Hello you. How are things? What have I missed?

I didn’t see much news in the last couple of weeks but the headlines from the Chilcot Inquiry managed to waft their way to my holiday bolthole. Claire Short and former Foreign Office lawyer Elizabeth Wilmhurst may have got the applause but for me the stars of the inquiry so far have been two other faces from the squalid past, namely Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell.

Read the rest of this entry »

All my bags are packed and comment moderation is on. Off on me hols. I’ll leave you with this which I thought was pretty damn cool…

(via Graham Linehan)

Back in a bit.

The Press Complaints Commission wants to hear from us…

The Editors’ Code of Practice Committee, which writes and revises the voluntary code of standards overseen by the Press Complaints Commission, is undertaking its annual review of the Code.

It welcomes suggestions from the public, civil society and the industry on how the Code might be revised to improve the system of self-regulation of the press, of which it is an essential component.

A group of bloggers have got together to build a group submission/petition. Here are the five suggestions we’d like to make to the PCC:

SUGGESTION ONE: Like-for-like placement of retractions, corrections and apologies in print and online (as standard).

SUGGESTION TWO: Original or redirected URLs for retractions, corrections & apologies online (as standard).

SUGGESTION THREE: The current Code contains no reference to headlines, and this loophole should be closed immediately.

SUGGESTION FOUR: Sources to be credited unless they do not wish to be credited or require anonymity/protection.

SUGGESTION FIVE: A longer and more interactive consultation period for open discussion of more fundamental issues.

You can sign the petition and make your own suggestions here: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/pcc/.

Tim Ireland has all the details.

God, it’s going to be a long few months before the general election and we get the privilege of rubber stamping the next elected dictatorship. Does the mind not reel at the prospect of having to listen to week upon week upon bloody week of this kind of horse’s doings from the likes of Harriet Harman?

“We have to understand that we now have a new cohort of well, active, healthy older people. The role that they play in their families, in the economy and in society must be recognised and responded to. We must recognise the emergence of the “wellderly”.”

You can just picture the warm little thrill she got when she said that, can’t you? I bet she did her best ‘aren’t I clever’ look. I sometimes think that some people are against all-women shortlists for parliamentary seats for no other reason other than the fear that such a system might turn up another Harman.

Anyway, her talking down to the electorate got me thinking. There must be loads of condescending does-he-take-sugar neologisms that New Labour could half bake in order to patronisingly pigeonhole thinking, breathing human beings. How about…

We now have a new cohort of well, active, incontinent older people. We must recognise the emergence of the “smellderly”.

…or…

We now have a new cohort of well, active, sexy older people. We must recognise the emergence of the “bombshellderly”.

…and…

We now have a new cohort of well, active, anti-social older people. We must recognise the emergence of the “neighbourfromhellderly”.

…then there’s…

We now have a new cohort of well, active, healthy older people aghast at the destruction of our civil liberties under New Labour. We must recognise the emergence of the “orwellderly”.

Then we’ve got the ‘farewellderly’ (never going to vote New Labour again).

Click to make big.

Make your own poster here (via Councillor Bob).

One would think and hope that, in their attempt to overthrow Gordon Brown, Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt acted alone and under their own initiative.

The alternative is too fantastical to contemplate. Imagine a darkened office in the Palace of Westminster where the Brownout plotters are gathered in the shadows. A hand reaches from the darkness for the telephone which is on the desk lit by an angle-poise lamp. Its silhouetted owner’s voice says into the mouthpiece: ‘This is a job for our top operatives. Get me Hoon and Hewitt’. Doesn’t work, does it?

The less said about Patricia Hewitt and her ‘would you like an ice cream, little boy?‘ demeanour the better. Geoff Hoon, should we forget, once suggested ‘that mothers of Iraqi children killed by cluster bombs would “one day” thank Britain for their use.’ Jacob Bronowski he most certainly is not. If these two were the finest minds the shadowy anti-Brown conspiracy has to offer, it’s well and truly knackered.

(See also the much used ‘Gordon Brown is the best man to lead this government’ line. Unfortunately, for a hollowed-out and intellectually bereft New Labour, he is.)

See also: ‘Who would rally to Geoff Hoon’s flag? Who would die in a ditch with Patricia Hewitt?‘

Unfortunately in these circumstances, silence is seen as treachery – ministers has to say something to avoid the appearance of complicity. What they should have done was get together and agree to pretend they’d heard nothing about the ‘plot’.

So when a journalist asked : ‘Minister, what do you think of Geoff Hoon and Patricia coup attempt?’ They could say: ‘Hoon? Hoon? Where do I know that name? Ah, yes. Didn’t he make the tea during the war?’ or ‘THEIR WHAT?’ and then walk away laughing uproariously and shaking their heads.

Day three and the temperature of the general election campaign has reached tepid-point. As time dilation kicks in between politicians and voters (ours are the clocks ticking at a slower rate, in case you were wondering), what have we learned?

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg has said there’ll be no ‘backroom deals’ with either of the two major parties before the election. He’s saving them of course for after the election when they’ll have more pull and can’t scare voters off. He wants you to vote for his policies, obviously, but isn’t prepared to tell you which ones he’s willing to horse-trade away in exchange for a seat in the cabinet of a coalition government.

Meanwhile, what would you get if Kryten from Red Dwarf and Brains from Thunderbirds were to have a child together? I put their photos through the Make Me Babies! photo merging website to find out…

	+
=

Finally, what’s all this nonsense about New Labour being skint and on the verge of bankruptcy? This attack advert warning against the dangers of a Tory election victory must have cost a fortune…

Fans of barely restrained fury and sneering condescension should make a note in their diaries for next week. That’s when Alastair Campbell makes his appearance before the Iraq Inquiry. I just hope for his and the inquiry members’ sakes that he remembers to visit the stationery cupboard beforehand…

One of the most vivid details to emerge from the [David] Kelly affair was that Alastair Campbell had used a pin held in the palm of his hand to control his temper while testifying to the foreign affairs committee. Each time he felt the explosive urge, the story went, he would squeeze on the pin and the pain would distract him from the immediate provocation. Like many stories about Campbell, this one wasn’t entirely accurate – it was actually a paper clip – but the gist was true.

It’s good to know this man spent so long at the heart of government.

So, apparently I’ve been doing this cack for five years this week. Go me.

All told, and without going into detail, 2009 was downright crappy for me and mine hence the large quiet periods on the blog. You quickly realise what a shallow and bathetic spectacle British politics is when reality decides to bite you on the bum.

The likes of Nick Robinson might as well be commenting on the goings-on inside the World of Warcraft for all the relevance the cloth-eared gobshite from Brown, Cameron, Clegg and the rest has when you’re up against it. No wonder millions of people don’t vote; if they’re not soldiers dying in vain in the desert, or not kids losing their minds in government detention centres, or not too close to the sharp end, they’re bumping along without politics and politicians. I imagine they’re quite happy. Or at least no more miserable.

So what’s next? Well, an interminable, unedifying and dirty-as-never-before general election campaign stretches out before us like a skidmark on the underpants of a morbidly obese incontinent. And nobody, as far as I can see, is offering to put a wash on. Mind you, the speeches we’ve heard so far have all the rhetorical heft of detergent commercials.

Judging by some of the bloggers the mainstream media have recruited so far to fill its hours of dead air and yards of fish and chip paper on the cheap, the general election is looking like one that will be won less by the Internet and more by the twin howitzers of glad, self-congratulatory anti-intellectualism and spitefully stubborn moral cowardice.

You think people are brassed off with mainstream politics now. What’s it going to be like in five months after all this?

…or the nuclear industry and my part in its downfall.

There’s a big story breaking at Greenpeace today. Despite assurances from the nuclear industry that things had been cleaned up, Greenpeace has found that the villages near the uranium mines in Niger are still contaminated with radiation…

I’m extremely pleased to say that I played a small part in helping bring the scandal to light. Back in January I wrote a rather strident post for Greenpeace’s Nuclear Reaction blog about just what the French nuclear company AREVA had been getting up to at its uranium mines in Niger.

AREVA weren’t very happy about that and in their response they invited Greenpeace to go to Niger and see what was going on for themselves. The Greenpeace nuclear campaign accepted the invitation and this month, after much hard work and planning, sent a team to Niger. And they certainly did see for themselves… AREVA nuclear scandal: Greenpeace finds radiation on the streets of Niger.

I’ve lived in Hove and Portslade for ten years. There are a lot of foxes around and about the place. I like them very much. I was once woken in the night by five of the cheeky so-and-sos having a Mexican stand-off in the street. It was ace.

In the time before the fox-hunting ban I don’t once recall seeing a contingent of red-jacketed horse-riders galloping across Hove and Portslade’s urban parks in pursuit of a foxy quarry. So I’m a little puzzled as to why the local MP Celia Barlow, who has a hyper-marginal majority of just 420 votes, is taking the time in the middle of a recession to remind her constituents that it’s the 5th anniversary of the less than incredibly successful fox hunting ban.

(I’m less puzzled as to why she copy’n'pasted her template press release like other New Labour lobby fodder automatons such as Clive Betts, Wayne David, Gillian Merron, Vera Baird, Jacqui Smith, Nick Ainger. The unreachable in pursuit of the immaterial.)

The Sun newspaper is 40 today. Forty years of lies, tits and an all-round lowering of our standards, morality and expectations. To mark this inauspicious occasion I’d like to dedicate this excerpt from Saturday Night Fry to Rupert Murdoch’s tool…

Out in the sea between France and Finland, the transport ship Happy Ranger is taking construction parts to Olkiluoto in Finland.

Some of my friends are aboard.

It’s very good news that the thousands of children sent to the British colonies in the mid 20th century, only to suffer terribly at the hands of those supposed to care for them, are about finally receive some small recognition.

It also means that another group of migrant children, taken against their will and abused in government institutions only have forty or fifty years to wait for their own apology.

And there there’s… These children shouldn’t worry either. We as a nation will one day – sometime mid-century if the convention is followed properly – also look back on their treatment with a sense of shame. Today, not so much.

So the Home Secretary Alan Johnson sacks Professor David Nutt as chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs because Nutt’s recent pronouncements ‘cause confusion between scientific advice and policy‘.

There you have it in black and white – the writ of the Daily Mail reading classes trumps science. As Jamie Kenny says, ‘what does it say about any scientist who would agree to work for the government under these conditions?’

Still, we can probably expect a rush of new policy initiatives from the Home Office now they’re being open about the dissonance between policy and science…

- Alan Johnson bans antibiotics saying ‘we must instead trust to the graces of Saint Dymphna and not confuse scientific advice with policy.’

- Alan Johnson says prospective female MPs are to be vetted with trial by drowning. ‘We must not confuse scientific advice with policy,’ he says.

- Alan Johnson announces the introduction of daily human sacrifices to ensure sun comes up. ‘We must not anger the Fire Gods or confuse scientific advice with policy,’ he says.

- Alan Johnson says he is to have Galileo exhumed so he can sack him because his scientific advice does not reflect policy.

That damned science. You just can’t trust it. I mean, where’s it got us, all that scientific study? Poor Alan. The whole world must have him in a constant state of terrified confusion. I bet he keeps running around the back of his telly so he can try and catch the little Eastenders inside it. My dog does the same whenever a cat comes on.

Still, at least scientific advisers to the government know where they stand now. They can tailor their advice to the counter-Enlightenment mores of little Englanders – and the prejudices of desperate ministers with their eyes on the dole queue – or sling their hooks. As Jack Pickard says, this government cherry-picking of science makes it difficult to trust any of its scientific advisers to tell the truth. Unless, that is, they are immediately sacked afterwards for telling it.

One is a fat, wonkey-eyed loser with repugnant attitudes towards immigration, and the other is the leader of the British National Party.

One has his thugs break down foreigners’ doors at dawn, and the other is the leader of the British National Party.

One has his thugs intern foreigners and their children, and the other is the leader of the British National Party.

One has his thugs regularly and frequently beat foreigners, and the other is the leader of the British National Party.

One has his thugs traumatise foreigners’ children, and the other is the leader of the British National Party.

One is loading darkies on to planes and sending them back to some of the world’s worst hellholes, and the other is the leader of the British National Party.

As the Yarls Wood door clanged shut on her, no doubt Adeoti Ogunsola said to herself, ‘thank God Gordon Brown isn’t a fascist’.

As the life drained out of him, no doubt Manuel Bravo said to himself, ‘thank God Gordon Brown isn’t a fascist’.

As the bullets thudded into him, no doubt Adam Osman Mohammed said to himself, ‘thank God Gordon Brown isn’t a fascist’.

Half the country seems up in arms that Nick Griffin is being allowed near a television studio but when a man, who has done things to foreigners that would give Griffin wet dreams from here to eternity goes, goes on GMTV barely anybody squeaks. Hell, a huge chunk of them voted for him.

Some fat wannabe-Nazi pillock goes on the telly and you’d think the barbarians were at the gates. The Prime Minister is shipping darkies off like so much freight and we’re more worried about whether the one with all the teeth from Girls Aloud is lip-synching on Saturday night TV. And yet Griffin’s never going to wreck the number of lives Brown has – not if he lives to be a thousand.

Griffin’s a bastard in a small, squalid way. You want to see a proper scumbag? He’s running the bloody country.

Why history is against the government’s decision to allow nuclear reactor operators to dump low-level nuclear waste in landfill sites…

Trafigura. Gagging. Injunctions. Suppressed reports. Caustic Soda. Freedom of Speech. Carter-Ruck. The Minton Report. The Ivory Coast. Birth defects, miscarriages and deaths…

All you need to know is right here.

(Via Nick Barlow on Twitter)

You need to have a serious talk to someone about how the Internet and search engines work. This was the first page of Google.co.uk search for Trafigura earlier this morning…

Click for the bigger picture

For those coming in late…

‘London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations,’ have gagged the Guardian from reporting parliamentary proceedings. That’s the parliamentary proceedings that you and I are completely free to read by simply going to the online version of Hansard.

So why have lawyers stopped a newspaper publishing quotations from the record of our democracy? It’s all to do with a company called Trafigura and what it may or may not have got up to in Africa.

It seems the Guardian has been prevented from publishing this written parliamentary question tabled by Paul Farelly MP…

61 N Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura.

You can download your own copy of the Minton report from Wikileaks.

It appears that some or all of these slops were disposed of at waste sites in and around Abidjan, Ivory Coast approximately in August 2006. This is alleged to have caused, or in part contributed to, a high incidence of health problems being reported, including nausea, breathing difficulties, vomiting, diarrhea.

Read section 3 in particular – ‘Health and Environmental impacts’ – all kinds of horrible stuff were involved.

Nick Barlow has more, as do many others. There’s also much being said on Twitter (if you want to Twitter about this, use the #Trafigura hashtag – it’s currently trending on Twitter’s front page). You might also be tempted to blog about Trafigura.

This is what Trafigura doesn’t want you to know. Now you do. If they hadn’t gone running to their lawyers, it’s very possible you wouldn’t. The Streisand is well and truly out of the bag.

More background:

Independent: Call for murder charges to be brought over toxic dumping

The settlement of the High Court case, expected to be finalised within weeks, concerns claims by victims who suffered short-term illnesses. But it does not apply to allegations, which will now not be tested in the British courts, that the dumped waste caused more serious problems, including deaths, miscarriages and birth defects.

Video: Newsnight – Dirty tricks and toxic waste in Ivory Coast

George Monbiot (on September 17): Trafigura’s attempts to gag the media prove that libel laws should be repealed

In Britain, libel (or defamation) is used as the rich man’s sedition law, stifling criticism and exposure of all kinds of malpractice. Dating back to the 13th century, it was reframed during the past 200 years specifically to protect wealthy people from criticism, based on the presumption that any derogatory remark made about a gentleman must be false. The law of defamation is the only British instrument which places the burden of proof on the defendant. Given the inordinate costs involved, it’s not surprising that it discourages people from investigating abuses of power.

Guardian: How UK oil company Trafigura tried to cover up African pollution disaster

The UN human rights special rapporteur, Professor Okechukwu Ibeanu, criticised Trafigura for potentially “stifling independent reporting and public criticism” in a report the oil trader tried and failed to prevent being published in Geneva this week.

He wrote: “According to official estimates, there were 15 deaths, 69 persons hospitalised and more than 108,000 medical consultations … there seems to be strong prima facie evidence that the reported deaths and adverse health consequences are related to the dumping.”

Ministry of Truth: TRAFIGURA AND THE MINTON REPORT

The concentrated sodium hydroxide (caustic soda) is one, as anyone coming into contact with it on the waste dump would be likely to suffer severe chemical burns to the skin or lungs, from vapour inhalation, and as, I’m afraid to say, scavenging from waste dumps is not that uncommon a practice in the developing world… Do I really need to spell out the rest?

Greenpeace: Trafigura background

On July 2, 2006, the Probo Koala (chartered by Trafigura) attempted to unload waste in Amsterdam. Noting the strong-smelling nature of the waste and probable toxic nature, harbour authorities told the ship that the waste would be more expensive to dispose of. The ship refused to pay extra treatment costs and left Amsterdam…

Econsultancy: Social media turns toxic avenger for The Guardian (#trafigura)

This tidal wave of tweets makes for particularly bad PR, given the banning order against the newspaper. It’s a bit like an artist achieving a Radio 1 ban, which can result in chart success. What you seek to suppress only generates further interest.

Update @ 13.00: Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger has just posted this to Twitter:

Victory! #CarterRuck caves-in. No #Guardian court hearing. Media can now report Paul Farrelly’s PQ about #Trafigura. More soon on Guardian…

Wikileaks: Ivory Coast toxic dumping report behind secret Guardian gag

Statements made in parliament, including those of Paul Farrelly MP, traditionally enjoy an absolute exemption from molestation by the regular judiciary. Parliament does not, insomuch as it believes itself to be an expression of the national will, subordinate itself to any other court.

Knowing this, lawyers for Trafigura, Carter-Ruck, obtained a second, secret media injuction to prevent reporting of Paul Farrely MP’s questions. That this alleged order was granted is a bold and dangerous move by the High Court towards the total privatization of censorship. Is a multi-billion pound commodities trader a truer expression of the national will than the House of Commons? The question is no longer rhetorical.

Wikileaks: The Independent: Toxic Shame: Thousands injured in African city, 17 Sep 2009

The PDF presents a copy of an article originally published in UK newspaper The Independent, but censored from the Independent’s website.

Well, it’ll save us all a walk to the local primary school next May, if nothing else. Screw the voters, the results of next year’s affront to democracy are in. Those who really matter have declared their verdict. Here’s state-funded gossip-monger, the BBC’s Nick Robinson…

Asked what Cam[eron] was going to focus on in his speech tomorrow, Robbo replied:

“Well, the Prime Minister will once again want to focus on the big issue that George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor was talking about..the deficit…”

And advertising-funded gossip-monger…

ITV’s Tom Bradby has called George Osborne “the Chancellor”.

Why else would Tories propagandists have the balls to start publishing this kind of guff.

‘We’re all in this together,’ said the heir to the Osborne baronetcy of Ballentaylor in his party conference speech – a previously undeclared hankering for inclusion (AKA ivory tower buck-passing). It’s just some of us are deeper in than others.

Were you one of those liberal-lefty types that rallied to David Davis’ banner when he made his pointless and self-aggrandising publicity stunt principled stand over civil liberties last year? Your erstwhile leader thinks you’re a coward and an appeaser…

“If we had relied on Guardian-reading vegetarians to defend liberty,” he reckoned, “we’d all be speaking German.”

One of course wonders how many gin-swilling Tories joined the International Brigade in 1936. And how many ‘Guardian-reading vegetarians’ will join Davis on his next ego-buffing fool’s errand.

The best response was the first comment to the above piece:

More accurately, if we’d have relied on the Daily Mail’s 1930s editorial stance to defend liberty, we’d all be speaking German.

Welcome to the United Kingdom, 2009…

Reading the high court judgment, you have to pinch yourself and remember that this isn’t Kenya under Daniel arap Moi, but good old Blighty, where the police are impartial, the civil service disinterested and a minister’s word is his bond. In a civilised country, at least half a dozen senior officials would now be charged with perjury, the secretary of state for defence would be facing impeachment hearings and a number of soldiers would be on trial for torture and murder. But in the United Kingdom, where we see only what we choose, the judgment sinks without a ripple. We carry on believing what we have always been told: that unlike other countries, we do things properly here.

But anyway. What’s Jordan been up to lately?

…The Sun was one of the principal cheerleaders and propagandists for it.

See also, courtesy of Alex Ross.

John Prescott, bluff working-class figleaf, together in sisterhood…

I suppose, if I was being honest about it, I think too much of the emphasis has been on female rights, which I have supported all my life, and we’re not getting other messages across. Most of it is about the equality issue. It is very important, but it is not our biggest campaigning issue, whatever they say about it.

‘Female rights, which I have supported all my life’? Rights to what, John? To live in the creeping fear of your meaty fingers? Let’s ask Linda McDougall, wife of Austin Mitchell…

It was 1978, just after my husband had become an MP. I was 35. There was a memorial lecture for his predecessor, Anthony Crosland, and we were welcoming guests into our house. I opened the door to Prescott and showed him in. It was the first time I’d met him. As he came through the door, he pushed me quite forcefully against the wall and put his hand up my skirt.

Things were different in those days. It was not uncommon for men to take their chances. He was just trying it on. There was no big fuss. I just rebuffed him politely. He shrugged and winked and we all carried on. But from that day I knew what sort of man he was.

Ah yes, the classic actions of someone who’s supported ‘female rights’ all his life. ‘John is John,’ said Tony, another revolting old fraud.