usual array of political exiles and slavering lunatics from both fringes.

I agree with Harry about the waywardness of Patricia Hodge' statement that BNP support was growing because Labour had ignored voters legitimate (sic) concerns over immigration (thus leading to a danger that Labour voters in her Barking constituency will allegedly defect en masse to the BNP in the upcoming Local Council elections). As Harry reminds his increasingly right of centre readerhip BNP votes are racist votes and the answer to racism is not to pander to it.

However Hodge' statement hides another side of the story which our Stalinist friend of New Labour is less keen to acknowledge.

This is what I call The Blunkett Effect, or looked at another way New Labour's passive aggressive love affair with Paul Dacre and the Daily Mail. I feel a fisting analogy coming on...
Well, lets put it this way, Tony and co's strategy of trying to out-do the right on immigration hasn't exactly contributed to a growing liberal consensus on the virtues of foreign workers joining the great British egg race.

New Labour has never been keen to try and lead public opinion. It has always tried to 'respond', though in fact less to that opinion itself than to the right wing of a popular press which has no qualms at all about leading it - though of course under the guise of 'expressing' what real people - or at any rate White Van Men - think.

In fact while Tony Blair and in particular David Blunkett, during his time as a muscular Home Secretary, argued that Paul didn't like it up him and that they could play an ID card to his race card and deport a few refugees to Zimbabwe , Iraq and various other places of safety while they were at it, it was nonetheless New Labour and the long arm of its anti-asylum-seeker legislation that came out smelling of shit.

In this sense, if no other, it is New Labour which is responsible for the rise of the racist right. And if YouGov's dubious looking Pole (sorry poll) is true, then they bear some responsibility for that too.

However, maybe those whom YouGov polled would feel different, if they looked to the facts, rather than demostrating how fascinating cognitive dissonance is by changing their minds (in distressingly small numbers) according to whom is proposing a policy, rather than what the policy is. The Refugee Council has attempted to rebut a few myths; while Nigel Morris, Home Affairs correspondent of the Independent, recently reported that an Amnesty on illegal immigrants is worth six billion to the UK - the hidden story here being not 'how many immigrants there are' but how productive they are.

Even in 2003 when asylum applications were higher than last year there were less than 50,000 while there were nearly 1.4million (mostly white) overseas workers in the UK. It is estimated that over a quarter of a million French people live in the Greater London and South East regions alone, then there's the Americans, the Canadians...

But the 'immigrants' the barking population of the expatriate east end (in Barking and Dagenham) are howling about are more than likely taxpaying productive UK citizens (as if it matters) contributing to the cost of the public services that they, those 250,000 French people, the Americans, the Canadians and Patricia's barkers are all using every day.

Is it just me or are YouGov's polls starting to get as odd as Mori's?

Plus ca change...

How rapidly the resolve of the French government wilts in the face of student unrest, yet how firm it remains as the banlieue burns.

Could there be some truth in "Theodore Dalrymple's" suggestion that the striking students motives were not as selfless as they may at first have appeared?

It is often pointed out that French unemployment under the age of 26 is the highest in Europe, running at about 25 per cent. Moreover, in the banlieues it is 50 per cent. These banlieues are homes to millions of people, disproportionately young. It follows - does it not? - that there must be a considerable section of the young population in which unemployment is less than a quarter, actually much less. One would hardly have to be de Tocqueville to guess in which section of the young population the unemployment was less: the section from which the demonstrators, or at least their leaders and agents provocateurs, are drawn. In an increasingly desperate situation, the demonstrators are so afraid of the future that they want to hang on to their privileges and job security by hook or by crook, even if it means that the youth of the banlieues will eventually have to be kept in order by the Compagnies Republicaines de Securite, the much-feared riot police, the CRS. There is nothing idealistic or generous about the demonstrators, just as there wasn't in 1968.

Could wily old Chirac and co simply be remembering their natural constituency?












...plus c'est la meme chose.

The Times They Are A-Changing

For some time reports have been coming out of Iraq which indicate re-alignments - the top link here is to a story (in February) which was essentially repeated more widely yesterday on some international media.

Basically the story is that the US forces are talking to some of the insurgents in an effort to separate the 'arab / iraqi nationalist' insurgency as they now call it from the jihadists.

Meanwhile last weekend Jack Straw went to Iraq with Condie in a most bizarre piece of choreography which saw a trip to watch Blackburn Rovers followed up with a quick flight down country to Baghdad to call for Iraqi politicians to take note of the 'allied blood' shed and 'vast cost' of the operation to liberate them.

Basically Jack was saying 'hurry up and form a government you ingrates'. ince he is keen to end situation where every time he talks about the glory of bringing democracy he finds people muttering about the place not even having a government never mind a representative one or any sense of security, law or order. You know all that stuff Tony and Charles Clarke rattle on about, concerning the ultimate human right being the right to live free of terrorist threats... well as long as you're a British citizen.

These were new words I cannot ever recollect Mr Starw making much reference to casulaties certainly not in the context of waving the tunics of our battle-bloodied sons before the iraqi ingrates, let alone moaning about how much this has cost us in financial terms.

Lets face it though, it seems to have cost them a bit too, in all senses, and they may well see Mr Staw's point as therefore of rather less earth-shattering import than he did. Certainly the response was hardly instant.

Watch this space as they say...

Place your pin

Despite being a bit posting-light of late (ok, I've been a bit tardy), I've filched a map thingy off Triffid Boy in the event that any of our readers would like to make their mark. Just scroll down and click on the icon that says place your pin.

With friends like these

Richard Norton-Taylor's article on the British army's "deep fury" at Donald Rumsfeld's decision to disband the Iraqi army after the invasion, evolves into a predictable but accurate rant on the current state of US/UK "special relationship".

What is Washington doing in return for all Blair's help? Bush has blocked a billion-dollar deal with Rolls-Royce to build engines for the proposed joint strike fighter - which Britain wants for its two new aircraft carriers - despite repeated lobbying from Blair. The US still refuses to share advanced military technology with us. It is refusing to let British agencies question terrorist suspects, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged September 11 mastermind; it won't even say where they are being held.

Meanwhile the Telegraph reports Britain is 'likely base for son of Star Wars'.

British officials were startled by the disclosure, insisting that, as far as they were concerned, nothing had changed since Geoff Hoon, then the defence secretary, told parliament in 2004 that a decision to base interceptors in Britain would be "open to scrutiny and debate in the normal way".

"No one asked us the question [whether Britain was now ready to be a formal candidate]," a British Embassy spokesman said.

Keeping it in the family

A gangmaster has been found guilty of causing the deaths of the 21 drowned Morecambe bay cocklers.

'Lin Liang Ren, originally from China... He and his Chinese girlfriend and cousin were also convicted at Preston Crown Court of helping cockle pickers to break immigration laws.

A father and son from Merseyside were cleared of the immigration charge.

During the trial the court heard that 29-year-old Lin Liang Ren was behind a huge operation in which illegal immigrants scoured the beaches for cockles.'

It is applaudable that someone has been prosecuted for this, after all its not often that such negligence is established and it is of course unfortunate that earlier warnings (before the tragedy) were not heeded. Clearly it is a relief to us all that the evil (& originally Chinese natch) gangmaster has been convicted and of course its good that the names of the innocent have been cleared...

Talking of which...

'David Anthony Eden Snr, 62, from Irby, Merseyside, and David Anthony Eden Jnr, 35, from Prenton, Merseyside, were found not guilty of the facilitation offences.

After the verdicts were read out, judge Mr Justice Henriques QC said he would sentence the three defendants on Tuesday.

All three Chinese could ultimately face deportation, he added.

The Edens were accused of running a company which bought cockles harvested by the cocklers.
Prosecutors alleged they had therefore indirectly employed the cocklers who died, but the jury rejected the claims and cleared the men of trading with the Chinese cockle gangs.'

So that's clear then: they weren't employing them and they didn't run a cockle company...

'The judge refused applications from the Edens for costs after hearing that Mr Eden Snr lied to police about the importance of cockling to his business.'

I can't possibly add anything else.

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.