Saturday, November 24, 2007 

Murdoch in his own words.

On occasion, stories which prove much of what you argue about just sail straight out into the open:

The media mogul Rupert Murdoch has said he wants Sky News to become more like his rightwing US network Fox News, and revealed the extent of his editorial grip on his British newspapers to a House of Lords committee.

The communications committee, chaired by Lord Fowler, toured the US in September to meet media executives, regulators and consumer groups as part of an inquiry into media ownership. Their conversations were made public yesterday in detailed minutes.


The minutes, available in this .doc file, are mostly full of the usual self-aggrandising bullshit from Murdoch about how wonderful his companies are and how, despite all the evidence to the contrary, he doesn't interfere with editorial independence, except when it comes to the Scum and News of the Screws.

Most amusing are the following claims:

They [the regulatory authorities] kept investigating his purchases on the grounds of plurality but he had invested in plurality by keeping the Times alive and putting 200 extra channels on the air through Sky.

Ah yes, keeping the Times afloat, meaning that his own politics are given the necessary veneer of "centrist" broadsheet gloss, is a sure sign of plurality. Thank the Lord for Rupert: he's given us 200 more channels of pure unadulterated shit.

He stated that “the BBC has a unique place in British life”. People were very hostile to any challenge to the BBC.

Which certainly hasn't stopped him from bashing the corporation at every opportunity in both the Sun and the Times. The reporting from both during the Hutton inquiry was a case in point: the government had done very little to nothing wrong while the BBC were the true villains of the piece, guilty before they had even stepped inside the court. The leaking of the final report to the Scum the night before it was published only highlighted how deep inside Number 10's rectum the paper was. The reporting from the Sun over the BBC fakery "scandals" was gleeful, gloating and delirious at being able to shoot into an open goal; when ITV's far more serious defrauding through its phone lines was exposed the coverage was cut to the bone and nowhere near as condemnatory.

News Corp was the first organisation to bring proper football coverage to the UK. Their investment led to better football grounds and other benefits. However it had been a real struggle.

Or you could of course argue that Murdoch's money and its effects have never been more apparent than following Wednesday's catastrophe. Murdoch created the "golden generation", the "bling generation" or whatever you want to call it, and has poured money in while the real football fans themselves have never been so priced out of the game.

He believed that Sky News would be more popular if it were more like the Fox News Channel. Then it would be “a proper alternative to the BBC”.

How true. You could watch the BBC's best efforts to be impartial, or you could watch open propaganda for Murdoch's politics on Sky News.

Mr Murdoch stated that Sky News could become more like Fox without a change to the impartiality rules in the UK. For example Sky had not yet made the presentational progress that Fox News had. He stated that the only reason that Sky News was not more like Fox news was that “nobody at Sky listens to me”.

This is also completely untrue. Sky News gave Richard Littlejohn two chances to make the "presentational progress" that Fox News had, one before Fox News had even been set-up in 1994 and then again in 2003. Both were miserable failures, with Littlejohn the first time complaining that the impartiality regulations were the reason.

Mr Murdoch believed that the role of the media is “to inform”. Reporters are there to find out what is going on and editors are there to invest in those investigations if they uncover something.

You can more than make up your own mind on what Murdoch's real view of journalism is by the example set by Fox News and by our own Sun.

He distinguishes between The Times and The Sunday Times and The Sun and the News of the World (and makes the same distinction between the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal). For The Sun and News of the World he explained that he is a “traditional proprietor”. He exercises editorial control on major issues – like which Party to back in a general election or policy on Europe.

It is of course then just a coincidence that the Sun and Times share the exact same view on both Europe and which party they backed at the last election. The reality of Murdoch's editorial control over the Times and Sunday Times is far more complicated. As what happened when Murdoch first gained control of the Times showed, he made the same platitudes he does now at the Wall Street Journal over editorial independence, only for Harold Evans to resign within a year because of Murdoch's constant meddling and disagreements with him. Andrew Neil, most certainly not a left-winger, and a former Murdoch editor has for instance also said:

Rupert Murdoch was an enormous presence in my life. Even when he wasn't there he was this sort of looming presence....I think that's how he does control things. He leaves you in no doubt that if he's not there in person he's there in spirit and he's watching what you are up to and you've got to stick to the parameters. The idea that he doesn't interfere is nonsense.

Neil hits the nail right on the head. Murdoch editors know full well what is expected of them. If they deviate from his well-known line, they get sacked. As a result, they don't, and so there's no need for him to leave huge calling cards which would make clear his gross editorial interference. Why else would every single Murdoch owned major newspaper around the world have supported the Iraq war?

Mr Murdoch insisted that there was no cross promotion between his different businesses. He stated that The Times was slow to publish listings for Sky programmes. He also stated that his own papers often give poor reviews of his programmes.

Any reader of Private Eye will be more than aware of the numerous puffs and cross-promotions that frequently feature in both the Times and Sun for his other media interests.

Of course, if you were looking for a report of Murdoch's evidence in his own papers, you'd be searching for a long time. Neither the Sun (which has only mentioned its owner 10 times this year) or the Times have published any article on the Communications Committee's release of the notes of the meeting. Then again, how could he possibly tell Sun readers that what they're consuming every day is exactly what he wants them to?

Labels: , , , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

11/24/2007 08:57:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Lord Guthrie treats Telegraph readers like fools.

Charles (Lord) Guthrie today authors a comment piece for the Telegraph:

Since I voiced my criticisms of government policy towards our Armed Forces during Thursday's defence debate in the Lords, many people have asked whether the five former defence chiefs who stood up were taking part in a planned ambush against the Government. They seem to think we all met up at Starbucks and plotted to give everyone in it a bloody nose.

In fact, the opposite happened. Far from being a co-ordinated plot, this was a spontaneous eruption from a group of people who find themselves at the end of their tether regarding the treatment of our Armed Forces.


As I wrote yesterday, all five of the Lords who spoke up in the debate on Thursday are either patrons or vice-presidents of the United Kingdom National Defence Association (a full list of its patrons, vice-presidents and policy board members is available from their website in a PDF).

I cannot of course prove that all five Lords did actively conspire to do what they did in the Lords on Thursday, or that it was, in Guthrie's words, anything other than a "spontaneous eruption," and so in these litigious times cannot come right out and call Guthrie a liar. He doesn't however deign to mention in his article the existence of the UKNDA, his patronship of it, or that all five of his fellow former chiefs of defence staff belong to it in their various guises. You can however make your own minds up about his less than honest disclosure.

Labels: , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

11/24/2007 08:40:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, November 23, 2007 

God help us.

The latest musical terrorism to be foisted upon us is Adele Adkins, yet another vulnerable, troubled, earnest, talented, insert bullshit adjective here female singer-songwriter who made her name on MurdochSpace. Talking to the Grauniad today, she says:

She laughs: "The Daily Mail? I'm in the posh papers! I read the Sun."

If anyone would like to submit their in-depth plans for how they would like to kill me so that I don't have to suffer any longer, I'll be more than happy to receive them.

Labels: , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

11/23/2007 11:03:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

The UK National Defence Association and snouts in the trough.

If the way that five former chiefs of the defense staff stood up in the Lords yesterday and condemned the government for its failure to "adequately" fund the armed forces smacked of a campaign being got under way, then you'd most certainly be right. What few of the reports of their speeches has made clear is that all five Lords, Boyce, Guthrie, Craig, Bramall and Inge also share something else in common - all are either patrons or vice-presidents of the recently formed United Kingdom National Defence Association.

On why such an organisation is needed, the UKNDA's website explains:

The fundamental problem to be addressed is that for many years now:
  1. Defence has been, and still is, too low in the nation’s list of priorities. and therefore

  2. The Armed Forces are under funded for the tasks they are set and consequently over-stretched.

Which is fair enough, as it goes. You could of course argue that in actual fact, especially since 9/11, rather than defence being too low in the list of priorities, war itself has been far too high in the list of priorities, but it is undoubtedly true that those forces that had no choice in being sent to Afghanistan and Iraq were poorly-equipped, on some occasions fatally so, are being curmudgeonly compensated when they are injured, and are currently living in completely inadequate accommodation while back here.

I do however think that it is thoroughly disingenuous for the UKNDA to be comparing the military spending of 1984 to now, as it goes on to do. Whatever your thoughts on the cold war as it entered its last ebb, we then knew who the "enemy" was meant to be, and it was a monolithic Soviet Union that had eastern Europe in its grasp and came right up to the Berlin wall. The situation now is wholly different, and will especially be once we eventually fully withdraw from Iraq: the only country where we will actually be involved in a war is one in which there clearly isn't a military solution, and the military themselves are coming around to that fact. The main emphasis for the military will most likely remain to be peace-keeping, outside of Afghanistan, crossing fingers that we won't be involving ourselves in the madness of an attack on Iran if such a thing happens. The current defence budget still stands at roughly £30bn a year; that's a third of what we spend, again roughly, on the NHS. Robert Fox on CiF provides a pessimistic counter-argument.

It's surely right though that we ask whether the grandees of this new organisation have any personal interest in an increase in defence spending. As the latest issue (1198) of Private Eye sets out, Lord Guthrie is for instance a director of Colt Defense, which supplies the US military with a number of rifles and weapons. Lord Boyce is a director of the VT group, currently a subcontractor on the T45 destroyer, which is over two years' late and £635m over budget. He's also a director with consultants WS Atkins, who on their website boast:

In the defence and aerospace sector we turnover around £150m per year in supporting the definition and delivery of many of the largest defence and aerospace programmes in the UK.

Lord Owen, who didn't speak yesterday but who is one of the UKNDA's patrons, is a paid adviser to Terra Firma Capital, whom the Eye points out bought the MoD's married quarters in 1996 in a deal the National Audit Office said lost the MoD £139million. Since then, it's leased the homes back to the MoD, but refuses like all other normal landlords to take responsibility for repairs, meaning the MoD has to pay others to do something that TFC should be doing themselves. Lord Inge, who did speak yesterday and who's on the vice-presidents' list (PDF), is the chairman of Aegis, the private security firm set-up by Tim Spicer and which was previously exposed in two videos posted online which showed civilian vehicles in Iraq being fired on for no apparent reason. He's also an adviser to ICX Technologies and a consultant to OWR AG, who provide decontamination systems. Moving down onto the "civilian" list, of the MPs signed up, Patrick Mercer does consultancy work for Blue Hackle, another private security firm (the ones we used to call mercenaries) while Nicholas "Fatty" Soames is a director with Aegis.

It's also just ever so slightly opportunistic for the Conservatives, who have previously never mentioned how Des Browne combining being both defence secretary and Scottish secretary was a problem, upon hearing Guthrie claim that it amounts to an insult set about parroting that it was exactly that. The claims that Brown is the one that has shown contempt are also surprising; it was only back in January that Blair showed how patronising he could be in a speech on HMS Albion by demanding that the military accept that conflict and casualty "may be part of what they are called upon to face," as if they didn't already know what was expected of them after taking them into a war which will rightly become known as his and his only. All those in the cabinet and parliament who voted for it are culpable, including Gordon Brown who was, as Vince Cable points out, the man who signed the cheques, but the ultimate responsibility lies with Blair. The way the attack has been personalised, especially in a week when the government has rightly been under intense pressure, is also hardly going to encourage the ministers under fierce criticism to feel anything but incredible anger at the way the UKNDA campaign has been orchestrated.

As Private Eye in its piece elucidates, it's not just how much money is being spent on the armed forces, it's also how that money is being spent. Additionally this week we've seen how QinetiQ, the government's defence research arm was allowed to be partially sold off, with the private equity group Carlyle able to make a profit of £300m just 3 years after buying a stake for just £42m, with the chairman and chief executive able to turn investments of £129,000 and £108,000 into assets worth £22m and £18m when QinteQ was floated last year. Unlike with the above, the Treasury under Brown's paws is all over this. None of the Lords who spoke up yesterday though had anything to say about it, but that might have had something to do with three of them potentially able to make plenty themselves out of how the defence budget is spent. Lord Gilbert and Bruce George MP both criticised the deal and are vice-presidents of the UKNDA, but neither has any financial dealings with defence firms. Gilbert is an adviser to ABS, which manufactures hovercraft, but is unpaid. It's one thing to stand up for the troops who are in the thick of it and more then fed up, it's quite another to be sticking your snout in the same trough which feeds them while doing so.

Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

11/23/2007 06:51:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, November 22, 2007 

Jahongir Sidikov escapes deportation - but for how long?

Craig reports back that Jahongir Sidikov, was mercifully not deported yesterday after offering passive resistance to those charged with putting him on the flight to Uzbekistan. Next time staff authorised and equipped to use force will be used.

Craig also voices his despair at the complete lack of interest, from MPs, officials and journalists about the whole state of affairs. There just doesn't seem to be any knowledge of just how repressive and dictatorial Uzbekistan has become, much worse by almost all accounts than it was during Soviet days. Unfortunately, Uzbekistan lacks marching Buddhist monks and charismatic, popular and well-known opposition leaders, or a ubiquitous tyrant that hate and anger can be directed towards like in Zimbabwe.

There is the spark of a campaign amongst other blogs and those commenting on Craig's site towards raising awareness of Sidikov's plight - Question That listing all those currently linking to Craig's postsfrom the MediaLens contact page and spreading the word. I'm personally unsure of the worth of contacting MPs; they can put down an early day motion and might try raising the issue in the Commons, but that often has little effect. More pressure will be put on the immigration service and Home Office if it gets widespread coverage in the media, which is why I favour personally getting in contact with the broads and ex-broads and making clear that there is real anger and dismay over the government deporting asylum seekers back to countries such as Uzbekistan. They haven't shown much interest so far, but if enough people do contact them they might just sit up and listen. I've taken some of these addresses from the MediaLens contact page:

Guardian
National news desk: national@guardian.co.uk
Alan Rusbridger, editor: alan.rusbridger@guardian.co.uk

Independent
National news desk: newseditor@independent.co.uk
Simon Kelner, editor s.kelner@independent.co.uk

Times
News desk: home.news@thetimes.co.uk

Telegraph
dtnews@telegraph.co.uk

If you do write, try to use your own words as generally they tend to dismiss mailings that are obvious carbon copies.

Labels: , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

11/22/2007 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Militants, terrorists, Islamofascists, or takfirists?

Timothy Garton Ash writes another well argued and important article, this time on what we should call those inspired by the ideology behind al-Qaida, and comes I think to mostly the right conclusion.

First, Islamofascist is mostly a laughable term. The main argument for its use tends to be that many moons ago, some Islamists had a grudging respect for the Nazis or were even in some cases inspired by them, as Maududi was. Slightly more persuasive is that the idea of a worldwide Islamic caliphate, especially if it is to be imposed by force, with Sharia law forming the legal system in such a state, as laughable and implausible as the concept is, more than bears resemblance to Lebensraum, a key component of Nazi ideology.

While Ash outlines a number of other reasons why the term doesn't ring true, I think he leaves an important one out. The main use of "Islamofascist", is directly or not, to infer that the threat we now face from al-Qaida is somehow comparable to that which manifested itself in the 1930s. This fantasy isn't just confined to the neo-cons who most liberally use the term: Sir Ian Blair has claimed something highly similar, and while Jonathan Evans wasn't entirely clear, he also said that the current threat level was the highest in MI5's existence. Most crucially, "the enemy", whoever it is has been since 1945, except in the case of the Soviet Union, has always been compared and made out to be the new Hitler. Go through them all, whether it be Gaddafi, the Ayatollahs, Saddam Hussein and numerous others, all have been the Nazis reincarnate. Mostly it's just laziness, but it's also borne out of a desire to scaremonger and resort to propaganda, looking for a false equivalence which motivates support for action.

Islamists is mostly covered by Ash, who rightly says that to use Islamists when referring to those who murder either 572 Yazidis or 52 commuters is to link those who do so with the likes of the Hizb-ut-Tahrir, the Muslim Brotherhood, or indeed, even the Justice and Development party in Turkey. We might not agree with their politics, and while some who were formerly members of the first two have become terrorists, they're still in no way comparable to the violence advocated and justified by the ideology behind al-Qaida.

Ash then prefers "jihadists", or especially "jihadist extremists" and "jihadist terrorists" and I think he's mostly right. Even there though there are slight problems. You could describe the likes of Hamas as jihadists, and while they're certainly terrorists or have been terrorists, considering they haven't launched a suicide bombing inside Israel now for a number of years, there's again a distinct difference between the aims of Hamas and the aims of al-Qaida. Similarly, there are jihadist groups in Iraq like the Islamic Army of Iraq (now widely believed to have turned almost completely on the Islamic State of Iraq), the 1920 Revolution Brigades and numerous others that are jihadist in ideology, but are completely opposed to attacks on civilians and have never used the tactic of suicide bombings. Regular readers might have noticed that I'm partial to the use of takfirist, at least in one definition of the word, that those who adhere to the ideology behind al-Qaida don't care who they kill, and exemplified by how the Islamic State of Iraq has murdered thousands of Shias through the specific targeting of Shia dominated areas in Iraq by suicide bombers. If such attacks even kill Sunnis, that's unfortunate, but that can still be justified by the belief that like the bomber they will be martyrs to the cause. The most accurate way to my mind to describe them then is "jihadist takfiris" or "takfiri jihadis", whichever you prefer, although jihadists is more than acceptable shorthand.

Ash ends the article with a flourish:

There is an obligation on those of us who are non-Muslims living in open societies like Britain, to choose our words carefully. Until someone comes up with a better one, I think "jihadists" is the most appropriate shorthand. There is, however, an equal and matching obligation on our Muslim opinion leaders. That is to condemn, audibly and unambiguously, the jihadists who threaten us all.

Indeed.

Labels: , , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

11/22/2007 10:22:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

A complete failure to find anyone accountable.

Ian Blair then seems set to continue as the head of the Metropolitan police, at least for another two and half years, upon which his current contract expires. It's anyone's guess as to whether it would then be renewed.

I don't think it can be overstated that, as it stands, absolutely no one has personally been found culpable for the systemic failures that culminated in an innocent man losing his life on that morning, in the most dreadful, vicious and reprehensible of circumstances. This isn't about being vindicative or demanding a scalp just for the sake of it; someone, in this case Sir Ian Blair, is ultimately responsible for what went wrong on the 22nd of July 2005, and then subsequently the behaviour of the Met as a whole right up to today.

If, instead of reacting in the way that the Met did, they had come out within a matter of hours of de Menezes being shot, come clean and said there's been a terrible tragedy, we're incredibly sorry, and we'll immediately let the Independent Police Complaints Commission investigate what went wrong and learn from its recommendations, all of the unpleasantness of the last two years could have been avoided. Instead, within an hour of de Menezes being shot dead, Ian Blair himself had written to the prime minister urging him to stop the IPCC from being allowed to investigate because of the "unique circumstances" of the time. As the first IPCC report stated, if Blair himself hadn't tried to halt their investigation, all of this could have been sorted out far sooner.

What followed from there was blatant lies, obfuscation and smears. The police, despite knowing full well that de Menezes had not been wearing a bulky jacket and that he hadn't leapt the barrier, allowed those details to become stated fact without putting the record straight. It's hard not to come to the conclusion that this was deliberate when you consider what followed: the leaking that he had overstayed his visa, as if this made a jot of difference to the fact that they had shot dead an innocent man, then later that a woman had accused him of rape, which when he was cleared of involvement in was hardly reported. If the IPCC investigation hadn't been leaked, there's the possibility we wouldn't have learned the truth of what happened for months more. The leaker responsible had her door broken down at dawn for her trouble.

Then, in the biggest and most outrageous insult of all, de Menezes was further smeared at the health and safety prosecution trial. A photograph comparing Menezes with Hussein Osman was according to a prosecution witness manipulated to make the obvious differences between the two less distinct, while Ronald Thwaites QC, in his closing argument wove a tale which directly contradicted evidence that the jury had heard, claiming that de Menezes didn't comply with officers who challenged him when he never was challenged, that he had behaved suspiciously when he had in fact acted like any other commuter would have done, and that Menezes might have "thought" he had drugs in his pocket which could have accounted for the way he acted, even though he didn't have any and didn't act out of the ordinary.

Sir Ian Blair could have pleaded guilty to the charge, especially when the prosecution case was so compelling. Instead, as the force today openly puts on its website, it's asked lawyers to consider whether it was in the public interest to contest the charge, and then whether an appeal is possible. Rather than learning from its mistakes, under Blair the force is still intent on challenging the actual facts of what happened on that morning. The document (PDF) itself only demonstrates the arrogance with which the lawyers responsible for the Met's woeful defence view their arguments, and shows their contempt for both the jury and the judge. Choice parts are:

9. Although the jury’s verdict is impenetrable as to precisely what they accepted and what they rejected of our defence, the judge made it plain at the conclusion of his summing-up that it was sufficient for the jury to make a finding against us on only one of the nineteen allegations in order to convict. It therefore does not follow from the fact of conviction that the jury accepted all of the prosecution’s allegations, or that we were found guilty of even one “catastrophic” failing as the prosecution labelled our shortcomings: a description which the judge did not adopt in his sentencing remarks.

This is what is called being in denial.

11. We knew and acknowledged that this was always going to be a difficult case in which to secure an acquittal. There was always a significant danger, as we think in fact came to pass, that the central issues would be obscured by too close a focus on the tragic outcome (which was not of itself a necessary element of the prosecution’s case), and that the jury would be unable to divest itself of hindsight and emotion fuelled in part by uninformed and adverse reporting before and during the trial.

How they came to such conclusions as these is anyone's guess. Rather than them not being able to rebut the case, built around the IPCC's report, it's all down to the jury's hindsight and "emotion". The part about the "uniformed and adverse reporting" is classic: the Met did everything it could to spin the coverage their way, lying, smearing and not correcting those "uninformed" reports, yet the guilty verdict is partly a result of the "adverse" reporting.

14. In summary, we feel that it was appropriate, right and reasonable for the MPS to mount a full contest to the charge and allegations which it faced. The MPS was accordingly entitled to seek the verdict of a jury.

See, this isn't just about whether there's a case for appeal, it's also about the lawyers, no doubt handsomely remunerated for their tactics in smearing de Menezes, justifying themselves.

Next, it's all the judge's fault:

18. The trial judge brought his influence to bear on the jury throughout the trial by the manner and frequency of his interventions and most conspicuously in his summing-up. We have little doubt that he conveyed to the jury his own unshakeable assessment that we could and should have done a better job. This should not have occurred. It was a matter about which strong complaint was made to the judge in open court. We are not, however, at all optimistic that an appeal on this ground would succeed.

If anyone should be complained about, it's Ronald Thwaites, but then he's one of the authors of this document, and unsurprisingly he doesn't criticise his own role in the Met's failure to get an acquittal.

All of this is without mentioning that Blair himself didn't know that an innocent man had been shot dead until the following morning, when even his secretary had heard the rumours. Those supporting Ian Blair know in their heart of hearts that the Met's behaviour both on that day and since then has been indefensible: that's why they're left with such intellectually bankrupt tactics as saying that "Al-Qaeda must be laughing at us while we busy ourselves pillorying the police who keep us safe," when the reality was that the police did the bombers' work for them, and then going off on tangents about how it's really about Ian Blair's success(!) that those who want him to go care about.

The failure for anyone to be found accountable though shouldn't be surprising. The police have killed innocent men before and got away with it. They will almost certainly kill more innocent people and get away with it too. Sir Ian Blair should have been sacked, seeing as he's too obstinate and too pig-headed to do the decent thing, to show that the police themselves are not above the laws that every other single one of us are held to. He has survived, but the Met itself has been tarnished.

Labels: , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

11/22/2007 09:01:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, November 21, 2007 

"It's a funny old game." "What is?" "Chess."

I'm sure I'm not the only one who noticed that just before half-time during England vs Croatia the advertising hoardings were flashing up something along the lines of "got skills? http://www.thefa.com/skills"

They must have wanted to get the applications for both a new team and manager in early.

Labels: , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

11/21/2007 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

56/8 days dies a further death.

The government's trying to sell more than one kind of cold sick.

Moving on from one abuse of power to a potential other, the plans to extend 28 days must lay even further in tatters following the evidence given to the home affairs select committee by both the director of public prosecutions, Ken Macdonald, and the former attorney general, Lord Goldsmith.

While yesterday saw the head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, fresh from predicting new doom to the press having to give evidence in private, believed to have said that it was not his role to comment on whether an extension was needed, which raises the question of why he needed to say such a thing behind closed doors, today's evidence was also expected but no less compulsive for it. Ken Macdonald, who previously made a principled and more than welcome call for the end to the war metaphor when tackling the terrorist threat, one that seems to have been accepted and put into practice, could perhaps have been expected to say that he saw no evidence for a further extension and that the CPS was happy with the current limit.

Lord Goldsmith, on the other hand, the man who rubber-stamped Blair's war through the swift modifying of his legal advice that had previously tied itself in knots, and also gave the OK to the dropping of the Serious Fraud Office inquiry into BAE's slush fund for the Saudis, would have been expected to stay loyal regardless of his departure from government. It's also astounding just because of what else Goldsmith got up to while attorney general, arguably tarnishing the post for good. Why be principled over detention without charge when he has had a hand in the enormous bloodshed in Iraq thanks to our unnecessary joining of the US invasion that his changing of his legal advice permitted? How could he have been prepared to put BAE above suspicion and make the rule of law a laughing stock yet resign over 90 days? Also, in general, to make your point about how you disagree with a government policy if you're a minister is to resign prior before it going before the House of Commons; can Goldsmith really be excused from doing this just because he was a peer? Was he perhaps motivated by the belief that if he did so, and the vote was lost, as everyone expected it would be, that he'd force Blair to resign with him?

It's impossible to know, but his intervention now is still welcome, if only because of the huge embarrassment it will cause Brown, especially at a time when the whole government is under pressure due to its startling incompetence. Revealing also was that he believed he was the only one in cabinet to feel so strongly; an indictment on the illiberal and supine nature of Blair's chosen few, especially those such as Patricia Hewitt and Peter Hain who had backgrounds in campaigning on civil liberties.

The only people now still calling for an extension seems to amount to Sir Ian Blair, a man responsible for the most heinous behaviour dolled out to a man shot dead in an anti-terrorist operation, some chief police officers who previously phoned up MPs' and so annoyed some that they felt they were being lobbied, and the government, with Brown sitting on anyone who betrays a moment's doubt, backed up by the Sun newspaper, the Times, the Express and probably the Mail. Everyone else is completely opposed, although where the public itself stands at large is unknown. In the current climate you can't quite believe that Brown would still attempt to force through the measure, but if all has died down again by next year all bets might once again be off.

Labels: , , , , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

11/21/2007 10:48:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Home Office to deport failed asylum seeker back to Uzbekistan.

The base inhumanity of the government's policy on asylum seekers seems to have absolutely no depths. Prepared to send "failed" asylum seekers back to Zimbabwe, Sudan, Congo and Iraq, all out of an impossible effort to appease the tabloids which a few years ago decided that those fleeing persecution were actually all skiving chancers looking for something for nothing, the Home Office's latest jaw-dropping attempt at reducing the figures by one is to deport a member of the banned opposition party Erk back to Uzbekistan. That's right, the country which only a couple of weeks ago was exposed on Newsnight as using forced child labour to pick the cotton crop.

Jahongir Sidikov has according to Craig Murray had his plane ticket back to the country booked for this evening. For all I know as I write this he could already be on his way back. Beyond any possible argument, deportation back to such a repressive state as Uzbekistan is almost certainly illegal under international law. As Craig writes, the UN Convention against Torture forbids deportation back to any state where there are "substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture". There is no doubt whatsoever that in Uzbekistan torture is completely endemic in the criminal justice system; Human Rights Watch released a 90-page report (PDF) on November 7 documenting just that. To send Sidikov back to Uzbekistan would be the equivalent of handing him over to the Uzbek authorities, who will doubtless ensure this time that Sidikov remains "disappeared".

The case throws up huge questions about the entire asylum system, from those whom initially decided that he could be safely deported back to Uzbekistan to the judge who rubber stamped the deportation with apparent contempt for the defence's entire arguments. She refused to accept that Craig, who was to be a witness, could not get to the court even though he was in Africa; and that a letter from the opposition leader Mohammed Salih was genuine, even though Murray knows for a fact that it was. The much hyped "fast-tracking" seems to be working perfectly to the government's short-term political advantage: within 2 weeks Sidikov has been refused asylum, had his appeal rejected and is now to be flown back to Uzbekistan. The consequences of this mean that the lawyers for the asylum seekers have very little time to prepare their cases: all very good for the government's spin on reducing the numbers seeking asylum and the "failed" ones being deported; incredibly tragic and unfair for those seeking refuge.

This comes only a week after the Home Office was criticised, according to the BBC's Mark Easton, in the most fierce way he had ever seen by a independent committee, which found that only 8% of complainants to the Border and Immigration Agency were even interviewed, while 89% of subsequent investigations into complaints were "neither balanced nor thorough". No one though really much cares about systematic injustice when it happens to some of the most weak and often wrongly reviled in society. Occasionally, when it involves families like the Kachepas it moves outside the pages of the broadsheets and into the tabloids, but the Independent is around the only newspaper to have consistently highlighted the huge problems and injustices which litter the asylum system. There are, as one of the report's authors said, not a lot of votes in such issues, especially when "human rights" have been turned into such dirty words by the likes of the Scum.

That there might be the most important point. It's the job of the media to push for such potentially unpopular and minority causes, and as the tabloids, which used to lead such campaigns far more than they do now have changed from newspapers into daily celebrity report sheets, awareness itself has collapsed. Where also are the Liberal Democrat or backbench Labour MPs to call for an end to such chilling deportations? It's a truism that a society can be judged by the way it treats the most vulnerable and those that it imprisons, and when it deports those very same people to such flagrant human rights abusers as Uzbekistan, this country deserves to be condemned in the most strident possible terms.

Labels: , , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

11/21/2007 08:20:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, November 20, 2007 

Oops, we did it again...

How worried should people be, asks the BBC? It is quite clearly time, as the Simpsons has long advised us, to crack open each other's heads and feast on the goo inside.

As I'm one of the 35million in the country not affected by this most monumental of fuck-ups, I'm sure you'll excuse me if I find the whole thing ever so slightly amusing. On the surface, while no politician can personally be blamed for a "junior" official losing two discs containing the entire child benefit database, what certainly can be attributed culpability is this government's insistence on empty managerialism in rhetoric while being completely hopeless about actually managing anything in its own departments. Why in the name of all that is fucking holy did a "junior" official even have access to the entire fucking database? What sort of even slightly large business would put all the personal information of its customers onto discs, when they can so easily be lost or fall into the wrong hands, especially when they contain such sensitive data? Why was anyone allowed to put such things through the internal mail, when they should have been delivered by hand if delivered at all in hard copy? Why couldn't the data be transferred across a secure network rather than on two discs? Why was the data on the disc not even slightly encrypted, apparently only passworded? You can ask numerous more questions and still not even get close to finding out just how dysfunctional some government departments might well be.

This is of course the same government that wants to set-up yet another huge database with the details of every child on it, although "celebrity" children and others whose detail is deemed more "sensitive" than others might be lucky enough to be excluded. There's the Spine, upon which the medical details of everyone whom uses the NHS is to be uploaded. Finally, there's the daddy of them all, the ID card database, which campaigners have long been arguing is far more insidious and dangerous than the ID cards themselves. The government couldn't have proved them more right if it had tried.

Labels: , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

11/20/2007 10:03:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Blasphemy, Liberty and crucifix-shaped dildos.

It's good to see that Liberty are intervening in the ridiculous private prosecution brought by Christian Voice against Jerry Springer: The Opera, with a view to finally getting the 1698(!) law on blasphemy repealed. Only thing is that I'm by no means certain that the argument Liberty will be making will stand up to scrutiny. From their press release:

Liberty will argue that the offence of blasphemy violates Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights which protects free speech and that blasphemy should be decriminalised in English law because of its lack of legal certainty (as has been held by the Irish Supreme Court in Corway v Independent Newspapers [2000]).

If Stephen Green of Christian Voice has decent lawyers, they will most likely already know about the case of Nigel Wingrove vs the UK, where Wingrove took the BBFC to the European Court of Human Rights over their rejecting of his short film, Visions of Ecstasy, for a certificate. A short feature in which a nun mounts and caresses the crucified body of Christ, the ECHR ruling was that

“Freedom of expression constitutes one of the essential foundations of a democratic society. As paragraph 2 of Article 10 expressly recognises, however, the exercise of that freedom carries with it duties and responsibilities. Amongst them, in the context of religious beliefs, may legitimately be included a duty to avoid as far as possible an expression that is, in regard to objects of veneration, gratuitously offensive to others and profanatory”.

which upheld the BBFC's ban. This was in 1996, two years before the Human Rights Act, the insertion of the ECHR into British law, was introduced. A British court, if a similar case were to be brought before it now, might quite reasonably come to another conclusion. The ECHR ruling though will certainly be known to the judges in this case, and it could potentially rule out Article 10 as being the main basis for any such throwing out of a private prosecution, or of the blasphemy law itself.

Of course, this might not have any bearing on the case at all, as the BBFC passed Jerry Springer the Opera uncut at 18, which would mitigate against any such similar parallel being drawn between the two cases. The BBFC themselves though have as recently as two years ago used the blasphemy laws to cut a film, although not one likely to get the Grauniad or Liberty up in arms. Belladonna: My Ass is Haunted was cut by a whopping 28 minutes and 46 seconds with the following justification:

Cuts required to abusive and potentially harmful activity (in this case aggressive forcing of an oversized butt plug into woman's mouth and anus); a reference to underage sex; and to blasphemous activity (in this case insertion of crucifix-shaped dildos into anus and vagina of women role-playing as nuns). Cuts made in accordance with BBFC policy and Guidelines and the common law of Blasphemy.

You can get away then with Jesus saying that he's a bit gay; dildos shaped like crucifixes are however beyond the pale.

The easy answer to all of this would be to repeal the blasphemy laws, something that has been mooted before. With this government however ever more inclined to add to the legislation which limits freedom of speech rather than strengthens it, we might be waiting for a very long time, leaving the likes of Stephen Green and a reincarnated Mary Whitehouse to continue their own struggles through the courts.

Labels: , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

11/20/2007 09:05:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

The clearing of Undercover Mosque and a certain law firm's involvement.

As widely predicted, Channel 4's Undercover Mosque programme was cleared by Ofcom of any breaches of the broadcasting code (PDF), including West Midlands Police's complaint that the editing of the programme had "completely distorted" what the speakers featured had said. Unlike some of the unfair criticism thrown at the police which claimed they had no evidence whatsoever on which to make such allegations, the Ofcom report features five examples (page 12) which the police gave which they said proved that the speakers' lectures had been misquoted. In the event, all are rather flimsy, and seem to more than give the benefit of the doubt to those featured whom in some cases were using bloodcurdling rhetoric which the police never disputed.

The 4th sequence the police included in their evidence that those featured had their views distorted is especially laughable, referring to Abdul Basit, who said that "the hero of Islam is the one who separated his head from his shoulders", talking of how a tabloid newspaper had praised a Muslim soldier who died with the headline "Hero of Islam". WMP's complaint wasn't that Basit hadn't said exactly that; it was that the comment had come from a far longer speech. It's hard not to be sympathetic towards Channel 4's dismissive comment on the WMP's complaint that the force had a "fundamental misunderstanding of the editing process" and betrayed "staggering naivety" about television production in general.

If the police felt they had to get involved, and on the basis of the evidence they produced their reasons for doing so were far from open and shut, the very last thing they ought to have done is go about it in the way they did, going straight to the media with what they were about to do rather than even bothering to consult Channel 4 and seek an explanation from them. It's become something of a practice for the police to run to the newspapers whenever they've got what they think is a "hot story", and especially considering their past record in doing just that in terrorism cases, you can't help but feel that this time round it's badly backfired. While the police have every right to complain about what they personally felt was a misleading and distorted documentary, the message sent by their actions was that those who were caught making highly offensive and extreme statements in places of worship were at best being defended by the police, with at worst giving the impression that they were above the law. In my view, the Crown Prosecution Service came to the right conclusion that no one should have been prosecuted for the views expressed in the programme; however condemnable and despicable the speeches were, they were not inciting racial hatred or violence, although in the case of "take that homosexual and throw him off the mountain" they came close. By their joint actions with the police however the distinct impression will have been sent that Channel 4 were the ones who should have been under the microscope.

David Davis goes a little over the top in suggesting that the police's actions risked "impeding freedom of speech", but it certainly merits asking the West Midlands police why they broadened their initial investigation from that of what was said on the programme onto those who made it. Some will and have cried political correctness, but considering that the CPS did consider whether any laws had been breached that hardly stands up to scrutiny. The most damage the police attitude will have done however is to the cause of moderates within the Muslim community: we need those who are spreading and disseminating such views in mosques to be exposed and shown up for how unrepresentative they are, and this is exactly what Undercover Mosque did. We also need to learn how to deal with such views when they are expressed in order to fight back against them; for the police to in effect accuse Channel 4 of being the ones in the wrong will have only have given those expressing such virulent viewpoints the feeling of impunity.

The most unexpected but revealing fact is left until near the end of the Ofcom bulletin (page 44). As well as the police complaining, the "Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia" also authorised a legal firm to moan for them. Just who were the fine upstanding body of lawyers who took the money off those who stand in charge of a system which sentences a rape victim to 200 lashes and six months imprisonment? You've got it, Schillings. This would be the same Schillings who last week co-signed a letter to the Grauniad calling for the immediate and unconditional release of the lawyers in Pakistan caught up in Musharraf's declaration of emergency purge, rights which those in the same position in Saudi Arabia have never had. Strangely, the cases involving the tyrants of Saudi Arabia and lying oligarchs like Alisher Usmanov aren't featured on Schillings' client press releases page, although it is shouting about its successful defense of footballer Anton Ferdinand.

Labels: , , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

11/20/2007 07:50:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, November 19, 2007 

The bash Brown years.

You would have thought, what with Alastair Campbell and although perhaps not by his own consent, but not without his condemnation either, Tony Blair during the Dr David Kelly row attempting to in effect destroy the BBC's independence that they might not view the two in that favourable a light. While the Hutton report continues to cast a shadow across the corporation's current affairs output, Campbell nevertheless had a sycophantic 3-part dramatisation/documentary of his piss-poor diaries produced by BBC2. Now, with only just six months gone since his departure, BBC1 is treating us to the Blair Years, a three-part look back over his tenure which, to judge by the first part last night on the Blair-Brown relationship is going to be similarly unquestioning and toadying to a fault.

The BBC will of course justify the lack of critical rigour in the programmes on the basis that Blair was hardly likely to co-operate with a series that lambasted him as a man who like all other prime ministers before him, fell into the delusion that he was the only one who could force through his "reforms", and who with it shed an inestimable amount of blood. Less easy to justify, if again the first one is anything to go by, is the way in which Gordon Brown is getting it in the neck from all his former enemies, with hardly anyone to defend him from their accusations and scarcely hidden loathing.

More surprising is that Blair and even Campbell are in fact the most magnanimous towards Brown, while the real sniping is left to the Blairites now out on their behinds, left outside of "Stalin's" age of change. Whether this is because of loyalty towards the party, the decision not to make things unnecessarily difficult for Brown or give propaganda to Tories, or out of monetary concern, with Campbell to eventually release an unedited version of his diaries and Blair yet to write his own memoirs it's difficult to tell, but it leaves Blair ironically being one of the very few in the programme to defend Brown. It gives a different side to Blair from the man we thought we knew, but it leaves the portions with him being questioned by friendly Iraq-war supporting hack David Aaronovitch less than thrilling, the platitudes being exchanged only highlighting the lack of interest displayed by Aaronovitch in getting to anything near the truth.

Around the only real criticism of Blair comes right near the beginning, where Lord Butler makes clear his contempt for the sofa-style of government practiced by Blair. It turns out neither Blair or Brown asked the cabinet what they thought about making the Bank of England independent; Blair replied that he knew they'd agree. After that mild ribbing, all the attention turns to Brown, but strangely as the programme went on you gained more and more sympathy for the clunking fist. Blair, for instance, notoriously stole Brown's NHS-funding budget announcement by going on Breakfast with Frost and bringing it up out of the blue, leaving the Treasury officials to do the sums involved at home on a Sunday, having to beg, borrow and steal in order to do so. No one had thought to consult the Treasury; yet Alan Milburn justified it as the right thing to do because of the constant negative press coverage of the NHS which needed to be replied to. Blair denied that Brown shouted at him "you've stolen my fucking budget", but his body language and failure to even look slightly sincere betrayed the reality.

That set the theme: Brown was always the stick in the mud. He objected to foundation hospitals, not according to Milburn again on practical grounds, but due to ideology, as if that somehow made it worse. The New Labour project, famously shorn and lacking in any principles or guiding background, held up thanks to Brown's daring to think of something as dispensable as dogma! Tuition fees was history repeating; Brown and his allies (Ed Balls was mentioned) plotted and conspired in the background, while the noble Blairites who were breaking the manifesto promise not to introduce top-up fees were only doing what was right and needed. Two of the Labour rebels on both policies popped up to say how if Brown didn't come out with his opposition, everyone knew full well what he thought and that his friends were themselves organising the opposition, with the programme implying this somehow amounted to high treason. One of the most unsympathetic Blairites, the whip Hilary Armstrong, voiced her belief that it was all more or less down to Brown. When the tuition fees rebellion got out of hand, with almost everyone believing the government was about to lose, it was only then that Brown and friends starting urging those they had previously encouraged to vote against to turn again. The only really new piece of information was that Blair confirmed he would have resigned had the vote been lost; in the event, they won by six votes, and Brown again had "bottled" it.

Thing is, on almost all these things that so angered the Blairites, Brown was right. To go on a television programme and announce a policy that the chancellor had long been planning just to turn the headlines, without even informing him of what you were about to do, is about as low as you can sink. Foundation hospitals, a pet project of Blair and Milburn's desire to force through change for the sake of it rather than for actual practical reasons were toned down from their initial incarnation thanks to Brown's opposition. A graduate tax, the policy that Brown offered instead of top-up fees, was far fairer and more egalitarian than having to pay over £3,000 a year up front through loans, which the well-off could pay immediately while everyone else was left with the debt hanging over them, the system which tuition fees introduced. Frank Field's sacking, a man much more at home with the Conservatives, over his intentions to chop welfare to the bone after his appointment by Blair, was more than welcome. Most of all, Blair had promised Brown that he would go at the end of his second term. When he decided that he was in fact going to stay on "to drive through his reforms", Brown was more than justified in telling Blair that he could never believe a single word he said again, even though the country at large had already long before came to that conclusion.

Instead, Blair was presented as having to put up with Brown's moods, sulking and general surly behaviour. Geoffrey Robinson was around the only former minister who contributed who was so much as slightly sympathetic towards Brown. Never was it suggested that Blair wasn't receptive towards Brown and that he had a right to have a say; something denied almost anyone other than a believer in the necessity of Blairism. You kept waiting for Hazel Blears or Tessa Jowell to pop up to fill the quota for gormless and hapless keepers of the faith. For them to feign anger when the "September coup" was brought up, as if Blair's hanging on for his own vanity's sake wasn't hugely damaging both the government and the Labour party, was the final straw.

Next week we're treated to Iraq, and how George 'n' Tony simply had to invade Iraq. If it's anywhere near as one-sided as last night's Tony show, expect it to end at the "mission accomplished" part.

Labels: , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

11/19/2007 07:37:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Usmanov-watch: Blanket denials from a man with a closet full of skeletons.

At long last, someone's finally managed to ask Alisher Usmanov pertinent questions about his relationship with Islam Karimov, dictator of Uzbekistan and Gafur Rakhimov, the Uzbek mafia boss. The Grauniad's actual profile and article are typically tame, although they expose the lie that Usmanov was pardoned by Gorbachev, but it's the unexpurgated answers that Usmanov bizarrely demanded be published in full which say a lot more than his bland denials seem to on first glance:

What can you tell us about your relationship with President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan and his daughter, Gulnora Karimova?

There isn't any relationship between me and President Karimov and any members of his family.

Yeah, sure. Usmanov's pardon, arranged by the Uzbek supreme court, was nothing whatsoever to do with Karimov.


Mr Wise mentioned one Gafur Rakhimov. You are on record as saying that you have known Mr Rakhimov for many years. Is this correct? What can you tell us about your relationship with Mr Rakhimov, and what can you say about these allegations against him?

As I've explained previously, I only knew him since he was a neighbour of my parents. I have never had, nor do I have any business dealings with him.

How very convenient! As Craig Murray points out, this is the equivalent of saying that he only knew Mr Capone because he lived next door to him.

In December 1998, Lord Owen told the Observer newspaper that you had informed him that your criminal convictions were being annulled by Islam Karimov, the president of Uzbekistan. What can you tell us about your relationship with President Karimov?

I have answered this already.

Do you accept that President Karimov was involved in the annulment of your criminal convictions? If so, what part did he play?

My criminal convictions were not annulled, but reconsidered by the Supreme Court, during which the evidence was found proving that the case was a trumped-up one.

The decision on my complete discharge was taken by the Supreme Court, not by the President. I have no relationship with President Karimov, and this is the second time I have to answer the question.

By the way, the verdict was appealed in the Supreme Court in post soviet Uzbekistan by two other persons, who were convicted in the case. Being a citizen of another country I had no chance to do it. People spinning this rubbish prefer to ignore certain facts that don't fit in their theories.


Usmanov, despite being advised by one of the top libel firms and another top PR company doesn't seem to have learned that when you're in a hole you're meant to stop digging.

There have been several reports in the Russian media detailing your appearances at social events organised by President Karimov's daughter, Gulnora Karimova, at the invitation of Ms Karimova. At least one of these reports has appeared in a newspaper that you own. (Kommersant, November 20 2006). It has also been widely reported that Ms Karimova played a role in assisting Gazprom with its gas export deal, by which Gazprom secured the rights to exploit Uzbekistan's gas reserves. What can you tell us about your friendship with Ms Karimova?

I have only met Ms Karimova during official events organised by the Uzbekistan embassy and by the Cultural Fund of Uzbekistan in Moscow.

Is it correct that Ms Karimova also played a role in assisting Gazprom with its gas export deal?


I know nothing about this. I believe that all the deals by Gazprom are made in conformity with a common business practice, like in any public company.

Did you work in conjunction with Ms Karimova in securing the deal?

The nature of my limited acquaintance with Ms Karimova has already been clarified. I have never had any business dealings with her. Sincerely, I do not understand what makes you believe any claims to the contrary, especially coming from a person who hasn't presented nor does he have any evidence to support his position. I have no relationship, business or political alliances with Ms Karimova.


There's plenty here for the investigating hacks to dig into with a view to proving that Usmanov is lying. Expect plenty to be doing so right now.

Nothing that Usmanov has said here will dispel the circling rumours that he and Schillings attempted to stop from even being heard. Indeed, he might well have inadvertently given himself more than enough rope to hang himself with. His blanket denials of the many claims of Craig Murray and others rightly warrant further investigation; his attempt to be straight only furthers the belief that he has plenty to hide, and his previous charm offensives and playing of the victim have done nothing to halt the questions surrounding his background. Further legal flurries seem likely once the truth begins to seep out.

Labels: , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

11/19/2007 07:09:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Send in the lawyers.

Following on from the removing of comments from her blog after she idiotically accused Ben Goldacre of being involved in a "serious breach of parliamentary procedure" for downloading evidence freely available from said committee's website, Nadine Dorries is now threatening to send in the suits against Alex "Recess Monkey" Hilton after he posted a screengrab of her 22-year-old daughter's Facebook profile on his front page (now removed, replaced with this post), a grab which contained the use of one or two racial epithets:

Unfortunately, today’s blog is a rebuttal in defence of my family. As an MP I don’t mind it if people want to take a pop at me – it comes with the territory. However, not my kids.

Every young person I know has a Facebook profile, my daughters are no exception and use it to keep in touch with their friends. Unfortunately Alex Hilton, aka Recess Monkey, had no scruples about trawling through my daughter’s profile in order to damage her reputation.

My daughter’s face book account was the No 1item on his web site for a number of days.

A comment on my daughter’s site had been left by one of her best friends Chido Kawunda. Chido used the ‘N’ word when discussing this year’s Big Brother incident with Charlie.

It has to be said that involving children in political disputes, regardless of the details, is rightly looked down upon. Dorries might have more right to complain however if she hadn't herself liberally splashed photographs of her offspring all over her blog, which just invites snooping. In any case, if Hilton had wanted to especially damage Dorries he would have gone and named the woman in the photograph as Dorries' daughter; he instead asked readers to guess. Oh, and I don't have a Facebook profile, but that might be because I don't have any friends.

That isn't quite enough for Dorries though:

Alex Hilton attempted to insinuate that the comment was made by my daughter in a derogatory way about black women. This is definitely not the case – ask Chido; and by the way, the issue is now on it’s way to Simon Smith at Schillings , to ask his advise as to whether or not this matter is libel and actionable. http://www.schillings.co.uk/Display.aspx?&MasterId=af8a38df-e12a-48da-953b-d4be1b79d6da&NavigationId=233

Dorries really ought to know better to seek legal advice as her first course of action; and definitely be aware that Schillings are most certainly not the flavour of the "blogosphere" at the moment.


I suppose one wouldn’t expect anything else from the researcher of a Labour MP. It makes you wonder what kind of MP employs a person who spends his day going through Facebook accounts. Is this done on a Parliamentary computer I wonder? One paid for by the tax payer, in the time he should be working, again, paid by the tax payer?

It is not lost on me that he chose to highlight the Facebook account of my 22 year old daughter. However, has he been through the Facebook accounts of all of my girls? One of them is only 15 – and if he has – there’s a word for people like you Alex.

Take me on all you want, but mess with my kids…..

It's too bad then that while Hilton's website is most certainly not state-funded, Dorries' most definitely is. Oh, and then she suggests he might be a paedophile even though Dorries' 15-year-old daughter wasn't invoked until Dorries herself brought her into it. It's also somewhat ironic that despite Dorries making clear that she's ready for anyone to take her on, she removed the comments from her blog at the exact moment that err, others did over her slurring of Ben Goldacre.

Dorries is though of course the blogging doyen of the Tories: her endless anecdotes about her wonderful existence, what knickers she wears and how she'd undergo cosmetic surgery all being highly interesting to the Sir Herbert Gusset alikes all across blogland. Fuck with her and the big boys pile in, as demonstrated over on Iain Dale's. I'd be careful Alex, or Schillings might call on Alisher Usmanov to come and sit on you.

Labels: , , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

11/19/2007 06:29:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Scum-watch: We know better than the workers.

Today's Scum is highly annoyed about Brown and Alan Johnson daring to decide not to hand over yet more vast sums to private health companies who were getting paid for operations and treatments regardless of whether or not they actually were used or not:

GORDON Brown was slammed last night for blowing £100million of taxpayers’ cash scrapping Tony Blair’s NHS reforms.

The PM could have built two children’s hospitals, or hired 4,000 nurses with the cash.

Instead, he has used it to compensate private health firms after axing their NHS contracts.


Instead of leveling the blame with Blair and Johnson's predecessors for drawing up contracts which paid a lump sum to the private sector firms rather than on the actual amount of work they did, Brown gets in the neck. £100million is a disgraceful amount of compensation to pay to firms which must be laughing all the way to bank with the way the NHS works; they build hospitals with fewer beds than the ones they're replacing, and then have years' of payments still to look forward to under the hugely wasteful private finance initiative, and when they get their contracts canceled because they're not treating enough patients they still get paid! The blame however lies with Blair and his ideological fervour for marketised solutions which has imposed such madness on the NHS.

The Scum's leader knows who's really to blame though, and would you believe it, it's the unions:

AXEING private contracts for the NHS is foolish.

Gordon Brown should think again.

The NHS needs competition to drive up standards. It needs private firms to perform the ops and services so waiting lists can be cut.


This is nonsense. Almost all of the centres being scrapped were not seeing the volume of work they expected to; patients were voting with their feet through the choice system to go with the state rather than the private sector, even if it meant a slightly longer wait. As Alan Johnson set out, one of the services in the West Midlands had a take-up of 5%. Continuing to pay for 100% take-up when it was only doing 5% is economically insane.

 Spending £100million to compensate companies for tearing up their contracts is shocking.

True, but so is continuing to pay private health firms in full when their centres were sitting idle, especially when their introduction in the first place was completely unnecessary.

And it’s a disgusting price to pay for appeasing the unions, who only care about protecting jobs.

Christ, unions caring about protecting jobs? What's next? The police only caring about catching criminals? Rupert Murdoch only caring about his own self-interest? In any case, the unions don't just care about protecting jobs; they also care about how the NHS is little by little being broken up, being readied for inevitable full-scale privatisation whenever the government decides that a free at the point of use service is no longer "economically sustainable", as the treatment of Karen Reissmann demonstrates.

Mr Brown should ignore their selfish bleating.

And put patients’ lives first.


Quite right. The Sun and the CBI know better than the workers on the front line what's best for the NHS, and yet more private snouts in the public trough is the only way forward.

Labels: , , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

11/19/2007 06:01:00 PM | | | links to this post

About

  • This is septicisle
profile

Links

Last posts

Archives

Email me
Syndicate this site (XML)
Powered by Blogger
and Blogger Templates