easyweb.co.uk - labour

Paying Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

Fri, 11 May 2007 00:48:48 +0000

It's one of the basic tools of any magician — control of the audience's attention. It's said that a good magician knows at all times where the audience is looking, and controls it. Misdirect the audience into looking at your right hand, while your left hand palms the coin. Or, if that fails, use the Glamourous Assistant as the focal point.

Today's lesson in stage magicianship comes from our old friends, the Labour Party. While you're all looking at the left hand waving goodbye (or the Glamourous Assistant), the right hand is busy palming £400m of my money and yours.

That 8% cost slippage (that's £2.4bn so far, or 76% of the original budget for those keeping count) came out in the Gateway Review, a month past the required deadline, and just happened to be published within a few minutes of the Dear Leader's Resignation Speech. Mind you, the only reason it came out at all was because the courts ordered to be published.

Yes, it seems that even in its death throes, the Blair Project cannot resist spinning for all its worth. It's another Good Day to Bury Bad News — an open goal so wide that we should have seen it coming a mile off.

Oh, we did.

A Funny Kind of Future

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 17:02:51 +0000

So here's the theory — a couple of senior labour bods, panic about the idea of El-Gordo as Dear Leader. In a desparate attempt to derail the expected coronation (and the gentlemen's likely permanent sinecure on the back benches), they launch a debate on the future of the Labour Party (my emphasis).

Now while this is as obvious a piece of astroturf as the gamut will allow, you'd think that if they had a modicum of sense, Haystack and Hairdo would ensure that the related website would do mad, off-the wall, distracting things like... ooh, debate ideas for the future of the Labour party.

Visiting it for the first (and likely only) time today, I discover this as the front page:

(Again, my highlighting)

Yes, it's Clarke, continuing to punt ID cards. And the forward looking bit (so far forward looking that even Tone hasn't suggested yet) is that the National Register should include a DNA database, presumably to support the Dear Leader's fondness for fishing expeditions.

Leaving aside that even this cowed Parliament balked at the idea of DNA inclusion, I'm just failing to see the 'future of the Labour Party' element here.

Anyone? Buehler? Anyone?

Lowering the Bar

Wed, 17 Jan 2007 15:47:49 +0000

So, The Dear Leader and Shaven-headed Sidekick have given up on the burden of proof of the criminal law...

The Al Capone Bill (yes, it's been at least a week since a Serious Crime Bill was in the works) is positing that the necessity of proof is just a fiddly little thing that plain gets in the way when you're trying to get those Nasty Mr Bigs.

Oh yes, we're reducing the burden of proof in Criminal matters to that of Civil cases because it's easier that way.

Insert your own A-levels joke here...

Home Office Promises - Unfit for Purpose

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 22:21:33 +0000

So I'm sure you remember the big kerfuffle about foreign ex-prisoners not being deported from a month or three ago. And how Big Hard Dr John was going to personally track them down and sling them out of the country. All (approx) 1,000 of them, but 43 of the most serious ones in particular.

This was so high a priority task that a special taskforce was set up to set up networks of informers, knock on doors in the middle of the night, bundle people off on unregistered flights to unacknowledged prisons in regimes with a laissez-faire attitude to death squads and so on.

You might therefore think that — given this was such a high priority of public safety — we could rest assured that a newly vitalised Home Office would complete the job. Ah but no. No, no no. It turns out that the Snatch Squad has been disbanded already, having failed to deport perhaps half of the 1,000 total, and to find 1 in 6 of the most serious offenders.

Which raises an interesting question — now that the Eye of Sauron (aka the editorials of Murdoch owned newspapers) has moved on, can we infer that the taskforce was never more than political window-dressing?

(Hat-tip: lebwog)

Spot the (Knee)Jerk

Wed, 03 May 2006 10:49:19 +0000

So, here we have a Home Office who are failing in the management of an existing task:

Trial judge recommends the offender should be deported on sentence completion. Home Office makes a formal decision to follow that recommendation, then fails to carry it out.

(Note that the judge recommends that the offender be deported, not be considered for deportation. HMG's description is spin.)

Rectifying this requires the Home Office to simply be better at keeping records and communicating between its various Directorates (ie Prison Service tells Immigration that someone's coming to the end of their sentence. Immigration turns up on release day with a plane ticket and a taxi to LHR).

Not rocket science, is it?

But in a desperate attempt to get ahead of the headlines, Ol' Jug-ears decides that what is needed is not better implementation of existing legislation (which is more than adequate - Home Secretaries already enjoy the broadest of discretions to deport people who are non-conducive to the public good), but new, more draconian legislation.

Again.

The Home Office's Best Week Ever

Sat, 29 Apr 2006 12:13:19 +0000

With apologies to la Hewitt for the title.

To start slightly off centre, this week saw two major scope increases for the National ID scheme (conveniently after the legislation has passed):

The NIR is to function as a complete population register with cross-functional data sharing that far exceed the stated strictly limited circumstances mandate. As previously predicted by the Fiend, myself and others, this is child's play once you have foreign keys to all the government's databases stored on the Register
Contrary to previous promises, the Card is to store your medical info. So as well as the inevitable Civil Liberties problem here, every provider of medical services is going to need the Card Reading Kit (previously estimated by the Home Office as £4k - £6k plus connectivity for each reader workstation). Whose budget is paying for this? Can't imagine the Dept for Health is jumping at the idea.

So I'm beginning to think that maybe the best way to keep tabs on the population isn't to give each of us an ID Card, but instead to lock the lot of us up in a secure location, and then HMG will know exactly where we all are. Oh, wait...

Continues below the fold »

Party Funding - Loans, Gifts and the State

Sat, 25 Mar 2006 23:43:47 +0000

Listening to the recent debates about party funding, there seem to be two camps emerging:

Let's leave all the funding limits in place, and just make it more transparent
Let's further limit the amounts individuals and/or corporate bodies can give/lend to political parties, and make up the gap with state funding that won't come with the taint of political favour for sale.

Now let's be clear - I think that people should be allowed to give money to promote their political beliefs. Parties are at their heart voluntary associations, and should be allowed to rely on their membership to fund them.

However, both of the above camps make the same assumption — that parties should be allowed (no, sorry, encouraged) to maintain their current spending levels, particularly in election season. But I have two very good reasons why this is a false assumption:

Campaigns should be fought on the basis of who has the best ideas and policies, not who spent the most on advertising. Does anyone really actually believe that the national poster campaigns make a valid contribution to that debate? The Devil Eyes poster? The Fagin poster? Are you thinking what we're thinking? At least we don't have paid-for political TV ads here...
If a party can't muster a mass membership that can fund its activities, doesn't that suggest that they're not connecting with the electorate? If one or two large donations can outweigh the entire membership fees and donations of the party membership, then of course it's going to bring undue influence with it, whether that's for good old fashioned pork barrel, or fittings for ermine.

Three Cheers for the Home Office!

Wed, 08 Mar 2006 10:51:54 +0000

HMG have been swearing blind for ages now that a main reason why we absolutely must have ID Cards and the National Identity Register is to ensure that we comply with the new International Civil Aviation Organisation passport standards, and remain in the US Visa Waiver Scheme.

The work involved in this would therefore increase the cost of passports to £93 (HMG figures, disputed by the LSE amongst others).

Well paint me pink and call me Nancy, the Home Office has managed to do it sooner, cheaper, and without all the ID Cards/NIR nonsense. On Monday it announced it would issue its first Biometric, ICAO-compliant passports this week. Home Office minister Andy Burnham was quick to point out that the passports would confirm the identity of the individual.

So, all the benefits of ID Cards and the NIR, for the cost of .... (wait for it...) £53, or a supplement of just £11 on current prices.

As HMG is an entirely logical beast, with the interests of the country at heart, we can expect an announcement from the Safety Elephant in the next few days declaring that the ID Cards/NIR objectives met, and the rest of the scheme being abandoned.

Oh, wait...

Democracy? We've Heard of It

Wed, 22 Feb 2006 17:01:26 +0000

Somewhat lost in recent events over Smoking Bans, ID Cards and Glorifying Terrorism, a couple of wee announcements that didn't hit the front pages: apparently we're abolishing Parliament and cancelling elections.

Nothing to worry about then...

MPs in 'Getting Something Right' Shocker

Wed, 15 Feb 2006 21:27:29 +0000

Well knock me down with a feather, Parliament has actually passed something that:

I agree with
Most of the rest of the country agrees with

What!? I hear you exclaim. Yes, it's true. In the midst of ignoring the country at large and taking away a large number of freedoms (not least, the freedom to leave the country without paying several hundred quid to deposit vast amounts of your information onto a honeypot for identity fraudsters), Parliament has agreed to bring Englandshire into line with the rest of these islands (and increasing areas of Europe) and ban smoking in public places.

Scotland's Top Hypocrite Strikes Again

Wed, 04 Jan 2006 16:28:39 +0000

Thanks to an extended flight delay this morning, I was able to listen to the excellent Radio 4 documentary on the Skye Bridge Tolls, abolished a year ago (how did I miss it?)

However, the coverage was spoiled by the outright and blatant revisionism of Brian Wilson, who claimed to have been always for the tolls. Would this be the same Brian Wilson who campaigned against them (as did the local Labour Party candidate, one Donald Munro) in advance of the 97 election, and was heard in January 98 uttering this statement:

as rapid progress as is possible must be made to reducing and removing tolls.

And who would seem to have been even more strongly against them two years earlier, if Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish (then a Tory minister) is to be believed.

But then, this is nothing new to Labour's ur-partisan attack dog (making John Reid look like a cutesy puppy by comparison), who the morning after the devolution vote was on television putting the boot into the cross party consensus to start Labour's Holyrood election campaign on the very shows designed to allow the non-Tory parties a moment of Isn't it good when we work together for the common good.

Dear Anne: About These ID Cards

Mon, 27 Jun 2005 15:11:39 +0000

Today I participated in Democracy, and wrote to (well, faxed) my MP on the subject of ID Cards. Read on for what I wrote, and wait and see if Anne Picking also participates. Although given her history of never rebelling against the Labour whip, and spending under £150 per annum on stationery, perhaps I shouldn't be too hopeful of a sensible response. We'll see, eh?

Choose Labour

Thu, 05 May 2005 09:37:31 +0000

Excellent pastiche of I. Welsh's classic Trainspotting monologue. It's worth quoting in full (by the magic of a Creative Commons license):

Choose a country where you're not allowed to walk down the street unmolested by some knuckle-dragging copper demanding you prove who you are.

Choose Shiraz and Ciabatta before waiting eight years and choosing to vocally crap on people who chose Shiraz and Ciabatta.

Choose a fat slob who tells a representative of Wales's national newspaper that he doesn't matter because he's not national enough, couldn't string a coherent sentence together if his life depended on it, takes the car for journeys of 200 yards, punches protestors in the face, and make him the man in charge of the nuclear launch codes if his boss has another "minor heart episode".

Choose the people who said that they'd never introduce tuition fees for students, shortly before introducing tuition fees for students. Choose the people who said they'd fix the House of Lords, then didn't. Choose the people who said they'd fix this voting system where all but 200,000 people are ignored even during election campaigns, then decided it didn't suit them.

Choose a party which thinks that the term "wasted vote" is anything other than an affront to everything it stands for.

Choose a man who decided in private to invade Iraq and then gather as much evidence, fake or not, to garner public support. Choose a man who denied doing so. Choose a man who knowingly initiated a war based on the concept of regime change, who knew that doing so is against the law, and lied, lied and lied again about doing so. Choose a man who, having been found out, says it's OK because the regime needed to be changed even though that's against the law.

Choose a government which cuts £60k to the wee Woodcraft Folk for not agreeing with that, before handing over £1.2m to Christian fundamentalist "youth workers". Choose a party which had over 400 members of parliament, of whom less than a fifth had the nerve to stand up to it all.

Choose a man who told you point blank that he did not "out" David Kelley, before admitting finally last week that -- oops, oh dear, I was lying through my arse again and I did do it after all.

Choose a party packed to the rafters with people who think it's alright to lock people up indefinitely without trial, who oppose even letting it go under the eyes of a judge first, who appear on television to claim that the legislation resulting from their defeat on that point proves that their plans are moderate. Choose a party whose Home Office representative appeared on television only yesterday claiming that the solution to not letting people into the country who shouldn't be granted admission is to introduce ID cards, rather than the slightly more obvious method of checking their passports.

Choose a party whose stated policy on anti-terror provisions is to repeal the Magna Carta. Most of all, choose letting that smug little tosser claim on Friday morning that you agreed with every last thing he ever did.

I chose not to choose Labour.

I choose something else.

http://www.honourablefiend.com/archives/2005/05/choose_labour.html

Kay Report Damns Case for War

Mon, 26 Jan 2004 01:37:40 +0000

The Kay Report, delivered along with Kay's resignation, concludes that there were no WMD worth talking about in Iraq since the first Gulf War.

"Just Ask the People of Basra"

Wed, 01 Oct 2003 07:45:25 +0000

As previously anticipated, the Government's entire rhetoric on the justification for the Iraq war is now based on regime change.

I've just been listening to Blair on Radio 4's Today programme, being asked whether, given the lack of WMD, he thought the war was still justified.

Blair's argument was entirely based on The people of Basra are grateful to be rid of Saddam. Which is all very well, except for the minor point that it was then, and is now, illegal to force regime change.

One could also add that the people of Iraq are also mustard keen to get the foreign troops out of the country so they can run the place themselves, but that would be mere quibbling.