Through it all the New Labour crusade for justice continues
Look, this MPs’ expenses cataclysm is a side show. While we’re hurling rotten fruit at the government they’re carrying on doing their job and rounding up the real bastards. All I can say is thank Christ these public menaces had their doors kicked in at dawn and were dragged to a detention centre:
A woman from the Ivory Coast and her four-year-old son are being held at the Dungavel detention centre following an early morning raid in Glasgow.
It comes days after details of measures to improve the treatment of failed asylum seekers were announced.
And look at these scumbags…
Ismail Cherbal and Safia Aouf, nationals of Algeria, and their British-born children Sonia aged four and son Aya aged 15 months have been detained in Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre for the past 32 days.
Fifteen months old? Well, you can’t be too careful. You might think that New Labour are a bunch of grasping venal bastards but under all the brouhaha with expenses, the true heart of our government still beats.
What sort of country sends a dozen uniformed officers to haul innocent sleeping children out of their beds; gives them just a few minutes to pack what belongings they can grab; pushes them into stinking caged vans; drives them for hours while refusing them the chance to go to the lavatory so that they wet themselves and locks them up sometimes for weeks or months without the prospect of release and without adequate health services?
(See also the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns)
Posted on May 15th, 2009 at 11:28am under Eye Catching Initiatives, Human rights, New Labour
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• 2 Comments |
Quite.
The criminal or morally dubious activity of fleecing the taxpayer by kicking the arse out of “the system” of expense allowances, whilst reprehensible, should be at or near the bottom of the list of criminal/morally dubious activities and policies the New Labour Government – with the support and encouragement of its Parliamentary allies in the Tory Party – should be castigated for. The list does not need repeating here, although it does include what has been highlighted above.
Al Capone was a murdering criminal gang leader involved in all sorts of immoral as well as illegal activities. Yet it was fraudulent behaviour through Tax evasion which landed him in jail rather than the more reprehensible of his activities. The fact that in both cases relatively petty financial shenanigans totally overshadow far worse activities and outcomes in general public perception says a lot about our media and about our dominant culture.
In this regard it seems there is too much civil obedience and insufficient civil dis-obedience.
The wailing and knashing of teeth over MP’s expenses is out of all proportion compared with the impact of other policies, decisions, actions etc. Martin Rawsons cartoon in today’s Guardian (Saturday 16 May) sums it up well:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/cartoon/2009/may/16/martin-rowson-cartoon-mps-expenses
Ian Hislop made a more telling point than he probably realised on Fridays edition of HIGNFY when he said that just one of these revelations would have provided sufficient headlines for a weeks worth of media coverage and suddenly there’s 37 of them.
Bad as the MP’s expenses issue is it seems reasonable to conclude that HM’s subjects are being led by the nose in a concerted attempt to use the opportunity provided by this snouts in troughs affair to undermine faith in the current two party system.
This may or may not be a problem or no bad thing in itself. However, one always has to consider motivation and who may or may not gain. It’s quite telling, IMHO, that Norman Tebbit managed to get one his utterences reported and highlighted this week along the lines that people should vote for smaller parties – and you can bet what’s left of your pension pot that he’s not thinking of the Green Party, the SNP/Plied Cymru, either of the Respect factions or whatever Socialist Parties exist.
There’s an election coming up which is likely to favour the anti-European and anti (non white) immigration parties in this current whipped up climate. A year on from a General election there exists potential for a re-alignment of the Thatcherite section of the Tory Party with some, or elements of some, of the smaller right wing parties and any independents of a similar frame of mind.
Seems to me there’s a certainamount of stage management of change taking place here that needs dragging out into the light of day.
[...] the notorious threats to public order, four year-old Arouna Gaye and his mother, Fatou Felicite Gaye, who were interned in Dungavel [...]