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Meet Hicham Yezza…

In May 2008, Hich, an Algerian national who’s lived and worked in the UK for more than decade, was arrested at his office at Nottingham University’s School of Modern Languages under the Terrorism Act 2000, as was his friend, Rizwaan Sabir, a postgraduate student researching terrorism at the university’s School of Politics and International Relations.

As for the events leading to their arrest, it emerged, several days after they were arrested, that Sabir had downloaded an alleged Al Qaeda training manual from the website of the US Department of Justice, where it had been openly available since December 2001. Sabir obtained the document in question, which had already been extensively edited/censored by the US DoJ before publication, in order to use it in his research and had done nothing more with it than forward it to Hich for printing to save himself a few quid.

For this ‘crime’ both were arrested and held by the police for six days before being released without charge, at which point Sabir was free to return to his studies, while Hich was immediately rearrested on Immigration charges and, a mere three days later, made subject to a fast-tracked deportation order which was scheduled to be executed on June 1, a mere eight days after it was issued – and all this despite Hich having publicly declared his intent to fight the charges against him.

It’s quintessential New Labour, you have to agree. Over-reaction followed by vindictiveness.

You can find out more at the Free Hicham website – in particular take a good look at just what you can do to help.

Like Tim, I thought I’d email the office of Home Office minister Phil Woolas. I don’t regard the minister as a man of good conscience so it’s probably futile appealing to that part of his make-up. I wondered if there was another lever…

To: Phil Woolas
From: Justin McKeating
Subject: Hicham Yezza

Dear Minister

You are no doubt aware of the circumstances of Hicham Yezza and the ordeal he has suffered at the hands of the Home Office. Others will have rehearsed the reasons as to why Mr Yezza should be allowed to stay in the country. I would just like to say this.

At the next general election my MP Celia Barlow who has a constituency majority of just 420 will knock on my door and ask for my vote. Can you tell me, in the light of the case of Hicham Yezza and many others like his, why I shouldn’t refuse Ms Barlow my vote and campaign for a political party with a more humane attitude on these issues?

I look forward to your reply.

Justin McKeating
Hove, UK

Another brick wall headbutted.

On the bottom of the Daily Mail article where James Purnell and Chris Grayling duke it out over who’s the hardest when it comes to society’s vulnerable, there’s the story of the Ramond family:

Ray and Tracey Ramond have been branded Britain’s biggest beneficiaries from state handouts. The couple and their nine children hit the headlines three years ago when it emerged they received £39,000-a-year in benefits.

The headline to the piece is:

And then you see the accompanying photograph:

Life is good!

I don’t know about you but when I saw it my first thought wasn’t ‘just where is this Easy Street and how do I get there? It does indeed look easy there.’

I’ve just pitched a Saturday night prole-pleaser to the BBC. It’s downmarket from Strictly Come Dancing I suppose but it’s definitely on a level with that one where minor celebrities get pushed into a swimming pool. It’s called Feel the Benefit and it goes like this.

(more…)

If you want the ins and outs of the Israeli/Hamas face-off you’re better off elsewhere. I think it’s probably worth noting however that the Israeli government needs to realise that, in taking its policy on Gaza directly from Escape from New York, the film was meant to be entertainment not a blueprint for shredding the human rights of an entire population.

On the other side Hamas need to remember that if you’re going to include thousands of people in your insane deathwish by going up against a massively more armed and resourced nation in a fight you can’t win, it’s maybe an idea to consult them first.

The response of British politicians, such as it is, is worth noting. At the time of writing, Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague has been almost entirely silent on the matter of Gaza in the newspapers (or maybe they don’t think him worth quoting). He did give a thirty second soundbite on Radio 4 this lunchtime on how there was probably nothing much that could be done.

He then spent considerably longer justifying his other jobs outside of his shadow cabinet position. ‘You can gain in your effectiveness as a politician from a wide acquaintance with the world,’ said after-dinner speaker Hague with no trace of irony as the children of Gaza and Ashkelon screamed.

David Miliband also waited until day three of the bloodbath before offering his thoughts. ‘I think that any innocent loss of life is unacceptable and in this case there have been massive casualties, some of them civilians and some of them children,’ which really is a gutsy thing for a New Labour foreign minister to say.

Whether he meant innocent loss of life in just this conflict or all conflicts he didn’t say, but I think we’re safe in assuming that the level of unacceptability of civilian deaths depends very much on who is firing the missiles. Either way, it’s a pronouncement that must have drawn bitter and ironic laughter from both the Israeli and Hamas high commands. At least he’s called for cease-fire which is more than his predecessor did when Israel fired more than a million cluster bombs into Lebanon in 2006.

Update: Word from Tony Blair, special envoy to the Middle East, is in. The statement neglects to tell us just where Blair is right now in this time of crisis (he likes to keep his holiday destinations hush hush after all) or from which celebrity’s mansion it was sent.

Apparently Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley works ‘four days a year at Profero‘, ‘a marketing agency that helps to mount Government health campaigns.’

Moving swiftly over the loyalties and ethics of a man who belongs to one political party while working for a firm that enacts its opponent’s polices, it’s the ‘fours days a year’ that gets me intrigued.

Just what good can you do in just four days? I wonder if he isn’t the guy who goes from desk to desk in the office cleaning the crud out of everyone’s mouse. That would be a health campaign worth getting behind.

Meanwhile, in a display of the shocking lack of self-awareness common in many New Labour MPs, Richard Caborn had this to say…

Cameron doesn’t have the authority to tell his Shadow Cabinet part-timers to stop their outside interests. The public want confidence that Cameron’s team are not speaking for some vested interest.

…New Labour, of course, never having touched a vested interest ever, ever, ever, even with a twenty foot pole, honest.

(Via Councillor Bob)

And no, one of them isn’t ‘off’ in response to his staggeringly half-arsed plan to censor the Internet.

The two words are prior restraint.

Still, Mr Burnham can scratch the itch of his technocratic authoritarianism all he likes but if this plan actually happens (who decides what’s ‘unacceptable’ and what isn’t? Does every website in the world have to join a queue to have a rating applied? Doesn’t Burnham know that technology already exists to protect children from inappropriate content?), I’ll show my bum in the window of Marks and Spencer.

The fact that Burnham had to wait until the Saturday between Christmas and New Year to get himself a hearing on this should tell you all you need to know about how seriously to take him.

Philip on Gordon Brown’s relentless optimism…

“Today, the issues may be different, more complex, more global” than the Second World War, an altogether simpler and more local affair; yet nevertheless, “the qualities we need to meet them the British people have demonstrated in abundance before”. After all, we survived the First and Second World Wars by mortgaging ourselves to the Americans (who could afford us at the time); we survived the industrial revolution by stealing from brown people and subjecting our own people to vile factory conditions, draconian poor laws and the workhouse; we kept smiling through the Black Death by blaming it on Jews and witches: whitewashed with a minimal twenty-first-century gloss, these are all good, sound New Labour coping strategies.

Read the rest…

Apart from showing next to nothing worth watching this Christmas, the BBC excelled itself in two small but significant ways:

a) Scheduling the new Wallace and Gromit film to start at half eight on Christmas night so that small children are too knackered to watch it.

b) Ensuring said Wallace and Gromit film starts late so that anybody recording it for said small children will have said recording cut off before the end.

Tossers.

Update: It seems whatever it is that is draining the BBC of competence is not isolated to BBC1. Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe review of the year (on BBC4) was similarly truncated. Cheers. If the three episodes of Mark Gatiss’ ghost story I’ve got are in the same condition I may very well take it upon myself to haunt Mark Thompson.

Didn’t we have Christmas already this year? It comes around quicker every year, I swear (not least because they start advertising and selling it some time in early August).

Anyway, happy thing to you and yours.

See you on the other side.

GORDON Brown sat on the railing of the old iron bridge that takes people in and out of the small town of Bedford Falls and stared at the freezing water.

Read the rest…

So, how hard does the Tory shadow cabinet want to work for their constituents and for victory at the next election? Just how serious are they about guiding Britain through torrid times? Er…

William Hague threatened to lead a walk-out if David Cameron forced his Shadow Cabinet to give up their lucrative second jobs, it was claimed last night.

The Tory leader planned to ban ‘moonlighting’ by Christmas, but has since backed down in the face of an internal revolt.

How’s that for strong leadership. It should certainly make for interesting times should Cameron make it to Number 10. ‘I told Russia they must withdraw their troops from Georgia. They said no. I said “ok, then”‘. ‘I told the energy companies to pass on the fall in the price of oil but they refused. What can you do, eh?’

(more…)

Another year another message of queer-bashing hyperbole from the Pope. He doesn’t half pick his moments, this being the season of goodwill and all.

Pope Benedict XVI has said that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour is just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction.

Last year homosexuals were ‘an objective obstacle on the road to peace’. This year men and women being nice to each other in ways an octogenarian celibate neither understands or approves of is on a par with ecological disaster.

If a blogger starting spouting this hysterical guff they’d be laughed out of town. It’s the same addled mindset that compares New Labour to the Nazis or Zanu-PF. But no, put it in a long red and white dress and have it come of the mouth of someone who’s known the pleasure of neither woman nor man, and suddenly equating gay people with terrorists and global warming is the height of theological rhetoric.

What is it with Ben 16 and the gays anyway? He’s like a Catholic Richard Littlejohn. On and on and on and on and on and on and bloody on. Is such an obsession with homosexuality healthy, I ask myself. You look at the state of the world and you really have to wonder.

Ben 16 keeps up with the times:

Pope Benedict XVI has paid tribute to 17th-Century astronomer Galileo Galilei, whose scientific theories once drew the wrath of the Catholic Church.

He went on to say how he thought Henry VIII was a snappy dresser.

This has been on the cards for a little while but it now looks like the crazy bastards are actually going to do it:

The government has been accused of trampling on individual liberties by proposing wide-ranging new powers for bailiffs to break into homes and to use “reasonable force” against householders who try to protect their valuables.

So with soaring debt, rising unemployment, gas and electricity bills still sky high we’re going allow bailiffs to kick doors in. Apparently ‘the new powers would be overseen by a robust industry watchdog’ but will that be before or after some burly skinhead in a bomber jacket has had you in a headlock?

‘Bailiffs for private firms would for the first time be given permission to restrain or pin down householders.’ Are they all going to be given rigorous training in methods of restraint? The chokehold, maybe? Perhaps the ‘nose distraction‘. Let’s hope so although, as the police and the prison service can tell you, all the training in the world doesn’t always mean a mutually satisfactory outcome.

You could call this another front in New Labour’s war on the poor but the thing is, they way things are going right now, the number of people who could end up on the receiving end of this is growing by the day. It’ll probably take a nice, respectable white middle-class stockbroker, who’s down on his luck and has photogenic children, to be killed or seriously injured before people realise that this isn’t just about keeping the underclass nervous.

It’s teaching all of us to never, ever, be poor. To never, ever, have a run of bad luck. Keep your head down and keep kissing the boss’ arse. Bite your tongue over your pay and conditions. Come in a bit earlier and stay a bit later. Don’t forget you’re the smallest of cog in this economy – a little fear should keep you lubricated and in good working order a little while yet.

So, who’ll be the first to be killed, do you think? A bailiff kitchen-knifed in self-defence or a householder strangled on his or her lounge carpet? I would say place your bets but we’re really going to have to be careful with the pennies from now on.

I was in the park walking the dog earlier on this morning when I saw some old bloke who’d slipped and fallen in the mud. He looked quite frail and was clearly struggling to get up so I went over to help. Before I gave him my hand to pull him upright, however, I gave a him a swift, firm boot to the ribs.

Sure, he’ll be quite sore for a few days but the old bastard will think twice before he falls down again.

Which brings us to big-hearted Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell and his latest act of unfettered altruism towards the poor and vulnerable.

Emergency state loans given to the poorest people in the UK could cease to be interest free, under changes being considered by ministers.

The social fund currently extends £500m a year in interest-free loans to some 1.2 million benefit claimants.

But the government says in future some loans could be run by credit unions, who it says typically charge annual rates ranging from 12.68% to 26.8%.

How’s that for a nice big dig in the ribs when you’re struggling to get on your feet? How’s that for ‘we feel your pain’? It’s empathy you could only expect from a man who went to fee-paying and public schools, and did bloody Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford before graduating to think-tanker and Blairite special adviser without touching the sides.

But wait, there’s more…

The BBC’s political correspondent Jo Coburn said the reforms were designed to ensure that interest-free loans were not offered to people who did not really need them.

Yep, only the really bloody desperate are going to be screwed. I wonder how many will decide to stay flat in the mud. Why doesn’t Purnell just cut to the chase and get himself a stovepipe hat and a ruddy great knob stick for braying passing urchins?

(Via Harpymarx)

Update 6.45pm: Well that’s got to be one of the fastest retractions of New Labour horseshit in its entire squalid history. Nice to see Purnell pushed understrapper Kitty Ussher out to cop the flak despite it being his signature on the consultation document. What a brave little soldier he is. Much braver when he’s pushing the little guy around, mind.

Do it. Do it now. Let’s crash Cowell’s Christmas.

In other news, this is the last Saturday for a bit when I’ll be relegated to the back room while puffed-up ponces prance about in the front. Result. I’m about to extort 14 weeks of my own where I have control of the television on a Saturday evening. What shall I inflict on the rest of the family, do you think? Obviously I won’t be able to stretch to anything as ghastly Strictly Come Dancing. I wonder what an eight and four year-old would make of a Takeshi ‘Beat’ Kitano restrospective…

I have to say that this New Labour online propaganda offensive is a curious animal. It’s obvious that project leader Derek Draper (yes, that Derek Draper) hasn’t the first idea about blogs and online writing hence his breakfast meeting this morning with the ‘great’ and the ‘good’ of New Labour blogging.

And what a guest list it was. Alex ‘Gays=Paedos‘ Hilton. Charlie Whelan (Gordon Brown’s former news massager and now facing accusations of bullying in his new job with Unite). Luke (lobbyist for arms dealers) Akehurst. Tim Allan (Alastair Campbell’s deputy when Campbell was paid to lie to the country). And others who, frankly, should really know better if they want to keep their well-earned reputations for being decent and trustworthy people.

The thing is, what Draper doesn’t seem to realise is that many blogs – left, right and centre – have sprung up in almost direct response to the spin, lies and downright bollocks churned out by the New Labour machine in the last five or six years. An enormous number of bullshit detectors were installed quite a while back and have had an awful lot of testing. How he thinks any online effort set up by someone of his democracy-circumventing pedigree is going to garner even a veneer of trustworthiness beyond a hard core of credulous acolytes is for him to explain.

Maybe he’s going to rely on lazy on-deadline journalists with their fingers on the copy and paste keys to foster his new venture. It’s about the only example he could take from the big boys of right-wing blogging who’ve built their so-called reputations on the indolence and penny-pinching of the Fourth Estate looking for cheap copy. Online, however, Draper should expect heavy incoming fire.

The government lovingly and gently lowers our wedding tackle into American hands…

The UK Atomic Weapons Establishment, which makes and maintains the warheads for Britain’s nuclear missiles, has come under the control of US companies after the government sold its one-third stake.

Ministers were accused Thursday night of trying to conceal the change in ownership after failing to make an announcement to parliament.

So let’s not have any more of this nonsense – Here’s Gordon Brown in 2006:

And I mean not just stability by securing low inflation but stability in our industrial relations, stability through a stable and competitive tax regime, and stability through a predictable and light touch regulatory environment – a stability founded on our strength to make the right long term decisions, the same strength of national purpose we will demonstrate in protecting our security in this Parliament and the long-term – strong in defence in fighting terrorism, upholding NATO, supporting our armed forces at home and abroad, and retaining our independent nuclear deterrent.

(Actually, there’s hardly any of that paragraph that doesn’t deserve a shoeing.)

Gordon Brown was in the House of Commons yesterday polishing the turd of New Labour’s Iraq campaign. It has to be said, what with his visit to the place this week, that he’s managing to buff that stool with some success. Judging by the reaction to his smudging of history this week from the media and his cunning idea of a placeholder garrison in Basra so a public inquiry can never be held, New Labour may yet escape a full examination of its crimes.

Still, some haven’t forgotten and never will. How about this exchange from the debate yesterday:

John Barrett (Edinburgh, West) (LD): The Prime Minister has never detailed what the Government believe to be the number of civilian deaths in Iraq. Much work has been done on that, and the lower estimates are around 100,000. If the Prime Minister cannot give details today of his estimate, will he confirm that the Government will do some work on it, so that we can know the answer to the question?

The Prime Minister: It is not a matter for the British Government: it is for the Iraqi Government to examine what has happened in their country. Only they will be in the position to obtain the full information. I cannot see how from here or from just Basra the British Government could conduct such a survey.

I think we can take from that the Prime Minister really doesn’t want to know. And why would he? Even if he’s a fifth as human as his ‘friends’ and ’sources’ tell us, the true enormity of what he wrote the cheques for would surely help to crush even the most hardened sociopath.

But Gordon’s answer is just insulting though isn’t it? Were you expecting anything else? You have to admire his management of the low expectations many have of him. ‘It is for the Iraqi Government to examine what has happened in their country.’ How very fucking generous of you, Gordon. You’ll be telling us next that Iraq is a sovereign nation.

In other words, it was New Labour’s job just to deliver the cluster bombs, depleted uranium, missiles and bombs. What happens after that? Well, you know. Like a postman, I suppose. You can’t expect to be able hold the postman to account if he delivers a parcel containing a toy that chokes your kid, can you?

And how about ‘I cannot see how from here or from just Basra the British Government could conduct such a survey’? He’s just spent a week telling us how fantastic things are in Iraq, hasn’t he? The surveys published by the Lancet were conducted under far more dangerous conditions. The government and its courtiers rubbished those surveys (despite what the Ministry of Defence’s chief scientific adviser said).

So why not take the opportunity of ‘improved’ conditions in Iraq to rub the Lancet’s nose in it? Gordon would be able to stand up and crow, ‘look everybody, we only killed x thousand men, women and children!’ Or, if he wanted to spin it more sympathetically, he could use a government-sponsored survey to demonstrate his fabled humanity and courage we’ve been told so much about.

Like I said, he really doesn’t want to know.

A shocking tale…

Andy Coulson presided over a culture of bullying when he was News of the World editor, an employment tribunal has found today in upholding a claim of unfair dismissal against the paper.

[...]

[Senior sports writer Matt] Driscoll was sacked in April 2007 while on long-term sick leave for stress-related depression, which the tribunal found had arisen directly as a result of bullying behaviour led by Coulson, who was News of the World editor for four years from 2003.

Where would a scumbag such as Coulson turn next for employment? Who would touch such an unpleasant shit, even with a twenty foot poll?

Coulson was appointed Conservative party director of communications in May last year.

Oh.

Take a look at the headline to Martin Kettle’s column in the Guardian today.

Now, how many people actually settled down to that thinking it was going to be an unmissable read, do you think? How many on the other hand, whether with the paper or the website, hurriedly turned the page or clicked the mouse?

You see this kind of thing a lot, particularly in the Guardian. Who is stuff like this supposed to appeal to? The audience for it must be miniscule. Those of us who’ve watched Blunkett over the years will roll their eyes at a hagiography by a New Labour hack. For those willing to overlook Machine-Gun Blunkett’s many failings, the column is equally redundant, isn’t it? By now there must be few who are going to be persuaded to change their opinion of Blunkett, least of all by Martin bloody Kettle.

Right here.

Can anybody else hear ‘Whitey on the Moon‘ by Gil Scott-Heron?

(Via John Brissenden)

Good grief. One is a war-mongering totalitarian widely feared and hated, has enormous powers, and who uses dark methods to get what he wants. The other is Darth Vader. Dick Cheney reflects on eight years of super-villainy…

He referred to a comment from Hillary Clinton likening him to the Star Wars character Darth Vader. “I asked my wife about that, if that didn’t bother her. She said, no, it humanises you.”

It speaks volumes about the state of Dick Cheney’s reputation (and possibly his marriage) that only by comparing him to one of popular fiction’s totems of evil do we see his human side. I mean of course he comes out well compared to Darth Vader. It’s when Cheney’s compared to people who don’t stomp around the place, dressed in black strangling people, blowing up planets, and maiming their kids, that he comes off badly.

(The rest of the interview probably isn’t worth the bother. It’s the usual. Bush Administration has ‘done pretty well’. Torture bad. Waterboarding and Guantanamo good.)

So, George Bush takes having shoes thrown at him in his stride and says its ‘a sign of a free society‘.

If that’s the case, that Iraq is now ‘a free society’, let’s hope this isn’t true:

The Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at George Bush has been beaten in custody, his brother said today.

Muntadhar al-Zaidi suffered a broken hand, broken ribs, internal bleeding and an eye injury, his older brother, Dargham, told the BBC. He has since been handed over to the Iraqi judiciary, a step that normally heralds a criminal case.

Or would George like to tell us that that’s fair game in a free society as well?

I didn’t have any Internet access at the weekend and was therefore unwillingly subjected to what passes for Saturday night entertainment in this country right now. Here’s what I found…

1) Is the decision to have the winner of this year’s X-Factor sing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah – with it’s line ‘but you don’t really care for music, do you?’ – an act of supremely self-deluding arrogance or a staggeringly idiotic oversight by one of history’s greatest cultural vandals?

2) Who knew so many people guarded their pennies so jealously?

3) Is it just me or does Cheryl Cole look like an ironing board that’s been creosoted? Is that look supposed to be sexy?

On the whole, it makes you remember the years of Russ Abbot’s Madhouse as if they were Renaissance Italy.