Michael Martin – still corrupt

The Sunday Timesa has a brilliantly detailed article about the Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin here.

There is a dynastic quality to Martin’s Scottish political empire. Since 1979 he has been MP for Glasgow North East (formerly Springburn); his son, Paul, was elected to the equivalent seat in the same constituency in the Scottish parliament, despite having shown little dynamism while he served on Glasgow council. At election times, the pair of them appear together on the streets in identical suits and shirts. “We call them the Martin mafia,” laughs an SNP activist.

But this is not just a father-and-son political operation. For several years after Martin became Speaker, his wife, Mary, was also on his constituency payroll, earning £25,000 a year for unspecified duties, even though she was living in London with her husband. His daughter, Mary Ann, who lives in Glasgow, was for many years employed as his constituency secretary, and most people in the area assume she still is. In fact, as the autumn deadline approaches for MPs to declare which family members they employ, Mary Ann has been quietly removed from the payroll. The Speaker’s external PR adviser would say only that Mary Ann left her father’s employ “sometime this year”, though it is understood to be a very recent change. Martin declined a request for an interview, and his secretary wrote warning that nothing must be written that is “misleading or inaccurate as to fact”.

What is it with these socialists, they accuse the tories of acting like ‘toffs’ and then get all aristocratic themselves with nepotism.

I do note however the secretaries warning and I don’t intend to ‘mislead or be inaccurate as to fact’. So let me get straight to the point, Michael Martin is corrupt. Now I shall point out why this isn’t misleading or inaccurate but true.

Greene’s Labour colleagues in Scotland are reluctant to criticise Michael or Paul Martin. “Michael runs a tight ship,” says one Labour councillor, who asked to remain anonymous.

He adds that there is considerable resentment of the way they seem to regard the constituency as a family fiefdom.

Apart from the Tesco superstore complex, there are few signs of private commerce. Most economic activity is state-funded, and the business of this part of the city is recycling different types of funding, from Brussels, London and the Edinburgh parliament. Labour lost control of the devolved parliament to the SNP at the last election, but it keeps a grip on the city of Glasgow itself, which it has ruled for as long as anyone can remember. The permanent Labour rule has created a vast bureaucratic operation, state-funded and based on patronage and old-fashioned machine politics. “It’s like Chicago in the 1920s,” says McAllister.

In the mid-1970s, Labour councillors frequently faced charges of corruption; the graft is apparently more subtle these days, but it is there, and many politicians (there is no suggestion that this includes the Martins) have to reach some sort of accommodation with the big family gangs who run the main drug and prostitution rackets in the city. In Michael Martin’s constituency, 60% of children live in “workless households”, where the entire family income comes from the state.

Well clearly as the MP and MSP for the area they hold considerable sway in the labour party and are clearly bigwigs in the area. I’m going to ignore that totally unsubstanciated allegations about the family crime gangs but turn instead to the vast political bureacracy where nothing gets done without say so. Not only does this drag money out of the taxpayer who has to fund the endless waste, it also acts to entench the power of those in charge. Whilst this allows, indeed fosters corruption it should only be the local people who suffer.

(Under the Libertarian Party local councils would be totally funded by a local sales tax, planning laws more or less totally scrapped, schooling removed from political control and council monopolies abolished (the councils would not have a monopoly on waste disposal for example) and would not have to follow central govt orders about supplying services if local people didn’t want or couldn’t afford them).

Michael Martin was born on July 3, 1945, into an observant Roman Catholic household, one of five children. His father was a merchant seaman and his mother a cleaner. He left school at 15 without any qualifications, became a sheet-metal worker with Rolls-Royce and a shop steward, then a full-time organiser with the public-sector union Nupe. There was nothing fancy about his political career, his political associates recall, as he plotted his path to Westminster. Rather, Martin worked the system and covered the party bases, establishing favours through assiduous networking on Glasgow council before clinching the inner-city seat in 1979. Always on the right of the party, he was at war with Militant in the 1980s and won, served as parliamentary private secretary to Denis Healey from 1980 to 1983, and supported Roy Hattersley running for leader in 1983. Martin was seen by Commons colleagues as affable rather than clubbable, perhaps because he has never drunk alcohol. While most MPs aspire to join glamorous committees such as foreign affairs, he set his sights lower, becoming chairman of the administration committee – the “committee of blocked loos” – where he learnt how the Commons worked. This was to be crucial when Betty Boothroyd stepped down as Speaker in 2000, and his network of contacts sprang into action to return favours.

In other words a combination of buggins turn and backscratching.

When a Speaker of the House of Commons is finally selected, he or she must traditionally show reluctance and be dragged from the bench to the chair. It is an act, of course, for being Speaker is one of the most sought-after jobs in British politics. He has immense power, because he sets the procedures, chooses amendments and in which order they are debated, and defines what is a “finance” bill – a technical term attached to a piece of legislation that prevents the Lords from blocking it. Government and opposition leaders are scared of antagonising Mr Speaker. He cannot be sacked, unless he is caught red-handed, like Sir John Trevor in 1695, taking a bribe. And when he decides to leave, he joins the exclusive ex-Speakers’ club, with a thumping pension and a guaranteed seat in the Lords.

Two of Martin’s three immediate predecessors – George Thomas and Betty Boothroyd – rose from humble origins. Both adored the job and were popular, or at least respected, in the Commons. Lady Boothroyd says she loved every day of the job, and the perk of the finest flat in London, with its rooms facing south across the Thames. “For eight years I felt I was living in Venice, because I was always looking at water.”

Yet Martin has seemed incapable of enjoying his prize. From the start he appeared convinced that colleagues and the media were doing him down. He annoyed traditionalists by abandoning the Speaker’s wig and tights. He struggled with procedures, and did not always appear to know members’ names when calling them to speak. He was surprised to be told he had to resign from the Labour party to preserve the Speaker’s historic neutrality, and did so only reluctantly. One former official suggests that the Speaker was not exactly a workaholic. Where previous Speakers had spare time to prepare for official receptions by reading up on the guests, Martin, the former official recalls, tended to disappear to his private suite to watch television. He liked soap operas, but his favourite programme was The Royle Family. The official conceded that Martin was supportive of junior staff and encouraged people from disadvantaged backgrounds similar to his own. But he was contemptuous of people he sensed were cleverer than him, and likely to take offence at any perceived intellectual snobbery.

Being lazy is not a crime, neither is feeling inferier to those who are more intelligent. But it does tell us something of the manner of the man. He himself clearly knows and understands his own failings and begrudges others who are more able. This is the sort of person who is unsuited to political office as they will tens to ingnore the best course of action based purely on their own predjudice. I have seen this sort of stuff on numerous occasions from labour MP’s as they ignore expert opinion and get on with their crackpot ideas.

Supporters of Martin expected things to settle down, but they got worse. The atmosphere around his office became ever more acrid. Mrs Martin had never settled in London, one official said, and rarely went out. Staff believed she was a firm republican, because she would generally decline invitations to Buckingham Palace, and Mr Martin would go alone.

There were rows with the Commons security team when they challenged Mrs Martin’s guests to show their passes. The Martins became convinced that she should be entitled to a government driver. MI5 was contacted to see if there was any credible security threat to the Speaker’s wife that might justify a driver, but none was identified, so the request was denied.

It was at this point that Mrs Martin began claiming back over £4,000 worth of taxi receipts for shopping trips with her housekeeper, supposedly buying food for official functions.The Speaker and his wife have the entire Commons catering operation at their disposal for official functions, so the idea that Mrs Martin would need to take a taxi to buy cocktail nibbles was regarded as risible. Mike Granatt, a PR man drafted in to restore the Speaker’s reputation, resigned after finding he had been misled by the Speaker’s office about the nature of those trips.

And this is where the corruption is clearly identifiable and starts. The ‘rules’ might say that this is above board and within the law. Any ordinary person would instinctively smell the stench of corruption, the ‘rules’ might well allow Gordon Brown to claim for his subscription to Sky TV to give a well known example but this just means that when you get MP’s setting their own expenses claims that they will do whatever they like to feather their own nest and bugger the poor taxpayer who has to pay for it. We have already seen that Martin comes from a backgroud of entrenched corruption, it probably seems normal to him, he has his snout so firmly mired in the trough that he probably doesn’t even realise that most people view him and his ilk as disgusting parasites.

(Don’t we the voters deserve better than a self satisfied freeloader leeching of our labour. This is yet another benefit of Libertarian policies, by decreasing the size of the state the scroungers will have less opportunity to sponge off the rest of us).

Last spring there was another eruption in the Speaker’s office. A group of enterprising protesters from Greenpeace had climbed a crane moored in the Thames and unfurled an anti-nuclear banner reading: “Tony WMD”. Most MPs took an indulgent view of this latest manifestation of protest politics. But the Martins did not see the funny side. According to past and present Commons staff, Martin exploded with rage because the floating crane occupied by Greenpeace was moored just 30 yards from the front of his apartment. Martin found that four impertinent environmental activists had unrivalled views into his own bedroom, and indeed into all the finest staterooms of their official home on the floors below.

The man held responsible for failing to thwart the protest was the serjeant-at-arms, a public servant of the old school with impeccable military credentials, Major General Peter Grant Peterkin. He had spotted the risk of the crane in the Thames the moment it was put into position for repair works to Westminster Bridge. He alerted the river police, but they were then caught napping when a Greenpeace speedboat successfully landed the protesters on the crane.

Colleagues understood that the serjeant’s days were numbered, and there was no surprise three months later when he was told his contract would not be renewed. The Speaker did not attend Ampleforth-educated Grant Peterkin’s farewell party.

Again, this bit isn’t corruption but gives insight into this mans vile and dispicable personality

Douglas Carswell is highly unusual, as an MP who has publicly challenged Martin’s suitability for the job and demanded he set a date to step down. Carswell, one of the energetic young Tory modernisers elected to the Commons in 2005, deplores the snobbery of the allusions to “Gorbals Mick” and sees nothing to dislike personally about the Speaker. But Carswell thinks he has not been up to the job of holding the executive to account.

Colleagues were appalled in April when Carswell made his views known, predicting the MP’s career would not recover and he would never again be called to speak in the chamber. To his surprise and, he says, to Martin’s credit, Carswell was called for the first time in three years during prime minister’s questions just after he had demanded the resignation of Mr Speaker, though he concedes it might also be that it was the first time he had remembered his name.

Martin is temperamentally ill-suited to dealing with the tempest caused by MPs’ expenses because he is stubborn and old-fashioned in his view of Commons procedure. It is perhaps his misfortune to have been in the chair when abuse of the system came to light, characterised most infamously by Derek Conway paying his son Freddie £45,000 as a parliamentary researcher while he was a full-time student.

Conway is another MP who is clearly corrupt. It is not that he is paying a family member, it is that he is paying a family member much more than the going rate whilst the family member was fully engaged elsewhere (so in other words would not have been able to do the job oproperly anyway).

(And what is going to happen to Conway and Martin for their corruption. Bugger all. Which is why the Libertarian Party has taken a clear stand to mitigate against this kind of behaviour here.

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Don’t Trust Us – Test Us

Sadly, we’re all so used to corrupt politicians saying one thing and then doing another, that we would understand if you were to wonder why you should trust in our integrity. Don’t—test us. Until some honesty has returned to public life, we will require that any candidate standing for election in the name of the Libertarian Party will make the following commitments:

• the full details of any and all expenses that they claim in the execution of their duties will be disclosed in their entirety on this website within 30 days of being incurred

• they will not employ their spouse, or any other member of immediate family, using public funds

• they will not participate in any pension scheme associated with their public position

• they will not accept offers of hospitality, travel junkets or similar freebies, which could be seen as an attempt by any individual or organisation to gain influence or favour

Whilst placing restrictions over and above the current state of the law on our candidates is distinctly unlibertarian, as a party we are prepared to swallow our principles on this to ensure that you, the public, don’t have to keep swallowing yours in respect of how the political class currently abuse our trust.)

But there is a further problem for Martin, for he is complicit in many practices that, though within the rules, seem dubious. Like many of his constituents in “workless households” in Glasgow, Martin has been adept at maximising his family’s income from the state. On top of his £137,000 salary, he has a pension estimated to be worth £1.4m, and the best rent-free apartment in London. His wife was earning £25,000 a year in the first years of his speakership, and his daughter until very recently worked as his constituency secretary. His son, Paul, eased gently into the Scottish parliament, earns £50,000 a year. And, even though he has a primary home fully paid for by the taxpayer, Michael Martin claimed £17,166 last year in housing allowance on his home outside Glasgow, which is mortgage-free. Even his closest allies were dismayed when it emerged that he used air miles collected on official, reimbursed travel to fly his entire extended family from Glasgow to London business-class at Christmas. Paul Martin has had to explain to the Scottish parliament why he failed to declare this donation.

And this gets to the heart of the matter. The corruption is endemic and institutionalised, Martin is simply feathering his own nest in the same way as Conway and others.

It’s corruption pure and simple but since MP’s make their own rules they have simply used the law to legitamise their disgusting behaviour.

One of the oddities of parliament’s opaque procedures is that a Freedom of Information request will show that on February 19 this year, Speaker Martin gave tea to the Polish ambassador and claimed back £3.77 on expenses. Yet there is still no requirement for him to reveal which members of his own family he employs on the public purse, and at what salary. Ann Keen, Labour MP for Brentford and Isleworth, ran his campaign for Speaker eight years ago and remains a close ally in the Commons. She and her husband, the fellow Labour MP Alan Keen, earned the joint tabloid sobriquet “Mr and Mrs Expenses” after it became known that each was claiming £17,669 in housing allowances for the mortgage on an apartment on the south bank of the Thames, even though they live only nine miles from Westminster.

Martin’s stoutest defender on the Conservative benches has been Derek Conway, the “Mr Expenses” par excellence, who did not see the writing on the wall, has been stripped of the Conservative whip by David Cameron, and will not be defending Old Bexley and Sidcup at the next election.

Why am I not surprised.

By opting to defend such practices, and to benefit from them himself, Michael Martin has squandered his opportunity to become a pipe-playing, Italian-speaking, self-made national treasure, the sheet-metal worker who rose from grimy, post-industrial Glasgow to be Speaker in the House of Commons.

“It’s a tragedy,” says one retired official. “Having achieved this great eminence, he’s going to be remembered as the worst Speaker for 200 years.

The ONLY way to stop this sort of behaviour is to have a free market with full transparency in everything. Cut down the size of the state and abolish state monopolies and this sort of thing will more or less vanish.

I am not a violent person but I would be quite happy to watch Martin, Conway and the others sswinging from a lamppost. They really are the worst sort of vile and dispicable creatures.

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A backward step

Dizzy Thinks has just redesigned his blog.

I think the new design is just a bloody mess as he has done away with the simple clear and concise “modernist” look and replaced it with a heavy ‘in your face’ oldfashioned look.

Another problem is that the ‘comments’ is at the top of the post, surely one would wish to read the post first and then the comments, so why not have the comments at the bottom?

I am sure the writing will remain the same but the style is offputting.

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The left don’t just have bad policies, they are nasty as well

(Does that make them evil?)

The Guardian newspapers Comment Is Free have an article on former Prime Minister Margret Thatcher being given a state funneral when she dies.

A lot of the comments are quite frankly rather nasty and well, basically filled with hate. Why is it that the left are repulsive and disgusting in a way that the right appear not to be.

For example, a lot of people on the right will dislike the policies of Gordon Brown intensely, yet I doubt that in twenty years time Gordon the moron will have hoards of people eager and happy to broadcast their intentions of dancing on his grave. Brown will probably be remembered with pity as an idiotic buffoon with mental health problems who was simply out of his depth for 13 years.

I think the reason is to do with power. The left need to gain power so as to contol the state in order to boss others about whereas the rights idea of power is to loosen the shackles of the state.

With the conservatives having a major lead in the opinion polls they will almost certainly win the next general election which must be called in the next two years unless Cameron gets caught in bed with a sheep or something. The left will absolutely hate Cameron whatever he does so I suggest that he should aim to give them as much reason as possible. Not that I think he will, I regard him as just another proponent of the large state, albeit better than labour (talk about damning with faint praise).

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American Hypocrite

I don’t really blog much about american issues. After all, I’m not American and have never had any intention of ever living there, although like most places I guess it has both good and bad points.

One of these bad points would be the politicians.

Barak Obama is recently quoted as saying “We need to focus on fixing and improving our public schools, not throwing our hands up and walking away from them” during a meeting of the American Federation of Teachers when he mentioned his opposition to school voucher programs.

All well and good you may think.

Mr Obama has two children, where does he send them to school?

He sends them to the private University of Chicargo Laboratory school where tuition costs $20,000 a year per pupil. As a rich person Obama can afford this, meanwhile ordinary  people have to send their kids to the local taxpayer funded school and wait for the politicians to improve the standards.

I have a better idea. How about introducing education vouchers in the UK and also allow anyone to set up schools without any restrictions. The free market would soon see a plethoria of new schools opening and give the parents *REAL* choice in where to send their kids. Standards would soar as good schools were opened and expanded and bad schools closed. The cost to the taxpayer would also go down by £24billion as I have blogged here. Indeed, this is such a good idea it is actually the Libertarian Partys policy.

Of course, there would be losers. But would any sensible person actually mind bad teachers getting sacked, beaurocrats being thrown on the dole and taxation going down.

Another upside is that it would annoy the stupid hypocrites like Obama as their stupidity was exposed for all to see.

Hat tip to Coyote Blog for details of Obamas hypocracy.

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Lefty Righty?

A lot of people tend not to fully understand what freedom is all about.

For example, some on the left are very socially free while being economically authoritarian and some on the right are economically free while being socially conservative.

But it seems to me that the socially free left don’t accept or undertand that being economically free is *NOT* what the socially conservative mainstream portray it as. (To be fair the rightees also have this problem but tend to be more open in acknowledging the situation that their lefty counterparts).

As a Libertarian I am against such things as artificial constucts like limited companies having preferencial treatment under law by way of their limited liability. This sort of distinction is something that is not considered often enough IMO.

Let me give you two more examples.

1. I once had a long and detailed discussion with a businessman about him introducing drug tests to his workforce in order for him to greatly reduce his public liability insurance. Now irespective of my belief that all drugs should be legalised I am quite happy for this businessman to drug test his workers *WHILE THEY ARE AT WORK*. After all, while he is paying them and they should be in a state to do their jobs properly. The problem is of course that drug testing will not take into account the worker who finishes his shift on Friday afternoon, has a couple of joints Friday night and is perfectly fit and capable come Monday morning. The employers call on the worker only extends to the job the worker does and then only when the worker is being paid.

2. A few years ago I worked with a bloke who got sacked for lying on his application form. He suffered with a bad back and hadn’t declared it. His work was fine but the employment laws are such that the company wasn’t interested in taking the chance to employ a good worker but had to consider protecting their own back first.

You see it’s not about left or right it’s about authoritarianism or freedom. In the first case being free to do whatever one likes when it doesn’t interfere with your job and in the second case being free from restrictive laws which mitigate against against good workers. Two situations where the lefty rightees support one freedom and oppose another whist maintaining their opposition to each others position.

All it boils down to is two sides of the same coin.

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Homosexual – Police scandal

Cabalamat over at Amused Cynicism has a rather interesting post about how the Norfolk Police are treating one of their constables who doesn’t think that homosexuals should be given preferencial treatment here.

Whilst I agree with the thrust of Cabalamats argument that the Police should uphold British law irrespective of whatever any silly ‘supreme being’ belief system can come up with and that people who work in such jobs should therefore put the application of the law above their own personal views, I do feel that Cabalamat is disregarding the nature of the policemans bosses in calling for such action.

While neither me nor Cabalamat know the details of any allegations due to lack of detail from the newspaper report it is clear (to me at least) that PC Graham Cogman has done nothing more than point out his distaste that one particular group, in this case, homosexuals, was singled out for promotion.

I used to be a policeman and when I took the oath of the office of constable it was to police “without fear or favour” and by having the top brass of Norfolk Police telling everyone that they were encouraged to show support for a particular 5% of the community *IS* showing favour. The same thing happened last year with a group of firemen up in Scotland. Their bosses wanted them to hand out fire safety leaflets at a homosexual pride march and the firemen in question were threatened with the sack if they didn’t comply. The reality of the situation in both the Scottish firemen and this case is that the bosses want to be seen to be ticking the “lets be nice to homosexuals and promote them” box instead of focusing on getting their collegues to perform the duties that we the taxpayer actually pay them to perform.

Considering all this, when PC Cogman was fined 13 days pay he must have realised that he had nothing to lose and therefore might as well take his employer to court for descrimination.

Good luck to him I say, even though I think he is a religious nutter his bosses clearly aren’t concerned with treating everybody equally or even offending the views of those people who like him think homosexual activity is a sin. Norfolk is a small force of some 1200 or so police and I just know that PC Cogman now has absolutely no chance of ever getting any promotion, courses, detachments or anything else he may want to do with his career. Instead he will get all the ‘shit’ jobs going, however good he maybe at police work and treating members of the public the same.

As an aside, the first comment Cabalamat has received is mere noise and adds nothing to the debate. I know Cabalamat has a light touch where moderation is concerned but in this case it’s nonexistant.

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Propective MP wants council to waste money.

One of my local papers, the Wisbech Standard of Friday 18th July has on it’s front page the call by Stephen Barclay the conservative parliamentary candidate for Cambridgeshire North East, who wants the local district council, Fenland to provide £100,000 for a night shelter for the homeless in the centre.

If Mr Barclay wants to spend £100,000 on the homeless he should provide these funds from his own pocket and not seek to use the power of the state to force already hard pressed council tax payers to cough up yet more money that is simply unnecessary.

However, if Mr Barclay *REALLY* wanted to help the homeless he would be calling for the abolition of all the unnecessary laws and red tape that stop landlords providing housing. The only thing these laws and regulations do is push up the price at which landlords can offer accommodation and entrench monopolies whereby new entrants to landlording are unable to enter the market place and thereby offer competition which will keep prices low and standards high.

So why is Mr Barclay taking this stand? After all, it’s far easier to call for other people to be taxed instead of dipping into ones own pocket so I bet this really isn’t anything to do with the homeless. I bet this is much more to do with Mr Barclay getting his face on the front page of the local newspaper because he wants to get elected as an MP. Even though the tories will be defending a large majority built up over the years by a respected local man, the retiring MP Malcolm Moss, Mr Barclay is not a local so he is doing this simply to get known. The “cause” could have been anything, it just so happens that homelessness was the first thing that Mr Barclay came up with in order to appear caring.

I am going to send this to the Wisbech Standard to see if they print it.

Update The editor has indeed published this, more or less whole, with only a couple of small changes that I must admit make it slightly easier to read. There is also another letter on exactly the same subject also moaning about the waste of money but which doesn’t go into reasons why.

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Unions go on strike

The local Authority unions have gone on strike.

Did anyone notice?

I didn’t and I bet most other people didn’t notice either, which would tend to indicate that this country has an over abundance of local authority workers whom the rest of us can do without as they are unnecessary.

If a private company pays excessive wages they go out of business, if they don’t pay enough then they don’t get enough high quality workers and go out of business. The market takes care of this situation to send out signals that benefit everyone.

Local Authorities who pay too much money to their workforce merely increase the council tax again and labour Local Authorities actually get more money from central govt with which to featherbed their workers anyway. In other words the full force of state power is used to extract money from taxpayers under the threat of having something nasty like jail and large fines happen to then if they don’t cough up. There is also national minimum wage legislation to comply with. Private enterprise will merely mechanise away or change their business modal so as not to employ workers that add less value than the the minimum wage from their labour. Local Authorities have to abide by wage legislation and are also tightly controlled by govt dictat about having to provide numerous services that are uneconomic or inefficent or just plain unnecessary. The market is not free in this instance and therefore cannot operate to anyones benefit.

So how can the system be changed to make it better.

Firstly scrape the central govt grant to councils and also council tax for local taxpayers and replace this with a local sales tax. This means that people have the chance of not paying much by not buying much and Local Authorities are in competition with one another to hold their rate of sales tax down otherwise people will simply use the shops in another council area.

Secondly, stop govt interference. Allow councils to make their own decisions about things which will make councillers much more accountable to their electorate. I guarantee that the turnout for local elections will shoot up as local voters will once again be able to make their voice heard.

Incidently, a local sales tax and accoutability at a local level are Libertarian Party policies. Fopr more information go here.

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Don’t wait till the truth about knife crime stabs your eyes out…

…may well be a long title but FFS, it’s no worse than the blatant idiotic stupidity of that pompous twat Jacqui Smith and labours policy wonks at the Home Office.

Let me explain. There has been a bit of a media frenzy about knife crime recently and then suddenly 5 people were stabbed in one day in London and that cretin Smith felt compelled to issue a knee jerk reaction. Hence she came out with the idea that knife carriers and users should be taken rpound to the nearest hospital to witness the suffering and apologise to the victims of knife attacks (At this point intelligent readers may well remember Tony Blairs crackpot idea of marching hooligans to the local cashpoint to fine them on the spot, another idea that went down like a lead balloon with was quickly dropped never to be mentioned in polite society again).

At this point I assumed that this particular stupidity would simply go the same way as Blairs stupidity of a few years ago. I was wrong. A good arbiter of public opinion is the BBC’s “Have your say” section on their website. Basically, it when ballistic and utterly condemned this latest move by making the very fair point that victims wouldn’t want to meet their attackers wilst recovering from surgery etc.

So what does Smith do, she claimed it was a “misunderstanding”. Yet when confronted with the email sent to the media and the Press Assoc. report stemming from it which read

Young offenders caught in possession of a knife are to be confronted with stabbing victims in an attempt to underline the horrors of carrying a weapon, under plans announced by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith.

Mrs Smith unveiled a series of shock tactics including visits to A&E wards where people are being treated for knife wounds, meetings with the families of stabbing victims, and prison visits to offenders jailed for knife offences.

The measures are part of the Government’s initial response to last week’s horrific spate of knife attacks which culminated in the killing of four people in London in the space of 24 hours.

Smith quickly backtracked but not before they had got the tame BBC to reort that the press release was ambiguous and therefore open to misinterpretation.

SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN

The liebour party, more spin than a tumble drier.

Or, if like me you follow George Orwells line that language should be used openly and made clear,

The labour party, a bunch of fucking liars.

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David Davis, he’s still authoritarian.

Now that the results of the Haltemprice and Howden by election are in lets look at the result. The turnout was down by 50% due to 9,000 students being away and rain but Davis share of the vote was only down by about 25%. That is a clear indication that people support his stand.

I must say I was most pleased that Jill Saward, standing on a platform of supporting the destruction of freedoms only managed to get 492 votes and was beaten by Gemma Dawn Garrett of the Miss Great Britain Party with 521. Someone should tell Saward that being the victim of crime doesn’t make her views worth listening to.

However, I do find it unhelpful that Davis still supports such measures as 28 days imprisonment without charge and the death penalty. Davis is clearly not a Libertarian and I must say that the Libertarian Party was wrong footed by not fielding it’s own candidate.

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Bob Geldof writes in the Telegraph…

This is a brilliant bit of writing in support of David Davies and the by election today.

I have reproduced it in full because I think it’s so good.

Today’s by-election in Haltemprice and Howden is not normal. It is extraordinary.

The people there are not being asked to consider the competing policies of government and opposition. They are being asked to think about who we are, what we stand for and whether we will continue to be the country built by previous generations. This is a fight about how much of our liberty the state can remove, before it changes who – and what – we are.

As a voting issue, it may appear less immediate than the financial downturn. There will be no debate about standards of living, but rather the standards we choose to live by. I hope the people of East Yorkshire come out in greater numbers than ever, because the issue is more vital than even our immediate food and fuel bills.

They are being asked about what kind of country we wish to live in. We may never get to vote on something so profoundly fundamental again.

Let us be grand for once, for we talk of great subjects. Ask “what is the point of Britain?” if we so casually give up the liberty which defines this country, its greatest gift to the world.

Still today, 800 years later, Magna Carta resonates: “To no man will we deny, To no man will we delay, Justice and Right.” Is that not grand, worthy of your vote? Is habeas corpus to be traduced in one sad moment of political expediency? Do we not clearly deny and delay Justice and Right when we imprison a person for 42 days without charge?

What existential threat do we face greater than those of the past 800 years? What great terror exists today that not civil war, not world war, nor recent other terrorisms could make our forefathers change the fundamental basis of this state? What is so dangerous that our oldest statutes could be upended for such a ha’p'orth of momentary panic?

What terrorises the terrorists is our civilisation. What those unthinking fools of fundamentalism fear most are the freedoms our representatives now strip away. This “war on terror” is against Islamist forces that reject the Enlightenment.

How can we ever succeed, if we side with our opponents in rejecting those ideals? Every moment we are spied on by the invisible watchers, every time we are monitored, every time we are logged on databanks, they win. And every time we accept it, we lose.

Why should I carry an ID card? I own my identity – nobody else. The war on terror is no answer. ID cards did not stop the bombers in Germany or Spain. Nor does it diminish crime, nor illegal immigration. And if for some mad authoritarian reason they are introduced, stand by for a brisk trade in false British ID cards.

It is comically Orwellian to trot out that absurd authoritarian excuse: “Only the guilty need be afraid.” How sickening to hear in England that repulsive expression so beloved of the Stasi-state, which is so demonstrably false.

Shall we say it to the innocent men of Forest Gate, shot, banged up and subsequently released without charge? Shall we say it to the demonstrators going about their democratic business who are roughed up, abused and detained?

Then there are the everyday liberties that affect us all. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act – the law that empowers the state to conduct surveillance and get hold of your phone records, emails and website usage – now extends to 786 councils and public bodies.

In 2006 they made 1,000 applications, each day, to use these powers! They say: “Only the guilty need be afraid.” Not in Brave New Britain. It is only the innocent that need be afraid. For the state now already assumes our guilt. We have all become suspects – guilty till proved innocent.

It is our complacency that lets them get away with it – our apathy we must fear. Are we so threatened that we must uniquely introduce the most illiberal precautions? The United States feels itself at war, but has an absolute limit of two days of pre-charge detention.

In Ireland, at the height of the IRA terror campaign, the limit was seven days. Australia, 60 miles from the most populous Muslim nation and the victim of its own bomb horrors, only has 12 days. Spain, France, Germany, Russia – all victims of terror, yet none detain longer than seven days.

What is wrong with us? Have we lost our confidence, our stoicism, our bravery and dignity – our sang froid? Not if the great dignity of the victims’ families following the 7/7 bombings in London, is anything to go by. Or the magnificent response of the capital with that very British attribute of “getting on with it”.

Is Parliament afraid? Apparently not. MI5? They say not. So why imprison people on mere suspicion for 42 days? How very unBritish.

I am not complacent about the terrorist threat. But the Government has presented no case that is remotely convincing. On the other hand, 42 days is most definitely counterproductive. Unjust law is grist to the terrorist mill – allowing them to take from us the very freedoms they despise.

What the terrorists are frightened of is the very thing this law rejects: reason, values, logic, liberty and law; what Rumpole, that great defender of Justice, calls the Golden Thread that runs through British justice. And what moral authority rests in a lawmaking body that acts against the liberties of its own people?

I was told David Davis was out on a limb on this one. Shamefully that is true. But it is the right limb to be out on. And it is a limb I am happy to join him on. It’s the same limb that William Wilberforce clambered out on to in his fight against slavery. It is the limb that justice, liberty and rights are perched upon.

This by-election is about that, nothing else. Not party, policy or personality. It is about Magna Carta, habeas corpus, the constitution – what Britain is, was and must remain.

Today East Yorkshire gets to speak for us all, on behalf of justice versus intolerance. To whistleblow against encroaching authority. To firewatch against unthinking power. To speak about an idea of liberty under law. To vote for an idea of a kind of life. The idea of Britain.

Tory, Lib Dem, Labour: who cares – clamber out on this limb with us, for it’s where we all belong. Turn out hugely and thank God that you are in a country that is still free to do so.

Liberty is always dangerous – but it’s the safest thing we have.

Excellent.

On other matters

I once called Bob Geldof a ‘scruffy cunt’. It was in 1986 at the old Kensington town hall swimming pool. I was there with a mate, standing by the coffee machine getting a drink because they always put too much chlorine in the pool when I noticed a very tall man with his back to me wearing an ankle length dirty brown ‘puffa’ coat. I said “Look at that scruffy cunt”. My mate said “That’s Bob Geldof”. He was there with his stupid wife at the time and a couple of their kids. As soon as I had said it he turned round and I managed to look the other way but I could see from the corner of my eye that he spent a good 3 or 4 seconds looking directly at me before turning back towards his wife and kids.

This isn’t the first time that I have been rude to someone in the public eye (or indeed out of the public eye) and I doubt it will be the last and it’s not something that I am proud of. I have a habit of speaking first before fully engaging my brain on matters of decourum.

In my defence, he was, very.

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Gordon Brown is a liar

About nine million motorists will have to pay more road tax under reforms aimed at punishing gas-guzzling vehicles, the government has admitted.

Official estimates say vehicle excise duty will rise for 44% of vehicles made since 2001 – by up to £245 for the most polluting ones – but will fall for 18%.

So when Gordon Brown stood up in the House of Commons to announce these new tax increases he *DELIBERATELY AND KNOWINGLY LIED* when he claimed that the ‘majority’ would pay less.

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