Max Hastings Gets It...

Max Hastings is spot on in the ‘Mail’:

Public sector salaries and perks have soared. Almost three-quarters of a million employees have been added to the State's payroll. All manner of new and mostly ridiculous jobs have been invented. Fresh rights have been conferred on some deserving people and many undeserving ones.

Tink he’s talking about the ‘Guardian’s’ jobs page? Yup, me too...….

Now, however, the party is finished. In a bewildering world, the only certainty is that we are going to be worse off. For the next two or three years, many - myself included - accept that there is an irresistible case for high public spending to keep the economy moving, as consumer expenditure falls.

But this must be directed exclusively towards infrastructure projects that will make Britain stronger and more competitive when it recovers from recession.

And not ‘Diversity Outreach Communications Co-ordinator’ roles for newly graduated social studies students…

Henceforward, we need real investment, which means things we can still see when the dust clears.

Alongside this, there must be a purge, cull, massacre of all the crazy public spending, non-jobs and social projects which have become a dead-weight on Britain. If once we could afford a 'street football co-ordinator' in Moray, Scotland, at a cost of £19,887 a year, we can do so no longer. If ever it seemed acceptable for Lambeth to seek an 'enviro-crime enforcement officer' at up to £30,774, it is not now.

The North-West Development Agency spent £90,000 on representation at last year's political party conferences.

Braintree Council has advertised for a 'climate change manager' at £38,556 a year. Hertfordshire County Council has sought a 'head of participation and inclusiveness' at up to £42,197.

Preach it, Max!

Now the gravy train is heading towards the buffers, we just can’t afford to soak up ‘jobs’ like these anymore. And yet the pepers are still full of them, and where jobs are being cut in the public sector, they are front line, useful jobs. Not back-room box tickers and form fillers.

Today, much of the nation's anger is focused upon bankers, whose doings make the Great Train Robbery look like an honest day's work. But soon, very soon, the scandal of public sector pay and perks, along with reckless spending projects, will provoke even greater passion.

Most public sector workers are hardworking people fulfilling vital roles in society - nurses, teachers, policemen and so on. But they themselves can hardly relish the spectacle of scarce national resources being squandered on others, State-employed drones performing non-jobs.

Indeed, it’s often a factor of blogs such as ’Inspector Gadget’ and to a lesser extent, ’The Magistrate’s Blog’.

State employees once enjoyed more security than private sector workers, while receiving less money. Under Labour, this has changed.
The Pensions Policy Institute reports that while average private sector pay stands at £25,300, average public sector pay has risen to £25,600, with far more generous pension terms. Only at the top of the tree are private sector rewards much larger.

But at the top of the public sector tree, rewards are almost comparable. Certainly, I don’t see anyone calling for the pension to be stripped from any of the top mandarins the way they do for Sir Fred…

Gordon Brown's most pernicious legacy as Chancellor is that he has burdened the shrinking profit-making part of the economy with an unsustainable commitment to the privileges of State employees, whom he recruited in industrial quantities.

Given the dominance of State employment in Labour's Celtic dependencies, the English face having to work overtime to support an army of Scottish, Welsh and, above all, Northern Irish public servants.

Which is unsustainable.

We must repeat the mantra again and again to our rulers: it is over, over, over.

As a society, we can no longer afford State employees, starting with ministers, who write cheques on the nation without thought for the simple truth that we are broke.

So, Max, who do I vote for to end this? And please, don’t tell me ‘Cameron’s the man!’.

Because he isn’t. Is he?

Another Police PR Success Story!

Anyone remember the old ‘Not The Nine O’Clock News’ sketch, where a cop is quizzed by his superior over blatant harassment of a member of the public (on racial grounds)?

Well, to such lines as ’Loitering with intent to use a pedestrian crossing..?’, we can now add ‘Laughing too hard at the wheel…?’:

When Gary Sanders was pulled over by police he was sure he had done nothing wrong.

The company director was obeying the speed limit and not driving dangerously.

So, he was quite surprised to hear the ostensible ‘reason’:

But to his astonishment he was told he had been stopped for excessive laughing.

Mr Sanders had been talking on a hands-free kit and was chuckling at what his friend had said.

No doubt Mr Sanders was a little perturbed at being told this, and I expect he queried this (as is his right). Perhaps forcefully:

But the officer who ordered him to stop at the exit to the Mersey Tunnel told him: ‘Laughing while driving a car can be an offence.’

Really..?

If that had been the end of the matter then Mr Sanders, 47, would probably have laughed the whole thing off.

But he was quickly reminded of an unpleasant fact of life in the UK – some police really, really shouldn’t be given a uniform and powers:

But he subjected him to a 35-minute grilling, with questions about everything from his ethnic group to details of distinguishing scars on his body.

And despite not being charged with an offence, he still had to waste a further 90 minutes of his time producing his driving licence and other documents at a police station.

Because no doubt, having made the officer look a complete cock, and perhaps having a better car/suit/educational background than the officious little prig, he needed to be taken down a peg or two.

'The officer accused me of throwing my head back in a dangerous way, which I denied since it is definitely not something I do.

Better not sneeze at the wheel then.

'It became a bit ridiculous when he wanted to know the colour of my hair as I have alopecia and there isn't a hair on my head. When I pointed this out he asked "What colour was your hair when you had some?" It went from ludicrous to unbelievable. He definitely had a bee in his bonnet about something and I got the brunt of it.'

No, Mr Sanders. He was just an officious little shit and a bully, who having been granted power by the state, feels free to abuse it whenever he wants, because no-one seems to be checking him.

And for his actions here, and the danger he places all other police officers in as a result of his behaviour, he should be found, disciplined or sacked, if he has other such abuses on record.

Mr Sanders said the officer eventually admitted no law had been broken, but still insisted he should show his documents to be checked.

'The police should have better things to do than harassing law-abiding people this way. I missed an important meeting and my whole day was messed up and all for nothing. Its was certainly no joke.'

Indeed. Should Mr Sanders drive past a police officer getting beaten to a pulp one dark night, is he going to stop and help? Is he going to say to himself ‘That’s one of my public servants, who do a thankless job keeping us all safe, and he needs help’?

Or is he going to think ‘Screw you, whoever you are!’ and drive on past? If so, could anyone blame him? Certainly not me.

And everyone reading this story is going to either have their existing prejudices confirmed, or their faith that the police are basically a force for good who are willing to root out the bad apples because they care about the effect they have shaken. Because we’ve all come across bullies, box-tickers and jobsworths before, and we know the feeling.

Naturally, the management of this particular police farce doesn’t see this as a problem at all:

Superintendent Kevin Hagger of the Mersey Tunnels Police said: 'There is no record of the incident in the system so it seems the gentleman was just spoken to by the officer and the matter not taken any further.'

‘It didn’t happen, right? Go on about your business, proles…’ No doubt if car video of the incident exists, it’s been quietly scrubbed now.

Brian Gregory from the Association of British Drivers said: 'This is a shocking example of the police harassing innocent motorists simply because they are an easy target. To suggest that a driver could be prosecuted for laughing is ludicrous beyond belief.

Two points, Brian. They aren’t all harassing innocent motorists (no doubt the ones that aren’t are fully aware of just how difficult clowns like this make their job for them), and those that are aren’t doing it because motorists are easy targets, it’s because they are simply unfit to be police officers. They’d do it to anyone if they thought they had a good chance of getting away with it.

Thanks to ‘managers’ like Superintendent Hagger and legislation ensuring that they can’t be photographed by the public, their numbers are going to grow…

So Close…

Melanie Reid (last seen wailing at how harsh the criminal justice system was to ‘unfortunates’ who happened to possess ovaries) mulls the way society views drug addicts, and comes to a somewhat surprising conclusion:

It's an interesting question. Do we, as a nation, consider drug users to be (a) victims or (b) libertarians, people exercising their right to choose? Were one to put this to Harriet Harman's now famous court of public opinion, it would be fascinating to see how the country split.

We don’t need to try, mind you, as Melanie is happy to tell us what we think:

It might be close. The caring professions, the liberal consensus, the tolerant and the gentle would vote for “a”, while the pragmatists, the no-nonsense, hard-working centre Right and everyone who takes recreational drugs would opt for “b”.

Well, that’s cleared that up…

The question is important, given the prevalence of drug use, but the schism runs deep. Our public policies are indeed founded on the liberal notion that drug users need support, but the opposite view prevails in the country. The result is an underlying tension that, for the most part, we successfully ignore.

Until we can’t ignore it. Like, for instance, when it impinges on the cozy middle-class existence:

As a teenager in South London, Jake, now 20, became a user of the addictive and powerful form of cannabis known as skunk; on the receiving end, many would say, of peer pressure. His parents, worried about their younger children, gave him a chance to reform and when he didn't, they changed the locks. Jake was taken in by a friend's parents.

Did the Myersons do the right thing? Was it a child they threw out, a victim of drugs; or an abusive young man who needed to be shown the consequences of his behaviour?

I’d say the latter! And he’s almost certainly not alone…

Victimhood, however, is a crowded town to live in. Jake condemned the book this week, saying that he did not want it published. He resents that his mother has been writing about him “for the past 16 years”.

He's not an addict, he says, describing his parents as naive, insane and emotional about his use of drugs. And there we have it: a man-child who feels rejected, exploited, his rights abused, who says that the drugs are no big deal. A victim, in other words. And a mother who feels understandably violated by her child's drug use, and who has, probably brilliantly, turned private trauma into literary victimhood.

Hmm, the scales are dropping from eyes now, aren’t they?

Everyone is on ambiguous moral ground. The Myerson case is, in many ways, a classic example of how confusing it can be when a comfortable, creative lifestyle rubs up against the harsh realities of drug use.

In the case of Brandon Muir there was no cosy lifestyle, but the same questions about a drug user's rights and the fallibility of liberal attitudes are raised. How far must we consider the drug user as the victim? Sometimes, until they kill someone other than themselves.

Well, yes. That’s the inevitable consequence of viewing violent, shiftless inadequates as somehow ‘not responsible for their actions’. Drugs, naturally, being only one way in which the liberal elite excuse barbarism:

Brandon was not on any at-risk register. Why should he have been, when social policy emphasises that drugs users be supported in their lifestyle, not told to wise up? From top to bottom in the existing system, that ethos rules.
Addicts are official victims. They are not regarded as people with a choice. The presumption, therefore, is on keeping their children at home with them, not removing them. Suggestions that contraception be a condition of receiving methadone for addicts caused an outcry in Scotland, with accusations about eugenics.

Heh! What’s that old saying about a conservative being a liberal who’s been mugged?

Looks like Mel’s been mugged – by reality!

Which take precedence? The human rights of the infant born to the junkie, or the right of the junkie to have both lifestyle and children? At the moment, it is firmly the latter. Social policy remains studiously non-interventionist; non-judgmental; passive. Hence the confusion. Hence the increasing number of babies raised in addict households; and hence - if you like- the increasing number of screwed-up middle-class teenagers.

Hurrah! Finally, the penny drops…or does it?

According to an Audit Commission report today, children's services deteriorated last year and remain the least good area of councils' work. We should not be surprised. Among both families and professionals, only confusion and lack of confidence will reign until we begin to address the moral status of drug taking.

No, no, no!

We don’t need to simply start getting judgemental about the drugs, Mel; they are merely one factor – we need to go back to being judgemental about the whole lifestyle.

Otherwise we are merely tinkering around the edges of the problem, and risk losing focus and producing legislation that will criminalise the minor, occasional users while leaving the major offenders alone. In other words, like almost all of the rest of Nu Lab’s legislation to date…

”The play’s the thing…”

Oh, dear. The perpetually-aggrieved are up in arms yet again:

Campaigners have already disrupted one talk before a performance of Richard Bean's play, England People Very Nice, by mounting the first onstage demonstration in the National Theatre's 32-year history.

However, they are now planning to picket audiences arriving at the theatre and Travelex, one of the National's main sponsors.

And their problem…?

Bean's play charts the settling of the French Huguenot, Irish, Jewish and Bengali communities in Bethnal Green since the 17th century.

The National has billed it as "a riotous journey through four waves of immigration" in the East End of London.

Seems like just the sort of thing we need, doesn’t it? A look back at the advantages - and disadvantages - of our history of immigrant waves? In just the same way the BBC is happy to spend our money on special ‘Eastenders’ episodes looking at ‘the black experience’. I don’t recall protests about that.

It seems not all agree:

After his protest Mr Ismail, 43, said: "Richard Bean is making it seem like all Bangladeshis are drug dealers or users, muggers and marry their cousins."

Mr Kinsella, a teacher from London, said: "I find it outrageous that a play that could have been written by a racist Year Nine pupil has been allowed to be performed at the National – a publicly funded theatre."

Odd thing to say – does ‘Dancing at Lughnasa’ make it seem like all Irish people are rural peasants? It’s drama, for god’s sake!

And I wonder just what Mr Kinsella ‘teaches’, if he believes that the National Theatre wouldn’t have had lawyers crawling all over anything potentially sticky before opening night.

Mr Ismail outlined his plan to take the protest to currency exchange firm Travelex, which sponsors the National's £10 ticket season.

He said he was doing this because Nicholas Hytner, the director of the National Theatre, had persistently rejected his requests for a head-to-head public debate.

He said: "I've asked Travelex to support and mediate our claim for a public debate. If they don't come back we will have to say that Travelex supports a racist play."

Listen, you odious little toad, he has no obligation whatsoever to hold ‘a head-to-head public debate’ with the likes of you. Who, exactly, do you think you are?

Accusing Hytner of being "reckless and irresponsible" in putting on a play he described as "childish and purposefully racist", he said: "He wants a national conversation, so let's have a public debate. He has put this out there; let us challenge it."

By picketing, and by disrupting legitimate theatre productions? That isn’t ‘challenge’.

If you don’t like Bean’s play, write one yourself – you are supposedly a ‘playwright’, or so you claim.

Ironically the play was meant to "lampoon" the sort of racist 'Alf Garnett' attitudes that all the four immigrant groups have experienced.

Nicholas Hytner, the director of the National Theatre, said: "The play lampoons all forms of stereotyping.

"It is a boisterous satire of stereotypes of French, Irish, Jews, Bangladeshis, white East End cockneys, Hampstead liberals and many others.

"Every stereotype is placed in the context of its opposite and it clearly sets out to demonstrate that all forms of racism are equally ridiculous."

Won’t matter – the Offended have spoken. Everyone else can presumably shut up. That’ll help integration, I’m sure….

‘Computer Says ‘No’…’

Staff at supermarket giant Tesco refused to sell wine to a mother - in case she gave it to her 14-year-old daughter.

Fraud investigator Karen Dumelow, 46, and her daughter Emily were at the check-out when a cashier said she could not serve her in case the wine was given to the youngster.

Of course, it shouldn’t be any damn business of Tescos what she did with it – drink it herself, give it to her daughter, christen a ship with it, or pour it down the sink.

But we no longer live in a world where we expect personal responsibility from adults and take appropriate action when they break laws – now, everybody’s business is everybody’s business, up to and including the checkout operators in major supermarkets…

She had been about to pay for two bottles of white wine at the Portsmouth store while doing her weekly shopping with her daughter.

Mrs Dumelow said she spoke to three senior members of staff who agreed with the cashier who had wanted to see identification for the teenager.

So, it’s not just the checkout where they don’t select for initiative and problem-solving….

She said today: 'The checkout assistant asked Emily for ID and I just told her that obviously she didn't have any because she is only 14 years old.

'I couldn't believe what I was hearing. It was crazy. Do you have to leave your children at home if you want to buy alcohol now?

No. Just don’t shop at Tesco. Shop somewhere they don’t employ box-ticking morons at the checkout, or in the administration.

Mrs Dumelow, from Milton near Portsmouth, said today: 'The part that incensed me the most was that literally one minute later I bought the wine from the same till - it was unbelievable.

'All I had to do was send my daughter to the car and all of a sudden everything was OK. '

Well, that’s because, despite what Tesco PR flacks might say, this has less to do with ‘curbing under-age drinking’ and more to do with ensuring that it is seen to comply with the latest nonsense from the government. The customers can go to hell if they don’t like it….

Tesco today apologised for the incident and the embarrassment it caused.

'We work hard to prevent under-age sales, including proxy sales where adults purchase alcohol for under-18s. However in this instance we got it wrong and sincerely apologise.'

How about you stop ‘working hard to prevent under-age sales’ and just concentrate on being a supermarket? By all means, ‘card’ those who look underage as you’ve always done – that’s sensible.

But going down the route of rushing to implement every barmy ‘initiative’ this flailing government comes up with, in a desperate bid to stave off the inevitable, is only getting you bad publicity.
Do the sensible thing – cut your losses….

Unseemly Clinging…

The social services boss whose staff asked a foster family to take in a sex attacker who then raped their infant son and molested their daughter has refused to resign.

Hmm, sounds familiar. Where have I heard something similar?

Oh, right:

The refusal by director of social services Phil Evans to quit echoes the Baby P scandal last year, when Sharon Shoesmith, head of Haringey children's services, said she would not resign after her staff visited the 17-month-old 60 times before he died in August 2007 following months of horrific abuse.

And as I recall, she didn’t resign. She was determined to cling to her post.
She didn’t get the chance:

She was sacked from her £100,000-a-year post without compensation last December.

And given that her failure was to be in charge of a gang of incompetents who ‘merely’ didn’t act on the information they had, how much more culpable is someone who agreed a policy of placing foster families at risk?

Last night, Mr Evans, who is thought to earn at least £80,000, said he would not be considering his position despite admitting 'a serious error of judgment'.

You don’t need to – I’m pretty sure others are considering it for you!

Vale of Glamorgan council last night denied the decision not to tell the family of the teenager's alleged past was made in the interests of data protection.

They refused to say who took the decision to keep the foster family in the dark, before the completion of an NSPCC inquiry into the scandal, which could take two months.

In other words, they’d like to release the name once the fickle media has moved on to the latest scandal…

Welsh Assembly member Chris Franks said on Tuesday night: 'There has to be a complete reorganisation of the social services department.

'Mismanagement caused this horrific situation. We need the council to fully explain how this horrible episode was allowed to happen but they seem to be in denial at the moment.'

They’ll move to ‘bargaining’ pretty soon – then we’ll see a few bodies tossed over the side of the sled to the pursuing wolves.

Vale of Glamorgan councillor Neil Moore added: 'It's a devastating case that should never have happened. The history of this boy should have been known to social services. We need to find out why it happened, what procedures were in place and whether they were adhered to.'

If procedures really were ‘adhered to’, I think that’ll be an even greater scandal. Don’t you?

The parents of the two children are said to be considering suing the Tory council, which refuses to reveal whether anyone had been sacked over the incident.

Labour, Tory, makes no difference. Once in power, they cling to it like limpets, no matter what, and view the people who put them there as little more than irrelevancies…

“You’ve gotta help us! We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!”

Danish ‘CiF’ columnist Jakob Illeberg (yes, that one) has yet another befuddled article in CiF about the increasing violence between immigrants and biker gangs:

There is no end in sight in the Danish gang war that has been raging for more than half a year – on Sunday night two masked youths, connected to the immigrant gangs that are fighting out a turf war with the Hell's Angels, attacked a pub on Amager in Copenhagen. They forced a man to lie on his belly at gunpoint and then fired 10 shots into the pub, killing one and injuring two, before shooting the man on the street in his kneecaps. The incident is the third in as many days.

How vibrant….

The gang war has been pasteurising life in the Danish capital for far too long. The police have tried to control matters, but rather than being solved, the problems seem to be escalating and the locals are increasingly staying indoors or even moving out of the trouble spots.

You mean, the ordinary police are useless against well-armed, well organised gangs with a tribal secrecy rule. Well, I never….

The Danish minister of justice, Brian Mikkelsen, insists that the fight against the gangs is being won, but it certainly doesn't feel that way walking on Norrebro in central Copenhagen this weekend. The atmosphere, in an area usually full of people in shops and cafes, is tense – the locals just want the problems and the criminals to go away.

Are the politicians addressing this?

Why, yes, it seems they are:

The Danish integration minister, Birthe Ronn Hornbech, is now contemplating the introduction of a new set of laws that will in effect mean that all foreigners caught committing a crime involving a weapon will be expelled from the country. The proposed policy is supported by the rest of centre-right government and the Danish People's party, and therefore looks likely to be passed in parliament.

Hurrah! Of course, it won’t solve the problem whereby these ‘immigrant gang members’ turn out to be second or third-generation citizens, will it? But baby steps, and all that…

Are you happy, Jakob? Oh, I forgot:

But several experts have warned that the new zero tolerance strategy is risking institutionalised inequality. While the tough line might have some effect on the immigrant gangs, it could easily be seen by the Hell's Angels as giving them the upper hand and reason to start an offensive.

Yup, you did just hear a Danish citizen decry attempts to remove foreigners who have abused their host country’s laws as somehow ‘unfair’….

It is strange that it should take dozens of episodes with firearms and several deaths before the police is willing to upgrade its presence.

Really…?

You mean, with all the concerned liberals like yourself ready to whine and complain about any perceived ‘racism’, the fact that the cops are apt to say ‘Oooh, not stepping in that snakepit…’ comes as a surprise to you?

But while the Hell's Angels and their supporters are a clear and relatively easily defined group, the immigrant gangs are less well known. It is them the Danish population fear the most. But these gangs do not represent the foreigners in Denmark, they just give them a bad name.

You could, presumably, say the same of the Hells Angels. Should the police give them the kid glove treatment as a result?

While there is every reason to clamp down on the gangs' criminal activity, legislating one's way out of trouble is often not the answer. If a white boy gets a small prison sentence for carrying a weapon while a foreign boy is expelled for the same crime, surely that is bound to make the foreigners feel even more stigmatised.

‘A white boy’…? But a little while back, you were saying how less well defined the immigrant groups are. Why, then, so sure that some of them aren’t ‘white’?

And, who cares if the ‘foreigners’ (by which you really mean, ‘criminals’) feel stigmatised? Presumably, the ordinary working immigrants trying to make a living without stepping into a bullet are as sick of these yahoos as everyone else!

The question then remains: what to do? Few in Denmark seem to have a clear idea. The original plan was to let the gangs fight it out, but that now seems a far too dangerous proposition for the rest of the Danish population.

‘The original plan was to let the gangs fight it out’? Really…?

I’m reminded of that ‘Simpsons’ sketch, where Flanders’ hippy dippy parents take their out of control child to a doctor and tell him: “You’ve gotta help us! We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!”

Trying nothing got you nowhere, did it, Jakob? So kindly get out of the way while people try something….

Everyone In Their Box…

It seems the head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission isn’t averse to a little inequality, so long as it’s the ‘right sort of inequality’:

Trevor Phillips, the head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said that a proposal to only allow MPs to serve for a maximum of 20 years should be considered to allow a more diverse Parliament.

And us voters? Do we get a say, Sir Trev, or are you going to decide for us?

After all, if we really want ‘a more diverse Parliament’, the remedy is in our own hands.

Currently, only 15 of the 646 MPs are black or Asian, and women make up just 19 per cent of MPs.

I guess we aren’t that bothered then.

So why should Sir Trev be?

Speaking at a conference on Parliamentary representation, Mr Phillips said: "The Commission starts from the position that a Parliament which reflects the make-up of the nation it represents will result in better legislation and a higher degree of public confidence in the democratic process."

"There needs to be people inside this House... who actually know what it means to be disabled, there needs to be more people who are women, and there needs to be more people from different kinds of ethnic groups."

So much for MPs who swear represent all their constituents! In Sir Trev’s ideal world, if you are a disabled member of the public, go see the MP in the wheelchair. Got breasts? Go see the MP with the bits poking out of her blouse. Got a bit of a tan on holiday? Go see that ethnic chappie over there, he deals with your kind…

So, how does Sir Trev plan to bring about this ‘improvement’ to our democratic process?

The equalities watchdog called for the introduction of schemes to allow under-represented groups to receive "internships" working in MPs' offices. He also backed political parties introducing all-women shortlists when electing Parliamentary candidates.

Ah, right. Take it out of the hands of voters. Nice one, Trevor…

He said: ``The reason this House took exceptional measures in relation to all-women shortlists was a very simple one.

"It wasn't just to be nice to women, it was because a House that only has 20 women in it in the 20th century looked ridiculous."

How many does it need not to look ridiculous in your eyes, then, Sir Trev? 30? 50? 200?

The 'Google Ads' Algorithm needs a bit of work...

This ad comes at the end of a story about a drunken woman biting off her boyfriend's tongue....

Phil Woolas: ‘Who Will Rid Me Of This Troublesome Statistics Body…?’

The independent statistics body for Britain has a 'sinister' attitude to immigration, a minister has claimed.

Phil Woolas questioned the motives of the Office for National Statistics in publishing figures showing one in nine UK residents was born abroad.

I guess that’s the inconvenient thing about these independent bodies, isn’t it Phil. They have a habit of letting the cat out of the bag…

The immigration minister revealed that he had tried to prevent the organisation publishing the data and accused it of 'playing politics'.

Ministers appear to be going on the offensive against the ONS and its chief statistician, Karen Dunnell, after a series of rows over official data.

But Mr Woolas's broadside is likely to trigger a backlash from MPs, who say the body must be able to collect information and provide impartial analysis free from Government interference.

So, he tried to prevent an independent body from publishing data, and he accuses them of ‘playing politics’?

Hmmm….

Ministers were said to be 'fizzing' with anger last month after the ONS published figures showing the growing numbers of immigrants getting jobs while the British workforce declines.

It revealed that the number of foreign workers increased by 175,000 to 2.4million last year while the number of British fell by 234,000 to 27million.

Labour sources suggested the timing of the release was a political act designed to embarrass Gordon Brown over his controversial 'British jobs for British workers' slogan.

It was unfortunate, yes. Perhaps Broon shouldn’t have opened his mouth, if he knew the evidence would discredit him? How come he didn’t? Isn’t he supposed to be some kind of control-freak?

But then, if we’d been talking about a Conservative government, would any of these ‘sources’ be claiming the same thing? Of course not!

It came as construction workers took part in wildcat strikes in Lincolnshire and Kent, angry about jobs going to foreigners.

Then last week, the ONS published statistics showing foreign-born people make up one in nine of the population of the UK.

Because that’s what they DO - publish statistics. It’s hardly their fault that each new statistic shows the true picture, and not the one painted by government spin doctors.

In a letter to Sunder Katwala, head of the Left-wing Fabian Society, Mr Woolas said most people believed it was the Government that had released the data.

'In fact, it was the ONS with no ministerial involvement and indeed despite my objections,' he added. 'What's worse is that the press release highlighted the one in nine figure as the main finding.

'So, Government gets the blame by some for whipping up anti-foreign sentiment when it is the independent ONS who are playing politics.

'The justification from the ONS who had, out of schedule, highlighted the figure two weeks earlier because it was "topical" is, at best, naive or, at worst, sinister.'

Suck it up, Woolas! They are doing their job. You aren’t. And that’s all there is to it….

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said: 'The way ministers are behaving over crime and immigration figures is little short of a disgrace.

'When they can, they manipulate the figures for their own political purposes and when they can't they launch hysterical rants at the independent statistics office.'

It’s called ‘losing the plot’. And it’s going to happen more and more often, until we finally get rid of this bunch…

Sir Andrew Green, head of the MigrationWatch think tank, said: 'It's extremely unfortunate if a minister gives an impression of bullying the official statisticians for doing no more than setting out the facts, however inconvenient they may be for the Government of the day.

'To imply that there is some sinister motive in simply telling the truth is astonishing.'

But not surprising, given this control-freak government.

Last night, Mr Woolas was unrepentant saying: 'The ONS need to be aware that they are entering shark-infested waters. It's not the role of the ONS to dictate the debate.'

A spokesman for the ONS said: 'We will not be responding to this letter.'

Or in other words: ‘F*** you, Minister!’

Mark Wadsworth has the possible reason for the ONS to decide not to play nice with Broon’s Bunch, and Unenlightened Commentary has a great post title for his take on this!