Oh, and let’s not forget Leetle Teetch Sarkozy, pictured in the same article warmly welcoming Gadaffi to the G20 summit. Absolutely no truth whatsoever in the crazy rumours put about by the desperate sex-crazed dictator (Gaddafi, not Sarkozy) that someone put funny money into the 2007 French election campaign.

Here's Gaddafi with his mate Berlosconi and one of his 40 virgin female bodyguards - 39 if Silvio had anything to do with it

Gaddafi may have had a head start in the race for the hotly-contested title of most bonkers, loathsome and sociopathic oil-glutted dictator in the Middle East, but he was arguably given a leg up when Ronald Reagan bombed his tent in 1987 and killed his wife, kids and relatives in a vintage example of liberal intervention. Since that time, he took every opportunity to piss off ‘The West’, supporting terrorists of all stripes and persuasions, the nuttier the better. Funny he would react like that.

The rank hypocrisy of his ‘rehabilitation’ has already been discussed in my 2009 article (Oil, money, BP, fear that it might come out in the wash that Libya was at best a bit part player at best in the Lockerbie outrage plus the fact that he was a psychopathic loony). Since he was canonised by Tony Blair Gaddafi may have stopped supporting terrorist groups targeting western interests but he murderously arsed around in Africa with impunity. Moreover, the current Tsunami of cant surrounding the reasons for bombing democracy from 35,000 feet into Libya stands violently at odds with the blind eye shown to last week’s incursion by Saudi soldiers into Bahrain, killing rebels (not freedom fighters?) opposed to the weak-chinned Sheikh presiding over western interests in that boozy  Gulf bastion of R+R and general jiggery-pokery. Complicated? Not really. File under SNAFU (Situation Normal. All Fucked Up).

John J Kelly.

Gordon Brown (the ugly one on the left) congratulates Colonel Gaddafi, thinking he is Sarah Boyle, winner of Britain's Got Talent

Over the past three days, as the Lockerbie ‘terrorist’ release turns into a full-blown international incident, we have heard not one word, or even a Twitter, from the man who saved the wurreld (and its banks). This is highly unusual; Gordon and his wife Sarah Twittered from Inverkilliecrankie, or wherever they are on holiday, catching crabs and burying each other in the sand, when the ungrateful Evil Empire dissed the NHS. This time it’s serious. Somebody gave Gordon’s independent-minded fellow Jocks a pass to give Abdulbasset al-Megrahi, the only person convicted for the Lockerbie bombing, a get out of gaol free card on the spurious pretext that he had less than three months to live.

Let’s leave aside the mountain of evidence that al Megrahi and Libya probably didn’t do it. He was threatening to appeal, a process which would have certainly opened the UK and US to wide and embarrassing scrutiny of their highly circumstantial fingering of Libya, then THE axis of the axis of evil, now everybody’s best friend and a bulwark against terror. Blame switched from Syria, the HQ of the PFLP- GQ terrorist cell allegedly paid by Iran to carry out the bombing as revenge for the downing of Iran Air Flight 655 six months earlier (1988) by the USS Vincennes, killing 290 civilians, when Syria joined the Bush 1 and Thatcher ‘Coalition of the Willing’ in the first Gulf War. Let’s ignore Scottish due process which dictates that a terminally ill prisoner should be released on compassionate grounds to die in dignity. Let’s ignore the oft-repeated fact that post-devolution, Scotland makes its own decisions in law. Let’s try and pretend that Britain isn’t the 51st US state, even if the antics of the past few years have understandably left the opposite impression.

Let’s try and focus on the facts. Last Friday UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband furiously demanded that BBC news presenter John Humphrys retract the ‘slur’ that the FCO had anything to do with it. Today’s Sunday Times revealed that Ivan Lewis, UK Foreign Minister responsible for Libya, ‘is said to have written to the Scottish government, encouraging officials to send home’ al-Megrahi. Ten days ago ‘Lord’ Peter Mandelson, Business Secretary and de facto ruler of Great Britain, admitted discussing the subject a couple of weeks ago with Colonel Gaddafi’s son Saif at the Rothschild villa in Corfu. Today, after a mysterious prostate operation (in sympathy with al Megrahi or the result of some other sort of probe?) Mandelson broke his own uncharacteristic silence to declare it ‘offensive to claim’ that this meeting was connected to the release of the Libyan or to trade deals, despite the fact that Saif-al-Islam Gaddafi had emphatically declared the opposite. Colonel Gaddafi, meanwhile, has effusively thanked just about everybody in the UK:

Sarkozy is pissed off because he thought he was welcoming Michael Jackson to the G20 Summit. All Gaddafi had to offer was unlimited supplies of oil, gas and cash, though he performed a passable moonwalk.

“To my friends in Scotland, the Scottish National Party, and Scottish prime minister, and the foreign secretary, I praise their courage for having proved their independence in decision making despite the unacceptable and unreasonable measures that they faced. Nevertheless they took this courageously right and humanitarian decision.” And I say to my friend Brown, the Prime Minister of Britain, his Government, the Queen of Britain, Elizabeth, and Prince Andrew, who all contributed to encouraging the Scottish Government to take this historic and courageous decision, despite the obstacles.” (Reuters).

Barack Obama came slowly out of the traps to declare the decision ‘highly objectionable.’ Despite the fact that the release of al Megrahi was ‘on the agenda at every meeting between Blair and Libyan officials’ it was highly OK for St Tony to broker a return of Libya to the international coalition of the hypocrites in 2004 when we realised we were running out of oil and there was rather a lot of it there, not to mention a strongman capable of bullying the bejasus out of many of the the other whackjobs in Africa, especially Sudan, and Mahgreb Middle East. Despite the fact that we knew more than a week before it happened that this release was on the cards, FBI Head, Robert Mueller, sent a hissy letter expressing outrage and astonishment to Kenny MacAskill, Scottish Justice Minister, clearly intended for public consumption (printed in full in The Times). Various neocons (and David Cameron) have postured their horror at the release of this convicted terrorist and outrage at his hero’s welcome in Tripoli as though this was a bolt from the blue.

Exclusive: what they found when they operated on Mandy's prostate - a banana AND a Miliband.

Those are the facts. Here’s some outrageous speculation. Gordon Brown desperately needs sovereign funds. Mandelson told him that this was a small step to take and that nobody would bother once the dust had settled, and anyway, his new friend (and UK homeowner) Gaddafi jr had assured him the return of al Megrahi would pass off quietly. Scotland, an oil and gas economy, was promised lucrative oil supply contracts and plentiful exports of Dundee rock, Irn Bru, tartan and sporrans. The US agreed to turn a blind eye on the condition that Gaddafi refrained from dancing the Highland Fling. Besides, it’s a big bonus if al Megrahi dies without making an appeal – the dirty secrets surrounding massive CIA manipulation of witnesses and evidence, including the possibility that Pan Am Flight 103 was carrying US secret service contraband die with him. Mandelson wins either way: if Brown is discomfited and if the Scottish National Party is put in the hole, his task of bullying the Labour Party is strengthened (Labour desperately needs seats in Scotland in the upcoming General Election). The inconvenient truth is that Colonel Gaddafi is a loony and his son appears to be a blowhard, so the whole yellow ribbon homecoming was unfortunate, but you can’t win them all. Champagne all round at Chateau Rothschild, Corfu branch. Another dinner guest has provided immense entertainment value on the international stage.

John J Kelly

Tomorrow belongs to me. Shirtsleeved Dave and his fragrant Chloe. Meet the new Blair, same as the old Blair?

The Tories overturned a 5459 Labour majority by 7,348 votes in the Norwich by-election on Thursday in a decisive and pivotal victory. Their turnout was 6% lower than expected, but 70% of the Labour constituency stayed at home watching Big Brother. The Lib Dems came third as usual, giving the lie to those who perennially hope that disillusionment with the two main parties will translate into a third way. Chloe Smith, 27, a fragrant middle class girl, will become the youngest Tory MP for more than 30 years and poster girl of ‘New’ Conservatives. Gordon Brown declared it ‘a bad night for everyone’ – another breathtaking example of Cnutian self delusion. Tory leader David Cameron disagreed, as well he might.  A 16.5% swing, nationally extrapolated, indicates a landslide General Election victory margin of up to 240 seats. Whether it is achieved by Labour voter disillusionment will be academic to the victors. The Hartlepool monkey would stand a good chance against Grim Gordon and Mandy the Mendacious.

Norwich North came up for grabs early because the incumbent MP, Ian Gibson, resigned having been barred by Labour from standing in the next election, having sold his taxpayer-funded flat to his daughter at a heavily-discounted price. Casting round for something to spin, Labour-leaning pundits – there are still plenty – argue that this qualifies the result as exceptional, that when the electorate awake to the full horror of an Eton claque slashing public sector budgets and effectively putting the emergency brake on the gravy train, they will ‘come to their senses’ and support ‘New’ Labour.

This ‘argument’ ignores the almost-universal rule that elections are lost by the incumbent rather than won by the opposition, especially after a long period in power and definitely if the country is economically decimated, the wealth gap has widened, unemployment rampant, parliamentary scandal and cronyism is rife and it is involved in one or more unwinnable wars. No offence to Chloe, who looks and sounds sincere and will probably do a good job, but Labour voters sat on their hands in Norwich (and Nantwich last May) because they cannot abide the current leadership and the unholy mire into which the country has sunk. The New Labour strategy of wallowing in the fudgy centre leaves undecided voters and radicals with even less choice than before. Those who can be bothered will vote for change for its own sake.

Thus, barring a miraculous economic recovery which will reduce the record £600 billion national debt, itself requiring an equally miraculous reversal of the record trade deficit, unemployment falling from a projected 3 million next May to less than 2 million (ditto conditions apply), ‘victory’ in Afghanistan, peace in Iraq, obliteration of the Taliban, Al Quaeda, repatriating over 1 million ‘illegals’ demonised in the phony War on Terror and collective amnesia about the destruction of civil liberties which has been the hallmark of the Blair/Brown years, the Eton boys’ brigade will be ruling Britain next year. Despite this record, recividist Hounhyms still ‘believe’ that electoral boundary changes introduced since 1997 will make it impossible for the Tories to achieve anything greater than a hung Parliament. They bluster that Cameron needs a swing of 6 percent to draw level, rising to 11 percent to achieve a working majority, while the Tories need a 40 percent share to get near to Blair’s margin of victory in 1997. This tells us more about the desperation in the Labour war room and the enduring capacity to favour fantasy over fact than it does about the state of the nation.

The facts are thus: the Tories won the Crewe and Nantwich by-election last May with a swing of 17.5%, again on a reduced turnout. The recent European MEP elections put Labour in third place, 12% behind the Tories and 43% behind the combined votes of the Tories and the single issue UK Independence Party, most of whom would vote Tory in a General Election. Euroscepticism cost Tories votes in the past: in the next election, this will be an advantage. Were an election to be called tomorrow, the two leading opinion polls give the Tories a 16% lead over Labour. Most polls indicate a projected 40% share, and have done so for several months. Labour’s share would be 24%. This translates as somewhere between a comfortable Tory working majority and a landslide, despite what Labour’s frantic Panglossian spinmonkeys would have you and I believe. A big majority would be bad for Britain, but that’s another story.

No shows will count as a vote against Labour. There is little to choose between Tory Tony and Tory Dave. Gordon IS a moron. Mandy is (fill in the blanks). Next question, please.

John J Kelly

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/we-have-ways-of-making-you-talk-mr-blair/ http://thusmagazine.com/2009/06/we-have-ways-of-making-you-talk-mr-blair/#comments Sun, 21 Jun 2009 14:35:58 +0000 John Kelly http://thusmagazine.com/?p=3623 It used to be difficult to shut Tony Blair up, especially on the subject of Iraq. Remember his epic war speech to Parliament, when the phrase ‘weapons of mass destruction’ was repeated more than 15 times? Now he only speaks for $400,000 a pop to neocons or lectures the Pope on theology. He might yet have to do some serious unpaid explaining, maybe even from the dock, but the question is, how, when and where? Thus provides the answers. By John J Kelly.

Gordon's got a hard hat and two pairs of brown trousers, more than the army had when they were sent into Basra.

In the past week the clueless yet relentlessly authoritarian UK government scaled new heights of ineptitude and plumbed new depths of contempt for public sensibilities. Announcing the long-awaited Iraq War enquiry on a timetable that would ensure its publication only after the next election is one thing. Appointing five government/Whitehall stooges to hold said enquiry, at least two of whom were responsible for the policy and strategy which led to Britain’s involvement in the war in the first place is another. Claiming on national radio, as did Blairite Foreign Secretary, ‘banana boy’ Miliband, that ‘every secret service in the world’ thought Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and that ‘if you’re looking for a conspiracy, you won’t find one’ gives a further clue to the ‘outcome’ of the enquiry. Announcing that this epic search for truth would be held in secret on the twisted logic that this would ensure that those questioned would feel more inclined to tell the truth on the precondition that nobody would be held accountable sums up the depths of degradation into which the current government has sunk our ‘democratic’ system. Had enough yet? Well think again, there’s more.

The familiar excuse that the enquiry needed to be held in camera ‘in the interests of national security’ was a spin too far for the men in black glasses and the men in nylon khaki. It is an open secret that the spooks felt hard done by at being blamed for the amateurish and deeply mendacious ‘dodgy dossier,’ lifted from a PhD student’s C grade essay and allegedly sexed up by Alastair Campbell, which Blair brandished as his ultimate casus belli. (Had they been involved, the document would at least have been spellchecked).

Every security service in the world thought this was Yellow Cake Uranium when in fact it was a deadly weapon of my image destruction.

Though Austin Powers (aka John Scarlett) was the source of the Yellow Cake Nigerian uranium nonsense which Bush used as part of his ultimate casus belli, this appears to have been a combination of wishful thinking and routine incompetence, rather than politically-motivated mischief. ‘In the interests of national security,’ we might never know whether the sources and judgment of the UK security services were corrupted (think Mossad) and its advice overridden (think Blair/Campbell) in the haste to rush to war and support the carpet bombing of tens of thousands of civilians and cause an insurgency which took the death toll to more than 100,000, not to mention the turkey shoot of over 22,000 Iraqi soldiers in the first glorious ‘victory week’ of an engagement which has lasted far longer than WW2 and Vietnam.

The British army, justifiably angry at having held their tongues after holding Basra for five years with cheap equipment, clown cars, mail order uniforms and armour that wouldn’t pass muster at a girl guide’s paintball party, then ridiculed by the US for leaving the place in a mess – ie. with lots of Iraqis left alive – also declared themselves off side. With (Sir) John Chilcot, a dab hand with the Persil, cf the Butler Report, at the helm, Professor (Sir) Lawrence Freedman (co-author of Blair’s 1999 Chicago ‘Humanitarian Intervention‘ speech and alleged architect of the government strategy on engagement in Iraq) riding shotgun and three other sockpuppets to make up the numbers, there was little chance of a fair hearing. Faced by a mutiny led by General (Sir) Richard Dannatt and dark, professionally deceitful Oxbridge twats turning against their lords and masters, the government executed a partial U-Turn (which could yet become a full one).

How, or why, did they ever think they could get away with another cover-up? God told them to do it. In today’s Observer, it is alleged – and predictably denied by this Pinocchio government – that Brown was asked by Tony Blair (through Mandelson, one presumes) to hold the enquiry in secret, for fear that he (Blair) would be tried in the court of public opinion. Well, yes he would, should and well might be, except that a more appropriate and less biased place might be the International Criminal Court at the Hague, where the tribunal would not be stacked with Blairite cronies.

Meanwhile, Thus has thought long and hard as to how to drag the truth of the situation out of Blair and his fellow alleged war criminals. Since it was also revealed this week, in the first of a series of leaks designed to soften the impact if and when they are later confirmed, that while Blair had not authorised the use of torture by UK forces or agencies, he had not stood in the way of other countries who chose to use it, we have our answer! Hold the enquiry in Morocco. Transport can be arranged. After a professional application of waterboarding, a spot of Binham Mohamed on the Old Man, electric shock therapy and constant repetitive exposure to loud music – may we suggest ‘Things Can only Get Better? (Thus passim) – we won’t need any high fallutin’ experts to tell us who did what and when. After all, as any Blairite will tell you, torture works. It formed the basis of much of the intelligence gathering behind the War on Terror, after all.

]]> http://thusmagazine.com/2009/06/we-have-ways-of-making-you-talk-mr-blair/feed/ 0 http://thusmagazine.com/2009/06/dont-panic-lord-sugar-of-tut-will-save-the-economy/ http://thusmagazine.com/2009/06/dont-panic-lord-sugar-of-tut-will-save-the-economy/#comments Sun, 07 Jun 2009 09:31:33 +0000 John Kelly http://thusmagazine.com/?p=3555  

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.

Former Labour Party Leader Michael Foot's heart was in the right place. Unfortunately, the rest of him was assembled at random

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown is the most unpopular leader of the Labour Party ever, a singular achievement given the horrorbags who preceded him. His 21% approval rating beats the previous liability incarnate, Michael Foot, who scored 24% in 1982. Foot was a principled Fabian, idealist socialist toff in the Orwell mould but his donkey jacket, mad stare, scary hair and CND badges earned him the nickname ‘Worzel Gummidge’ and made him unelectable in the Brave New World of image and soundbite. Brown, a charisma-free zone, has not acquired a popular soubriquet, though Private Eye style him as ‘Supreme Leader’ in a nod to the stagnation, authoritarianism, denial and corruption of the Brezhnev era, which preceded the collapse of the Soviet system.

Little man on a big stage. 'Good Evening Sheffield. I'm a tosser. Alright?'

Foot’s Old Labour image was the catalyst for ‘reforms’ which saw him replaced in 1983 by ‘Welsh Windbag’ Neil Kinnock, who never used one word where 20 would do. Kinnock, a former Tribune left winger, redhaired, freckly, pointy-featured, with a deep grating voice and tweedy demeanour, projected an uneasy persona which vacillated between pint-drinking man of the Welsh valleys and hopelessly aspirational metrocentric hipster. The latter was the invention of his Director of Communications, Lord of the Flies, Peter Mandelson, who rebranded Labour as a European-style social democrat party, ironic, since Kinnock and Labour had hitherto violently opposed European integration. Trounced twice by Thatcher, Kinnock was nevertheless odds-on to defeat ‘Grey Man’ John Major in 1992, who, (like Brown) was an unelected stand-in following Thatcher’s ousting. However, he snatched defeat from the jaws of victory with the toe-curlingly hubristic 1992 ‘Good Evening Sheffield’ rally and speech. This inauspicious beginning was nevertheless the New Labour Nuremberg. Unprecedented spin, media manipulation, luvvies for Labour, pop anthems and feelgood bourgeois materialism would follow in an epidemic suspension of disbelief. Blair would realise the illuminati dream of a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie fuelled by media manipulation, sustained by fear and fuelled by financial chimaera.

The Blair witch project. Now he's trying to become President of Europe, helped by his lovely friends Berlusconi and Sarkozy

But not for a couple of years. Sensible John Smith replaced Kinnock, who fled to Europe on the EU gravy train with his wife, Glenys and is now a ‘Baron’ for services to irrelevancy. Smith, although worryingly Scottish and a lawyer – a harbinger of the plague of Jocks to come – was a grounded, humorous, intelligent leader, who was not physically repugnant. Unfortunately he died of a heart attack in 1994, leaving the door open to the dreaded double act of Brown and Blair, stage-managed by Mandelson and his Iago, Alastair Campbell. Blair served ten years, set the tone for institutional kleptocracy by enriching himself in the housing boom and memoirs market, sucked up to George Bush then skipped town leaving a legacy of three wars (two of which are illegal) untramelled immigration, Islamophobia, madcap expansion of public spending with little to show apart from the Millennium Dome, crippling tuition fees for students, an undeserving, tax-avoiding oligarch class, widened gap between rich and poor, the worst recession for sixty years, national debt at its highest ever levels, ubiquitous state surveillance, abuse of police powers for political ends, a cowed media, widespread corruption and unemployment set to exceed 3 million. Brown was his ‘prudent’ Chancellor. When he assumed the mantle of Prime Minister, he declined to legitimise the post with an election. 

It was obvious after the first term that the New Labour project was a get rich quick scheme for a grotesque politburo of social-climbing chancers and mountebanks. Had the Tories put up a half-decent opposition as opposed to fielding gargoyles such as William Hague, Michael Howard and Iain Duncan-Smith, the free ride might have ended earlier. We would not have avoided the global recession, but we might have halved our exposure to its worst effects. Corruption amongst MPs would not have been any less, but the democratic deficit might have been less pronounced. In truth, it’s hard to tell, since both parties now occupy the soggy centre and their policies are largely indistinguishable. 

Now, as New Labour faces the final curtain, Gordon Brown, saviour of the wurreld and its banks and a major player on the global stage (Widow Twanky?) may be forced out of office by cohorts of his own larcenous claque. Alan Johnson, Health Secretary, is tipped to take over as leader, presumably on the basis that it would be a waste of time to bother to find anyone good ahead of the election, which Labour will lose by a country mile. Labour are thus proposing to run the country with yet another unelected Prime Minister, completing the shredding of any semblance of democratic principle and practice. When Brown goes, which will be very soon, there should be a General Election, and whoever gets in should enact a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Further urgent reform is needed to reverse the undemocratic ‘reforms’ to the House of Lords, which have replaced a crowd of unelected hereditary peers and a few life peers, many of whom were geriatric, drunkards, mad or a combination thereof, and thus as difficult to control as a herd of cats, with a stacked deck of unelected politically-appointed gurning lickspittles. Then there is the small matter of getting the country out of the mire and back to work. For this to happen, Cameron will need to find a proper Chancellor as opposed to George Osborne, and some policies, as opposed to soundbites. He’ll be wearing the Brown trousers, god help him, an odorous proposition. Serves him right for being a Conservative, like most of New Labour.

John J Kelly

We have never had greater access to facts, yet according to Edelman’s Trust Barometer, only 34% of the worldwide public trust news media, a figure down from 46% last year. The percentage falls to 28% in the UK, which boasts the world’s the highest per capita spend on media, yet is outside the top 20 in terms of trust in its information providers. These facts – or, more accurately, statistics – presented at the recent Editorial Intelligence /Reuters Institute/Edelman  panel discussion, merit an article in themselves (on its way). We are certainly living in sceptical times, but, more worryingly, there appears to be a direct and accelerating correlation between the amount of information thrown at our citizens and their capacity to believe it. The blatant professional manipulation which has become a hallmark of politics and, to a marked degree, of business reporting, has corroded our faith in the media itself.

Lies are arguably less dangerous than the manipulation of empirical truth. Facts, and notoriously, statistics, can be partially and selectively presented and juxtaposed to persuasively justify unreasonable scenarios, especially if ‘emotional intelligence’ is set aside in the grim pursuit of ‘empirical reason’ – more or less Dickens’ core argument against Utilitarianism. It is no coincidence that John Stuart Mill is a Blairite poster boy in an age and a country where facts are ostensibly in oversupply yet trust in government, and especially the media, has rarely, if ever been lower. Thus said, I love fact and favour empiricism over hypothesis, but believe that the currency of fact itself has been debased. The most telling facts have a thusness which does not require deep analysis. You can take them or leave them, but if you allow them to speak for themselves, they resonate of their own accord. Here’s a random selection from last week’s UK media, mostly aggregated by Ten, one of my favourite websites. Make up your own mind as to what they imply:

• A third of all UK MPs employ members of their close family, some of whom receive as much as £40,000 a year of taxpayers money. BBC

• 69% of voters think Gordon Brown has handled the MP’s expenses scandal badly, 23% think he has handled it well; 55% credit David Cameron with handling the issue well and 35% badly. (ICM/Guardian poll)

• Seven Speakers of the House of Commons were beheaded prior to 1560. (Guardian)

• More than 50 employees of the state-owned British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) earn more than the UK Prime Minister. (Thus)

• Elizabeth 1 had a plaque in her Whitehall Palace bedchamber that read: The fall of Rome was due to three things: self-interest, hidden hatreds and youthful council. (TEN)

• Confidence among business professionals rose to -28.2 at the end of March, from -45.3 at the end of the previous quarter. (Institute of Chartered Accountants)

• UK home repossessions in Q1 rose by 50% on the equivalent period in 2008. (Council of Mortgage Lenders)

• The number of women giving birth over the age of 40 has more than doubled to 26,419 in the past 10 years; greater equality means more women choose to spend their 20s and 30s pursuing careers while higher mortgages mean others have put off having a family. (Mail)

• Pringles have been designated a crisp, despite Proctor and Gamble, its owners, arguing in court that it is only 42% potato – it now owes HMRC £100m in back taxes. (FT)

• 275 million people are now using Facebook – it’s growing at a rate of 500,000 per day – which accounts for 4.1 per cent of the world’s online time. (T3)

• The CEO of BT may receive a £680,000 bonus despite the firm reporting a full-year loss of £134m, announcing 15,000 job cuts and a 50% cut in its dividend. (Ten)

Thanks again to Ten. 

John J Kelly

“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

Mandy in ermine, obsessed with postmen - leader of New Labour, as he might look in Opposition

‘Lord’ Peter Mandelson, former EU Trade Commissioner, now UK Business Secretary and architect of the ‘plan,’ has made little headway in winning them over. He appears oblivious to the damage he is doing by fighting a divisive and largely irrelevant battle for a relatively small amount of privatisation loot in the context of the deep recession and the looming certainty of heavy defeat in the EU elections followed by a General Election. Until recently, Mandelson was pushing hard for an uncontested sale to TNT, part of the former Dutch Post Office KPN Group, but allegations in the UK satirical magazine Private Eye and the Telegraph that TNT executives fraudulently avoided paying a tax bill of at least GBP 150 million to the UK Inland Revenue at the time of the Dutch takeover was the subject of a tabled Parliamentary Question. TNT also attempted to have Royal Mail censured a couple of years back for what it claimed were ‘illegal’ state subsidies. This appears ill-advised in hindsight, given that Royal Mail planned to offload its GBP 8 billion pension liability into the public sector in order to give the illusion of profitability to the postal services division and sweeten the TNT deal. More recently TNT complained to the EU that Germany’s minimum wage laws constituted a barrier to competition against Deutsche Post in the German market – campaigning to abolish the UK minimum wage would guarantee a strike which would cripple, not destroy, what remains of Royal Mail. Holland liberalised postal services on April 9, which explains why the Royal Mail deal was so attractive to TNT, but it will be interesting to see how it fares without a captive home market. There are few other candidates to take on the politically-poisoned chalice of Royal Mail. Deutsche Post, which owns DHL, recently announced losses of EUR 1.69 billion compared to a profit of EUR 1.38 in 2007.

147 Labour MPs have signed a Commons motion condemning plans to sell the Royal Mail minority stake. A rebellion on that scale would leave Brown in the humiliating position of relying on Conservative votes to push the part-privatisation into law. Research by the (left-leaning) think-tank Compass suggests the amount of money the Treasury would raise from the sale has almost halved since last year, claiming a price of £1bn is realistic in the recession but said a minority stake would have fetched an estimated £1.9bn if it had been sold a year ago. Mandelson responded acidly to the Compass claims, clearly still committed to a course of action which, at this price could only benefit one party – TNT – two, if you include the Tories – the government discomfiture would be another gift. Royal Mail, meanwhile, which has been run unremarkably (apart from his vast salary) since 2003 by the Blair-appointed ‘dream team’ of former FA CEO and advertising man Adam Crozier and part time Chairman Alan Leighton, argues that it could be run profitably without need for overseas ‘investment’ if the pension liability was cleared off its balance sheet. Delivering letters is not rocket science. Realists argue that the traditional letter post delivery is on a steep and terminal decline and that it should stay as a public service until such time as the public no longer need or are prepared to pay for it. Adding costs in the form of profits for a private sector partner will only increase costs to the consumer and forestall the inevitable.

Mandelson’s Post Office crusade defies rational analysis. If he proceeds with the sale, he stands a good chance of terminally wounding New Labour and losing a government vote for little or no gain. He is either motivated by arrogance, an inexplicable love of Dutch postmen or he is determined to undermine Gordon Brown and entertains notions of running for leadership after the inevitable trouncing in the next election. Alternatively, he could just be plain bonkers. My guess is all of the above.

John J Kelly