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Can’t we find Liam Fox something to do? You know, like run a war or something?

Britain’s Defence Secretary Liam Fox has defended his comments calling on retailers to ban the forthcoming Medal of Honor video game from their stores. On Sunday, Mr Fox said he was “disgusted” by the game, which allows players to adopt the role of the Taliban in the Afghan war. [...] On Sunday, Dr Fox said that it was “shocking that someone would think it acceptable to recreate the acts of the Taliban against British soldiers”. [...] An Electronic Arts spokesman said the game “does not allow players to kill British soldiers”.

“No British troops feature in the game,” he said.

So there we have it. The British defence secretary going off half-cocked and issuing factually incorrect, ill-informed bobbins about computer games while there’s a war on. Has anybody told him they’re not actually real soldiers? Presumably non-British virtual combatants are fair game. Sorry, computerised Americans, Liam just doesn’t care about you.

No mention either from Foxhole of any disgust about the civilians killed by NATO and attempts to cover those deaths up, but what are you going to do? What about the foul crimes of Henry Kissinger? Oh sorry, Liam’s a big fan actually.

Anyway, we now get an insight in to Fox’s character. Here’s his updated profile:

NAME: Dr Liam Fox
AGE: 48
LIKES: Proper killing
DISLIKES: Pretend killing

It’s not like me to kick a man when he’s down but I think today just might have been the day when my abject pity for Nick Clegg finally slipped over the border into contempt. He goes on Sky News and says that talk of benefit cuts is ‘speculation’. Ten minutes later, Downing Street is announcing that it is reviewing benefit cuts. His bosses clearly think he’s a dickhead, willing to soak up absolutely any and all humiliation.

Then, in the afternoon, he rocks up at the Shepherd’s Bush Village Hall to wax lyrical about Tory ‘plans’ for ‘social mobility’. The twist? Clegg and his entourage were completely ignorant of the fact that the Shepherd’s Bush Village Hall is targeted for closure thanks to the Tory-run council. Brave little Nicky Wicky – according to the Fulham Chronicle – despite being ‘given two cards made by children begging him to save their playgroup’ and ‘confronted by worried parents over the council’s plans’, didn’t even have the balls to answer questions about it.

When they come to make a satire of his time in office, they sure as shit ain’t going to call it ‘In The Loop‘. It’s starting to look pretty pathetic.

Nick’s first day in the big chair and he’s laying some morality:

Clegg refers to problems in Greece and Spain and says it is “morally wrong” to hand over debt from one generation to the next.

He might be right. The thing is, going by previous experience, when the Deputy Prime Minister talks of morality it’s time to turn on the bullshit detector. Nick is very good at slating the lack of morality in a given outrage but not very good at measuring the moral content of whatever replaces that travesty.

It’s like the war in Iraq (which Clegg was against, of course). Yes, Saddam Hussein was a bloodthirsty tyrant (you still have to say that out loud in case some passing knob thinks you supported him) but those who had a little grasp of history knew that the American military under the command of someone like George Bush Jnr wasn’t the trojan horse in which to smuggle liberal values in Iraq.

It’s the same with Tory policies drawn up to replace Nick’s moral wastelands. We’ve already seen that the moral outrage of child refugees being imprisoned is looking like it will be replaced by another.

It may be morally wrong to hand over debt from one generation to the next but look at what the Tories, with Clegg’s silent acquiescence, are doing in what they say is an attempt to stop that happening. The demonisation of the poor. An attack on vital public services (despite promising during the election campaign that this wouldn’t happen). And so on.

Those of us who didn’t support the war were asked often by those who did, ‘what would you instead?’ The answer was, generally and in the first instance, ‘don’t replace one atrocity with another’. In this current context of Tory government, the leader of the Liberal Democrats needs to decide which end of that argument he’s on.

Energy Secretary Chris Huhne has insisted the government is fully behind the opening of a new nuclear power station in eight years’ time.

‘My views on nuclear power have always much misunderstood,’ said the Energy Secretary. His views?

‘Ministers must stop the side-show of new nuclear power stations now. Nuclear is a tried, tested and failed technology and the Government must stop putting time, effort and subsidies into reviving this outdated industry.‘

‘The doubling of our electricity generation from wind in a little more than a year shows what renewables can do, and gives the lie to the need for a new generation of nuclear power.‘

‘Our message is clear, No to nuclear, as it is not a short cut, but a dead end. Yes to energy saving, yes to renewables, and yes to a sustainable energy future.‘

My favourite from Mr Huhne?

‘You cannot perform a U-turn on nuclear power, as Tony Blair did between the last two government statements on energy policy, without a proper debate and a full discussion of the options.‘

Yes, my mistake. I’ve clearly misunderstood Huhne’s views on nuclear power. There’s nothing in those pronouncements to make me think he wouldn’t back a new generation of nuclear reactors should he ever be made a figleaf in a Tory government with a 24% share of the vote. How silly of me. My faith in politics and politicians is restored.

Meanwhile, still no word from the Deputy Prime Minister on his government replacing one moral outrage with another.

At his appearance at Prime Minister’s Questions the other week, Nick Clegg said the imprisonment of child refugees was a ‘moral outrage’ and that he wanted to ‘restore a sense of decency and liberty to the way we conduct ourselves’.

So, thanks to leaked UK Border Agency documents this (via Freemovement) looks like what we’ll be getting instead…

Read the rest of this entry »

Defending David Cameron. May God forgive me for what I am about to do*.

Yesterday, Cameron said Iran has got a nuclear weapon. This was described as a ‘gaffe’ and New Labour accused Cameron of being a ‘foreign policy klutz’.

Excuse me?

This coming from a political party that lied about, spun and instigated two disastrous wars of choice in which millions have been killed, maimed and displaced. When Cameron reaches those levels of statesmanship, maybe then we can call him a klutz, eh? Some crap blurted at a public meeting doesn’t even come close.

Shadow Europe Minister Chris Bryant said, ‘this is less of a hiccup, more of a dangerous habit’. Yes, a bit like civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. No doubt as the missile rain down on the men, women and children of those countries, they sigh to themselves and say much the same.

The thing is, this criticism would have a little more pull if Gordon Brown hadn’t said something quite similar last year.

Iran has a clear choice to make: suspend its nuclear weapons programme and accept our offer of negotiations or face growing isolation and the collective response not of one nation but of many nations.

Was that a ‘gaffe’? Was Brown a ‘foreign policy klutz’ by New Labour standards? At the suggestion of a commenter on the blog, I even wrote to Number 10 asking if there was any proof to back up Brown’s assertion about an Iranian weapons programme (there was the terrible feeling we’d been here before).

The request for information was shunted to the Foreign Office who replied with what barely amounted to a fobbing off let alone anything that might justify ‘the collective response not of one nation but of many nations’. I wish I’d kept the letter for occasions such as these rather than tossing it out in disgust.

Cameron goes to Turkey and says Gaza is a prison camp. He goes to India and says Pakistan is producing terrorists. Instead of being hailed as bringing a drop of honesty to British Foreign policy, he’s accused of being an innocent abroad.

Former Foreign Secretary David Miliband went as far as to call Cameron a ‘loudmouth‘. ‘Loudmouth’? ‘Klutz’? They sure are elevating the debate at New Labour HQ.

Of course, when he was in power Miliband preferred a different approach. He preferred a policy of speaking quietly or, when it came to matters such as torture and rendition, not at all. Truly, Cameron has much to learn to match the New Labour greats.

* For avoidance of doubt, Cameron remains an idiot. Yesterday, when pulled up about his UK-were-the-WWII-junior-partner-in-1940 stupidity, he said: ‘We were on our own in 1940′. Which must come as a surprise to the likes of the No. 303 Polish Fighter Squadron among others.

After the massive leak of military documents about the war in Afghanistan, our illustrious Foreign Secretary William Hague said the leak could “poison the atmosphere in Afghanistan“.

Yes, because the litany of military incompetence, uncounted and unaccounted for civilian deaths, torture, war crimes and deals with corrupt monsters has been a gust of sweet mountain air through Afghanistan these last nine years, hasn’t it?

Right up until this week, you could take a deep breath anywhere in that country and savour the scent and taste of a job well done.

People are still in the Garden despite a second attempt at eviction today.

There’s a benefit gig tomorrow night (July 23) to raise money to help protect the community garden from the Tescos juggernaut with live music from Flat Stanley plus Ade sings Rosselsongs and DJ Gene Defekt.

Address: Hectors House, 52-54 Grand Parade, Brighton
Postcode: BN2 9QA | View Map
Time: 7.30pm-12
Price: £4 donation
Web: www.lewesroadcommunitygarden.org

You have to laugh*. Here’s another mark of the calibre of our current leadership caste. Wannabe Next Labour leader David ‘Brains‘ Miliband excoriates Tory Prime Minister David Cameron for a lamentable grasp of history by parading his own lamentable grasp of history…

David Cameron has been criticised after mistakenly saying the UK was the “junior partner” in the allied World War II fight against Germany in 1940.

So far, so predictable. A British Prime Minister goes to Washington and abases both himself and his country. The heir to Blair indeed. Miliband then weighs in with his own ill-educated response.

He said: “1940 was our finest hour. Millions of Britons stood up and gave their lives to defeat fascism. “We were not a junior partner. We stood alone against the Nazis. How can a British prime minister who bangs on about British history get that so wrong? It is a slight, not a slip.”

Millions of Britons gave their lives? We stood alone against the Nazis? Alone alongside France, Australia, India, New Zealand, South Africa. And who’s the ‘we’, desk jockey?

And so World War II, at a distance of 70 years, becomes a virtual reality fantasy playground for two Oxford educated political point-scoring pricks, the supposed cream of this generation. All those people did not die in vain.

Neither of the two modern political parties seem particularly interested or engaged with history. It is, after all, how they keep repeating the same horrible and bloody mistakes (as any cursory study of our Aghan and Iraqi campaigns will tell you). It’s how the likes of Ed Balls can describe himself as a Bevanite without dying of shame on the spot.

Still, as the first-hand voices leave us we can probably look forward to much more of this kind of fun. Sooner or later, a politician will be able to stand up and say thanks to Tory values the Russians were able to stand firm at Stalingrad. Hell, why not go for it? Thanks to the Jedi training school being given academy status, Luke Skywalker had the proper skills to destroy the Death Star.

* Or emigrate

David Cameron’s launching his Big Society today. If it works as it’s being spun it might just be a worthwhile contribution to fostering closer ties between neighbours. The cynic in me suspects its a cover for private enterprise to muscle in and strip community services to the bare minimum. For fun and profit.

That said, you can see the spirit of the Big Society in action if you know where to look. Take the Lewes Road Community Garden, for instance:

Once a bland outpost of the CARbon economy – an Esso garage – then a derelict site for over 5 years – transformed by the commitment, love and creativity of a random bunch of locals who dared ‘imagine a garden’ on the Lewes Road in Brighton.

During two days in May 2009 about a hundred people successfully created the Lewes Road Community Garden.

A place for meeting and greeting, reflection and relaxation and grubbying around in the wholesome earth.

Hundreds of plants were donated. Huge pots painted and planted. A circular lawn laid. Planters made from old tyres and scrap timber. A fresh new sign put up. Runner Beans and Sunflowers growing up the fences. A beautiful wooden bench specially made and donated.

The Garden would have stalls, gatherings and workshops. Yoga sessions every morning. Open air music gigs. Films in the dark open air. My kids learned about seedbombing and guerilla gardening there. They came home thrilled at the thought of being able to take flowers and colour to places that had none.

This is community is its real, unspun sense. Here, David Cameron could point at a very real example of people coming together and providing a service both the public and private sector can’t or won’t. So what does the future hold for the Lewes Road Community Garden?

Nothing.

In June, the Garden was evicted so developers can build a Tesco on the site.

Gordon was mad, bad, dangerous and beyond hope of redemption.

…said the man who told us his judgement to bomb Iraq was ‘made by God as well‘.

There is no one to match Gordon for someone who articulates high principles while practising the lowest skulduggery.

…said the man who orchestrated the Iraq war.

Mallory, education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don’t need little changes, we need gigantic, monumental changes. Schools should be palaces. The competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be making six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense. That’s my position. I just haven’t figured out how to do it yet.
Sam Seaborn, The West Wing.

Well Sam, I’d suggest you start by putting the likes of Michael Gove up against the wall. If schools should be palaces, Gove is a republican. Just when you thought New Labour were the philistines, vandals and harbingers of a new Dark Age, along comes Gove and his myrmidons to burn down your school. When the Taliban destroy schools it’s barbarism, when the Tories do it it’s economic stewardship. Go figure.

So we find ourselves stuck with another cloaca who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing. That this man is the Education Secretary should be cause for blood-spitting fury not weary shrugs.

Hands are being rubbed at the prospect of Gove being made to do a grovelling national tour to apologise for his crime of not checking his list properly. Like he gives a crap. He’ll be back from his cheap talk in time for dinner somewhere flash, his own children fully insulated from his ladder-pulling.

There are calls for Gove’s resignation. If he had any shame or empathy whatsoever he’d have resigned in disgust at the plans to abandon these schools. Him resigning because he cocked up his act of wilful vandalism (it was a schoolboy error, ha ha) and pissed on the futures of God knows how many kids doesn’t seem quite as honourable somehow.

(Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said it would be ‘absolute madness’ to make any cutbacks which affected children’s education. He said that last year that when New Labour were talking about their own educational scorched earth, obviously. it was madness last year. One awaits his pronouncement on the sanity of his Tory bosses with anticipation.)

Sniggering, Neo-Mosleyite, authoritarian technocrat and doomed Labour leadership candidate Andy Burnham says voting reform is ‘a peripheral issue’, ‘irrelevant’ and ‘a kind of fringe pursuit for Guardian-reading classes’. Like he can talk. At the recent general election Burnham was returned to Parliament with 48 per cent of the vote on a 58 per cent turnout. That means 72 percent of his own constituents in Leigh voted for someone else or stayed at home. Ten thousand more people sat on their arses on polling day than turned out for Our Andy. How’s that for ‘peripheral’, ‘irrelevant’ and ‘fringe’?

Still, forget about Burnham. He’s a hairdo. If he’s lucky, he might get a footnote in some treatise about how this country’s view of itself became so debased that people were willing to see the likes of him rise to positions of power. No, this is about Nick Clegg and his mangy pet project. By the time Cameron and his feral hangers-on have had their way with him and it, ‘peripheral’, ‘irrelevant’ and ‘fringe’ will look like compliments and the chance for real reform will be lost for another generation.

Poor Nick and his miserable little compromises. Just how much public humiliation will he endure from his Tory bosses before he starts to crack and what concessions he can extract from Cameron? My money’s on ‘a staggeringly cruel amount’ and ‘magic beans’. When they eventually make a documentary about Clegg’s career it’ll be prefaced with the warning ‘this programme contains scenes that some viewers may find disturbing’.

From the RMJ website:

A consortium of charitable trusts and city law firms, supported by Simon Hughes MP, are putting together a proposal to Government to save Refugee and Migrant Justice (RMJ). The proposal asks the Government to at least pay the money that it would have to pay anyway on insolvency on the understanding that this will be matched with up to £1,000,000 by way of grants, secured loans and donations to meet cash needs to finance work in progress.

We need concrete commitments for these funds today or as early as possible tomorrow – actual cash can come a bit later. So far today, we have been pledged £134,000. Significantly more could follow from charitable trusts and others we are already talking with. But at this point it is clear that this is going to be a very considerable challenge without some additional help.

The aim of the plan is to enable, with full transparency and without prejudicing the position of creditors, a 3 month period in which the Government can consider whether it might change the payment system, there might be time to look at some innovative solutions with the Office of Civil Society and banks and RMJ would demonstrate that it had a viable forward business model. If all that fails, at least it would provide time for an orderly transfer of our clients’ cases. We have 10,000 clients, including 900 unaccompanied children who may otherwise be left in limbo.

We are appealing for donations, however small, to help save RMJ and secure its services over the next three months. If funds from both Government and other funders can be agreed, RMJ’s administrators would, in principle, support the proposal to take RMJ out of administration.

To make a pledge, or for further information, please telephone Kathleen Commons on 07872 161 271 or email savermj@gmail.com

About Refugee and Migrant Justice

Refugee and Migrant Justice is committed to securing justice for asylum seekers and other migrants in the UK.

We are the largest specialist provider of advice and representation to asylum seekers and other migrants needing protection or other help to secure their human rights.

As well as helping individual clients, we use our considerable expertise to campaign for positive changes.

In these turbulent and confusing political times, I thought it would be useful and helpful to establish the terminology we need to understand just what the hell’s going on right now. We need to be able to identify the essential differences between the political parties. So here goes.

With their loathing of foreigners and welfare claimants, and their tight embrace of neo-liberal economics, the Con-Dem coalition governemtn is very much Continuity New Labour. With their loathing of foreigners and welfare claimants, and their tight embrace of neo-liberal economics, Next Labour is very much Continuity Conservatism. Is that clear?

Continuity New Labour’s leadership are affluent white male Oxbridge graduates. By contrast, Continuity Conservatism’s leadership are affluent white male Oxbridge graduates. In this way, a clear choice is spelled out at the ballot box.

Continuity Conservatism like to deport refugees to dangerous warzones whereas Continuity New Labour like to deport people to dangerous warzones. Continuity New Labour are the masters of ugly, dog-whistle appeals to racism and xenophobia but Continuity Conservatism prefer to employ ugly, dog-whistle appeals to racism and xenophobia.

Continuity Conservatism have a deeply unpleasant, thick-necked, plain-speaking professional Northerner to communicate to the lower orders that they’re being screwed. Conversely, Continuity New Labour have a deeply unpleasant, thick-necked, plain-speaking professional Northerner to communicate to the lower orders that they’re being screwed.

The latest Continuity Conservatism mouthpiece to lay down some dividing lines* is former communities secretary John Denham. His strategy for winning back power for his party is an audacious one: appealing to the oppressed minority of middle-class Southerners (coloquially know as ‘happy families’ and ‘suburban comfort’) by punishing foreigners and hammering benefit claimants. This thinking is sure to be attacked by Continuity New Labour who see a policy of hammering foreigners and punishing benefit claimants as the way forward.

Continuity Conservatism is concerned with managing the ‘perception’ of society’s more fortunate rather than emphasising reality. Continuity New Labour on the other hand is seeking to emphasise the ‘perception’ of society’s more fortunate rather than managing reality.

See? It really all does make sense.

* Why is it always dividing lines? Because they’re so thin. You never read about dividing chasms or canyons, do you?

Just what tickled my fancy in the last few days…

• » Ofcom warns off free Wi-Fi providers – Another turd left behind by New Labour
• » Refugee Week – Dates for your diary…
• » Nuking the oil spill – The ‘peaceful’ use of nuclear weapons…
• » Facing both ways on nuclear power – Chris Huhne adapts to power nicely
• » BBC News – British citizenship tests: One in three immigrants fail – I'd like to see the figures if citizens took the citizenship test…

Posted from my delicio.us links.

Refugee and Migrant Justice (RMJ) is a charity that provides free legal advice and representation to asylum seekers. The organisation is facing possible closure as a result of a new system of payment of legal aid whereby payments are only made when stages are closed. In RMJ’s case this is on average six months after work is started and can take up to two years.

They are not asking for more money, just prompt payment of what they are due. The possible closure of RMJ will effect 10,000 asylum seekers in the UK who will be left without legal representation, and may be forced to return to persecution, torture, and the threat of death. Nine hundred of their clients are children.

They have been in private touch with the new ministers but, despite some sympathy in the Home Office from Damian Green, they have just received a negative response from a junior Ministry of Justice minister. So they are launching a public campaign.

RMJ has managed to get a letter of support out today, signed by various public figures, and hope that this will put some pressure on the government. However, that alone is not enough, and RMJ are asking for support. They are encouraging people to write to the Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor Kenneth Clarke in protest at the closure. They also want to raise awareness of the situation as widely as possible, in as many different sectors as they can.

(Here’s a sample letter to Kenneth Clarke and a leaflet outline RMJ’s situation.)

Just what tickled my fancy in the last few days…

• » Bloggerheads (UK) – Private Eye magazine (and why I don’t read it anymore) – it's also why I don't read it anymore.
• » ID cards scheme will still apply to non EU nationals
• » In the loop: How Twitter transformed political reporting – One of the beauties of Twitter is that any idiot can sign up and declare themselves an authority on it…
• » Andy Burnham’s website – ‘potentially damaging content’
• » Check out Andy Burnham’s flashy leadership website
• » BBC News – Ministers to outline ‘radical’ welfare reform agenda – Iain Duncan Smith: – ‘work actually helps to free people’
• » Video: police arrest Brian Haw for not moving aside quickly enough – Looking at the number of lads they sent along, the Met are clearly terrified of Brian Haw…
• » David Miliband: 10 things you may not know about me – ‘When not helping to cover up torture, I like to kick back with a Twirl and a copy of the Gruffalo…’ Aw!
• » I see the Miliband (D) campaign team are persisting with that photo of their man giving the two-fingered salute
• » Dachshunds Are Amazing
• » Blood & Treasure: victims of government spending cuts with whom i have no sympathy
• » Britain’s electoral system ‘corruptible and open to fraud’, say Third World observers – Telegraph
• » Judge orders Home Office to stop deportations without warning
• » Not all gay asylum-seekers sent back to face persecution – “Why do you *choose* to be homosexual when you know it is illegal in your own country?”
• » LGBT Asylum News: 98% sent back? The Independent’s article makes a bad situation worse
• » The Media’s Contempt For Public Activism… « Back Towards The Locus
• » Soldier Who Filmed Gay Taunts of Iraqi Children Investigated
• » donpaskini: Coalition axes 44,000 "Big Society" jobs – The Con-Dem evil begins…
• » Janelle Monáe – Tightrope (on David Letterman)
• » Two consecutive tweets on the Guardian’s newsfeed tell a story…
• » John McDonnell: I am not Old Labour or New Labour – just Labour – John McDonnell speaks with honesty, compassion and integrity. He is, therefore and needless to say, doomed.
• » Bob Piper : That’s cleared that up then… – "We want a properly coherent British approach to Afghanistan"…
• » Blood & Treasure: little creatures – ‘Step aside fat Nick and take your shaven headed paranoids with you. This is the era of the real British national party…’
• » Bloggerheads (UK) – To: Nadine Dorries – An open letter to Nadine Dorries
• » George Lamb to leave BBC 6 Music – Some good news at last…
• » The Curmudgeon: Principled Opposition from Eds Miliballs
• » Tory pledge to end child detention means deporting babies | Counterfire
• » I Saw The Light – This one's for Ed and Ed for coming out against the Iraq war in 2010…
• » Labour’s new motto: immigration, immigration, immigration – 'to focus any argument about distributional justice on welfare claimants is borderline obscene…'
• » Ed Balls: I want Labour to win again by showing whose side we are really on – Mirror mobile – Ed Balls: Immigration 2, Living Wage 0, Housing 0, Poverty 0…
• » Pickled Politics » What is the progressive narrative on immigration? – 'How do you deal with people’s concerns without sounding like the English Defence League, the BNP or Andy Burnham?'
• » Rise in refugee children falling into destitution – Children & Young People Now – The number of asylum-seeking children who fall into destitution is increasing…
• » Border agency breaking rules over detention of children in Yarl’s Wood
• » The Curmudgeon: The Flexible All-Purpose Do-It-Yourself Labour Leadership Candidacy Kit – Enhance your Labour leadership candidacy potential with this handy enhancer
• » Torture inquiry to investigate accusations against British agents – Bad news for Miliband (D)
• » Craig Venter creates synthetic life form – Hmmm. I think Mr Venter will find the Miliband family beat him to this about 40 years ago…
• » IRR: How good is the good news on child detention? – News on child detention must be treated with caution.

Posted from my delicio.us links.

The Lib Dems seem to be slipping into life in government with comfortable ease. Energy and climate change secretary Chris Huhne, for instance, has gone from being a vociferous voice against nuclear power to, as EdF chief executive Vincent de Rivaz who wants to build four new nuclear reactors in the UK describes him, ‘a man we can do business with‘.

Meanwhile…

(Via chuzzlit on Twitter.)

Fourteen year-old Wells Botomani on life at the hands of the UK’s immigration services…

The nights are the worst in Yarl’s Wood. Doors being banged and sometimes people crying. You always think they may be coming to your door. This fear lives in me, and I don’t know how to get rid of it.

I don’t know how to get rid of it. It’s a far lesser thing, I know, but it’s the same for me and disgust.

We did this, we do this. Is it a learned behaviour, the things we do to these people? If so, who did we learn it from?

The recent right-wing establishment reaction to the peace camp and the arrest of Brian Haw in Parliament Square is fascinating to watch based, as it is, almost entirely on an aesthetic judgement rather than any consideration of just why the protesters are there.

It’s to be wondered why the Tories aren’t handing out nosegays and scented hankerchiefs to their swooning hangers-on. I wonder how much fuss there’d be if the protesters wore suits and had erected Art Nouveau gazebos instead of wearing jeans and t-shirts and living in tents (not that the judgement of a protest’s visual merits is the exclusive purview of Tory critics). Lost in all this is the irony that the government appears to be cracking down on protest just as they’re about to restore the right to protest.

Take a look, for example, at Tory mouthpiece Benedict Brogan in the Telegraph. He variously describes the protesters as ‘loons’, ‘ragtag’ and ‘grim’. He describes protest veteran Brian Haw as ‘dreadful’ and ‘demented’. Not once are the words ‘Iraq’ or ‘Afghanistan’ mentioned.

Tory press release machine Iain Dale had mentioned Brian Haw on his blog just once before yesterday (Britain’s biggest blogger couldn’t even get ‘Hawes’ name right when he finally got around to mentioning him yesterday) and doesn’t seem to have mentioned the peace camp before much either.

But as soon as his big mates send in the cops to hassle a few hippies, and never one to miss a bandwagon, Dale’s found his aesthetic sensibilities, declared that protesters should be judged on their visual appeal, and is holding the coats. He also elevated his dislike to a vendetta by finding one of the protester’s details and phoning the man’s employer. Oh, and he didn’t mention ‘Iraq’ or ‘Afghanistan’ either.

Sky News’ Adam Boulton tried to associate the protest with the death of a Japanese boy hit by a car. Leader of Westminster Council Colin Barrow talked about ‘ordinary workers and tourists who are prevented from going about their daily business’. This is cobblers. Parliament Square is, in effect, an enormous traffic island with no pedestrian access. Protests on the Square obstruct nobody unless they’re willing to risk the traffic to get there. You take your life in your hands trying to get on to it, certainly.

All of them eulogize Parliament Square’s beauty and the notion that it’s on a World Heritage site (it’s not, fact fans). I’m not really sure what the fuss is about in that regard. I’ve been on Parliament Square (protesting, natch) and in summer particularly, it’s a scrubby, patchy square of nondescript lawn. I wonder, before the protest camp arrived, how many times Brogan, Dale, Boulton, Barrow and the rest risked the traffic themselves to enjoy the Square’s ‘beauty’.