I think there’s probably a good book in profiling the various supporting actors of the New Labour years. You could source it from blogs and knock it out in an afternoon - there’s enough of us out there who’ve released our pent-up disgust over the years by documenting their various antics.

Many of the characters reveal themselves to be overtly demonic figures - John Reid, Jack Straw, for example. Some are jester figures deserving of laughter as much as contempt - see my favourite political in-joke, Alan Milburn, a man who, it’s has always disappointed me, isn’t a massive figure of fun in this country.

Falling between these two traits are the likes of Denis MacShane. Now plying his trade as the go-to gobshite and strutting bantam cock apologist for any half-baked New Labour disaster-waiting-to-happen, he largely exists these days as an unmissable target for abuse on Comment is Free. Back in the day though, he was an utter shit. Here’s the Guardian Diary column from 2001:

We much enjoyed Khalid Mahmood’s trenchant pro-war piece in the Observer. As he is one of only two Muslim MPs, the member for Birmingham Perry Bar’s defence of the bombing and dismissal of five “myths” about Islam (such as most Muslims opposing the bombing) will carry some weight. The fact that the article was identical to a piece sent last week to one of our three Muslim peers, the Rochdale chippy Lord Ahmed, is just another of those meaningless coincidences that afflict politics and media all the time.

Why Lord Ahmed declined to sign the piece, which reached him on crested Foreign Office paper and was written by FO minister Denis McShane, and pass it to a newspaper, is unclear.

And then is 2002:

What a year Lord Ahmed is having. Not content with turning in FO imbecile Denis MacShane for threatening him with MI5 surveillance after he refused to put his name to a pro-war article…

Isn’t that nice? Like I said, it deserves a book. It’d be a ripping read. It could also be an open-source directory of middle-ranking villains that writers of barely-believable fiction could borrow from when lacking inspiration. Need an icily humourless and petulant but also goonish and indestructible henchman? See H for Hoon.

All it needs now is a title. The League of Extraordinary Governmental Men?

With bloggers and journalists failing to get anything near a straight answer out of The Evening Standard’s bang-to-rights sock-puppeteer Andrew Gilligan about his online activies, Tim Ireland took the matter to the doorstep of the Standard’s owner, Associated Newspapers.

He headed into London to launch a free newspaper of his own, The Ailing Standards.

Head over to Tim’s place for the full story, sizzling video action and your chance to download your own copy of the super soaraway Ailing Standards.

The thing about the government’s ‘secret plan‘ to increase VAT to 18.5 per cent in 2010-11 is that, if you complained about how lame and ineffectual the cut to 15 per cent was, surely you don’t get to to be outraged about a future rise to 18.5 per cent.

If the cut took minimal amounts off consumer prices, doesn’t the same applies in reverse to a three and a half per cent (one percent on today) increase? We’re talking tiny amounts added to the prices of VAT-liable goods. Some of the same people who complained about the piffling amounts of individual savings earlier this week are now whining about piffling amounts of individual increases.

A 2.5 per cent decrease isn’t going to drive people to the shops, so a three and a half per cent (one percent on today) increase isn’t going to drive them away. Hardly a ‘a secret tax bombshell‘ and yet Cameron, Osborne and attendant cutting and pasting hangers-on are jumping up and down as if mater and pater had docked their pocket money.

If only they’d this much fuss over far more impacting and important issues. Yes, yes, well done for spotting it and everything Holmes and Watson, but get over yourselves for God’s sake.

Not wishing to distract from all the dancing in the street caused by the Chancellor’s rescue plan, here’s another example of New Labour generosity that you might have missed.

Twins: Ziyad and Bahabga Zighem aged 6 years 3 months, Rahima 4 years and 4 months, Hani 3 years and 6 months, and Zinedine 2 years and 3 months, have spent the last 29 days in Immigration detention @ Yarl’s Wood IRC and are still there today.

These five children are not seeking asylum nor are they migrants, they were all born in the UK, denied the *parentage of the country they were born in, by deliberate, discriminatory legislation in the ‘British Nationality Act 1981′ (came into force 1982).

Where’s the moral panic? Where are the tens of thousands of outraged phonecalls, emails and texts crying out at this terrible scandal? Isn’t there someone we can lynch? I’ve scoured the Daily Mail’s website and there’s no mention of the ordeal these children are being put through.

New Labour, need we be reminded, ‘unfurled its old battle banner for social justice’ this week.

You have to admit that this, if it’s true, is great…

A former communications intercept operator says U.S. intelligence snooped on [...] British Prime Minister Tony Blair. David Murfee Faulk told ABCNews.com he saw and read a file on Blair’s “private life”…

It seems we may have underestimated Tony’s best mate, George. Even he didn’t trust the slippery little get.

Looking around for Peter Mandelson’s famous ‘filthy rich’ quote, I find a letter to the Guardian from January this year…

You quote my comments to California computer executives in 1998 that “we are intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich” (Leaders, January 11). I do not object to being quoted, as long as I am quoted accurately and in full. What I in fact said on that particular occasion was “as long as they pay their taxes”.
Peter Mandelson
EU trade commissioner

The thing is, when you look at the tax loopholes that New Labour has failed to close over the years, allowing the rich to avoid tax, and costing the country billions, I’m not sure quoting Mandelson in full shows him or his party in any better light.

‘[H]istory will judge yesterday was the turning point when Labour unfurled its old battle banner for social justice,’ says Polly Toynbee in today’s Guardian. Yes, Labour has apparently refound its faith (if that’s what it is). What prompted this reversal though? Was it regret, conscience, ideology?

It was none of those things. It was desperation in the face of extinction. Alistair Darling is less a rallying general than a deathbed penitent willing to say anything - recant anything - terrified that he’s on his way to Hell. Even so, it’s a very half-hearted appeal to Mother Church.

In her column, Toynbee delivers what management types will recognise as the classic shit sandwich which is used to soften criticism of an employee. A slice of nice, a slice of shit, a slice of nice.

Amongst the battle metaphors and the policial ‘parties naked as nature intended’, we get ‘low earners deserve a fairer share of rewards [...] though they didn’t get it this time’, an ‘even if unemployment reaches 3 million, that still leaves 90% in secure jobs’ (how’s that for Toynbee-esque compassion?), and ‘what chance of a mad rush for 2.5% off VAT? Will people notice?’

When Toynbee says: ‘Odd how it has taken near calamity to shake Labour from its craven fear of the hyper-rich,’ you wonder where she’s been for the last ten years, particularly when she says herself, ‘Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had no word of reproof for gross greed and excess. Relaxed about the filthy rich, they “celebrated” vast salaries that spilled over to contaminate the public sector too.’

There’s nothing remotely odd about it. New Labour is hugging lepers now it’s realised it needs the plenary indulgences. Like I said before, the poor are being recruited as oncologists. Should New Labour leap rejuvenated, reinvigorated and re-elected from it death bed, with who and where will it celebrate the miracle, do you think? On a Glasgow sink estate with Gary and Sharon Sixpack? Or on the yacht of one of Peter Mandelson’s delightful friends?

I have to confess to still being confused by this VAT cut lark. VAT doesn’t apply to food so there’s no saving there for the consumer. Duty is rising on alcohol, tobacco and petrol so no help there either. I really do wish Alistair Darling was explicit on what he wants us to spend our money on this Christmas. Traditional elements such as the turkey, booze, fags and driving to see the relatives aren’t affected by the cut - with those last three, quite the opposite.

Jim Bliss in the comments here says ‘when I saw this item on the news my first thought was that it was not being introduced as a benefit for shoppers; but for retailers.’ And over at Liberal Conspiracy, Unity says: ‘There’s more to cutting VAT than just a few quid of that plasma screen TV you’ve been eyeing up as a christmas present for yourself [...] a cut in VAT might filter into and down the supply chain and lead to lower consumer prices.’

Unity’s a good lad so I’m prepared to accept he’s right. It’s just that that’s not how the cut’s being sold by the government. At all. No offence to Unity but isn’t it Alistair Darling’s job to explain it rather than him? This cut was leaked and billed as the kick up the arse high-street shoppers needed to open their wallets and purses, not as some jam-tomorrow business-to-business trickle down.

It was billed in all the papers and by Darling himself as immediate economic triage not a longer term palliative. Why? The spin has quite clearly failed. The coverage today has largely derided the government’s reasons for a two percent cut in VAT and therefore its effect on the economy. It’s also interesting to note that Darling’s promises of one-off payments for pensioners and increases in child benefit don’t kick in until January, a month after most recipients would find it useful (if Darling’s reasons for the VAT cut was to instigate a larger than expected seasonal splurge).

Following on from Richard Herring’s observation that the tabloid newspapers are some of the country’s biggest disseminators of ‘vile’, ’sick’ and ‘corrupting’ material and imagery, we have this (via Mike P) from the Daily Mail:

Fifteen council staff, including social workers, have been sacked or reprimanded after circulating a tasteless e-mail of reviled paedophile Gary Glitter carrying a child in a shopping bag.

And thanks to the Daily Mail, who reproduce a large copy of the image with the story on it’s website, tens of thousands of people - including children (will nobody think of the children?) - will now see the ‘tasteless’ image of ‘reviled paedophile Gary Glitter carrying a child in a shopping bag’.

Why were no Daily Mail reporters sacked or reprimanded after circulating the tasteless e-mail?

Let me see if I’ve got this right. If we get the 2.5 per cent VAT cut - from 17.5 to 15 - in the pre-budget speech today as massively and widely leaked by the headline-desperate government, that means on a £100 trolley of VAT-liable shopping (food is exempt from VAT so don’t expect the food bill to fall), you’ll be a whopping £2.50 better off.

That means, if I spend £200 on stuff other than for feeding my family, I’ll have saved enough for a sixpack of Stellas, yes?

How’s this for a we’re all going to die tearing each other to pieces over the last hunk of mouldy bread mash-up?

Overlay this:

Over a third of China’s land is being scoured by serious erosion that is putting its crops and water supply a risk, a three-year nationwide survey has found. [...] If the loss continues at this rate, harvests in China’s northeastern breadbasket could fall 40 percent in 50 years, adding to erosion costs estimated at 200 billion yuan ($29 billion) in this decade alone.

With this:

Rich governments and corporations are triggering alarm for the poor as they buy up the rights to millions of hectares of agricultural land in developing countries in an effort to secure their own long-term food supplies.

Is it too early to start drinking?

At least Alistair Darling’s getting into the spirit of the season:

Alistair Darling will make a high-risk bid to lead Britain out of recession tomorrow, when he is expected to cut VAT and entice the British people to go on a pre-Christmas spending spree.

Spending money you can’t afford on crap you don’t need. Isn’t that, at the end of the day, what Christmas is all about?

It’s amazing really. This government has largely been in the business of punishing the poor for being poor. Poverty wages. Cack-handed tax credits. Benefit crackdowns. High-handed demagoguery. Victorian guilt. And yet who do the government turn to when it’s all tits-up? Why, the poor, of course.

Here’s a few quid, peasants, now get out there and save this government’s jobs and pensions. If you can rescue the bonuses of those city types who’ve also shown you nothing but contempt during the good times, so much the better.

I don’t pretend to understand much of the economics behind this. I just wonder how much gratitude will be extended to the great British prole once poll ratings are temporarily inflated, dividends are up, and the taking of city bonuses is again no longer regarded in the same way as taking children from parks.

I’m sure the for-the-time-being-regarded-as-implicitly feckless poor will be regarded as the explicitly feckless poor once again soon. Doubly so if they end up spending their Christmas bonus on export strength lager, fatty foods, and sportswear*.

Really, what I’d suggest is, instead of splurging on tinselly crap, we should all pool our little slices of the government’s bounty and hire ourself a former government minister to lobby ministers on our behalf. They’re quite reasonably priced and willing to bend the rules for their clients.

* Update: It strikes me that the proles should have to submit a list of proposed purchases for approval, shouldn’t they? You know, just in case they end up spending the money on the wrong things like beer, cannabis, illegal wars of aggression, savings accounts, or pensions.

I had a more than the usual spring in my step this morning and I couldn’t quite put my finger on why. My thanks to Iain Dale for reminding me.

For those not in the know, a sockpuppet is…

…an online identity used for purposes of deception within an Internet community. In its earliest usage, a sockpuppet was a false identity through which a member of an Internet community speaks while pretending not to, like a puppeteer manipulating a hand puppet.

It’s a practice you see on the top blogs when their owners, unwilling or unable to defend their mistakes or arguments, appear in their own comment threads pretending to be other people. It’s a base cowardice really. Unfortunately, the example has now been set and the disease is starting to spread.

(more…)

Charlie Brooker on Sachsgate:

Richard Herring on the tabloids’ corruption of children:

I guess we’re always going to be stuck with self-righteousness, it just seems to me that the self-righteous do a lot more damage than the people they’re railing against. But I think the journalists are well aware of that. It’s a way for them to spread information that will prove offensive to people, without having to take any of the blame for the offence. Never mind if careers are being ruined or young minds are being polluted in the process. How does the print media manage to remain above criticism when they often do much more harm than the things they are criticising?

Have a nice weekend.

There are some who fulminate against our elected representatives commenting on the trivial issues of the day, whether it be the death of Sinatra, the imprisonment of a soap opera character, feckless quad-biking rock stars, mucky phone calls to Andrew Sachs, the benefits of television talent shows, or John Sergeant’s decision to hang up his cummerbund.

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Alexander Harrowell crunches the numbers on that BNP membership list:

Now, if immigration or population growth really is causing people to go fascist, we’d expect to find a correlation between population growth and BNP membership. Or, perhaps, we might find that places that are losing population are economically depressed and hence susceptible. A further detail might be changes in population density; becoming more urban might lead to a perception of being “swamped”, or becoming more rural/exurban might lead to one of isolation. So I drew up a table of population growth from 1991 to 2006, change in density for the same period, and BNP members per 100 citizens.

Here are the results.

Brilliant.

In an astounding reversal, the Tories are slowly handing the next general election to New Labour, aren’t they? Cameron thought he could do a Blair and just wait. Now he needs some proper ideas, he’s stuffed. They sent kids to do the jobs of grown-ups, the clueless sods. Cameron and Osborne look like they should be out building dens and tying bangers to cats’ tails. An alternative proposal to help us out of recession? Pass the crayons. They never, ever, got the knack of opposition and opposing, did they? Cheers for that, says a grateful nation.

All together now…

I like LOLGRIFFIN.

Caroline Slocock, chief executive of the Refugee Legal Centre:

Woolas says: “One lady showed me the scars on her thighs from where the soldiers had raped her, so I know, but I cannot take a decision on that lady’s behalf if I am fogged by cases that are misusing the law.” The right decision can be a matter of life and death. Yet all too often asylum seekers are unable to get a lawyer, and the quality of Home Office decision-making is particularly poor. That is why there are so many appeals - and not, as Woolas claims, because “there is an industry out there [with] a vested interest”.

Read the rest…

Moving stories of heroism and lives saved:

The Foreign Secretary said:

“This plaque honours those British diplomats who helped Jews and other victims of Nazi persecution during one of Europe’s darkest hours. Some of these individuals are well known to us: Frank Foley, for example, the Passport Control Officer and Secret Intelligence Service Head of Station in Berlin, who visited concentration camps to get Jews out and hid others in his home; or Robert Smallbones, our Consul-General in Frankfurt, who worked 18 hour days issuing visas on his own authority in the aftermath of the Kristallnacht pogrom. Others who also helped may have escaped history’s limelight, but all their efforts deserve to be remembered.”

Of course, if they were operating today, Foley and Smallbones would be people traffickers and looking at prison and vilification. The Foreign and Home Secretaries would be sending those rescued back to Germany and telling them telling them it’s perfectly safe as long as they live their lives discreetly.

You have to admit he’s a fine example of the master race…

LOLGRIFFIN courtesy of the mighty Chris Applegate.

Totally ace: The Charlian.

(via John Brissenden)

You’d have to have a heart of stone not to enjoy a brief but hearty laugh at the news that the BNP’s membership list has been leaked online*. This morning some of the people on that list will be experiencing the same feeling as the anti-fascist campaigners that the BNP like to photograph and out on the Internet. There’s also the hope that pissed-off members might sue the party into bankrupt oblivion.

The crowning jewel of the story is that the BNP, who only this month called the Human Rights Act ’surely one of the most pernicious pieces of legislation ever passed by the mother of Parliaments,’ and reiterated its promise to repeal it when the party - don’t laugh - becomes a ‘British Nationalist government’, have now asked the police to investigate breaches of the Human Rights Act.

Meanwhile, more dangerous demagogues lie closer to the centre of power. Namely, immigration minister Phil ‘You can’t come in‘ Woolas. He wants a ‘mature debate’ about immigration. What, another one? We’ve had a lot of calls for debates from New Labour and this is no different. Woolas fails to say who is supposed to be having this debate, what its formal parameters are, or where it’s to take place. Is he really interested in dialogue with anyone other than tabloid newspaper editors?

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There’s a lot of angst about those Somalian pirates nicking all that oil at gunpoint. Is is their lack of ambition that offends us, I wonder? When we did it on a much larger scale in 2003, we all clapped like seals, didn’t we?