Hark, What Do I Hear…?

Why, it’s the world’s tiniest violin, playing for Brian Binley MP, as he cranks the hyperbole all the way up to 11:

Happily, I have never lived in a totalitarian state. But this week I was given an insight into what it must have been like in the dark days of East European Communism to receive the infamous knock on the door from those delightful individuals who once did the dirty work of the Stasi and the KGB.

Oh, my!

Did someone knock down his door, intimidate his family, drag him off to a secret interrogation room somewhere, never to be seen again? What horrors can have befallen the poor man?

In my case, it came in the form of an email from the Daily Telegraph, informing me that I had "questions to answer" about my living arrangements in London in the three years after I was elected to Parliament in 2005.

My conscience was perfectly clear, and after reading the "accusations", I knew there was nothing for which I had to answer and duly contacted the reporter to explain the situation.

An email? Asking perfectly legitimate questions about his expenses? Expenses paid for from public money?

Cancel the pity party!

But frankly, I might not have bothered. Sadly, such is now the Telegraph's thirst and hunger for making mischief since obtaining the records of MPs' expenses, that it has long since abandoned the idea of fair and honest reporting.

Funny, I didn’t hear a peep out of you about this when it was Labour or Lib Dem MPs on the rack…

.. now the newspaper has turned it into a McCarthyite witch-hunt for the sake of a circulation increase. It is doing the reputation of British journalism a lot of damage.

Mmmm, you’re really concerned with some fictitious ‘damage’ you claim is being done to journalism, I’m sure. And not at all concerned at the very real damage being done to the reputation of MPs!

Oh, and you might want to steer clear of using McCarthy in the pejorative sense, since history proved him right about the ‘Reds under the beds’…

I phoned the reporter, and began to explain the situation, but it did not take me more than a few seconds to realise that she had no intention of engaging in a fair and proper conversation. She – or rather the Telegraph's newsdesk – had already decided that they were going to run a story about me and whatever I said was not going to change that. Her attitude was aggressive and sometimes downright rude, and it left a sour taste once I put the phone down.

Oh, you mean, you thought you try to persuade them that ‘these aren’t the expenses you’re looking for’, but your Jedi mind tricks didn’t work over the phone, eh?

Still, maybe it’s not your fault? Maybe someone told you it was ok and…

Well, of course:

I had cleared my living arrangements with the Fees Office at Parliament, and then the rules changed, so I had to move out, though I appealed against the changes before I did so.

You admit you were desperate to hang on to the cash so you appealed against the changes? That’s not helping your argument, is it…?

…this has gone too far, and it is about time someone stood up to them. They have taken it upon themselves to become judge and jury, without any thought to seeking the truth before they publish.

They did seek the truth, though, didn’t they? Have you forgotten?

They emailed you, you explained, and they decided your explanation wasn’t good enough, and they’d let the people decide. You know, the people whose money it was.

Hey, if it’s not the truth, as you claim, sue them Brian.

That’s your prerogative, after all.

It reminds me of Rudyard Kipling's famous quote for Stanley Baldwin: "What the proprietorship of these papers is aiming at is power, and power without responsibility – the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages."

You know, of all the many, many comments that induce vomiting in this shabby little whinge, this one takes the biscuit!

That Brian Binley MP, who voted moderately for a smoking ban despite MPs having exemption from it, should seek to criticise someone else for desiring ‘power without responsibility’ is beyond belief…

Knife Crime - It's Getting Worse

Now look where it's spread to...

'It seems to me that Barika was something like a little bit proud of what she has in her hand, and it was a little bit … for power.'

I guess they really are like us!

Why Is No-One Asking The Obvious Question?

This little gem from the ‘Mail’ is intriguing for what it doesn’t say:

MPs are to be 'gagged' from warning the public that a killer, paedophile or terrorist is being released into their community, it has emerged.

A leaked letter revealed that politicians are being asked by the Government to sign an astonishing secrecy contract.

Why are they telling MPs about it, if they aren’t supposed to tell anyone else?

The Ministry of Justice says that, unless MPs sign the code of silence, they will be denied information about any dangerous criminals being freed into their constituency.

Again, for what purpose?

To ensure they are housed well away from them?

Last night, shadow justice secretary Dominic Grieve slammed the secrecy clause.

He said: 'Managing the release of serious offenders is a difficult issue. But the government is trying to impose a blanket gag on MPs doing their job, in return for being kept informed of dangerous offenders released into their constituencies.

'The scheme is unenforceable, but it is still surprising that Ministers would expand it in this way, without advance consultation or thinking through the implications.

'At a time when the government is releasing thousands of dangerous offenders early - having undermined the probation service’s ability to supervise them properly - this measure will only further weaken public confidence.'

You know, Dominic, I think you are on a hiding to nothing if you think that public confidence can possibly be weakened further…

The letter, circulated among MPs last week, says the gagging clause will relate to so-called Critical Public Protection Cases - which include the worst offenders in the country.

In almost all cases, the criminal is assessed as presenting a very high risk of serious harm.

There is considered to be 'an imminent risk of serious harm on release from prison'.

In which case, why the hell are they being let out of prison?

And why are no MPs asking this question, instead of bleating about secrecy codes?

Remember, They Are Valued Professionals...

A fantasist who hired a hitman to kill her former husband was employed as a senior social worker in charge of vulnerable children after a council failed to properly check her criminal record.

Words fail me...

At the time of her conviction Barnes was a social worker in the child care department of Avon County Council.

She tried to take her employer to a tribunal for unfair dismissal, but the case was dismissed.

Now, that's chutzpah!

Despite her conviction and sacking, Barnes was given a job at Bath and North East Somerset Council in September 2005 as an assistant team manager and became a team manager a year later.

But details of her past emerged during a child protection case at Bath county court last June where she allegedly lied on oath and asked another social worker to do the same.

Judge Paul Barclay said he was "appalled" and carried out his own investigation into Mrs Barnes' past.

Well, at least we've found a judge who is on the ball...

Judge Barclay's report into the case was made public after Mrs Barnes failed in a Court of Appeal application to prevent her being identified.

Wonder if it was Judge Eady again?

Nah, he'd probably have allowed her appeal...

Bath and North East Somerset admitted it was a mistake to employ Barnes but said no children under Barnes' protection had been unfairly removed from their families.

"We have looked again at our systems and found that they are correct but need more rigorous enforcement," a spokesman said.

Ya think..?!?

North Northwester has a piece on this too.

You Can Whistle For It, Chum!

I’m going to have to pay an extra £6 to ensure the country is carpeted with broadband from Land’s End to John O’Groats? I think not:

Households and businesses will have to pay a £6-a-year tax per landline telephone under proposals to extend internet access across the country.

Well, in that case, I don’t need a landline, do I?

I have a mobile…

The cost of a television licence will also go up £9 to £151.50 in 2012 when most of the increase will be diverted to support regional news on ITV, the first time licence fee cash has been offered to a broadcaster other than the BBC.

So, having realised that the TV tax is iniquitous, the answer is not to cut it off, but to increase the size of the trough and the number of snouts in it?

Nearly everyone would have access to fast internet access at work and home within eight years but the Tories criticised the levies. Jeremy Hunt, their culture spokesman, said: “The cable revolution happened without a cable tax; the satellite revolution happened without a satellite tax.”

Quite.

And since when was it a ‘right’ to have broadband? Is Mad Gordo worried there are people in Soggy Bottom, Shropshire or Ram’s Tackle, Cornwall, who are missing the chance to see his gurning mug on YouTube?

Lord Carter believes its development would help to give the country an alternative economic base to banking and finance.

He believes the plan is honest with the public about the cost and that the cash will help to encourage about three times the amount of private money for each pound raised from public funds. However, with the cost of extending broadband so uncertain, he admitted that “if it’s not enough, we’ll keep the levy going for long, or we’ll raise the sum” .

Hmm, really?

I remember all those toll roads and bridges that were promised as free once costs had been covered?

Yeah, it’ll be just like that…

Are They Trying To Recreate The Recent Belfast Scenes Here?

Because it certainly seems like it:

Gipsies and travellers should be given priority in NHS hospitals and GP surgeries, doctors have been told.

They will be fast-tracked for doctors, nurses and even some dentist appointments above all other patients.

Are they insane? This couldn’t be worse timing…

GPs have also been told to see any travellers who simply walk in without an appointment, even if all consultation times for the day are full.

It gets even better worse…

They will also be given longer consultations than other patients. Five or ten minutes is the average but travellers will be given 20 minutes and allowed to bring relatives into the consulting rooms.

And don’t think it’s just the patients who will have to put up with this.

They have plans for the staff too:

Staff will be given 'mandatory cultural awareness' training so they can fully understand what it is like to be a traveller or gipsy.

Oh, ffs…!

The guidelines have been introduced because, under race laws, gipsies and travellers are defined as minority ethnic groups and the NHS is obliged to consider their special needs and circumstances.

Yet no special treatment is promised for other groups such as those from the Asian sub-continent or Africa.

So, will common sense prevail, and these guidelines therefore be scrapped?

Or will this be an excuse for those aforementioned groups to start saying ‘Hey! Us too!’?

Tory health spokesman Andrew Lansley said: 'No one should get priority treatment in the NHS apart from our Armed Forces, to whom we owe a special debt of gratitude.

'Decisions about who should be treated first should be based on a patient's medical needs, not their ethnic group.

'NHS managers need to get off doctors' and nurses' backs and start letting them get on with what they do best - looking after sick people.

'Such a policy of fast-tracking one section of society over another goes against the founding principles of the NHS’.

Well said. No ‘Ah, but…’ from Call-Me-Dave’s mob here. Makes a nice change…

Traveller spokesman Gratton Puxon, from the illegal camp at Crays Hill in Essex, welcomed the initiative.

He said: 'The problem stems from years ago when there was simply no access to healthcare, but things have greatly improved. Health workers visit the site quite regularly if people have chronic problems.'

I bet, in true NHS fashion, they urge their customers to abstain from alcohol, cigarettes, bareknuckle figting and dangerous sports like buggy-riding on motorways.

Don’t they?

The Department of Health said: 'We are aware that gipsies and travellers have experienced tremendous difficulties in accessing primary care.

'Partly as a result, community members experience the worst health inequalities of any disadvantaged group.

Hmm, could that be lifestyle related?

'The framework suggests fast-tracking for two reasons. First, as a matter of urgency, inroads need to be made into the health problems of gipsies and travellers.

'Second, if mobile community members are not seen quickly, the opportunity could be lost as they move on or are moved on. This should not be to the detriment of service provision to the settled community.'

How is it not to the detriment of the ‘settled community’ if these people are to be given priority treatment under the NHS…?

I’m really beginning to wonder if there isn’t some agenda driving this.

Perhaps, as Leg-Iron has often suggested, they truly do want ‘a summer of discontent’?

Economical With The Actuality

Over on ‘CiF’, Fionola Meredith has this heartrending (and disingenuous) sob-column about the Belfast ‘Romanians’:

At a south Belfast primary school many desks are standing empty today. The Romanian children who attend this richly multicultural school have suddenly vanished.

Notice that a ‘richly multicultural school’ is taken as a desirable thing in and of itself…

The other children wonder where their friends, who arrived after Romania's accession to the EU in 2007, have gone.

Do they? Have you asked them, then, Fionola?

Or are you just indulging in a wee bit of hyperbole there?

The scenario demonstrates the two faces of Northern Ireland.

It does…?

It's the one where newcomer families from other cultures are made welcome, where the children play trombones 10 sizes too big for them in the school orchestra, where mums bring their own speciality dishes to the summer fair. It's the one where a friendly, community-minded local church took in those bewildered Romanians, numbering more than 100, fed them and tucked them in for the night.

Ah, yes, of course.

The typical progressive view of ‘multiculturalism’, where a rainbow of smiling cherubs play together, and a whole world’s cuisine is spread out for their choosing. Everyone gets on with each other, no-one’s views impinge on anyone else’s and the only fly in the ointment is the stuck-in-the-mud Brits who unaccountably whine about the loss of their culture.

As if that was worth preserving, or something…

But please, Fionola, continue:

This Northern Ireland exists episodically, and in patches. Then there's the old, familiar, insular Northern Ireland, rooted in tribalism; fiercely territorial, truculent, self-loathing and hostile to outsiders. The racist intimidation of the Romanians – the latest and most visible in a sustained campaign of attacks against migrants in the area since trouble broke out at a World Cup qualifying match between Northern Ireland and Poland in March – has been described as the new sectarianism.

Notice how it’s only the ‘natives’ that are viewed as ‘rooted in tribalism, fiercely territorial, truculent’.

Never the incomers, who are, presumably, made of sugar and spice and all things nice. Quite unlike the slugs, snails and puppydog tails that make up those damned Northern Irish!

I’m sensing a pattern here:

Such sentiments have been evident in the tortuous logic used by some to justify the attacks, from well-spoken callers on radio shows claiming that a Romanian once looked sideways at their granny, to comments such as this one from a political blog ers-continues-unabated-in-south-belfast/P50> :

The attacks were wrong and unacceptable but sometimes it's the only way that some people can express themselves when they are powerless and disadvantaged by the political system and political elites.

Ummm, isn’t that view not too unlike that expressed by the likes of Guardian stalwarts like Milne and his ilk, when they are ‘resisting the imperialist forces of the West’?

Or is it just applicable to Third Worlders, and never to anyone else?

But Fionola almost, but not quite, lets the cat out of the bag here:

Even where an embryonic form of integration is working, it's not all sunshine and clapping games. Despite Paisley's beguiling vision, the journey towards a truly culturally diverse Northern Ireland will inevitably be marked by suspicions and embarrassments. Yes, it is uncomfortable to see a Romanian mother at the school gate, then later begging outside the market, or on the street with her kids at 2.30am, trying to flog plastic roses to drunk students coming out of clubs. But that's the reality. It's difficult and complicated.

Aha!

Two things – firstly, here we see the first glimpse of the truth behind these attacks that Fionola doesn’t mention in her article (but which is mentioned by the commenters to it) – this isn’t targeted indiscriminately at immigrants in general, but at one section in particular. Roma gypsies.

Secondly, that the Northern Irish must simply accept that these people have a right to come to their country and beg, and not raise any kind of fuss about it. This leads, inevitably, to the kind of simmering tensions that cause the kind of acts we’ve seen.

And while we are on the subject, when did the Northern Irish people vote to make their country a ‘culturally diverse’ one? Were they ever asked?
Was it ever debated whether this was something worth pursuing?

I think we all know the answer, though…

From....Well, Who Else?

The last word on MP's expenses:

Constituents of Tory MP Douglas Hogg said that unless they were able to see his address they would have no way of finding out which gigantic house with the pristine moat was his.

No Escape. Not Even In The Grave…

If you thought you could at least escape the clutches of the green fascists when finally in the sweet embrace of the grave, think again:

Grieving relatives have been left distraught after a council banned them from dressing loved ones in their favourite outfits in a crackdown on pollution.

Yup, councils now abrogate to themselves the right to tell us how to dress our deceased – for Gaia!

It means an end to people being cremated wearing their football shirts, or parents placing soft toys in children's coffins.

Because it’s killing polar bears if you bury your dead child with a Chad Valley polar bear soft toy. Or something…

Kirklees Council in West Yorkshire is the only authority in the country to adopt the approach, according to a national cremation body.

On top of the normal funeral arrangements, mourning families in Huddersfield are being forced to spend £60 on natural-fibre shrouds or seek permission from council officials to help honour their loved ones' last wishes.

So, it’s a money-making scheme too, is it? Fantastic!

Who’s got the contract for these ‘enviroshrouds’, I wonder? Al Gore? George Monbiot? Some other watermelon?

One man, who did not want to be named, was shocked to find his relative could not wear the 100 per cent cotton outfit she had chosen before she died.

He said: 'We knew it had to be natural fibres so she chose a top and slip that was 100 per cent cotton.

'But when the funeral director came we were told she would have to wear a special shroud. He pulled out a swatch of different colours to choose from.

'We didn't know what it looked like and when we went to see her in the chapel of rest, we couldn't believe it.

'It was all fluffy and frilly. The deceased would not have wanted to have been seen dead in it - unfortunately she was.'

And now that this pointless (and heartless) decision has come to light in the media, are Kirklees backtracking wildly?

What do you think?

A Kirklees Council spokesman said: 'Crematoria must maintain strict emission controls and it is because of this that Kirklees Council has a policy that bodies be dressed in approved garments such as cremation shrouds and that no artefacts are placed within the coffin.

'If a family wish to request a cremation in something other than a funeral shroud the funeral director needs to provide sufficient evidence that the proposed alternative was made completely of natural fibres. '

Well, no wonder it was an unnamed spokesman…

Listen, you little snivelling apparatchik – you aren’t employed to decide the minor funerary arrangements of the loved ones whose rates keep you in a comfortable job and a guaranteed pension.

You are employed to keep the streets clean, ensure the drains work, and the roads are pothole free. And nothing more.

Did even Soviet Russia aspire to these depths of control over their citizens lives?

‘No Consequence’ Britain…

Let your child play with a lighter and burn down a shop? No problem:

A fire at a clothes shop which led to a shopping centre being evacuated was started by a child using a cigarette lighter, it has emerged.

Consequences for the ‘parents’ of said junior firebug, who by the way was four years old?

Zero:

After consultation with the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), no criminal proceedings will be brought, Staffordshire Police said.

"The owners of the store are aware of these developments and they have been informed that officers have interviewed the parents of the child involved," the spokesman added.

I bet they’ve learned their lesson…

Get drunk (again) and assault a police officer? No problem:

A female police officer who was
battered by a drunken thug, leaving her face potentially scarred for life has watched her attacker walk free.

Consequences?

Again, zero:

But despite the seriousness of the offence which was caught on CCTV, Ryan Thomas was given a suspended prison sentence, a community service order and a fine.

I bet he’s learned his lesson…

Though, judging by the picture of him and his equally scummy wife (who the police thought he was about to assault, hence the intervention) leaving court, probably not.