I’m angry because nobody read my post last November and if they did, it didn’t change a thing (so what’s new). So is Sarah Brown, Gordon’s wife, as well she might be, living with a tripehead. But we’re both angry today because yet another miscarriage of justice is poised to be committed in the name of the ‘War on Terror.’ By John J Kelly

In November 2008, Thus helped draw attention to the long-running battle against the extradition of Gary McKinnon to the US. Today, the government will decide whether to hand him over to the US authorities on dubious, if not outright illegal grounds, or see justice done and tell the US to grow up. So far, in thrall to an extradition treaty covertly passed in 2004 by Tony Blair and signed by David Blunkett (who now admits it was a bad idea), the UK government and House of Lords have done nothing to protect a UK citizen’s rights. With the utmost respect for Mr McKinnon and his mother, who enlisted Sarah Brown, wife of Gordon, in her campaign amongst others, this case is bigger than the illegal and grossly disproportionate detention of an Asberger’s sufferer. If McKinnon’s extradition proceeds, no UK citizen is safe from the predatory ravings of publicity-seeking US neocon nutters. Blair is possibly a loony and certainly has much to answer for. McKinnon is an exopolitics nut who was looking for evidence of UFOs and anti-gravity machines when he stumbled into Pentagon computers (which were inadequately password-protected). One of the above was and is a power-crazed sociopath whose legacy should be extradition and trial before the International Criminal Court in the Hague. The other is a harmless guy with mental health issues who has already suffered enough.

McKinnon hacked in to US military sites looking for evidence of UFOs nearly 7 years ago. He never denied that his hacking was extensive, acknowledged its criminality, but vehemently denied that it was motivated by malice. The US authorities claim his antics caused widespread damage to their defence networks. McKinnon asserts that he was not even a professional hacker – if anything, he alerted the Strangeloves to the frightening inadequacies of their technology and thus deserves a congressional medal. He was arrested by the UK High Tech Crimes Unit in 2002, who told him he would get a community service sentence, but things took a bizarre turn for the worse when the US authorities demanded extradition and trial in the US, which could lead to up to 70 years in a Supermax prison. Incarceration will almost certainly exacerbate McKinnon’s Asperger’s Syndrome, which in his case manifests itself as an ‘honesty compulsion’ that will get him into terrible trouble with fellow inmates. (It also means that he will not plea bargain to reduce the sentence for something he is certain he didn’t do).

The chances of either a fair trial or leniency have been thrown into doubt by reports that US authorities have said they want to see him “fry”. It bodes ill for the much-touted lenient and caring US approach – has anyone seen any evidence thus far? – that the Obama regime have not intervened. Never mind Thus, when the ultra right wing Daily Mail is openly campaigning against the one-sided extradition law in general and the McKinnon case in particular, and the Prime Minister’s wife is onside, even an American should be able to work out that pursuing this vendetta will not win friends abroad. The US is happy to allow Britons to lose their lives fighting its stupid wars. They have no right to demand unilateral rendition of our citizens. Allow McKinnon to be tried here, where he committed his alleged crimes, or tell us to our faces that you don’t trust our legal system. Anything less is anal rape – another thing that Gary will need to watch out for in a US prison. ]]> http://thusmagazine.com/2009/07/stop-the-extradition-of-gary-mckinnon-to-the-us-its-undemocratic-heinous-downright-stupid-and-illegal/feed/ 0 http://thusmagazine.com/2009/06/epitaph-for-a-rump-parliament/ http://thusmagazine.com/2009/06/epitaph-for-a-rump-parliament/#comments Sun, 21 Jun 2009 22:41:45 +0000 John Kelly http://thusmagazine.com/?p=3640 Thus reader John Poole unearthed Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell’s speech upon dissolving the UK Parliament in 1653, which could be recycled as and when the current smelly rump parliament is dissolved – in a vat of Draino, perhaps?

“…It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money. . . . Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter’d your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth? . . . . Ye sordid prostitutes, have you not defil’d this sacred place, and turn’d the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress’d; your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse the Augean Stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings, and which by God’s help and the strength He has given me, I now come to do. . . . I command ye, therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. You have sat here too long for the good you do. In the name of God, go!”

Oliver Cromwell’s speech of 1653, explains how and why England briefly officially rejected Parliamentary democracy and became a dictatorship. He awarded himself the title ‘Lord Protector.’ We currently have 7 unelected Lords in the UK Parliament itself, including ‘Lord’ Mandelson, representing himself, whose deputy is an unelected Prime Minister who believes he saved the world.

Women are window dressing in the Brown government, as this picture of Peter Mandelson in weekend attire clearly shows

After 13 months of manufacturing decline and with unemployment heading towards 3 million,  the unelected British PM has promoted the equally unelected Business Secretary, ‘Lord’ Peter Mandelson, to First Secretary of State in a clear signal that his ‘democratic renewal’ measures mean exactly the opposite. Mandelson, who is really calling the shots at the fag end of this ruptured government, wanted the job of Foreign Secretary but David Miliband, who led a failed coup against Brown last autumn, refused to move. Meanwhile, fingers-in-the till Chancellor, Alastair Darling remains in his post because Brown’s choice of replacement, smeary Ed Balls, would have catalysed a full scale revolt. Blairites James Purnell and ‘Europe’ Minister Caroline Flint resigned in high dudgeon, the latter claiming that women were seen as ‘window dressing’ in the Brown cabinet. Ms Flint had posed as a vamp in a red dress in the (left-leaning) Observer Magazine fashion magazine the previous month. Both she and Purnell have serious questions to answer about the creative use of their members’ allowances.

As for women as window dressing – Jacqui Smith, Home Secretary also ‘resigned’ on Thursday. We first highlighted her part in the arrest of Conservative MP Damian Green (Thus passim) as a cover-up for her own abuse of second home allowances several months ago (Thus passim). In the hail of muck and bullets, the passing of Tony McNulty, Employment and Welfare minister, went almost unnoticed. The surveillance society and anti-transparency cheerleader McNulty, who allegedly gouged over £60,000 by claiming mortgage interest relief on his dad’s house (Thus passim) also played a leading role in the diversionary firestorm which saw disgraced Speaker of the House Michael Martin authorise the attack on Damian Green (for uncovering widespread manipulation of immigration statistics) all those months ago.

Back to window dressing. We’ve got an economy to fix. Who better to do it than Brown’s close personal friend ‘You’re fired’ Alan Sugar? He can break the news to the millions who will lose their jobs, perhaps even to Gordon himself. Promoting him to the House of Lords and parachuting him into the job of helping Mandelson sell what’s left of the business sector into the hands of Billy Big Time ‘oligarchs’ who turn out to be short of readies when the bill arrives displays perfect synergy. Both are preening fantasists. Sugar’s manufacturing legacy is terrible: Amstrad PCs, clock radios, rebadged video recorders and plastic phones that didn’t work, mostly manufactured in Asian sweatshops and assembled by monkeys in Neasden. Amstrad shares recorded a record loss in the 1987 stock market crash, when people suddenly woke up to the fact that they were unlikely to make money on products which would represent poor value if you found them in a Christmas cracker. Sugar’s resurgence came as a result of hosting a ‘reality’ TV gameshow, ‘The Apprentice’ where he breaks every rule of employment law and encourages barrow boy antics as a way of doing business. It is difficult to project the true horror of this man, so for the benefit of non-UK readers, here is an insight to his management strategy and business ethics, presented in cruel and unusual fashion by CassetteBoy. This is New Labour’s role model of a business leader. There is nothing more to add.

Except that Gordon got one thing right. Sugar is five times as popular as he is. CassetteBoy vs the Bloody Apprentice has so far had 550,000 YouTube viewers. The equally compelling Gordon Brown has only attracted 116,000 viewers. Joking aside, the country needs a General Election, not because Brown is a monster (he is) but because New Labour and its infighting, self-aggrandising, authoritarian second-raters have impaired democracy beyond recognition. It won’t get one without a fight for precisely that reason.

An admirable foreword is provided by that beacon of propriety, chauffeur-driven-to-excess Speaker Michael Martin. Fortify yourself with his good words and a working knowledge of a lucid and cogent, overarching section ‘Principles Governing Members Allowances,’ then rid yourself of the encroaching impression that we are governed by a bunch of shameless, grasping, incompetents. No, unless they are dyslexic, some of them are definitely crooks. The ‘Principles’ section contains, inter alia, the following. (The italics are mine – not of course that I am seeking to influence your view):

• Members must ensure that claims do not give rise to, or give the appearance of giving rise to, an improper personal financial benefit to themselves or anyone else. (This principle, clearly stated, has been comprehensively abused in so many cases that it is almost worth resting the case here. But I won’t.)

• Members are committed to openness about what expenditure has been incurred and for what purposes (Freedom of Information Act ….. apply to me? I rather think not, Jimmy! I‘m not about to tell any of you nasty little nonentities what I spent your brass on ….. and if anyone spills the beans we’ll call him a terrorist and set oor friends the Plod on him.”)

• “Claims should be above reproach and must reflect actual usage of the resources being claimed”. (Seven hundred and thirty quid for a massage chair for my bad back! Would you be kind enough to deliver it to my, er, second home please. Now have you got anything that will cure sticky fingers”?)

• “Claims must only be made for expenditure that it was necessary for a Member to incur to ensure that he or she could properly perform his or her parliamentary duties – such as a massive eight grand telly. 

• Allowances are reimbursed only for the purpose of a Member carrying out his or her parliamentary duties. Claims cannot relate to party political activity of any sort, nor must any claim provide a benefit to a party political organisation. (Fair enough on this one I suppose – there’s not much danger of our Honourable Members being so dishonourable that they would consider parting with any of our cash, once they’d got their hands on it, to any third parties – political or otherwise).

• It is not permissible for a Member to claim under any parliamentary allowance for anything that the Member is claiming from any other source. (Here’s a wheeze love. We’re both MPs right? And we’ve got two houses? You claim one as your second home and I’ll claim the other. Then maybe we could rent one of them out too. And we’re allowed to claim travel costs for each other too …. it’s true – ‘things can only get better’).

• Individual Members take personal responsibility for all expenses incurred, for making claims and for keeping records, even if the administration of claims is delegated by them to others. (Anyone could forget that the mortgage was paid off eighteen months ago – it’s right there alongside not remembering where you‘ve put your glasses or leaving the bath tap running).

• The requirement of ensuring value for money is central in claiming for accommodation, goods or services – Members should avoid purchases which could be seen as extravagant or luxurious. (This carpet’s looking a bit past its best. I’ll nip down to Carpet World and see what they’ve got on offer – or would you prefer I went to an antiques shop in Manhattan?)

• Claims must be supported by documentary evidence, except where the House has agreed that such evidence is not necessary. (Thank God the documentary evidence is finally in the public domain; horse shit, hanging chandeliers, flats for the kids, cleaning moats – all purchases vital to the function of democracy and bought at a time when the Government were sending troops out to parts foreign to get shot at with no body armour and in inadequate vehicles – makes you proud to be British).

Remember the New Labour 1997 campaign tune, ‘Things can Only Get Better?’ At the time an awful lot of us thought they couldn’t get much bleeding worse, but we were wrong. High spots, for me at least, were:

• moral outrage on the killing of foxes – and then killing tens of thousands of innocent people in foreign wars on the basis of spin • economy so far up the furthest regions of shit creek that our grandchildren will be picking up the tax bill • devolutionary muddle • ditching the Bufton Tuftons only to stack the House of Lords with cronies and stooges • needless regulation • surveillance • selling the country to oligarchs – and and all achieved whilst up to your elbows in the public till. Try spinning your way out of this one.  

John Keyes is a very big redhaired Irishman and my oldest schoolfriend, son of a miner and, like me, someone who would have been dragged to the gibbet rather than abandon his Labour roots. Thank you, Gordon fucking Brown, Blair, Mandelson, Darling, Harman, Straw, Miliband, Hoon, Blears, Mr and Mrs Balls, John Reid, Byers, Hillary Benn, Jacqui Smith, Phil Woolas, Milburn, Faulkner, Jonathan Powell, Matthew Taylor, Ruth Kelly (no relation), Hewitt, Campbell, Draper, Whelan, Shriti Vadera and all the backroom cretins who have stolen our hope. Special mention to the Guardian. Apologies to all those I’ve left out. John J Kelly.

PS. It’s a Shame Granita restaurant in islington didn’t close before Blair and Brown met to carve up the country. I wonder if they claimed on expenses?

“It beggars belief that the Secretary for Employment and Welfare Reform should be found to be either incompetent in his interpretation of Parliamentary allowances rules, or disingenous in their interpretation. Likewise the stern Ms. Smith. They should resign in shame. But that’s unlikely to happen. We’ve got more important things to do, such as setting an example of ’shared values’ for the wurreld and all its wee citizens, according to this week’s wheezing initiative to ‘combat Al Qaida‘ by training 60,000 shop workers (hopefully not Woolworths’ employees), council staff and parking attendants to take the war on terror to new levels. It won’t work, Gordon. We’re more scared of you and your light-fingered mates than we are of Bin Laden.” (Thus Passim: March 24, 2009). The same piece detailed how ‘Lord’ Peter Mandelson allegedly spent £500.00 per week on flowers for his office. Mandelson allegedly put in a claim for extensive renovations to his constituency address one week before resigning as an MP to become an EU commissioner. He sold the house for £135,000 profit. Then again, he sees no problem with people becoming ‘filthy rich.’

Thus has consistently speculated that the UK government uses anti-terror laws and a politicised police force as tools for authoritarian and anti-democratic assaults on civil liberty and as tools to attack political opponents. The arrest of Tory MP and Shadow Immigration Minister Damian Green in December 2008 after the leaking of embarrassing immigration statistics is a prime example (Thus passim). Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, was implicated. Michael Martin, Speaker of the House of Commons, authorised police to raid Green’s parliamentary office without a warrant on the grounds that the leak compromised national security. This week, Martin, a former Scottish Labour MP whose role is to uphold the probity, dignity and integrity of Parliament ‘impartially,’ shouted down Lib Dem MP Norman Baker and former Labour Minister Kate Hoey,  both of whom have campaigned for reform of MPs’ allowances in the past. Ms Hoey questioned the wisdom of the Speaker’s tactic of calling in the police again, this time to investigate the leaks to the Daily Telegraph which resulted in the tide of revelations of abuse of privilege and potential fraud by some members of all three parties. Misuse of police time and resources to hunt down a whistleblower could be construed in itself as a further abuse of privilege. Without the leak, the extent of endemic fiddling would have been obfuscated and suppressed. Indeed, Labour attempted earlier to exempt scrutiny of politicians’ expenses on the spurious grounds of national security.

Speaking on Radio 5 last Monday, another Thus favourite, the fragrant Alastair Campbell, Mandelson’s spinmeister Golem, editor of the Iraq War dodgy dossier (and thus an admirable moral commentator) said that as yet, the ‘C’ word had not been used in the context of this scandal. Another ‘C’ word could just as easily be employed in his context, but I digress. Let’s use the C word – not that one, the other one. Corruption.

Shadow Prime Minister David Cameron landed a great clunking fist on the grey jowls of Gordon Brown throughout this farrago, promising a full and transparent disclosure on how MPs spend their allowances, banning Tories from claiming for household furnishings and removing the whip from his aide, Andrew McKay MP. The Prime Minister followed suit by suspending former Agriculture Minister Elliot Morley for claiming £16,000 in mortgage payments after the loan had been repaid. Justice Minister Shaheed Malik (Sultan of ID Cards, by the way) reluctantly stepped down on 15 May, having forgotten to declare a vastly subsidised residence and buying a TV set for £1000.00. Labour peer ‘Lord’ Truscott was also forced to step down in a separate revelation, reported in the Sunday Times, that he, amongst others, had promised to influence legislation in the Upper House in return for cash. But Communities Secretary Hazel Blears (Thus passim) is still in situ, despite having been proven to have omitted to pay over £13,000 capital gains tax on a dubious ‘second home’ which she acquired on Members’ allowances and sold for a profit. It is perhaps more worrying that the UK Inland Revenue (HMRC) apparently ‘signed off’ on her tax return.

Westminster today is a vast necropolis of skeletons waiting to fall out of closets. Ten days of ‘revelations’ have curiously diminished the impact. Excesses have largely conformed to class stereotypes. Toffee-nosed Tories put in claims for draining moats, replumbing swimming pools and even the upkeep of a helipad. Labour expenses, with the exception of Mandelson’s garden and Tony Blair’s use of his allowance for a deposit on a £3.6 million Connaught Place mansion, have been more dreary – £800 plasma screen TVs, toilet seats and mock Tudor fascia for aspirational capitalist roaders. Cameron, whose expenses were apparently wholly above board, nevertheless expressed public abhorrence that members of his party could behave like – old fashioned Tories. By contrast, after his attempt to pre-empt independent investigation using the gruesome YouTube broadcast (inspired by Mr C word himself, Alastair Campbell) Brown, and leaderine-in-waiting, Harriet Harman, grasped at the defence that members were largely acting within the rules, thus the system, not its actors, was to blame. On this logic, a burglar might argue for acquittal on the grounds that it was the householder’s fault for leaving the window unlatched. 

When, and if, a comprehensive review of MPs’ expenses, remuneration and allowances is undertaken, it must be made explicit that any breach of not merely the rules, but the principle governing those rules will result in instant dismissal. Any breach of UK law, including tax avoidance, should be investigated, tried and punished according to UK civil and criminal law. Several UK MPs are already familiar with the process. Of the 646 members of the House of Commons, 84 have been arrested for drink driving in the last year, 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit, 29 have been accused of spouse abuse, 21 are currently defendants in lawsuits, 14 have been arrested on drug-related charges, 17 have directly or indirectly  bankrupted at least two businesses, 9 have been accused of writing bad cheques, 8 have been arrested for shoplifting, 7 have been arrested for fraud and 3 have done time for assault. 

John J Kelly

Thus predicts that reluctantly, the shrinking viole(n)t Campbell will enter the fray and snuggle up next to Mandy in the Lords, with the sincerity of a Spice Girl pushed on stage for a reunion gig. It is also odds-on that more propaganda masquerading as comment such as the longwinded, wonky, badly-argued cant which miraculously appeared recently in my former magazine, Prospect (however did that happen?) will trumpet themselves to general apathy. 

Meanwhile, under its relatively new director, wannabe kingmaker Richard Reeves (another ex-hack) of formerly leftish think tank, Demos, has taken another turn to the muddy centre and has invited ‘University’ of Cumbria academic, god botherer and ‘Red Tory’ cheerleader Phillip (sic) Blond to orchestrate a programme of ‘debate’ into  ’Progressive Conservatism.’ (The first question I’d ask is whether the term is an oxymoron or simply moronic). Keynote speeches will be delivered on January 22 by David Cameron, crossbencher Frank Field, Oliver Letwin and the ubiquitous Will Hutton of the Work Foundation (another oxymoron?) for which Richard Reeve once ‘worked’. There is allegedly a lot of money around in the think tank world, ahead of the election, which we are told isn’t happening (it is), despite all this jockeying for the centre ground. I’ll gladly head up a study group to ask: why? Nobody outside Islington and Notting Hill cares what these drooling halfwit spinmonkeys think, or if they think at all. 

John J Kelly

Gordon Brown looking sad in Helmand. 'This is paradise compared to Brussels'

We heard this morning that UK Gordon Brown has broken off his constructive discussions with EU leaders to appear in Afghanistan to mourn the death of four British soldiers, killed in two bomb incidents, one where a 13 year old suicide bomber killed 3 Royal Marines. We also heard that yesterday’s government announcement that UK knife crime had plunged by 14 per cent in a month was based on fraudulent statistics and that the ‘decision’ to withdraw the remaining 3000 British troops in Iraq was leaked to the press but not announced to Parliament (therefore might not happen). We heard that the jury in the de Menezes inquest returned an ‘open verdict,’ having been barred by the coroner to return a verdict of Unlawful Killing, but had rejected the mendacious accounts of the Metropolitan Police murder squad. We heard, we heard . . .

Head shot of Cressida Dick of the Met SO13 Shoot to Kill team. Scary name, scary hair, scary job in an institutionally racist, sexist force with no real accountability. Just plain scary, in fact. Dumb dumb bullets all round.

We heard former Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, break his (unusually protracted) silence to state that he sincerely hoped this setback would not affect the promotion prospects of Cressida Dick, the Calamity Jane in charge of the Operation Kratos SO13 Licence to Kill gang. Last Thursday we heard of a foiled Al Quaeda plot in Belgium to allegedly blow up the EU Ministers gathered this weekend, a potentially huge outrage, but, mysteriously, having categorically stated that the target was Gordon Brown, the UK press have subsequently virtually ignored the story (including omitting to mention that 8 of the 14 suspects have been already released). The international press had no such emphasis on Gordon Brown. Apart from signalling the return to full fighting form of spinmeisters Mandelson and Campbell, all this whirling might mean that Brown intends to ease out of Iraq with a diplomatic cough (‘mission accomplished?’) but almost certainly ‘redeploy’ the troops to Afghanistan. On the basis that the War on Terror is continuing to pose clear and present danger to the UK we can expect continued pressure to proceed with the Identity Cards project and lots more sirens in the middle of the night to keep us in a state of fearful preparedness for – a UK general election. While in Afghanistan, Brown pledged a whopping £6 million to ensure free and fair elections (less than the cost of a Mayfair townhouse for an Afghan warlord) but nearer to home, the Tories are applying pressure for an early election. In the fog of war, we seem to forget that the glorious leader of the free world was not himself elected by the UK populace.

John J. Kelly

PS. THUS POLICY STATEMENT. My new policy is to byline opinion pieces (most of THUS falls into this category) since it is counter to free speech to hide behind anonymity when making speculative comment. We try to attribute sources wherever possible, hence the plethora of references to sources in the public domain but it’s mostly just me spoofing around acting the giddy goat. Believe nothing, believe me.

no malingering in back-to-work Britain

In yet another demonstration of the sort of lateral thinking that has made Gordon Brown not only saviour of the banks but saviour of the world, Work and Pensions Minister James Purnell announced a government pledge to force long term sickness benefits claimants and some single mothers back to work. The Welfare Reform White Paper has also been welcomed by the Conservative Opposition, largely because it steals their thunder by arguing that unearned benefits undermine society and destroy the work ethic.

a spot of hard work never hurt anybody

The sand in the vaseline of this get-in-your-invalid-car-and-find-work initiative is that the UK has just registered the highest unemployment figures for 11 years. For example, Plaid Cymru (Wales) MP Hywel Davies observed that there were 320,000 unemployed people in his constituency but only 20,000 jobs advertised. Scottish MPs are also skeptical, as well they might be. Nobody (dares) to gainsay ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ in our Through the Looking Glass mother of Parliaments, but it would help if the UK had any Arbeit on offer to its able-bodied citizens, never mind the vulnerable, disadvantaged or unskilled. Genuine skivers will always find a way to avoid job opportunities and cheat benefits, but they are a tiny minority. 

But enough of this cup-half-empty rhetoric. Despite the fact that my White Paper to reskill unemployed lap dancers as school zebra crossing attendants and bankers as traffic calming bumps in the road met with studied silence from the government (Thus passim), our policy wonkers have been hard at work solving this latest conundrum. It’s so simple it hurts:

Latest UK Government health advisor

Send the sick and the lame on a ‘Crusade to Health’ to Lourdes. Allow those that are cured back into the country and put them to work immediately building a Brit Art installation out of their crutches, eye patches and walking sticks. Those that stubbornly refuse to be cured should be branded a threat to national security or similar by no-nonsense Northerner, Immigration Minister Phil Woolas who can knock together a failsafe points-based entry system at least as good as the one which kept out the million or so illegal immigrants we apparently boast. And there’s more. Since RyanAir are the main carriers to Lourdes, there is a fair chance that they won’t be they won’t be able to run fast enough to catch the plane back in any case so they’ll have to live in a French concentration camp – Calais has a good one, I hear. 

Behold the miracle: the lame leap from their Beemers and into the pub each match day

In the event that nobody will lend the UK Government enough cash to buy the RyanAir tickets, even during one of their miraculous ‘million seats for £1.00′ bonanzas, there is another solution. I have noticed that whenever my local team, Arsenal, play at home, miraculous numbers of people with disabled badges leap from their cars and rush to the ground, more agile and fleet of foot, in many cases, than the footballers themselves. If the government wants revenge and tabloid headlines, my advice is to start by investigating those displaying disabled badges in 4×4 jeeps, Beemers and pimpmobiles on Match Day restricted parking zones. There is more than a fair chance that they are also benefit cheats, especially if they can afford the gouging season ticket prices charged by our foreign-owned Mercenary Utd. soccer clubs.

Or we could move towards creating real jobs which people, disabled or otherwise, will enjoy doing. If that fails, make a Novena to St. Jude, patron of Lost Causes.

by John J Kelly

What Gordon, Barroso and Sarkozy might look like, should they choose to wear kilts

Despite EU President Jose Manuel Barroso‘s false memory of discussing the small matter of Britain’s entry to the Euro with the newly-ennobled Lord Mandelson, who as long ago as December 3 couldn’t remember having any such discussion when Britain’s EU Trade Minister, the EU president is meeting World Saviour Gordon Brown in London today. I wonder if they’ll get round to the Euro? Mandelson, embroiled in a high level row about not protecting Scottish kiltmakers against ferocious Far East competition, will presumably not pipe in the haggis at this mini-credit-crunch summit.

How Mrs Sarkozy might look if a gust of hot air lifted the kilts

What currency will Brown have in his sporran today? Will his kilt be M+S, Comme des Garcons, or some nasty inflammable acrylic Indonesian variety with a CE label stitched on by Afghan migrants? Or will he wear his famous Brown trousers? In 2003, when Chancellor Prudence to Tony the Bringer of War, he left the door open to Britain joining the Euro with his ‘five criteria‘, boringly predicated upon an equitable exchange rate, desirability for Europe and the UK economy and a referendum indicating approval by UK citizens (which he was confident wouldn’t happen). Back then the Euro was worth between GDP 0.57-0.62 and we were riding shotgun to W, World Police. Today the figure is nearer 0.82p and Britain is just one of many maxed-out bubble economies seeking a handout from the bank of Toytown.

One of the problems with converting to the Euro is that it inevitably involves a degree of ’rounding up’ – AKA gouging – on the part of banks, retailers, wholesalers, butchers, bakers and candlestick makers. However, if Brown’s brilliant management of the rate of decline of the value of Sterling continues at its present pace, there will soon be a window of opportunity to enter the Euro at parity. Think of the immediate economic benefits – no need to go round the supermarket with sticker guns – all we’ll need to do is substitute the £ sign for the €. See how easy and painless that was.

Another obstacle in the past was the pretense that we had the best banking knowledge in Europe, but now we know that our Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee is just as headless as the European Central Bank, so we’ve established parity there. A third consideration was sovereignty of banknotes – but since we’re going to have to print a Zimbabwean amount anyway, they might as well be Euro-denominated. The rules allow you to put the Queen’s head, Elton John, Barack Obama, Rupert Murdoch or whatever on one side, it’s not really like we’re losing much tradition. Besides, we’ve already given up Parliamentary Democracy and Habeas Corpus. Look how easy that was. Since most of our utilities are already in the hands of European companies, some of which, such as EDS, are part-nationalised, no doubt we could complete the process of re-nationalising the UK free from Brussels whingeing and get stuck into bankrupting an entire continent.

There’s still the awkward issue of the EU Referendum, but never mind, Labour promised us one of those before the last UK General Election and we’re still waiting, so this is hardly an unsurmountable obstacle. And anyway, the Irish have got that covered for us. They’ll kick Sarko senseless if he so much as mentions the blemming Treaty Referendum this side of the next century, sure they will. (Thus passim).

by John J Kelly

The government’s bailout plan for threadbare foreign technology and data collection corporations is gathering pace, despite the fact that like Iraq, the Dome or the Special Relationship, the majority can’t see the point of the drastic plastic Identity Card project and doubts that any good will come of it. But the UK government is determined to finish what it started – the Balkanisation of civil liberties and UK Plc. (in Administration). Apologies if I’m sounding a tad Monday morning, but I’ve just noticed that the overwhelming majority of the (estimated) £19 billion of UK taxpayers’ money earmarked for this flawed project will be spent on contractors such as EDS (Ross Perot’s liberal US behemoth) , IBM (US company who needs no introduction), Siemens (Germany), Fujitsu (the only Japanese company daft enough to buy ICL), Thales (a French water company) and a carpetbag of ‘international’ consultants (I’m only guessing, but CapGemini (Fr) surely loom large). We all know that the costs will balloon (even more), the project will have deadly security flaws and these foreign companies will repatriate our cash while remaining embedded in our national security in a deadly embrace. In a bizarre turn – file under ‘you couldn’t make it up’ – Jacqui Smith’s Home Office is seeking special powers to search the homes of UK employees of these companies for the next 20 years without recourse to search warrants (in the event of theft or, more likely, sensitive policy leaks). Yet we are told that there is absolutely no danger in assembling this database.

We already know that the government’s (largely outsourced) security vetting procedures led to up to 5000 illegal immigrants working in government departments. We suspect that the Damian Green farrago (Thus passim) has a lot to do with pathetic attempts to stymie more embarrassing leaks of that nature. But we need more police and government control over our lives. Not on my street we don’t. We’ve already got a hatful.

London, May 2008. Nearly 600 police in riot gear goosestepped up MY road scaring off Muslims and showing off their helmets when Brown showed Sarkozy and Carla round the Emirates Stadium, before I'd even started publishing THUS. This is not a fake picture.

Today, Gordon Brown is meeting a coalition of willing idiots (Sarkozy and Barroso, but not the sensible Mrs Merkel, leader of Europe’s largest economy) to tell them how to rescue their economies by charging banks 12% interest and expecting them to lend below Libor to bust businesses. (Those German fools are charging less than 5% interest to their desperate banks – next thing they’ll be manufacturing stuff to SELL to people for MONEY instead of playing Monopoly). Presumably his advice to Sarkozy will be to buy more British utilities with semi-nationalised French state utilities and take over our infrastructure completely. Mr Barroso needs to send us more immigrants to exploit from newly-initiated member states.

The EIB is suddenly to blame

Brown has apparently just woken up to the fact that the European Investment Bank (EIB) was set up to advance development loans to European businesses, and has EU cash available to do exactly that. When the Euro was weak against Sterling, UK banks made it difficult for small and medium sized businesses to take advantage of EIB loans at preferential rates (preferring to lend at rates preferential to themselves, of course). Some estimate that up to £4 billion per year in qualifying loans for UK companies went unclaimed for several years. It is risible that the UK government is now trying to blame the EU at the same time as claiming leadership in the credit crisis, but entirely consistent with the policy of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted (then shooting the stableboy, especially if he’s European).

Meanwhile, we’ll maintain the pretence of British independence by doing whatever the US, a busted flush tells us to do. It’s Monday morning and I’m grumpy, but last week the European Court condemned Britain’s illegal DNA database (THUS passim). Gordon Brown could reduce the national debt by several billion by putting the hated identity card scheme on hold and he could stop pretending that spending vast amounts scrubbing the decks of the Titanic with (foreign) toothbrushes is likely to work. Talk to the Germans, Gordon. They have some experience of economic reconstruction. It tends to involve a degree of hard work, readjustment to economic realities and (in the case of the former GDR) dismantling the wasteful and corrupting apparatus of the police state.