I’d like to suggest a small reform* to Prime Minister’s Questions in Parliament.

To wit: I think it should be renamed Prime Minister’s Answers. That way Gordon Brown would be in no doubt as to what he’s supposed to be supplying during these sessions.

Of late, and in a literal interpretation of the session’s title, the Prime Minister has taken to providing his own questions rather than answering the ones directed at him.

Here he is, last week:

I have to ask him: does he support identity cards for foreign nationals, which we are introducing this year?

I ask the right hon. Gentleman again: does he support ID cards for foreign nationals—yes or no? He says that he is against them; is he in favour of them for foreign nationals?

Why did the Conservatives have 18 years of not reducing the rate of capital gains tax?

And he was at it again this week:

The Leader of the Opposition wholeheartedly supported our action. He said that it was right to inject “liquidity to Northern Rock”. Is he changing his mind?

Perhaps the Leader of the Opposition will answer the question: does he still support our action?

Is the right hon. Gentleman now telling me that, from a position of wholeheartedly supporting that action, he is now against it—yes or no?

It really isn’t right. The Prime Minister is asking more questions each week than the leader of the Liberal Democrats. I’d say the Downing Street web team need to update the website or risk action for false advertising:

The PM answers questions every week that Parliament is in session…

If Gordon Brown wants to ask David Cameron questions across the Commons’ dispatch box, isn’t some kind of job swap in order?

To be fair though, this technique of evasion is harder than it looks. It’s obviously stolen from the old ‘Who’s Line Is It Anyway?‘ game where you have to respond to every question with another question. Try it on your next boring car journey. It’s like the ‘can’t say yes/no’ game - you have to have your wits about you. Gordon Brown must have a mind like a greased whippet.

That said, such lightning-fast thought processes clearly provide no impetus towards democratic accountability. I, for example, have a three-year old who can do jigsaws like they’re coming back into fashion but you try convincing her she’s in the minority in wanting to watch In the Night Garden AGAIN. All you get is plaintive, playing-for-time and misdirecting questions from her as well. She just does it with a little more dignity and panache.

*In it’s true sense, not as code for privatising it.

Gordon Brown is in the Observer today crapping on again about how ID cards are going to save us.

Alex Harrowell examines the Prime Minister’s argument with surgeon-like skill and efficiency. The patient does not survive. Great stuff.

I don’t have much to say on the whys and wherefores of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. Sharper minds than mine can give you excellent theories on who might have done it and why, whether Bhutto’s hagiographers are right and what happens next.

What caught my ear was some of the language used by politicians who, we can very reasonably suspect, might see Bhutto’s death as something of an opportunity. Take Gordon Brown, for example:

This atrocity strengthens our resolve that terrorists will not win there, here or anywhere in the world.

Easy for a man standing behind bullet-proof glass to say. Whose resolve? Our resolve? Put another body on the fire, would you, said Gordon. You do have to admire his ‘me and you against the world, kid’ spirit, mind. Like in his New year message where he says:

Just as we withstood the Asia crisis, the American recession, the end of the IT bubble and the trebling of oil prices and continued to grow…

Who’s this ‘we‘? I know quite a few people still crawling from the wreckage of some of those disasters. And while none of them starved, certainly a few will never walk again without help and none of them feel like crowing about a retooled Spirit of the Blitz either.

Forget for a minute that Brown might come to regret that use of the word ‘terrorists‘ in his eulogy to Bhutto. Should anyone in the Musharraf regime be fingered in connection with the assassination expect the word to be replaced with something like ‘rogue elements‘. Such linguistic contortions are the smaller price paid for cosying up to dictators. Concentrate instead on the word ‘win‘.

Much has been said about the nature of The War Against Terror and whether it can be won, lost or - looking at nascent efforts to engage with the Taliban in Afghanistan - drawn. Does Brown mean anything by ‘win’ other than paying lip service to propaganda?

I suppose if he’s looking at T.W.A.T. as one big game, then yes, the terrorists mustn’t be allowed to win. After all, it’s not as if there isn’t an inexhaustible supply of substitutes to replace those players stretchered off. To some, however, the assassination of a moderate and female Pakistani voice looks like a pretty big victory in its own right. I imagine Benazir Bhutto’s family aren’t viewing her death as a bump in the road to victory.

To Gordon’s mind, it’s probably akin to conceding a goal just before half-time. Yes, it’s particularly demoralising but after the break we’ll just have to dust ourselves off and level the score before notching the winner. Not forgetting the own goals of a million Iraqi dead and a resurgent Taliban that we’ll have to scrape back as well.

The coaching staff might want to look at substituting over-rated defender Pervez Musharraf who seems to be flagging. He’s definitely leaving space for the opposition to exploit. He’s promised to ‘redouble‘ his efforts in fighting Islamic extremists which would suggest he hasn’t been giving the team his full 100% in what is, after all, a vital fixture.

For teachers, pupils and parents at five successful schools across the length of England, the news that Gordon Brown was to single them out by name in his first major education speech was a welcome recognition of their dedication and hard work.

Local newspaper headlines on the morning of the speech last Wednesday suggested that the Prime Minister was to praise these institutions as beacons of excellence whose initiatives and ideas should be replicated across the education world.

But today The Times can reveal that Mr Brown never praised the schools in the speech and that at least five local communities may have been the victims of a sophisticated government spin operation.

read the rest

(via Political Betting)

Still no word on when Gordon Brown is going to get Aung San Suu Kyi out of jail, him being so admiring of her courage and everything during his Labour Party leadership bid:

For me, Suu Kyi defines the meaning of courage. Once courage was seen chiefly as a battlefield virtue. In most accounts the emphasis is on the physical - physical risk, physical vulnerability or physical triumph. It has been seen as an almost exclusively male, physical attribute: courage as daring and bravado, even recklessness; indeed, in many languages, the word for courage is derived from the word for ‘man’. But Suu Kyi represents the power not of the powerful but of the powerless: a woman, a prisoner of conscience up against a state with one of the worst human-rights violation records in the world; a country of only 20 million people with 1,000 political prisoners, 500,000 political refugees, children as young as four in prison, and poets and journalists tortured just for speaking out.

So what, if anything is being done, by our doughty defender of human rights, bravely speaking out in print, and his government? According to the Burma Campaign UK (via Ten Per Cent), not an awful lot:

With tight restrictions inside the country, organisations and projects promoting human rights and democracy have to be based in exile, and work through underground networks in Burma. Despite the International Development Committee reccomending funding for these organisations, D[epartment] f[or] I[nternational] D[evelopment] is still refusing to fund such projects. Many of these organisations played a crucial role in getting news and images out of Burma during the recent protests and crackdown.

‘This is not joined up government,’ said Mark Farmaner. ‘The government isn’t putting its money where its mouth is. The Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary have been leading the international community in supporting Burma’s democrats, but DFID seems to be going in a different direction, only prepared to deliver aid to people and projects that the Burmese dictatorship agrees to.’

Still, look at it this way, Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma might be no closer to freedom after 120 days of her great admirer being in power, but at least they’re no further from it either. And isn’t that the very essence of our courageous Prime Minister? No boom, no bust, just steady-as-she-goes. Sometimes it takes courage to do absolutely sod all.

Gordon pipes up at last:

Mr Speaker, I would also like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the work of our civilian and locally employed staff in Iraq, many of whom have worked in extremely difficult circumstances exposing themselves and their families to danger.

And I am pleased therefore to announce today a new policy which more fully recognises the contribution made by our local Iraqi staff who work for our armed forces and civilian missions in uniquely difficult circumstances.

Existing staff who have been employed by us for more than twelve months and have completed their work will be able to apply for a package of financial payments to aid resettlement in Iraq or elsewhere in the region, or - in agreed circumstances - for admission to the UK. And professional staff — including interpreters and translators — with a similar length of service who have left our employ since the beginning of 2005 will also be able to apply for assistance.

We will make a further written statement on the detail of this scheme this week.

I’ll wait for the details until commenting further as I’m sure will most people. I have to say though that I really, really, really don’t like the look of that ’staff who have been employed by us for more than twelve months and have completed their work‘ proviso. Don’t put that champagne on ice yet.

See you tomorrow?

UPDATE: And this shouts out as well:

And professional staff — including interpreters and translators — with a similar length of service who have left our employ since the beginning of 2005 will also be able to apply for assistance.

I might be wrong but I’m guessing that excludes teenage laundry workers.

Brown: Hadaway an’ shite, y’friggaz!

British media: OK then.

What a pisspoor display from one and all.

(With apologies to Viz.)

* Praise be unto him

Picture the scene:

Gordon Brown and his advisers are hunkered down in their bunker on Saturday afternoon. They receive advance word of the News of The World’s poll. The Tories are ahead in the marginal seats. To call an election would mean destroying the Labour parties parliamentary majority and force it to slug it out in a hung parliament.

A heavy silence falls on the room. For several minutes nobody says a word. Finally, a shaky voice says,

‘We’re screwed. What do we do now?’

Everybody looks from one to the other. Slowly, Gordon’s broodling sulk starts to lift. As one, everybody says together,

‘Get Marr’.

And so it came to pass.

I don’t have much more to say about this charade. But I would like to ask eveybody who saw Andrew Marr interviewing Gordon Brown: please raise your hand if your intelligence wasn’t insulted by that interview. Please raise your hand if you think Andrew Marr wasn’t handpicked to give Brown the result he wanted. And please raise your hand if you believe any of Brown’s reasons - such as they were - about not holding the election.

How the Brown-Marr summit helped anyone, I’m not sure. Brown looks worse for fronting up to only soft questions. Marr’s reputation sinks further for delivering them. I mean, were Richard and Judy busy or something? Was Davina McCall washing her hair? Patrick Kielty must have had a hangover. It’s hard to imagine them being worse. Marr makes the latter-day David Frost look like a interrogator at Abu Ghraib.

David Cameron says he wants a general election because we’ve in effect had a change of government from the Blair years. On this showing, he couldn’t more wrong. It’s the same old, same old: caught in a lie, a soft interview and pretend none of it happened. It couldn’t have been more apparent if Brown had said he was ‘a pretty straight kinda guy’. And we’ve got another two years of it.

Onwards to Tehran!

It’s been 90 days since Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, and over 100 since he captured her in print and selflessly brought her plight to a wider audience.

But there’s still no word on how Gordon plans to spring Aung San Suu Kyi from her less metaphorical prison. Maybe it’s his October Surprise to woo the activists after he’s called the election.

I suppose I might do something on Gordon Brown’s speech to the Labour conference today - I did Tony’s last couple so it’s probably worth seeing if Gordon’s any improvement oratorically.

I’m not holding out any hopes, mind, and the bloody speech is 13 pages of A4. Including power naps, it may take some time to get through it. In the meantime, Matt Buck has created a tasty reduction.

I think I’m in love (probably just hungry)
Think I’m your friend (probably just lonely)
Think you got me in a spin now (probably just turning)
Think I’m a fool for you (probably just learning)
Think that I can rock and roll (probably just twisting)
Think I wanna tell the world (probably ain’t listening)

Come on…

Think I can fly (probably just falling)
Think I’m the life and soul (probably just snorting)
Think I can hit the mark (probably just aiming)
Think my name is on your lips (probably complaining)
Think that I have caught it bad (probably contagious)
Think that I’m a winner baby (probably Las Vegas)

Come on…

Think I’m alive (probably just breathing)
Think you stole my heart now baby (probably just thieving)
Think I’m on fire (probably just smoking)
Think that you’re my dream girl (probably just dreaming)
Think I’m the best, babe come on (probably like all the rest)
Think that I could be your man (oh, probably just think you can)

Come on…

I think I’m in love, I think I’m in love

(With apologies)

Adam Boulton:

Under Tony Blair Labour dramatically changed the way Westminster did business just by shifting around the parliamentary timetable.

…

The net effect was that the Prime Minister, and MPs needed to spend less time in Parliament.

Gordon Brown is carrying on with these reforms - perhaps surprisingly since he has said that he wants to place parliament at the centre of the national debate. Almost all fixed points in the diary have been moved to the beginning of the week.

…

Far from being held to account more frequently by parliament, the new timetable actually seems to free up the government to behave more like a Presidential administration.

Smooth. An orderly transition of power, I think you could call it. Bloodless, you might say.

So Gordon Brown’s appointed a new adviser to investigate the effects of the internet (specifically violent and sexual imagery) on children. It’s Dr Tanya Byron, erstwhile presenter of the jewels in the BBC’s crown, ‘The House Of Tiny Tearaways‘ and ‘Little Angels‘, where member of dysfunctional families air their problems for the edification of the wider public. You know, the kind of programmes that make you feel like your life’s not so shit after all.

There’s no doubt that Dr Byron has an impressive CV: 17 years as a clinical psychologist and a burgeoning media career that has branched into writing sitcoms. It’s just that, how many people do you think Downing Street looked at before they decided on Dr Byron? Or did they just say, ’sod it, get her off the telly’? Would she have even got the gig without her media profile and is it possible that there are more suitable candidates?

Anyway. I’m probably doing Dr Byron a disservice and she might surprise us all by reaching conclusions and recommendations that don’t mirror Brown’s puritanical instincts or suggest banning anything.

Of course, all of this follows on from Gordon’s love of gritty, gripping television. Or wish-fulfilment, as we in the reality-based community like to call it. We are, after all, talking about a man who once uttered this piece of classic mouth-droppings:

I like TV programmes like X Factor, Dragons’ Den and The Apprentice. They show the value of aspiration, how anyone can achieve things.

It makes you wonder what else might be in the works. I’d give my left plum to be working in the Number 10 policy unit right now. Just think of the possibilities of being able to get the public swallow even more contemptuous and contemptible grift. How about these:

• Noel Edmonds gathers together a bunch of prison officers who have to guess which box contains the best pay rise. All the boxes have next to bugger all in them.
• Gordon Brown sits in a big black chair under a spotlight and is asked questions on his specialist subject by John Humphreys. Brown fails to address a single question properly but is still declared the winner.
• Fifteen suspected terrorists are locked in a house. The ‘housemates’ are then watched all day. That’s it. Not sure, but they might have already thought of this one.
• To stem public outrage over fatcat city bonuses, Bratley K. Twatt and his colleagues will be presented with their cheques by the sebaceous Chris Tarrant, who chuckles ‘I don’t want to give you that’ before handing them even larger cheques.
• Cabinet Ministers appear on a special edition of ‘Just A Minute‘ where they have to speak for a minute on a given subject. Repetition, deviation and hesitation are mandatory. Again, this may have already been thought of.
• Evan Davis takes a group of nurses to a trendy warehouse apartment to watch Duncan Bannatyne counting his money.
• Jeremy Paxman presents a quiz show where two teams of four working class students attempt to make it through higher education.
• Robert Llewellyn asks two teams, red and blue, to build manifestos out of any old shit lying around and then get them to fart around the country without collapsing. The winner gets to bin their manifesto.
• Jim Bowen presents a sporting quiz where he ask members of the public to continue to prop up the British economy. ‘Keep out of the black, and in the red,’ he begs.
• Gordon Brown invites two teams of political journalists to ‘Call My Bluff’. None of them do. Ever.

Gordon, if you’re reading, you can have those for free. Call me, baby.

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.

It’s 28 days since Gordon Brown became Prime Minister and still no word of when he’s going to spring Aung San Suu Kyi. And her being so helpful to his leadership bid and everything.

Most people will probably think this a minor point, a detail of process and thus not worthy of attention. But it’s worth reading if you are at all under any lingering impression that Gordon Brown is on a mission to fix our broken democracy.

Time to start keeping another list. This is number two. Number one is this:

Gordon Brown yesterday tore up Blairite plans for a supercasino based in Manchester… the prime minister had not discussed it with the cabinet.

I’m no fan of super-casinos nor a constitutional expert, but wasn’t there an act of parliament laying this down in law? (Which Brown voted for.) You know, democratic process ‘n’ shit?

Holy heck:

“Remind me, what is the route to the Commons press gallery?” Thus joked one of my colleagues when they realised - and you may find this shocking - that they would have to go to hear the prime minister speak to the House of Commons to hear what his plans were for the constitution. What, I hear you cry, no briefing, no interviews in advance, no quiet word in the ear. The answer is no, no and no.

Of course, this will all change when something goes tits up, as it inevitably will. When, as Brown is in this instance, selling duvets to Eskimos, who needs an advertising campaign?

[T]he whole thing was a predictable let down, which has left the BBC sexing it up by screaming “biggest cabinet change since second world war!” and “surprise changes!”. Some of the Blairite deadwood might have been removed, but some has inexplicably escaped the chop, probably only not to cause immediate ructions between the warring factions.

read the rest

Indeed.

She’s gone!

Mr Brown is thought likely to carry out the bulk of his Cabinet reshuffle on Thursday, but it has already emerged that one definite change will see Patricia Hewitt stepping down as health secretary.

Update: Beckett goes as well.

Er, not exactly.

Even his opening line: “It is with humility and pride… ” was straight out of an old Blair speech, one of those fake oxymorons, like: “it is with modesty and vanity”, the besetting sins of most politicians. The weird pledges: “democracy strengthened by citizens’ juries”. What are they when they’re at home?

Well, what were we expecting? People seem to have this mental blindspot that allows them to ignore the fact that Brown has been the big, fat spider at the centre of the New Labour web all these long years. No wonder he and his supporters moved heaven and earth to avoid a leadership contest. It wouldn’t have done to remind people that your man’s been complicit in all manner of horror, incompetence and mendacity.

Speaking of which, watching the newly elected Harriet Harman reversing away from her campaign pitches like a getaway driver in a dead end would be comedy gold if only it didn’t make the gorge rise.

Harman on Newsnight, May 29, on Iraq:

Clearly it was a mistake, it was made in good faith, but with a new leadership I think we have to acknowledge the bitterness and anger that there has been over Iraq and that we were wrong.

“I am not trying to wriggle out of my responsibility. I just think if you are looking forward and you want to rebuild public trust and confidence, you have got to admit when you got it wrong.

This morning on Radio 4 (RealPlayer required, forward about ten minutes in):

Edward Stourton: You said the war was clearly a mistake and you said the Government should apologise and admit quote we were wrong unquote.

Harriet Harman: Well, I didn’t actually say those two things you said.

She didn’t say those two thing, all right? Here’s video (forward to 13 minutes) of her not saying them, capisce?

Still, it’s all been such a thrilling, engaging spectacle that only half the Labour Party membership could be bothered to vote in the Deputy Leadership election.

Now to invigorate the country.

Well now, this is interesting.

Gordon Brown has promised to reverse the Commons decision to exempt MPs from the Freedom of Information Act. “It will be corrected,” he said of the legislation, passed by MPs 10 days ago. is interesting.

Put the Prime Minister elect in front of an audience of book-loving luvvies and happy camping Hampstead liberals, have Mariella Frostrup purr in his ear, and he folds faster than Tony Blair being told to grab his ankles by Rupert Murdoch.

Not that we should expect that this reversal sets any kind of encouraging precedent, but we can only hope that John Reid’s last gasp grab for Mosleyite posterity is similarly screwed.

So if you are a member of the Labour Party, and were considering using your vote ‘inappropriately’, you should thank the Parliamentary Party, for telling you that you can’t have one. Accept your the leader that has been chosen for you, and know your place. There will be no contest, your views are not required. Those of you that are left knuckle down, keep stuffing the envelopes, knocking the doors, attending the meetings and kidding yourselves that the people running the show are in some way interested in your input.

read the rest

Is Gordon a spammer?

…another one closes.