What we of the liberal centre-left have done is join Brown, Miliband and all those who so absolutely fail to represent our beliefs in allowing ourselves to be brow-beaten into silent, sullen acquiescence by the unrelenting right-wing propaganda of recent decades. We glow in Sarkozy’s facetious praise when we should shriek in rage about what a nasty, brutal, mean-spirited country our spineless apathy has helped create, and this report on the systematic maltreatment of asylum-seekers shames and diminishes us all.

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I take it that this is a rhetorical question.

Our political establishment has been convulsed by a debate about whether suspected terrorists can be detained for 28 or 42 days without charge. How is it, then, that this young girl, who no one has suggested has ever committed any crime, gets more than 80 days with no outcry?

You could tell her how but then we’d be here all day and there’s horsey racing today apparently. Let’s not spoil it. I’m putting my money on ‘Sociopathic Inertia’. It wins every time.

But when all’s said on done, never let it be said that this government are unfeeling bureaucratic monsters. Take a look at this press release from the Commission for Rural Communities’ website, calling for pensioners to be helped to get their pension credit.

We’re encouraging organisations in rural communities to work with us to ensure that people in rural areas are aware of their entitlement. Increased take-up of benefits could reduce pensioner poverty dramatically.

A laudable enterprise. Look out though, there’s trouble in paradise. Here’s a comment on the bottom of the press release:

In the area where I live people have died waiting for a visit from the Pension Service because they are so far behind with their work. The Pension Service will not however allocate “their” work to other partner organisations with whom they work to help speed things up - yet it isn’t hard to do a Pension Credit claim. Is more joint working the answer?

Here’s the reply:

Thanks for your comment. The situation you’ve described is tragic - perhaps your suggestion is a good approach. We’ll pass your comments on to our policy teams.

Now that’s how you deal with pensioner poverty. Can’t you see the policy teams leaping in to action? Don’t you wonder if they have costumes and a theme tune. Pol-icy, pol-icy, reviewing pensioner pov-ert-y. If you were old, poor and living in a rural community, wouldn’t you be sleeping a little easier tonight?

The situation you’ve described is tragic.

Sky News’ Kay Burley to the former partner of serial killer Steve Wright:

Do you think if you’d had a better sex life, he wouldn’t have done this?

Mat has more.

Update: Mitch Benn:

Maybe soon we will be able to do our own Daily Show, if this is the sort of journalism we’re starting to embrace on British TV news. But that won’t be any sort of compensation.

BRITISH Gas has said its 500% increase in profits is the result of charging people much more money to buy gas.

Unveiling its annual results, the company insisted the £480 million profit jump vindicated its strategy of making it a lot more expensive to cook food and keep warm.

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(See also Philip)

‘The number of people living in fuel poverty is at its highest for almost a decade. This no doubt accounts for the price increases announced by British Gas and its competitors, all of whom plan to raise their bills by between fifteen and twenty-seven per cent, thus continuing the combination of low prices and efficient service which is the hallmark of privatisation and competition in the free market.’

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…if you work for Westminster Council, as Jamie points out, you’re denying the homeless a bowl of hot soup.

If you work for the Home Office you’re busy splitting up families on Christmas eve. Evil never sleeps.

I say evil but it’s really just a case of someone enjoying their job a little too much. When bureaucratic efficiency is indistinguishable from malice, why bother hunting for the distinction?

Most of the poor sods forced to work today will prat about in the morning, have a few pints at lunchtime and then slope off early. No such genial seasonal piss-taking by the boys at the Home Office, oh no. Maybe they make a concession to the time of year by wearing Santa hats when they’re kicking in asylum seekers’ doors at dawn.

And all under the auspices of a Labour government. The next person to say to me that New Labour is still the best vehicle for progressive change in this country is liable to get a punch up the bracket. The oil of human kindness has leaked out of its sump and the engine has seized.

One hopes someone has bought Gordon Brown a new moral compass for Christmas because the one he’s got that he likes to brag about is clearly knackered.

But wait, there’s more:

The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, was today ordered to return a 15-year-old Iraqi asylum seeker to his UK foster carer after a judge condemned the way he was forced out of the country.

Mr Justice Collins criticised the “total lack of humanitarianism” of the way the authorities had launched an early morning raid to seize the boy, who later ended up on the streets when he was flown back to Austria.

Now that’s talent. It takes a proper pedigree bastard to dream this kind of stuff up. I suppose we should be grateful that these people are working for the Home Office and not freelancing. Otherwise they’d be holding the world to ransom with laser-satellites made from diamonds or bombarding us from orbit with poisons created from rare orchids. Or making suits out of dead prostitutes.

(Via Philip)

In proposing that temporary and agency workers should benefit from the same pay and basic conditions as their fully accredited counterparts, [MP Paul] Farrelly’s [temporary and agency workers (prevention of less favourable treatment)] bill drills into an issue that barely intrudes on the political mainstream: the casualisation of thousands of workplaces, and the alleged slow death of the Real Job. Around 1.4 million people currently work in the temporary and agency sector, millions more feel its downward pull on their working lives - and at its current rate of growth, millions more soon will do. Unfortunately, the involvement of the trade unions serves to confirm that the issue lies as far from middle England as can be, and you thus arrive at yet another illustration of how contorted Westminster politics has become: the political class blithely yakking about “rising aspirations”, while millions of people’s hopes are plummeting at speed.

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If I was editing The Blog Digest this year (and I’m not), this by Alex Harrowell would be up front. I’m not going to quote it, just go and read it.

I suppose it struck a chord with me because over the years I’ve being trying to reach my own synthesis on the psychology of government ministers and other public ’servants’ seemingly indifferent to the suffering of their fellow man. I may be some time.

Let’s just say that Alex and I are on the quest for the hidden human in these people. We haven’t found it yet but there’s a nugget of hope at the heart of our hunt nevertheless.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Chris Dillow is ace. I’ve had a drink with him on a couple of occasions and he has a bullshit detector and an ability to distill ideas that I’d kill for.

But I have to say that this really is one of the most chilling and dispiriting blog posts I’ve ever read:

Economic success requires that talent not be unlocked, and remain unused

[...]

As Harry Braverman showed in one of the best books ever written, capitalism requires that workers be robbed of their skills.

And this is why Brown’s words are not only stupid, but perniciously stupid. In pretending that economic progress and human flourishing can always coexist - especially under capitalism - he’s ignoring one of the most important and profound trade-offs of all.

I feel like I did when I found out Father Christmas didn’t exist or when I read that Steve McQueen was a wife-beater with a penchant for coffee enemas. Talk about pissing on someone’s chips. ‘Can’t win, don’t try,’ as Bart Simpson once said.

Why, Chris, why? What next? Heroes isn’t really a documentary? I don’t think I could bear that.

I’m sure you were as scandalised as I was to discover that the media fabricated its output in order to deceive the public. What I want to know is how many people died as a result.

WHY AREN’T THEY COUNTING THE CASUALTIES?!?!

Isn’t some kind of petition or website in order?

Why all the fuss about Gordon Brown’s £50 million cut to the Government’s drug rehabilitation scheme? ‘Hypocrite!’ screamed the Tories when the news leaked out straight after Brown declared he wants a review into reclassifying cannabis from Class C to Class B.

But is he a hypocrite? It’s makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? If, say, you’re a Daily Mail-fellating authoritarian, that is. Reclassifying the eeeeevil weed would mean more people being banged up for possession, so what would you need all the drug rehabilitation places for? Hence Gordon’s budget cut.

QED*, innit?

*Quite Evil Demagogue.

Via Matt, with have this edifying tale from the Times Educational Supplement:

Pupils as young as 10 are being asked personal questions, including how often they get drunk and whether their parents have paid jobs, in an Ofsted survey.

The education watchdog has told teachers they do not need parental permission before children complete the online questionnaire because it is anonymous.

But pupils are being asked for their full home postcode.

The information is being collated for - yep, you guessed it - ‘a national database’. Like a few drinks at the weekend? Got rumbled by your kids (as I did the other night) having a crafty fag? Then watch out. Ofsted aren’t now just interested in the quality of your children’s schools, they want to know about your quality of life as well.

Insert your favourite Nineteen Eighty-Four reference here. I refuse to acknowledge that they are overdone or cliched. On this occasion, I’ll go for the passage beginning ‘Nearly all children nowadays were horrible…’

I’ve got a friend with depression. Not a hugely severe depression but serious and debilitating enough to have made a huge impact on their quality of life and relationships. Very recently, finally at the end of their tether, they bit the bullet and went to see their doctor. The doctor told them they’d have to wait over twelve months to see a counsellor on the NHS for reasons ‘financial’ and wranglings ‘political’. ‘Self-help’ websites and Prozac were proffered and reluctantly accepted.

Yesterday, my partner’s mother was admitted to hospital with a serious infection, a result of the surgery she had a month or so ago. But, it being Sunday and people not usually getting ill on a Sunday (obviously), only a skeleton staff was available. My partner’s mother waited seven hours to receive treatment.

So, you know, fuck the Cutty Sark.

Celebrities, business people and a newspaper are not offering a total of £2.5m to anyone who can help with the safe return of Alan Johnston.

The News of the World and figures such as Sir Richard Branson have not jointly pledged £1.5m. Last week, Scottish tycoon Stephen Winyard did not offer £1m.

…

In the UK, Chancellor Gordon Brown was among those not expressing sympathy for the family, not saying every parent would be thinking of ways to help them.

In other news…

Before Spider-Man 3 started at the cinema the other day, the preceding adverts were interminable. There must have been fifteen or twenty minutes of them. Talk about a captive audience - it was the marketing equivalent of Guantanamo Bay. The two six year-olds I was with were losing their minds. Ad after ad after ad after ad of mindless crap you don’t need and can’t afford.

By the time the advert for the new Nintendo video game console came around, I thought the voiceover was talking about ennui.

Ithangyou.

‘On the morning of 22 January at midday the eldest boy rang. “We’re being deported at 8.25 tonight.” The phone went dead. Later Mrs Bokhari rang to say they’d all been handcuffed, put in a car and carted off to Heathrow. I went back to the minister. Not there. “Who’s running this department?” His secretary told me he hadn’t yet made the decision and promised to get on to Heathrow. I did too. My last phone call came from the plane to a background of Mr Bokhari shouting, Mrs Bokhari sobbing, the kids all crying. They took off at 8.25.

‘The fax from the minister saying he’d rejected the case was sent to my Grimsby office after it was closed and his e-mail reached me next day. Cunning that. Three days later the Bokharis arrived in Lahore to find their house daubed with the sign of the cross and occupied by squatters.

‘It leaves a nasty taste. An out-of-control Immigration and Nationality Directorate is doing what it wants to get deportations up. The minister goes along, ratifies its decisions (he hardly ever rejects them), observes its deadlines and strings MPs along, pretending to listen while doing nothing. Perhaps scarring young souls will teach them not to come here when they grow up.

‘Perhaps it will win votes to Labour from the lumpen lunatics who’ve deluged the Grimsby Telegraph’s website with abuse of their soft, immigrant-loving, geriatric, fool of an MP. Perhaps we’ll win enough National Fronters to compensate for the loss of the many liberals this has alienated. I don’t know. But I do know how I feel. Ashamed.’

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The paradox is this: Because we can travel large distances quickly, we have to. Because we have to, we do. Because we do, we can’t: Traffic. Strangely the only time people moan about traffic is when they’re in a car. “Bloody traffic” we say, forgetting for a moment that we are ourselves part of the problem we condemn.

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Jeremy, the Corporate Presenter, has tagged me with the ‘6 things in 2007 - My Prophecies‘ meme. Here’s what I foresee for the year ahead.

1) Stunning news in January when Tony Blair is revealed as a contestant on Celebrity Big Brother. Sealed in the house he is beyond the reach of the police who announce they wish to re-interview him under caution in the culmination of the cash for honours scandal. Blair wins the competition, and thus stays out of the clutches of the law for a whole month, by the simple expedient of giving a steady trickle of gossip about all the celebrities and popstars he’s holidayed with over the years. The stories about Cliff Richard prove particularly shocking and the pop sensation is torn limb from limb by a baying mob.

2) After the execution of Saddam Hussein fails to stem the violence in Iraq it is announced that it was not the real Saddam that was hanged but one of his many famous doubles. In another attempt to stop the ongoing carnage another double is publicly hanged. And then another. Like the moon landings, after four more hangings, people lose complete interest. In order to jump start the franchise, a vote via telephone and text message is held to decide the method of the real - honest, it’s truly him - Saddam’s execution. The highlight of the 2007 Easter TV schedules is a show where Saddam jumps into a pit of starving dogs with a sword, like Ernest Borgnine in the movie, ‘The Vikings‘. Presented by Ant and Dec. On Christmas Day, for the post-Eastenders cheer-up, a clone of Saddam is pushed very slowly into a bacon slicer. By Dale Winton.

3) Blogging is officially outlawed by the Government after an unprecedented torrent of sweary, unconstructive blog posts hurt their feelings. This culminates in John Prescott refusing to deny rumours circulating the internet and put to him on Radio 4’s Today programme that he is a useless, Northern crap-factory. Hordes of pasty and overweight bloggers wheezily take to the hills to wage guerilla warfare (that is, post rude articles via a wi-fi hotspot) until the Government is swept away by the return of the King Over The Water, Tim Worstall.

4) New security measures to check women wearing the niqab passing through UK airports are delayed just long enough for Tony Blair to flee the country wearing one after he is charged with selling honours.

5) After previous scaremongering falls on deaf ears, Sir Ian Blair announces that the terrorist threat facing the country is the ‘gravest since zombies took over in “28 Days Later“, Martian tripods levelled Leatherhead in “War of the Worlds“‘ and the time, as a boy, he was sacked from his paper round for shooting the wrong dog up the arse with his air rifle because he thought he it was going to bite him.

6) President for Life Blunkett declares martial law.

I’m going to break with my traditional role of meme-slayer on this occasion because I quite like this one and I could do with a laugh. The following people should feel under no obligation to take up the baton but if they have any feelings for me at all they should do so: Pond, Rodent, Larry, John and Nosemonkey.

If this heralds a lurch to the populist right for one of the few sane voices New Labour has left, it would be a great shame. Lost amongst the clamour of Alan Johnson whirling on a sixpence over faith schools we have…

Convicted offenders who are unemployed should be given longer community sentences, according to the chairman of the influential home affairs committee.

John Denham claimed offenders who had a job or cared for family members should receive shorter sentences.

Maybe he’s planning a (deputy) leadership bid. Such ambitions are often presaged by some outburst of ill-thought reactionary bigotry. You know, to demonstrate to the Murdoch press and the Daily Heil that there’s no principle you won’t jettison to curry favour.

The trick here, clearly, is to get yourself a job and some kids. Such attainments make you less of a prick according to Denham and worthy of leniency from the courts. Let us not forget that unemployment does not happen by accident and that if you find yourself in that position you brought it on yourself and deserve what’s coming to you. Or something.

As if being unemployed isn’t punishment enough without supposedly intelligent and compassionate men buying into the misanthropic tabloid shibboleth that such unfortunates are an underclass worthy of harsher treatment than the rest. There’s something really rather grotesque about a politician marking out the jobless, particular while unemployment is climbing under his party’s stewardship of the economy. Manufacturing industry, anybody? It’s akin to the emerging verdict on Iraq that it’s the Iraqi’s fault that stable democracy is refusing to take root there and they’re dying in herds.

I don’t want romanticise and get into a ‘boo hoo, the poor unemployed - let ‘em do a bit of shopliftin’, t’ain’t doin’ no bleedin’ ‘arm‘ apologia but Denham seems to have forgotten that societal factors influence who commits crimes. And as a spokesman for Liberty says, more time spent sweeping the streets is less time spent looking for the job which will admit you to Denham’s definition of high society. Punishing the unemployed harder than the rest doesn’t make them any less jobless.

(He also called for those serving community sentences to be made to wear uniforms - an idea last expressed by the sinister Hazel Blears if you needed any further indication of how debased it is. Misery loves company - Blears and Denham are probably just trying to spread the degradation around a bit. Not only that, if this idea does see the light of day, it’d be a fine idea to invest in a company reducing replica uniforms. Those babies will sell to ‘the kids’ like crack-flavoured Vauxhall Novas.)

No doubt, on the basis of his logic, that the length of community sentences should be based on the ability of the offender to turn up and sweep the streets, Mr Denham will be calling for on the spot fines to be weighted according to the offenders ability to pay. For example, those guilty of glassing someone with a champagne bottle should pay a bigger fine than someone using a lager bottle. Surely it should be incumbent on the police officer issuing summary justice to ascertain the offender’s level of income? Maybe our ID cards should detail our tipple of choice to make it easier.

Why not go the whole hog and do the same with custodial sentences? I have two young daughters who rely on my care. If I go berserk the next time I see yet another dog crapping in my street and I kill its couldn’t-give-a-shit-about-where-my-dog-gives-a-shit arsehole of an owner in a frenzied attack of rage, shouldn’t my sentence be shorter than someone without kids?

Here, it seems, is more proof that the supposed arrival of the classless society is less a matter of conditions on the ground than a culture that blithely ignores them. Just before this year’s local elections, I spent time in Stoke-on-Trent - omitted from Phil and Sofie’s top 10, but probably bubbling under - where the BNP were snapping at the heels of a broken-down Labour party, sending round leaflets that read less like the Potteries’ take on Mein Kampf than something put out by the Socialist Workers’ party (”Labour betray the working man and woman - potteries, mining steel … all destroyed”). The regenerated urban wonders of Manchester were less than an hour away, yet here were scenes that are actually more common than some people would like to believe: walled-up factories, Poundstretcher shops, low-paid service-sector jobs, and the abiding sense that the good life was happening somewhere else. A couple of days later I ended up discussing all this with a former editor of a tabloid newspaper, who looked at me as if I was slightly mad. His counterargument was based on the usual mirage of limitless affluence and what used to be known as embourgeoisement: “Britain is booming,” he snapped back.

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Pro-abortionists, the next time you get into an argument with a anti-abortionist, quote this to them.

Most young people in local authority care are destined to end up in prison, homeless or working as prostitutes, a report by a think tank claims.

Let’s get the ones who are already here sorted before we bring any more unwanted kids into the world, shall we?

EDIT: Pro-lifer changed to anti-abortionist. The term ‘pro-life’ is, of course, Unspeakable.

All fingers and thumbs,
Blair fiddles (while cedars burn)
with Rupert’s zipper.

*I’m bored.

You couldn’t call this unexpected:

Three Britons and a Canadian have been denied the right to sue Saudi Arabian officials they say tortured them.

And while Tony Blair did the usual non-specific condemnation at Prime Minister’s Questions today…

Dr. John Pugh (Southport) (LD): Now that Ron Jones and others have lost the right to sue Saudi officials for torture, what meaningful legal redress is there for any Briton tortured abroad in the light of the Law Lords’ ruling?

The Prime Minister: May I point out to the hon. Gentleman that we intervened in this case in order to ensure that the rules of international law and state immunity are fully and accurately presented and upheld? That is important for us as a country and for others. But our strong position against torture remains unchanged: we utterly condemn it in every set of circumstances.

…you can sleep soundly again knowing that this slight bump in the road to harmonious trade with the Saudi government has been smoothed and the prestige that comes from selling massive amounts of military equipment to one of the world’s most brutal regimes is untarnished.

A cynic might ask whether the Government would have weighed in on the side of “rules of international law and state immunity” against four men seeking redress for what was done to them (one of the men has medical evidence proving he was tortured) had the torturers in question been the goons of pre-war Iraq or Iran, Burma, Zimbabwe or any other abattoir state with which we don’t have a multi-billion pound arms contract. If you are going to get yourself picked up and tortured while on holiday, try and check the Foreign Office’s Strategic Export Controls reports before you leave. If we sell your idyllic destination lots of armoured vehicles and electric stun batons, you’re better off being on your best behaviour.

Blair must now be sweating that England don’t meet Saudi Arabia in the knock-out stages of the World Cup. After all, if the House of Saud take umbrage, who will buy all those Eurofighters? Tony will have to make the call. “I’m sorry Sven, but for the good of BAE shareholders, your lads have to throw the match. Tell you what, lose in a penaly shoot-out, it’ll be more convincing”.

Failing that, just pepper the crowd with MI6 agents armed with blowpipes and curare-tipped darts. “Looks like the heat got to the lads once again, Gary.”

Update: As happy coincidence would have it, it’s Torture Awareness Month.

I’ve not heard that Sandi Thom single all the way through yet, but I’ve seen the TV ad about six billion times, and the short, poxy burst on that is more than enough to convince me that if her sudden rise to stardom WASN’T the end result of a shrewd marketing campaign, the implications are terrifying. Because to believe the official story - that thousands of people voluntarily subjected themselves to this shit online, then recommended it to their friends - is to lose your faith in mankind completely.

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