How the other half live - Viggers ducks live in a £1600.00 Stockholm-inspired floating gazebo

This morning The Telegraph reported that Conservative MP Sir Peter Viggers would stand down at the next election, at the request of David Cameron, having claimed over £30,000 in gardening-related expenses, including £1600.00 for a floating duck house. Some wags wondered whether it fell under the MPs’ second home category. Another Tory grandee, Michael Fallon, MP, overclaimed £8300.00 in mortgage repayments. Financial News pointed out that both, as members of the Treasury Select Committee, have been fierce in their criticism of the lack of governance, excessive salaries and expenses of executives of failed UK banks such as Royal Bank of Scotland, HBOS, Northern Rock and the financial sector in general. More pertinent, the Treasury Select Committee, a cross-party group, is tasked to examine the expenditure, administration and policy of HM Treasury, with all of its agencies and associated bodies, including HM Revenue and Customs, the Bank of England, the Financial Services Authority and the Royal Mint. 

The good news is that so far only two of its 15 members have been found to have only a sketchy knowledge of accounting and principles of sound governance as regards the use of taxpayers’ money, so we should all feel safe that our watchdogs are beyond reproach. Now, back to Tony McNulty, Minister for Welfare and Employment, (who voted strongly against a transparent parliament) and Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, who votes against transparency of any sort. These staunch allies of Gordon were in the frame long before the general mayhem erupted. Why has Brown not acted in the new spirit of hang-em-high and why have we heard nothing about the domestic finances of Mr and Mrs. Balls? I leave it to you to join up the dots.

John J Kelly

Has prolonged exposure to the George Bush approach to the democratic process affected his rational cortex, or is the UK Prime Minister completely hatstand?

Any hopes of reform of the British Houses of Parliament under the glassy stare of Gordon Brown were dashed yesterday with his schizophrenic rebuff to the Opposition leader’s call for a General Election. The unrepentant Labour leader said that the government was too busy addressing the crisis in the economy and the MPs’ expenses scandal to hold an election, and that he didn’t want to see the Tories bringing in public spending cuts. I’m no shrink, but there is more than a hint of psychosis here. Brown’s policies exacerbated the crisis in the economy, largely through massive public sector overspending. At least three of his Cabinet Ministers – Blears, McNulty and Smith  - have patently ‘made mistakes’ on a serious scale with their expenses. McNulty, whose department deals with benefit fraud, may well have misappropriated £60,000 all within the rules, of course. (Thus passim). None have been disciplined. Several more Labour grandees, including former Prime Minister Blair, Jeff Hoon, Alan Milburn and various backbenchers, have defrauded the taxpayer to a greater or lesser extent, whether or not it was ‘within the rules.’

The Speaker of the House, the loathsome Labour-inclined Stalinist, Michael Martin, tried to use the police to intimidate The Telegraph and stop further revelations (Thus passim). He was deposed, under pressure from Tory Doug Carswell, Nick Clegg, Leader of the Lib Dems and others. Few detractors were Labour (pace Kate Hoey). In fact, he was warmly applauded from the Labour benches when he made his unapologetic announcement of resignation, no doubt helped by a chat fron Obergruppenführer Brown.  Though the Speaker’s role is supposed to be independent, another New Labour innovation has been to decimate that illusion. (For our foreign readers, this may sound tedious – it is – but this guy was only the second person to be forced from the office, technically the second highest in the land, in over 300 years). This constitutional crisis, and the most widespread outbreak of sleaze since the Rotten Boroughs, happened under Labour, led by an unelected Prime Minister. In the ‘reformed’ House of Lords – now stacked with mostly undeserving unelected representatives, this time chosen by Labour rather than birthright – two Labour peers, Taylor and Truscott, were suspended yesterday for offering to take cash bribes (Thus passim).

If there were an election next week, despite the despicable behaviour of certain Tories with regard to expenses (confirming that the epithet ‘The Stupid Party’ still applies in some cases) polls indicate that Labour would face a wipeout. According to the British Polling Index, support for Labour has fallen to its lowest level since polls began in 1943. 23% of voters support Labour – compared with 45% for the Tories. 17% support the Lib Dems. In a general election, this would translate into a majority of 220 for David Cameron, beating Tony Blair’s 1997 victory by 41 seats.

The country needs an election. Labour delusionally think the populace will quickly forget about the small matter of corruption in high office, the manipulation of the police and security services to political ends, the fawning obeisance to George W Bush which caused so much tragedy and mayhem and the legacy of the largest national debt of all time. The danger is that we’re tired of hearing about MPs’ expenses, but it should be noted that Brown has effectively done nothing about it outside soundbites, and what he has done has been in the wake of Tory initiatives. On their performance in opposition and the evidence (or lack of it) of their economic policies as presented to date (George Osborne is not good with numbers), the Tories don’t deserve to win a huge majority, but they will. This in itself is bad for whatever democracy we have left. But Labour sure as hell deserve to be consigned to oblivion for the atrocities they have perpetrated. It’s also entirely possible that Gordon is a nutter. On these grounds and because I can’t wait for the Tories to get in so that I can revert to type and start kicking them, I commend David Cameron’s petition for a General Election. It will cheer us up no end to see the Browns moving house. No doubt somebody else will pay for it.

John J Kelly

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

The schizophrenic government which allowed hundreds of thousands of allegedly bogus ‘asylum seekers’ to pour across our porous borders in the name of human rights – and cheap labour – has once again misread the public mood. According to Lib-Dem home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne: “I am pleased that the Government has climbed down from the Big Brother plan for a centralised database of all our emails and phone calls. However . . it is simply not that easy to separate the bare details of a call from its content. What if a leading business person is ringing Alcoholics Anonymous, or a politician’s partner is arranging to hire a porn video? There has to be a careful balance between investigative powers and the right to privacy.”

Innocent pigeon fanciers might be used as conduits of terror messages

At the heart of the matter is the debate as to whether layers of extra legislation are required to enable the security services to do what they are paid to do in the first place. Internet Service providers (ISPs) and browser search engines such as Google already hold records of internet access. Telephone companies keep records as a matter of course. The EU directive gives governments access to such data, provided they can show just cause. By now, any sensible subversive will have been alerted to the danger of publishing plots on the internet and will instead be tying notes written in invisible ink to the legs of homing pigeons.Have you thought about that one, Vernon Coaker (if, indeed, that is your real name?) Terrorists, paedos and their ilk may resort to communicating via small ads in local newspapers – what does ‘massive blow-out sale, Arndale Centre, everything must go’ really mean? Find out who placed that ad, Jacqui. Sudoko enthusiasts are probably honing their secret coding skills. Out them by forcing the Times to deliberately publish unsolvable puzzles. Gather data on those who complain. I’ve even heard unconfirmed rumours that in provincial towns, swingers identify each other by planting pampas grass in the front gardens of their semis. Break down the doors, Austin Powers. If they are not swinging, they are probably terrorists. If they are neither, then they have nothing to fear. 

What if the government has already put some or all of this deep packet inspection plan into place, in its Intercept Modernisation Programme, without bothering to ‘consult’ the population at large or inform Parliament and is trying to cover its tracks ahead of the election? But that would be anti-democratic in the extreme. We all know how committed this government is to open democracy, so it can’t possibly be the case. Perish the thought. It’s about as far-fetched as manufacturing a fiction about weapons of mass destruction as a pretext for an illegal war.

John J Kelly

In the frozen North of England they have a primitive Easter custom. Armed police kick down doors, hurl you to the ground, lock you up for days, pretend you are a terrorist, then deport you. This was not in the John Moores University prospectus.

Thus followers will not be surprised to hear of the release without charge of all the dastardly terrorists who were plotting to blow up Manchester’s Arndale Centre and other key installations over Easter. We predicted the outcome on April 10. Two of the Pakistani students were cleared more or less immediately and it was announced today, Budget Day no less – a good day to bury bad news under even worse news – that the remaining 9 had been handed over to UK Border and immigration officials. No bomb factory was discovered. In fact, despite having 28 days to winkle the truth out of them, no evidence was found, apart from a few happy snaps of Manchester’s biggest shopping mall and other amazing cultural high spots, 1 (one) email and, allegedly, some ‘subversive’ telephone calls. The photos may well have been taken as memories of their time in the North West, to wow the folks back in the Hindu Kush or wherever, like students do, but this is probably a ludicrously far-fetched theory. It’s much more likely that they were Al Qaeda, Smersh or even the debbil himself – ask Tony Blair, God’s avenger – he knows. Let’s hope they got some snaps of shiny boots, batons and their mates being held in stress positions for extended periods to take back to the foothills of Peshawar Province, where they could hardly be blamed for turning into powerful Taleban recruiting tools. (They were recruited to Liverpool John Moores University by an official university representative in Peshawar and were allowed into the country by UK Borders and Immigration authorities. Hello?)

As reported in our earlier piece, this malarky coincided with the need to divert attention from Jacqui Smith’s expenses shenanigans, the sad case of the death of Ian Tomlinson at the G20 demonstration, after a truncheon accidentally hit the back of his legs and he was unfortunately smashed to the ground by a masked and unidentified member of the Special Patrol Group – sorry, Territorial Support Unit. The same Jacqui Smith might also have been somewhat concerned that the arrest of Damian Green, the Tory shadow minister who had come into possession of leaks relating to hopeless lies and obfuscation of Home Office immigration figures (Thus passim), was about to be exposed as misuse of anti-terror laws to smear political opponents.

Meanwhile, Bob Quick, Assistant Commissioner and head of the Anti-Terror squad, who coincidentally was also heading up the enquiry into the Green arrest, was exposed as a numbnuts for revealing details of the North West terror plot outside Downing Street, and supposedly bringing forward the timing of the ‘swoop’. No doubt dark forces will spin that this gave the ‘terrorists’ time to cover their tracks etc. It could equally be the case that Bob Quick deliberately displayed his memo, that there was never really a terror plot and that this sad scenario follows the all-too-familiar pattern established with the Man United bombers (Thus passim), Forest Gate (massive raid, man shot, absolutely no link to terrorists whatsoever), the Galloway Gaza Convoy arrests (ditto) and, indeed, the whole curious case of terror ‘supergrass’ Hassan Butt. North West MP and Borders and Immigration Minister Phil Woolas, a sad case of mistaken identity card if ever there was one, shrieked on Channel Four News ‘We’ve got them’ on the night of the arrests. Meanwhile,Paul Fahy, Manchester Chief of Police, confidently assured Manchester shoppers the night following the ‘swoop’ that they had nothing to fear. Given that the students were proven not to pose a threat, he could only state this if he was certain that there was no plot in the first place.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. Of the government, silly.

John J Kelly

Up for it. 'Left unchecked, we have a more violent crowd in uniform than the crowd who are demonstrating.' Former Asst. Met Commissioner Andy Hayman

Paul Hilder of Avaaz.org believes peaceful protests can change the world. My heart says he’s right but how would Gandhi have fared in Britain today? 2 million protested in the UK alone against the Iraq war in 2003 and Britain still participated in an illegal war. Tibetan human rights protesters were kettled and cudgelled when the Chinese Premier came to pick up a few tips on human rights from Blair and when Brown slavered over the Olympic flame. On the other hand, a few hundred berserkers trashed buildings in central London in the infamous 1990 Poll Tax riots and defeated Margaret Thatcher. More recently Thai protesters demanding the resignation of the current Prime minister succeeded in disrupting the Summit of South East Asian nations in Pattaya. Without in any way condoning their actions or motives – whether or not the current Thai Prime Minister is democratically elected (like the UK Prime Minister he isn’t) anyone who wants to see the return of the clearly corrupt former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra needs some sort of re-education – but they wrecked nine months of careful preparation and gave the Chinese premier, amongst others, a glimpse of unfettered people power in action. Clearly that’s what the Powers That Be fear most. The British police and security services demonstrably would not have let this happen. The question is, how far are we prepared to sacrifice democratic principles and practices in the name of preserving a status quo which is taking on a very unpleasant shape? It is undeniable that the UK in particular has seen a totalitarian drift towards the banning, stifling and disruption of peaceful protests, ironically during the period of ‘New’ Labour ‘liberal’ democracy, which is now looking like New Stalinism, complete with its very own NKVD.

The London G20 summit saw non-violent pressure by hundreds of thousands of citizens on a number of topics. The City of London protests immediately before the summit were rowdy, but still overwhelmingly peaceful despite media hysteria, aggressive policing and a handful of troublemakers. Bystander and father of nine Ian Tomlinson died that day (Thus passim). Video footage shows that he was struck down by a masked, baton-wielding policeman. Many police wore balaclavas or took off their identification numbers. By telling the media before the protests that they were ‘up for it’ if violence ensued, commanding officers whipped up dangerous hysteria. The police denied responsibility, and although they have now identified and suspended the officer who struck the blows, none of the group in the video footage came forward voluntarily, and police statements contained patent falsehoods which were ironically only revealed on camera. As well as constraining rights of assembly, new laws now supposedly prohibit taking the very photos and videos of police officers which have begun to reveal the truth of these events.

The ramifications of the Tomlinson affair, along with the patent disarray of the Met Police on a number of other matters, are echoing across the world. Apart from the fact that he was neither an agitator nor a demonstrator, comparisons can be drawn with the case of Blair Peach, a New Zealander who died in a London demonstration as a result of police brutality in the 1970s. Tellingly, nobody was held accountable at that time. No officer was convicted or even lost their job as a result of the Menezes shooting at Stockwell station, and the security services are currently under a growing cloud for their part in rendition and torture of terrorist suspects. If this incompetent and crude suppression of centuries-old liberties continues, the entire British population is in danger of kettling. That’s why the Avaaz.org petition is important.

Follow this link to watch the video and sign the emergency petition to fix British policing of demonstrations. “Avaaz will deliver it directly to the Home Secretary, Parliament and the Metropolitan Police” - provided they don’t meet with an ‘accident’ along the way . . .

http://www.avaaz.org/en/fix_british_protest_policing

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance - oh, alright, you can take a quick look - it's probably all made up anyway

Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick, Metropolitan Police anti-terror ‘supremo’ ‘promptly’ resigned yesterday after he was photographed outside 10 Downing St clutching a top secret document listing UK Al Qaeda suspects atop a sheaf of papers. “YOU CAN’T QUIT QUICKER THAN A THICK QUICK QUITTER” screamed the Sun, referencing the cheery advertising slogan of KwikFit, a tyres and exhaust (muffler) depot. But Thus readers know that his resignation, far from timely, is long overdue. On December 22, 2008 Thus Passim: bob-be-nimble-bob-be-quick-resign-from-the-enquiry-now/ detailed how Assistant Commissioner Quick was leading the investigation into Home Office leaks which saw an outrageous and probably illegal raid of the office of Tory MP Damien Green under the auspices of the government, who openly accused the Tory Front Bench of colluding in efforts to compromise national security. We questioned whether it was appropriate for Quick to head up this enquiry – into himself. Needless to add, the ‘investigation’ continues. More worryingly, Thus reported that had compromised the security of his own family and his own force by running a wedding car hire business under his wife’s name from his home, boasting in local newspaper advertisements: “Cars . . with former police officers at the wheel.”

Loadsamoney! Taser lady Jacqui Smith can't stand all this whingeing about executive perks. She pays her mortgage, subsidises her sister's house, employs her hubby and buys his TV porn, all on a miserable Cabinet Minister's salary. What's your problem, losers?

Had PC Quick done the honourable thing at that time, the alleged security services raids on UK ‘terrorist cells’ in Manchester and elsewhere which the spin doctors are now predictably calling ‘a real and present Al Qaeda threat to Britain’ would not have been allegedly compromised. He was gifted at the time with the full support of Home Secretary ‘Taser’ Jacqui Smith (Thus passim) herself deeply implicated in the politically-motivated raid on the Tories. Subsequently Ms. Smith herself was revealed to have ‘misinterpreted’ the rules on MPs’ expenses, having used her ‘second home’ allowance to pay the mortgage on her (first home) family residence while staying at her sister’s London house. It was also revealed that Ms Smith’s husband (employed at taxpayer expense as her constituency secretary) had bought subscriptions to porn movies which the Home Secretary had submitted as expense claims.

Cloying statements of regret and gratitude from Ms. Smith for Bob Quick’s sterling work in saving the country from (unspecified) perils float on a reeking sea of cant. Video footage which shows that 47 year old father of nine, Ian Tomlinson, who died of a heart attack at the recent G20 protests, was not only an innocent bystander posing no threat and taking no part in the protests, but was savagely assaulted by a masked riot police officer surrounded by colleagues, who were not ‘showered by bottles and stones’ and who did not identify themselves after the incident, indicates the dangerous levels of unaccountability into which ‘Fortress Britain’ has descended. The ‘investigation’ into what looks very much like criminal assault resulting in death will be held by another division of the Metropolitan Police. We all know the conclusions, so why bother?

Jacqui Smith should resign, not least for her abuse of the public purse, but also for promoting, sponsoring and endorsing Quick’s former worrying behaviour in running a second business, albeit in his wife’s name, using police credentials as its calling card. Predictably, the Establishment has attempted to spin away from this latest descent into Third World farce by listing the tireless work in which the police and security services are engaged to keep the Al Qaeda threat at bay. But whilst we marvel in admiration at their efforts, let’s not forget the last time we heard about a major terror threat emanating from Manchester. On 19 April, 2004, 400 police raided several homes and held 8 Asian men, a woman and a 16 year old boy on suspicion of engineering a plot to blow up Old Trafford stadium and cause mass carnage. The evidence was a block purchase of tickets by a ‘group of Asians.’ The headlines in the (Murdoch-owned) Sun, at that time a partisan supporter of Tony Blair, read: “EXCLUSIVE: MAN UTD SUICIDE BLASTS FOILED.” There was absolutely no substance to the plot. Their only crime was supporting Manchester United (not yet indictable). They received no apology. Neither did those accused of the equally fantastic, unfounded ‘Ricin plot.’ Today’s Daily Telegraph cites ‘M15 sources’ in stating that thousands of shoppers were targeted over Easter. Despite the release without charge of one of the ten Pakistani students arrested and no discovery of a bomb factory or explosives of any description so far, Phil Woolas, the gaffe-prone northern Immigration Minister whose particular fetish is identity cards, declared brashly on Channel Four news: ‘We got them.’ Manchester police have now declared the ‘target zones’ safe for Easter shopping after all, so Woolas must be right. There appears to be some confusion amongst these high level sources, however. Some reports claim the Pakistani students were Taliban, others Al Qaeda. Britain, and the US, are certainly ‘at war’ with both, but Taliban activity so far afield would be very rare, if not unique. Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Kashmiri group allegedly behind the Mumbai attacks would seem the more likely candidates if any, especially since a couple of the nitwits behind the failed 21/7 London suicide bombings were allegedly members. Two of the suspects travelled to Pakistan last year, but then again, they are Pakistani. Two come from Peshawar, a hotbed of terrorism, but then again Liverpool John Moores University, where they study, actually has a student recruitment agency in Peshawar. But I’m merely speculating, unlike our brilliant police and security services, who have saved the day yet again.

It would be cynical to see this latest ‘Al Qaeda terror threat’ outbreak as an attempt to spin the beleaguered UK government and its incompetent Home Secretary out of the more prosaic clear and present danger resulting from an objective enquiry into her personal affairs, abuse of police power for political gain and the unlawful killing of an innocent man (two, if you count Juan Charles de Menezes). It would probably be unfair to equate the uptick of fearmongering with the tactics of Tony Blair in 2005, who announced, on BBC Radio Woman’s Hour of all places: “What they [the security services] say is that you have got to give us powers in between mere surveillance of these people – there are several hundred of them in this country who we believe are engaged in plotting or trying to commit terrorist acts – you have got to give us power in between just surveying them and being sure enough to prosecute them beyond reasonable doubt. There are people out there who are determined to destroy our way of life and there is no point in us being naïve about it.” In the year following the introduction of the 2005 Prevention of Terrorism Act, despite the ‘several hundred identified terrorist operatives,’ only 17 people were convicted, but the government diverted attention away from a far more destructive force – Gordon Brown’s bulimic public spending surge, designed to disguise the Tsunami of the swelling bubble economy. 

Al Qaeda, whoever or whatever they may be, needs to do nothing at all. The UK government’s off-the-leash attack dogs are acting as the provisional wing of the public relations department of Terrorism Inc. They need new handlers.

John J Kelly

I'm not a top copper, but the giveway clue in this advertisement from Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick's undercover limo service might have been 'police officers at the wheel'. In itself, this is an unenticing, unless the newly-weds wish to be driven at high speed, dragged from the vehicle with a blanket over their heads and bundled up the aisle by ex Plod. Good for shotgun weddings, I suppose.

The story of Bob Quick’s (wife’s) sideline business hiring luxury executive cars, run from the family home has now been well-documented. The unwise and slanderous outburst from Quick, who accused the Tories, and Shadow Home Office Minister Dominic Grieve in particular, of ‘corruption’, of endangering his family safety and undermining the Police enquiry into the earlier Home Office leaks is now common knowledge. His subsequent ‘grovelling apology’ to Cameron and the Tories is now also in the public domain. Silobreaker is the most comprehensive source.

I’m (clearly) not a copper, but it appears that Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick may have compromised the integrity and impartiality of the ‘enquiry’ which he is leading by his rash slander of the party and parties accused by Labour (Thus passim) of encouraging Home Office leaks of allegedly sensitive immigration data which led to the dramatic arrest of a top Tory. On this basis alone, he should resign as head of the enquiry and pass the job along to another department or (preferably) another police force entirely. 

One way to discredit and spin an investigation which might severely embarrass the government is to throw a large spanner into the spokes of the enquiry, add a spice of ‘Terror’ and hope that the resulting muck and bullets will smear everyone, especially if it is timed for the festive season, when not much news reporting happens. A version of this tactic may have been at play here. Bob Quick may have blindly lashed out at what he considered a mischievous attack by the Tory-favouring Mail on Sunday, but history shows that this influential right wing middle class tabloid has been used to great effect in the past by elements of New Labour, especially when there is a ‘Terrorist threat’ angle to the story.

Silobreaker networking image puts Quick in the middle and terrorism on the extreme edge

All this is largely irrelevant, since we already know the ‘outcome’ of this enquiry by the Met Police into the Met Police. We will hear that the Police acted completely independently of the government. Even though the Home Secretary and Prime Minister were informed of the raid on Damian Green’s parliamentary office and had it in their power to mitigate or halt the breach of parliamentary privilege that occurred, they ‘chose not to’ since to do so would compromise the ‘integrity and independence’ of the Police. The leaks, we will be told, were and are too sensitive to be revealed to the public and possibly exposed the entire nation to Terror on a massive scale. It will be conceded that neither David Cameron, Dominic Grieve nor Damian Green actively conspired to encourage the junior Home Office civil servant to leak information, but it will be acknowledged that he had an ulterior motive in so doing – to curry favour with the Conservatives. 

What possibly won’t be acknowledged is that the Police acted disingenuously in searching Green’s offices without a warrant, that it is possible that covert surveillance techniques were used which may have required authorisation from the Home office, that Jacqui Smith and the leaky Immigration Office department had prima facie motive for suppressing information relating to a breakdown of information relating to the number and whereabouts of illegal and overstayed immigrants, some of whom may be nationals of countries with whom Britain has a parlous diplomatic relationship (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia, for example). Neither will it be acknowledged that Gordon Brown and his advisors, principally Mandelson, had no right or justification to publicly intimate on national public media that the Leader of the Opposition and his Front Bench played an active role in colluding to leak information of this nature.

Nobody will be prosecuted (Scotland Yard have already conceded as much). Nobody will be brought to book. Bob Quick wedding car hire will operate from another premises (and frankly why not – good luck to him and his wife) – unless unkind – and possibly jealous – ‘sources in the Metropolitan Police’ leak his new address too. Please prove me wrong. And tell me I’m not a Tory. I’m not. I’m not. I’m not. I’m fed up of defending the poor lambs. But independent or not, I wouldn’t fancy my chances when they sweep to power, Superintendent Quick, so I’d keep the car hire business ticking over.

Despite these apparently turbulent developments, BT is ploughing ahead with the implementation of its ‘Webwise’ tracking software which profiles user behaviour by tracking online viewing through ISP data. BT should think carefully about the effect this may have on its already-tarnished reputation, but it probably won’t.

Lies, damned lies and statistics. Over 1000 people asked for ID cards – counted over TWO years

carving up the crime statistics

In a demonstration of the contempt for sensible interpretation of statistics which recently got the UK government into trouble for claiming that knife crime had fallen based on a sample of 78 incidents over three months, “Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has said that 1,142 messages from the public to the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) between November 2006 and October 2008 were classified as ‘wants an ID card’. This made ID-card requests “by far the most common subject matter”, Smith said on Thursday, in response to a parliamentary question from Liberal Democrats’ Home Affairs spokesperson Chris Huhne.” In real terms, that’s around 1.5 ‘messages’ a day. By contrast, up to 2 million people actively protested against the Iraq War in one day, but the government ignored them. Worse yet, Ms Smith admitted that “the IPS received 3,073 items of correspondence on the scheme between 1 November, 2006, and 31 October, 2008 but admitted that the IPS did not sort the correspondence according to support for or opposition to the scheme. (Thanks to ZD Net). So the erosion of democracy and slide into banal authoritarianism continues apace. We already know the endgame. We’ll get ID cards, the system will fail and vastly exceed its budget. The data warehousing will be managed at great expense by US companies. There will be huge breaches of security and fraud. But the statistics hold out a glimmer of hope. At this rate of take-up, the government could save a huge amount by purchasing card-making kit and laminators from Woolworths and individually making up the identity cards. There are plenty of out-of-work folks who could help, taking photos of the 1100 people who definitely want an ID card and putting their names in a special ‘Loonytunes’ databank. Their psychological profiles identify them as prime targets to vote positively for any mad government initiative, volunteer for crazy scientific experiments, buy Jaguar cars and sign up for BT Broadband. So it’s not all doom and gloom.

Another victory for profiling.

Police went Crackers in Wimbledon, aided and abetted by the tabloids, they hounded the wrong man for 12 years

With the conviction of Robert Napper, the Metropolitan Police announced today that there was no need for an enquiry into the Colin Stagg fit-up, on the grounds that ‘lessons were learned.’ In other words, the Police know what they did wrong and it won’t happen again. So that’s alright then. Except it’s not. It has not been too widely reported that the female police officer who participated in a ‘honey trap’ to frame Colin Stagg received £125,000 compensation, early retirement and a pension, while Napper, the person responsible for the crime, who had been reported to the police by his own mother for rape, was arrested twice for carrying a loaded handgun within eight weeks of the murder on Wimbledon Common, had a history of copycat crimes, including rape and battery of a mother and child and was allowed to roam free to commit further horrible crimes while the police and tabloid media engaged in a vicious miscarriage of justice aimed at clearing up the case of a mother brutally murdered in front of her infant child. Their grotesque entrapment antics led to further crimes being committed. It has been claimed that using today’s technology, the same ‘mistakes’ could not happen, yet contrary to media reports, DNA samples from both Napper and Stagg were available and could have been used to at least eliminate Stagg from their ‘enquiries.’ This is doubtful: Stagg was ‘convicted’ by the police, egged on by the media, keen to find a perpetrator for a heinous crime, at an early stage. The ‘honey trap’ was sordid, illegal and reckless. There should be an enquiry, but there won’t be. 

John Baker’s piece for THUS (below) summarises the details of this case better than I can. It is sad and remarkable that we are not taking this opportunity to re-examine the lack of police (and media) accountability which led to this gross miscarriage of justice. The victims were not just the family of the murdered woman, nor Colin Stagg and his family. Several other people raped and possibly murdered by Napper, certifiably criminally insane, might have been spared had the police not behaved like actors in a bad TV drama. As far as we know, nobody lost their job or has been called to account – at least not publicly.

John J Kelly