By John J. Kelly

In a move unprecedented in Europe since Martin Luther said the Pope wasn’t a Catholic, German Finance Minister Peter Steinbrueck called Gordon Brown’s “crass Keynesianism” breathtaking – but not in a good way. Following the rude absence of Mrs Merkel, the German Chancellor who couldn’t be bothered to turn up to Gordon’s Coalition of the Borrowers last Monday (Thus passim) another Hun, this time Steffen Kampeter, wee-weed on the recovery plans by stating that Brown’s audacious Micawber Plan (Thus Passim) showed a “failure of Labour Policy.” Sarkozy, meanwhile, dapper Neo-Liberal French footie friend of Gordon, is erring on the side of financial incaution. The issues are well summarised here in a Bloomberg Special Report.

I hold in my hand a message from the German Chancellor

Conservative Shadow Chancellor George Osborne – who nobody cares about anyway after his boating misadventures – piped up that “there is a growing international consensus that Brown’s borrowing binge will make the recession worse, the recovery more difficult and burden future generations with a mountain of debt.” Labour Foreign Secretary David Miliband – who nobody cared about after he failed to unseat Brown and was pictured with a banana last October but is now rehabilitated as Mandelson’s hopfrog – said on the BBC Today Programme that it was all a German internal spat (unrelated to Eton footwear). Mrs Merkel was behind Brown’s Micawber Plan to urge Europe to splurge a quarter trillion Euros on tax cuts and public spending, funded, presumably, from the Planet Zanussi. He didn’t say just how far behind it she was, though.

Exactly what part of Schadenfreude don't you understand, Herr Bleistift Schwanz?

Mrs Merkel announced earlier that no big decisions would be taken about the level of state intervention in the German banking crisis until January, estimated subvention at around Eur 32 billion over two years and ruled out tax cuts. The world money markets, clearly in awe of Brown even if the Valkyrie was resisting his charm, signalled their ringing endorsement. Sterling plunged to a record low against the Euro, which was hailed as a triumph by the madly spinning Miliband who declared that a weak pound would help exports. True, if the UK had anything left to export apart from bankrupt Woolworths Pick ‘n Mix boiled sweets and old MFI furniture (THUS passim). It will be very bad for UK imports of just about everything else, but crucially of energy, denominated in dollars, which the UK, like everyone else, sort of needs in order to keep the lights on and the printing presses rolling at the Royal Mint.

It's Mr Micawber again, vying for EU Finance Minister's post

European insiders recall that during his time as UK Chancellor, Brown’s modus operandi was to turn up at EU Finance Meetings, read a prepared speech then take off his headphones and ignore the debate as he got on with his homework. He’d put on the phones for the closing speech and exit, assuming consensus around the UK position. This endearing trait has not been forgotten. Brown, meanwhile, reiterated this week that he had no intention of considering Britain’s entry into the European currency, a peculiar message from the self-appointed leader of Europe’s latter day Marshall Plan. As a worrying postscript, BBC Economics Editor Robert Peston reported that HBOS, which the UK government bailed out in September, has incurred an extra £3 billion in losses against unsecured loans in the past three months. Santander, Spanish owner of Bradford and Bingley and Abbey, two more UK financial sector strugglers, also announced huge job cuts in the UK as of January.

Meanwhile the UK credit card companies, who are gleefully charging an average of 14.9% interest on purchases and 23.9% on cash advances, and who are mainly owned by the banks, ruled out passing on Bank of England interest rate cuts to their customers, though they did say they would give distressed borrowers 100 yards head start before sending the attack dogs after them. Stick to your guns, Missus Merkel. Alles is far from Klaar. We really don’t want another Weimar. Look what happened last time.

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.

I couldn't possibly comment except to say that the Tories are smokey spinmonkeys who go on boats with Ruskies, unlike me

You can read more about all this from much better sources such as Silobreaker, which reported the collapse of the case on Monday. Ms Murrer herself was on BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour today. In another extraordinary and completely unrelated coincidence, Peter Mandelson, the scrapping spinmeister general New Labour peer and Business Minister, declared on BBC Radio 4′s Today Programme that the Conservatives were within their rights to call for a debate on the Damian Green affair, but that the ‘alleged’ fact that the Immigration Office junior civil servant who leaked over 21 pieces of information to the Shadow Minister was canvassing for a job with the Tories. he said the same on Sky News: ”I understand the anger expressed by some MPs because it touches on what they see as their rights and privileges. ‘I also have to say I think that for many Conservatives, it is a self-serving smokescreen, behind which to hide their own apparent collusion with a Home Office official who was allegedly systematically leaking Home Office papers to the Conservative Party, in order to pursue his own personal political ambition.’ Mandelson, who is not a member of the House of Commons, added: ‘I would like to know from the Conservatives whether their frontbench and their leader knowingly colluded with that civil servant in riding a coach and horses not only through the Civil Service code but also through the law.’

These allegations themselves, though legally qualified, are deliberately tantamount to accusing the Tories of breaking the law – or ‘aiding and abetting’. I observed the interesting coincidence of Mandelson’s re-emergence and the outbreak of renewed parliamentary violence earlier (Thus passim). Today’s masterful intervention makes the link explicit.

The most striking and relevant coincidence through all this smoke is that Damian Green has been threatened with the same charge as Ms Murrer: ‘aiding and abetting misconduct in a public office.’ Lord Mandelson’s musings now go further. By implying that ‘their frontbench and their leader may have knowingly colluded,’ in an attempt to deflect heat away from what is almost certainly turning out to be a serious constitutional crisis, he has almost certainly raised the stakes to Defcon 2. Thus has heard, meanwhile, that Jacqui Smith has ordered an investigation of the police investigation. By the police, of course. 

I’ll be relieved to leave this subject and get back to the real world. There is smoke and fire on all sides, but the overall implications of these curious coincidences are valid: either the police have gone unilaterally  troppo, someone is urging them to go troppo, the government is having a series of senior moments, or this is part of a dangerous, concerted attack upon HM Opposition to deflect attention from evident failings of the Immigration Department which may have implications for National Security. Allegedly.

You can read all 237 pages of the UK Government pre-budget report if you really want to, but to save time, cut to the chase o page 198. This tells us what the Government earns, spend and the difference between the two, and explains the headlines we have been reading. The biggest one shows UK Government (or is that ‘our’?) debt growing to £1,084,000,000,000 in 5 years time. That’s £17,777 owed by each person and child in the UK, at 2007 population levels. This time it’s serious. See Thus passim for more on the UK’s parlous credit status. (Thanks to Buckle, Green for pointing to p. 198. I personally have no intention of reading this meritricious jibber-jabber).

Innovative retail finance will replace failed banks with Scottish names

Beggars can be munificent, however. It’s cheering to note that the deposits of 10,000 savers with London Scottish Bank, a former secondary banker (credit trader) have been guaranteed by the government Financial Services Compensation Scheme. though the bank has gone into Administration (Chapter 11). London Scottish was a sub primer lender by any definition. Its business was old-fashioned money lending to people with a poor credit history, debt collection and fixed interest deposit accounts. It was a better example than most of this somewhat rancid but arguably necessary business, but its elevation to the status of a bank serves as an example of the failings of regulation in the UK financial services sector. While pleased for the depositors (but puzzled as to why folks would deposit money with the tallyman), I wonder if Gordon and Alastair were swayed by the faux-ethnicity of this Manchester ‘bank’. ‘London Scottish’ which joins Bank of Scotland and Royal Bank of Scotland in putting out the begging bowl. Next, pawnbrokers may be eligible to apply to the government to guarantee pledges, secured against dodgy watches, bling and musical instruments. UK plc might become a leading secondary market for such items, replacing our financial services industry, until a few weeks ago the envy of the world and other planets.

Oh, you are naughty, Mr. Plod. But I like you.

The awful events in Mumbai overshadowed a serious breach in democratic principles in the UK on 29 November, 2008. Nine counter terrorist police stormed the Kent home and Westminster offices of Conservative Shadow Minister Damian Green, searched his home, constituency and Westminster offices and detained him under the Official Secrets Act. The MP was bailed after several hours of interrogation on a putative charge of ‘aiding and abetting misconduct in public office.’ David Cameron MP, Leader of the Opposition, immediately decried the actions as ‘heavy-handed’, ‘unnecessary’  ’Stalinesque’ and redolent of ‘Zimbabwe.’ We heard little from the government until today, when Harriet Harman, Deputy Prime Minister and defender of the nation’s freedoms and morals (Thus passim) categorically denied any government involvement but conceded that, though MPs were not above the law, it was a worrying sign if the police were allowed to rampage through Whitehall riffling through MPs’ correspondence. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith admitted that the Cabinet Office had initiated the investigation into the ‘leaks’ and that a civil servant had been arrested as far back as November 11. It beggars belief that no discussion of tactics had taken place.

Ms Smith, defender of the State’s right to taser and tag (Thus passim) took a different but familiar line on flagship BBC political TV show, the Andrew Marr Programme. While (evasively) denying that anyone in the government knew anything whatsoever, before, during and after a well-resourced and highly politically-sensitive operation, she defended the rights of the police to act unilaterally ‘on information received’ as a sign of their democratic independence and refused to apologise in any manner to the Opposition MP. The argument is Orwellian, rather than Stalinesque, and disconcerting on several levels.

Firstly, if the Home Office was completely unaware of this action, relating to leaked information that, amongst other things, up to 5000 ‘illegal immigrants’ were unwittingly employed by government agencies in positions which could compromise the security of, amongst others, the Royal Family, then we have a problem. This fact was admitted by the government (after a leak) in November 2007. Ms Smith admitted that the Home Office was aware of the ‘leaks’, but claimed she and her department were unaware of the impending police action. Secondly, if nobody in the Home Office, up to and including the Home Secretary, was informed or even asked to provide a view as to the necessity of the high profile arrest and detention of the Opposition Spokesman on Immigration, then nothing has been learned from the systemic and endemic failures which led to the departure of John Reid, the previous hardline Home Secretary with, let’s say, distinctly ‘Stalinesque’ tendencies, whose reign of terror, conducted largely in the name of the War on Terror, split the Home Office in March 2007 and left it in disarray.

Thirdly, if the Home Secretary seriously believes that the nation will believe that there was and is no ulterior or political motive in the manner or execution of this operation, she is still living in the dark, spinning, leaking David Kelly days of Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell, who coincidentally, have recently returned to positions of influence. Damian Green received information whose disclosure, whether damaging to the reputation (if that’s the right word) or not of the Home Office Immigration Office appears to be pertinent, urgent and appropriate, especially at this tense time. It is also damaging to the credibility (if that’s the word) of the government. The police raid coincidentally occurred on the last day in of Labour-supporting Metropolitan Police Chief, Sir Ian Blair, sacked by Boris Johnson, a high profile Tory who carries a huge amount of executive power as Mayor of London and Chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority. If any link is suspected, action is required. If the government tacitly supported such plainly extreme action – a phone call would have sufficed – then it needs to explain why.

Ms Smith refused to confirm or deny that she or her department had signed authorisation to bug Mr Green’s phones and Blackberry mobile phone device. If it is subsequently proven that devices or premises were bugged by the police or other agents of the state, then the previous Home Office farragoes will pale into insignificance.

The issue of ‘police operational independence’ lies at the heart of this incident. If we are to believe that there was no co-ordination in an assault on the civil liberties of a high ranking Opposition Shadow Minister, so far not resulting in charges and, moreover, breaching Parliamentary privilege by entering the Houses of Parliament and searching his office, then we are looking at the green shoots of a Police State. If the Home Office was aware and, formally or informally, colluded, we are looking at a full grown Triffid. Deputy Prime Minister Harriet Harman, appeared to contradict Ms Smith by conceding that questions would need to be asked as to how Parliamentarians could expect to function if breach of privilege without sanction, is allowed. The Police know who authorised what, when and how. They should whistleblow, or take the blame if any or all of this is proved to be abuse of power. Cameron should continue to apply pressure for an official enquiry, (pressure has already yielded a Commons statement).

1984 was literally a bad year for British democracy. The Miner’s Strike and IRA Terror introduced breaches of democratic and constitutional principles which Labour in opposition were powerless to oppose. We could be facing a constitutional crisis which transcends tribal politics. This time round, Labour, even in its senescent state, should know better than to think we’ll be fooled into acquiescence by mutterings of things beyond our ken.

Up the workers

Last week the government claimed that ‘over 80%’ of sex workers were slaves, a claim hotly denied by the English Collective of Prostitutes. Harriet Harman, Deputy PM, spoke on Woman’s Hour urging Womens’ Institute (WI) members to report newspapers carrying escort advertisements, since the oriental and East European escorts on offer may be the victims of trafficking. They may also be illegal immigrants.

UK Local Community Minister Hazel Blears bangs on about the need to prosecute men (‘punters’ or ‘Johns’) who attempt to have sex with a woman who is employed to have sex by a third party (pimp). Sweden recently introduced this law but it is too early to tell whether it has stamped out illicit sex. They also have a law against drinking too much in public. You see a lot of drunken Swedes abroad.

Profiting from immoral earnings and ‘keeping a bawdy house’ has been a UK criminal offence since the time of Moll Flanders. There is logic to the argument that if women can be prosecuted for soliciting, men should be fined for responding. But given the obvious difficulty of proving who did what, to whom, when, and under what circumstances, even for a government which introduced an average of 2633 new laws per year under Tony Blair, 2823 in Brown’s first year, 64% more than under ‘Iron’ Lady Thatcher, there is more logic in decriminalising than trying to do a King Cnut. 

Degrading, exploitative and disturbing image of Hazel Blears

Driving sex out of the classified ads, telephone booths and newsagents’ windows is a publicity stunt too far. 2.3 million UK citizens view sex sites in the UK every day. A simple Google of ‘London escorts’ produces a cornocupia of sordid personal services advertising galleries of females, most of them foreign. Those WI members who aren’t already gaga will most certainly have a funny turn if they intend to hunt down all the thousands of ‘sex workers’ in cyberspace. 

The UK middle classes like to claim moral superiority on the grounds that they are unmoved by basic instincts. Dr Jekyll turned into the debased Mr. Hyde when he left his comfortable professional home in search of illicit pleasures. ‘No sex please, we’re British’  was a phenomenally successful stage play and (dreadful) film. Harrogate WI members famously raised profile and money by posing naked for a calendar, made into an emetic film about middle class ladies baring all in the name of charity. ’Secret Diary of a Call Girl,’ a mainstream drama, sponsored by Legal and General Insurance, attracted the station’s biggest non-terrestrial audience. The ‘latter-day Moll Flanders’ heroine, played by ex teeny singer and Dr Who girl Billy Piper with her tarted-up girl-next-door looks, living the high life, is a role model for aspiring sex workers. Sexy ads for the second series currently adorn UK bus shelters.

Sex trafficking destroys lives. Prostitution is not a good career choice for young people of either sex (we never hear much from MPs about rent boys, unless they’re caught with them). Forced and arranged marriages are infinitely worse, since the women are imprisoned for life and forced to bear children and do housework. I wonder why the police and immigration authorities cannot do more about this problem? Nothing to do with political correctness, of course.

Turn curb crawling districts into permanent ‘no waiting’ zones for cars, patrolled more than once in a blue moon by uniformed police. Give the saddos a traffic violation fine – several times more expensive than the streetwalker they intend to violate. (Taser their asses, adds Jacqui Smith). This will get it off the streets but will not stop people buying and selling commodity sex. At the budget end, poverty, abuse at home and narcotics are root causes. At the ‘Call Girl’ end, I’m sure there is a degree of pimping, but we need to listen to the views of the women on the sharp end, so to speak, not Hatty Harman, who I presume, like me, has no direct experience on either side of the world’s oldest commercial transaction.

Gary McKinnon

Thus is not normally a campaigning website, but please sign this petition on behalf of Gary McKinnon. The UK government and House of Lords have done nothing to protect a UK citizen’s rights. If it weren’t deadly serious, it would be risible, and is a horrible reminder of the nightmare slide into totalitarianism of the past eight years.

McKinnon hacked in to US military sites looking for evidence of UFOs nearly 7 years ago. He never denied his crime. His hacking was extensive, but not motivated by malice. He admitted it to the UK police, who told him he would get a community service sentence. Since he was never charged in the UK, he now faces extradition to the US and life in a Supermax prison. McKinnon suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome. Incarceration will almost certainly exacerbate his condition. According to his supporters, he has an honesty compulsion that will get him into terrible trouble with fellow inmates. There is little chance of either a fair trial or leniency, given that the US authorities have already said they want to see him “fry”.

His request for a judicial review was scheduled to be heard on December 2, but his supporters say that the Law Lords now anticipate setting a date for hearing the request any time from December to January, 2009. Let’s hope it’s after Obama’s inauguration, and that commonsense prevails. This is a hangover from the one-sided extradition treaty bulldozed through in the name of the so-called War on Terror. A demonstration is planned outside the US Embassy and the ‘office of Tony Blair’ on 5 December 2008 from 5-7 pm. Meanwhile, you can petition your MP to sign Early Day Motion 2388, a modest proposal which calls upon the Home Secretary to ask our US masters to repatriate McKinnon on health grounds in the (likely) event of being found guilty in the US courts, according to the terms of the 2003 Extradition Act.

Pass this petition link on to as many people as you can and try to avoid a serious miscarriage of justice.

http://www.gopetition.co.uk/petitions/stop-the-extradition-of-gary-mckinnon/signatures.html

No change there, you might say. But back to these identity cards. I’d like to put in an early order for a couple. Although I haven’t tried second lifing just yet, I fancy living out a second life with somebody else’s identity entirely. I’ll register a car, rent a room, pop down the Blackstock Rd where (allegedly) you can buy a spare passport and get someone to hack me a new identity card. If it weren’t for the credit crunch, I’d buy some electrical goods, alloy wheels and rent a phone, just like the person who stole my identity last June. Given the UK government’s Keystone Cops track record in maintaining databases, my false identity – I rather fancy the name Caiphas Galaxy – will be as convincing and secure as my real one. plus, I’ll be secure in the knowledge that a US mega corporation, possibly one that forbids its employees to wear beards, will be immensely richer and embedded in the UK security infrastructure at UK taxpayers’ expense for the foreseeable future, pretending that the database is up, running and foolproof. An employee will leave the database on a DVD outside the Al Qaeda internet cafe, however and tighter measures will need to be deployed, including installing more cameras outside said cafe and deporting Mr Bin Laden, the owner, to Afghanistan.

So why not cut to the chase and explain, in those special patronising Home Office tones; ‘we’re introducing identity cards to create macjobs in call centres, waste (borrowed) money, increase the possibility of electronic identity fraud and to give the Daily Mail some more stuff to moan about.’

According to the Home Office website ‘the modern police’ are indeed ‘working towards diversity.’ If they aren’t too busy in the kebab shop, getting their cars washed at the Albanian car wash or leaving their guns in the toilet at Starbucks, you’ll find some of them – in this case a Muslim police person - suing for racial and sexual discrimination.

While you’re on this wonderful, Panglossian website, take a look at the police powers. ‘ The modern police service is a varied, multi-layered, responsive institution working to ensure your safety.’ It goes on to tell you that can stop anyone for anything nowadays without giving any excuse whatsoever: non-compliance is an offence in itself. Lucky us.

Sorry, I’m getting above myself. Too much ginseng today. I blame the Koreans.

Caiphas Galaxy

PS. The CIA website, one of my favourites, emits a delicious pretend typewriter sound when it spells out its title, letter by letter. These guys mean business! Watch out you commie pinkos – we’ll render you to Syria, our new allies in the war on terror, soon as look at you, Barack or no Barack!