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?

The default position is that they must be guilty – of something. Being Pakistani will do for starters. A couple came from Peshawar Province, a ‘notorious Taleban stronghold’. Thus reported on April 10 that Liverpool John Moores University, where they were studying, has an official student recruitment agent in Peshawar but this appears to have been overlooked in the ensuing witch hunt. Others allegedly travelled to study in Britain on ‘incorrectly completed immigration forms.’ Phil Woolas, Immigration Minister, whose department is responsible for checking such matters, intemperately pronounced ‘we’ve got them’ (meaning bomb plot terrorists) on the evening of the arrests. If they are indeed guilty of entering the UK on false pretences, for the purpose of terror-related mayhem (no evidence was produced to even hold them for the 28 days permitted) and they do represent a real threat to security, then senior heads should roll in the Borders Agency. If they are innocent, they should be allowed to stay. In summary, logic dictates that Woolas should go if the ‘terror suspects’ are deported. 

Home Secretary (for now) Jacqui Smith shows her ID card at the video shop

Woolas, arch advocate of the government’s Identity Card scheme, is an Oldham MP, so it is less than surprising that Manchester has been ‘chosen’ as the testbed city where ‘young people’ aged between 16-25 can voluntarily apply for ID cards (at a cost of £30.00). Foreign nationals have already been obliged to register. The scheme is opposed by Lib-Dems and Tories, who, human rights considerations aside, may not object to ID cards as such, but doubt the government’s ability to deliver the scheme on budget  - latest estimates are £5.5 billion, so let’s call it £11 billion –  but more importantly, whether the system will further compromise individual data and actually facilitate identity fraud. The half-baked cards which will not carry biometric data until 2015, there will be no new national identity database – the existing government databases are a hacker’s half hour recreation – plus scanners which link to said databases will not be readily available for quite some time. Apart from that, it’s great!

No2ID spokesman, Phil Booth (also based in Manchester) said: “It makes a lie of all these grandiose claims about biometrics if there is not the infrastructure to back it up. . . . It will be a bit of plastic that will be eminently copyable.” He added that employers who doubted the authenticity of the card have been told to ‘flick it to check for a distinctive sound’. File under ‘you couldn’t make it up.’

Along with the Pakistani student bomber farrago, Manchester gave us the imaginary 2002 Old Trafford bomb plot (10 ‘Iraqi Kurds’ released without charge in the runup to the Iraq War) and the curious case of Hassan Butt allegedly a Jihadist turned informer, but by his own admission, a publicity-mad fantasist. Even known mad mullahs, such as Sheikh Bakri Mohammed  declared Butt’s claims to be a Taleban recruiter fraudulent, as far back as 2002, but this did not stop the British hounyhmns from hanging on his every word. He – or they – may or may not have been manipulated by the security services, but Manchester police compounded the felony by wasting millions attempting to prosecute Butt and compel the gawps who promoted him to ‘reveal their sources.’  Finally, Manchester had the UK’s highest crime rate in 2007 - another compelling reason to make it the place to launch a hugely costly, half-arsed ID card scheme which is open to widespread abuse. As we said last December, put me down for two, mate.

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

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

no malingering in back-to-work Britain

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

a spot of hard work never hurt anybody

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

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

Latest UK Government health advisor

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

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

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

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