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Those who followed goings on at the 2005 general election will remember New Labour’s wearyingly cynical and scaremongering tactics that formed the centrepiece of its negative campaign against the Liberal Democrats: Voting Lib Dem will let the Tories in. Peter Hain’s back door was an unpleasant and prominent feature.

It’s now 2010 and in the run up to the forthcoming election, constituents in Hove and Portslade are having this crap from New Labour shoved throught their letterboxes…

click to embiggen

Whoever produced this dross has a very short memory or, probably more likely, a galloping dose of denial. They’ve clearly forgotten or are studiously ignoring this little nugget from a certain Gordon Brown in September 2007…

I am a conviction politician like her, and I think many people will see Mrs Thatcher as not only a person who saw the need for change in our country and took big decisions to achieve that, but also is and remains a conviction politician, true to the beliefs that she holds.

A week later Brown had her round to tea at Downing Street and he paraded his guest in front of the waiting media. When do we get to see that in New Labour campaign leaflets?

EDIT: Sorry, not sure I made it clear that this is a New Labour leaflet I’m talking about here. Here’s the other side of it…

click to embiggen

I’ve edited the post slightly to make things clearer. In short, Thatcher is a source of embarrassment for Clegg, a cause of admiration for Brown.

For some reason Tory pencil-neck Michael Gove is the man chosen for the assault on New Labour’s ties with the Unite union. Apparently Unite has given 11 million quid to Gordon Brown in the last three years. Brown then, if I understand Gove correctly, used the money to usher in the communist dystopia under which we now toil and slave. After the next election, if Unite get their way, Britain will look like the worst bits of Doctor Zhivago.

I was particularly taken with this from Gove:

“Labour’s re-unionisation has put them in bed with the past at a time when it is crucial that this country wakes up to the future.”

The Shadow Secretary for Schools is dishing up metaphor stew. Can you sleep with the past? Does it hog the duvet, I wonder. Also: Wake up! Wake up! The future is nearly here! You don’t want to kip through it, do you Britain? You know, I think Michael Gove might be calling us a bunch of lazy bastards, lolling abed just as something modern and… stuff is about to happen.

And when a Conservative shadow minister uses ‘forces of conservatism’ as a pejorative term, you can pretty much conclude British politics is busted beyond hope. I mean, did it not cross Gove’s mind, even for a second, the nine kinds of prick he might sound like saying that? You’re a Conservative, Michael. You are the forces of conservatism. The clue’s in the first three syllables.

‘In the three years since Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, Unite has spent more than £11 million of its members’ money on buying influence within the Labour Party’. To which the only answer is: it didn’t do them much bloody good did it? Not exactly 11 million quid well spent, was it? Gordon Brown is so grateful for his Kremlin gold that he called the Unite members striking over their working conditions at British Airways ‘deplorable‘.

Still, now we know. All you people who lost your jobs, investments and homes in the last couple of years, hear Gove’s cry: that’s who ruined this country in the last few years, the bastard unions. Them and their sub-prime mortgages, their soft-touch regulation and their multi-billion dollar bail-outs. The red scum.

So here we go again, back where people use words like ‘Gordon Brown’, ‘Labour’ and ’socialist’ in the same breath – in the face of 13 ugly years of New Labour neo-liberal history, no less – and expect to be treated as if they were great observers of the age. Ahistorical doesn’t begin to describe it. Gove’s claims that under Brown ‘class warfare has not only been resurrected; it has been elevated to holy principle’ would read as weapons-grade satire coming from anybody else.

Anybody who thinks the New Labour high command are hard-bitten class warriors huddled around their braziers (have you seen the Milibands?) should be immediately barred from participating in politics for life and for their own safety be permitted to use only a fork with a cork on it at meal times.

Clearly I’m no expert on foreign policy. That’s why I’m typing this in the spare room and not ordering the bombing of villages in Afghanistan.

That said, something bothers me about Foreign Secretary David Miliband’s plan for peace in the country:

This involves three things. First, the reintegration into Afghan society of low-level insurgents prepared to lay down their arms and accept the writ of the government. Second, political engagement with those disaffected by the current settlement, but prepared to renounce violence, split from Al Qaeda and accept the constitutional framework. Third, a wider regional political settlement that sees all Afghanistan’s neighbours and near neighbours supportive of an independent Afghan state.

It sounds like a plan although it does sort of fly in the face of the hardline ‘we don’t negotiate with terrorists’ thing we’re fed when some poor sod is kidnapped and is about to get his head sawn off by an al Qaeda affiliate somewhere. Define ‘low-level insurgents’. Is it those that only work weekends or don’t load their AK-47s?

What if Ken Bigley or Margaret Hassan’s murderers were ‘low-level insurgents prepared to lay down their arms and accept the writ of the government’ being merely ‘disaffected by the current settlement, but prepared to renounce violence, split from Al Qaeda and accept the constitutional framework’?

We need a moral philosopher of Miliband’s calibre to make the distinction between a beheader and a mere IED-layer or woman-stoner. Still, if we’ve learned anything in the last 14 years, it’s that there’s no moral, logical or rhetorical cul-de-sac out of which the likes of Miliband cannot handbrake-turn.

No, what bothers me is this. Hamid Karzai has been the elected leader of Afghanistan since 2004 and we’re only just coming up with this now? This plan’s six years and countless deaths late isn’t it? Mind you, only a cynic would suggest that the glorious liberators of Aghanistan are scrabbling around for this fix now because they’re saddled with a seriously bent partner in Karzai and a military campaign limping into its ninth year.

I for one cannot wait to see the fighters, extremists and women-haters that Miliband is hoping to coax onto our side (not to mention the ones already on our side) implement his much loved universal values.

So the news that Tory peer and millionaire sugar daddy Lord Ashcroft has announced he is ‘non-domiciled’ in the UK for tax is playing out in all the squalid fashion you would expect. It basically boils down to: ‘BREAKING NEWS: We’re both as disgusting and craven as each other when it comes to sheltering tax dodgers say New Labour and Tories.’ They might as well have made a joint statement.

In seeking to obscure their complete lack of honesty over the tax affairs of the man trying to buy the general election for them, the Tories are looking to spread the blame. Look at two of New Labour’s biggest donors, they squealed, Lord Paul and Sir Ronald Cohen are both long-term residents of the UK and also ‘non-doms‘. New Labour reply that the Tories ‘aren’t being straight with people’ (it obviously takes a bunch of wriggling liars to know a bunch of wriggling liars).

Both sides have ended up using a pisspoor and insulting ‘Look! They’re doing it as well!’ excuse for their tax-dodgers as if it’s a defence any normal person could employ in daily life and expect to get away with it. Morality and accountability both got a pasting in the ensuing shit-slinging. All they’ve actually managed to do is further entrench the deeply and widely held belief that the main parties are as bad as each other. That should do wonders for turnout come polling day.

You end up thinking, what are they, like six or something? If I want to watch a bunch of insufferably spoilt shits petulantly screaming at each other about whose fault something is I’ll spend more time with my kids, thank you very much. New Labour and Tory heavyweights John Prescott and Eric Pickles even took it upon themselves handbag the other about their parties’ tax dodgers on Twitter. Salad dodgers defending tax dodgers. It’s even less dignified than it sounds. This election campaign has descended into cheap so fast I can’t believe it’s costing millions to fund.

Meanwhile…

And then there… Toby Helm:

When Sir George Young recently blurted out that Ashcroft was a non-dom on Newsnight he was “corrected” by a spokesman for the party who said Sir George had “miss-spoken”.

No – it now turns out – he hadn’t.

The correction of Young was a lie perpetrated not by the spokesman, who would merely have been taking orders, but by the people at the top.

Some of the testimonies of the survivors of the Child Migrant Programme, which sent ‘poor children for a “better life” to countries like Canada and Australia from the 1920s to 1960s’, and for which the Prime Minister today apologised, are harrowing…

There was this woman, just shouting, shouting at my sister to get up. She was in bed asleep and she’s only five so she was crying and the woman just kept shouting at her. She didn’t have to do that. The search was bad. Why did they have to search my sister? She is only five, what is she going to have? They touch you all over and they’re rough. [1]

…

He had previously been a happy child who was successful at school, but now became very sad, skipped school, lost his appetite, slept poorly, was plagued by nightmares, and screamed in the night. [2]

…

‘I wanted to kill myself all the time I was there. And I think Joseph picked up on how I felt, because he cried so much. Some of his hair fell out, he wouldn’t eat and became ill’ [3]

…

‘You don’t know how it feels to be a kid full of dreams and to feel that nobody cares, that the dreams are not important to anyone. My little sister Jessica is four years old. You think, well, she won’t understand, but in her world Jessica knew what was happening.’ [4]

…

[O]lder children were so stressed they wet their beds and soiled their pants. [5]

…

In actual fact, those testimonies are from children who have been detained and imprisoned by our government in the last few years.

Now, you might think that’s a cheap shot. That it demeans the suffering of those children taken from their families under the Child Migrant Programme and deported overseas where they faced abuse and misery along with the the hard work of the people who support them. I don’t mean to: those people deserve apologies, riches and peace. It’s just… how can the Prime Minister’s apology carry any weight whatsoever when his own government’s agencies are – right now – giving children similar treatment here and then deporting them to countries where they and their parents face abuse or worse? Brown said today…

“We are sorry they were allowed to be sent away at the time when they were most vulnerable. We are sorry that instead of caring for them, this country turned its back.

“And we are sorry that the voices of these children were not always heard, their cries for help not always heeded. And we are sorry that it has taken so long for this important day to come and for the full and unconditional apology that is justly deserved.”

He also said they were cruelly lied to and their childhoods “robbed”, and described the scheme as “shameful” and “a deportation of the innocents”.

Sound familiar? How long until the children of Yarl’s Wood and Dungavel get their apology?

It’s Brown who demeans the suffering of the survivors of the Child Migrant Programme. His apology is worthless while children under his government’s supposed care also suffer.

(Visit the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns website. Sign the Downing Street petition calling on the Prime Minister to end child immigration detention.)

[1] Mark Easton: Children in detention at Yarl’s Wood
[2] The Children’s Commissioner for England’s follow up report to: The arrest and detention of children subject to immigration control
[3] New Statesman: Katherine’s testimony
[4] New Statesman: “My dreams are not important to anyone”
[5] OurKingdom: Roll calls, body searches and sex games

You probably couldn’t give a finch’s fart about this – what with politicians screaming at each other and Our Cheryl splitting up with Ashley – but I thought it would be instructive to see what policies are announced on any given day by the main political parties in the run up to the election. You know, to see if those who want our votes are interested in anything other than screaming at each other.

To find out what’s been announced I’m going straight to the source – the news pages on the respective parties’ websites. It might not be too scientific but they should be pleased: this way I’m not taking anything that’s being filtered through the filthy, biased media. So what have we got for Monday February 23?

Conservative policies: 1

Announcement’s were…

- ‘A New Age of Agriculture – Our Agenda for British Farming’

…also…

- Tories show how ideologically similar to the government they are by parading a minor New Labour defector
- Tories sort of agree with New Labour’s pre-election hard-man crime and punishment window dressing

Lib Dem policies: 2

Announcement’s were…

- Tim Farron set out plans to reform the farm payments system and use the savings to support farm apprenticeships
- Vince Cable sets out the Liberal Democrat plan for the banking sector

…also…

- Labour and Tories are wrong on the economy and I’m right, says Vince Cable

New Labour policies: 0

Announcement’s were…

- The Tories are nasty says Foreign Secretary, David Miliband
- Tories are nasty says John Healey, Housing and Planning Minister

(Actually, ‘Healey announced a boost to housebuilding in England, by confirming nearly £500m funding to build around 8,000 affordable homes across the country’ but I can’t find that positive announcement on the New Labour website. Who told me? The filthy, biased media did.)

If this blog has one theme running through it, it’s a morbid fascination with the grotesque, mewling shapes into which morality – as most of us thankfully recognise it – is often twisted when political pressure is applied to it.

Take Alistair Darling and his peach-like ego for instance. He goes on the telly last night and says Gordon Brown’s crew unleashed the ‘the forces of hell‘ against him when he predicted the worst recession in 60 years, as if he was some poor Germanic tribesman being swooped down upon by a horse-riding, sword-wielding Russell Crowe.

It’s the complete and utter lack of perspective and self-awareness (on both Darling’s part and the way the media have lapped it up) that makes you torn between whether to laugh yourself sick or emigrate with alacrity off this toilet-bound rock. We unleashed ‘the forces of hell’ on millions of Iraqi men, women and children. Alistair Darling had a couple of fat blokes say a few things about him that he didn’t like. He’s still in his job and nobody died.

How about New Labour’s much heralded ‘Fast Track’ asylum system, built to outflank the Tories and appease the right-wing press? Human Rights Watch released a report yesterday that…

…documents how women asylum seekers with complex claims are being routed into a system designed for much simpler claims. The women are held in detention largely for the UK’s administrative convenience, have very little time to prepare a legal case, and have only a few days to appeal if refused. But the claims often involve such sensitive and difficult issues as sexual violence, female genital mutilation, trafficking, and domestic abuse. There is little time for lawyers or other representatives to build the trust with their clients needed for them to explain their claims or to obtain medical or other evidence needed to verify them.

It’s more and more apparent you couldn’t trust Gordon Brown’s moral compass to stop him taking a whizz on the the bathroom rug let alone show some humanity to these people.

Speaking of the devil, the Prime Minister is in this morning’s Telegraph speaking out against assisted suicide. Such deep respect for human life would be laudable, consistent and admirable coming from most people but Gordon Brown was at the centre of a government that assisted at the very least 100,000 Iraqis off this plane of existence.

Is he the right person to be lecturing us that, in high moral tones that ‘I know in my heart that there is such a thing as a good death’? I suppose there’s an argument to be made somewhere that those herds of brown people had good deaths in that they died in the service of the Greater Good (not, unfortunately, the abstract concept but the exclusive club of politicians and business leaders).

Brown’s obvious hypocrisy would be lessened if palliative care centres weren’t having to hold fundraising events and the hospice movement (founded by Brown’s heroine Dame Cicely Saunders) wasn’t scraping to get by. After 13 years of New Labour, many people have anything but ‘a good death’ in this country.

The corollary to an anti-euthanasia stance should be well-funded, universal, humane and dignified palliative care systems, shouldn’t it? His claims to seeing ’such a thing as a good death’ in his heart is one thing, seeing it in his government’s actions is quite another. As with many other things, Brown’s claims to morality on this are engulfed by a greater one. That’s conveniently forgotten, however, when another pitch has to be made to religious voters and Daily Mail readers in an election year.

Douglas Alexander is the Secretary of State for International Development. He’s currently running New Labour’s re-election campaign (or Labour General Election Coordinator as he’s less than grandly titled – have these lot never heard the words Supremo, Caudillo or Kaiser?) because obviously there’s bugger all for a Secretary of State for International Development to do right now.

Anyway. Douglas has been bragging on Twitter that New Labour canvassers ‘made 102,079 contacts on the doorstep in the last week alone’. Contacts on the doorstep. What he means is 102,079 people answered the door when a New Labour activist knocked on it. But that just doesn’t sound as whizzy, technocratic and wanky enough, so he has to jazz it up.

Now, you might say I’m belittling New Labour activists but probably not as much as Douglas who described all their hard work, them being out in all weathers knocking on 102,079 doors, as making ‘contacts on the doorstep’. Plus, in the event of a New Labour victory, the party high command will go back to ignoring the grassroots campaigners until the next election.

What Douglas doesn’t say is how many of those 102,079 ‘contactees on the doorstep’ responded with ‘piss off’ or words to that effect. If we take the 2005 election results as a guide, there’s a rough chance 78 per cent of them did (a mere 22 per cent of the electorate turned out for Team Tony last time around, not that such a piss poor showing stops you from getting a decent majority under our wonderful electoral system).

Come on Douglas, you can have bragging rights to those figures as well if you like. We could call them ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ ‘contacts on the doorstep’. We can then measue how many of those are converted into ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ ‘ballot interface events’.

* I’ve realised that the upcoming general election isn’t a Hobson’s Choice (‘a free choice in which only one option is offered’), it’s a Morton’s Fork (‘a choice between two equally unpleasant alternatives’).

In an election year all parties have to make compromises. Before being thrown into the stewpot of a manifesto, issues and ideas must be chopped, seasoned, stirred, simmered and reduced.

Some would argue that there are ideas that shouldn’t be played with for the sake of politics. The health and well-being of our children for instance. New Labour would beg to differ…

Campaigners today accused the government of performing a U-turn over sex education in faith schools, after changes to a bill they said would allow the schools to discourage the use of contraception and teach that homosexuality is wrong.

Why would a self-styled and so-called ‘progressive’ political party do such a thing, undermining the issues of safe sex and tolerance?

Religion should play a role in British politics, Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy will say in a lecture later. The UK government minister will say connecting with religious voters could help Labour win the general election.

Ah, that’ll be why.

No. 10 deny PM ‘hit’ Iraq. Allegations Gordon Brown pulled the country from its chair and ’shoved’ it are ‘lies’ said a spokesman.

Largely trampled beneath the deeply unedifying flurry of handbags that we must now call Bullygate was the announcement that the Prime Minister is to give evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War on March 5. However, lost in the distant mists of time B.B. (Before Bullygate), was Gordon Brown’s launch of a pre-emptive strike on the Inquiry.

On February 19, 2010 at approximately 15:27 GMT explosions were heard in the Chilcot Inquiry. Special operations commandos from Number 10’s News Management Division, infiltrated throughout Westminster, called in the early air strike.

Getting his retailiation in first, Brown announced ‘the threat of weapons of mass destruction was not the reason he backed the invasion of Iraq’. ‘History will be kind to me for I intend to write it,’ said Winston Churchill. Brown hopes to ape him.

Mr Brown said weapons were not his prime motivation, and instead it was Iraq’s persistent disregard for United Nations’ resolutions which “put at risk” global security.

Ah, yes. Respect for international law and the will of the international community (or at least the five permament members of the UN security council) are important considerations. Although, how a disregard for United Nations’ resolutions in this instance puts global security at risk if we discount WMDs is for much more morally flexible minds than mine.

And isn’t it fortunate that Gordon now reveals he didn’t regard Saddam an imminent threat, just as that argument is shown (once again) to be a stinking pile of mendacious horseshit. If only Brown had had a quiet word in Alastair Campbell’s ear back in 2002, all of this unpleasantness might have been avoided. Brown seems to have had no consideration of Iraqi human rights (as Blair later tried to twist it) and admits Saddam could have stayed in power if only he’d come clean about the weapons he didn’t have.

If anything, Brown’s case for cluster-bombing children is even weaker than Blair’s. At least Blair tried to convince us of some threat that needed countering. Brown makes the deaths of – at the very least – 100,000 people, the destruction of a country, and the debasement of UK foreign policy sound like an early bed time for disobedience. I have children who have a ‘persistent disregard’ for what they’re told. God help them if I take up the Brown Doctrine.

Mission Accomplished.

Still, should Brown win the election I for one look forward to him taking to new theatres his intolerance of countries whose flouting United Resolutions ‘put at risk’ global security. What are the chances, do you think?

It was instructive to hear William Hague rendered speechless over the matter of extra-judicial murder on the radio today. And to think this moral coward wants to be Foreign Secretary after the next election.

At least he was asked the question. The actual Foreign Secretary emerged from a briefing with the civil servant who’d met the Israeli ambassador (the brave Miliband doesn’t seem to want to get his hands dirty with this one) to talk about the events of the last few days as if it was a few people losing their passports while on holiday…

The Permanent Secretary made clear how seriously we take any suggestion of fraudulent use of British passports. He also explained the concerns we have for British passport holders in Israel… We want to get to the bottom of the issue of the fraudulent passports or their potential use. That’s the most important thing for us.

That’s the most important thing for us. You’ll notice there was no making ‘clear how seriously we take’ the possibility of our so-called allies using death squads as tools of policy. There are no apparent ‘concerns’ that peace in the Middle East probably isn’t best reached by ostentatious liquidations in high class hotels (or the puchasing of arms in high class hotels either).

Is Miliband ignoring the issue or has he not thought of it? Is he chary of mentioning it or does he not care? Which qualities best suit a British Foreign Secretary in an age where we see to export our ‘values’ to other countries? There could be a third way: he’s accurately calculated that nobody gives a shit.

See also: Liberal Conspiracy – Mahmoud al Mabhouh: the ethics of state-sponsored assassination

The massive fuss over Labour MP David Wright calling Tories ’scum-sucking pigs’ on Twitter shows that all concerned, including me, having nothing better to do. Political correspondents across Westminster seem to have dropped everything to chase the story with a tenacity not seen since All The President’s Men.

Eric Pickles, Tory Party chairman, hasn’t shut up about it for the best part of two days. He’s starting to sound like a girl who’s had her pigtails pulled. How he of all people can object to being called a pig is anyone’s guess although credit to him for going on the telly at lunchtime. Sacrifices must be made when someone’s saying beastly things about you on Twitter.

It’s also nice to see that some of the Tory bloggers getting their knickers in a twist are those who aren’t above calling people ‘pricks‘ and ‘paedos‘ themselves. It wasn’t so long ago that George Osborne was referring to Gordon Brown as being autistic. Right-wing outrage was more muted on that occasion.

Still, its just another example of how the wit and intelligence has largely fled from British politics. ‘Scum-sucking pigs’, ‘pricks’ and ‘paedos’ – is it really the best we can do? The days of John Wilkes are indeed long behind us.

You know, the likes of David Miliband and Alan Johnson can whine all they like about being outed as the friends of torturers and butchers while trying to supress the details of Binyam Mohamed’s treatment, but it’s not as if New Labour don’t have previous form on this.

To suggest that the government fought this case to avoid embarrassment or save face is just plain wrong…

…is weapons-grade horseshit from our estimable Foreign and Home secretaries.

Tell it to Sandy Mitchell, Les Walker and Bill Sampson who were tortured by the Saudi Arabian government in 2002. The then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told the mens’ families ‘not to rock the boat‘. Labour hired top-notch lawyers to make sure then men didn’t get redress. Was that to avoid embarrassment or save face? A bit of both considering we sell billions in arms to our Saudi mates.

Tell it to Craig Murray who, as UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, was smeared and sidelined for saying he wasn’t too happy that the Uzbek government (our pals in The War Against Terror) had a thing for boiling people to death. Jack Straw had a hand in that as well. His fingerprints were all over these torture cases back in the day. Was Murray’s treatment to avoid embarrassment or save face? Again, arms sales figured in the equation as did the fact that Uzbekistan borders Afghanistan and was the ideal location for coalition air bases.

Tell it to the Egyptian asylum seekers who Tony Blair wanted to deport despite being told the people faced torture and execution. ‘This is crazy. Why can’t we press on?’ said the great man of God. Avoiding embarrassment and saving face? That and appeasing the right-wing press and securing freebie holidays.

This squalid little crew always worked hardest when it came to avoiding embarrassment and saving face. If only they’d put as much energy into running the country.

Geoff Hoon, the Hammer of Iraq, is stepping down as an MP – not in 45 minutes unfortunately but at the general election. In announcing his flouncing he took the opportunity to have a whine about the media…

…newspapers do not always report fairly or accurately and [...] I always tried to take decisions in the best interests of the country…

Poor Geoff, suffering so at the hands of nasty newspapers. It’s good that he’s finally come to the conclusion that newspapers aren’t always the benign collaters of the public record, however late in the day it might be. He clearly thought ‘45 MINUTES FROM DOOM‘ headlines and the hounding of Dr David Kelly showed newspapers acting ‘fairly or accurately’. He’s certainly never felt compelled to make a public statement to the contrary. But then he did have a filthy hand in both squalid affairs.

Still, there is more joy in heaven over one lost sinner who repents etc.

The Prime Minister celebrates a man released from torment…

His story reminds us that that there is no corner of the earth so far away, no injustice so entrenched, no enemy so powerful that people of good conscience cannot campaign for change and win.

No, he wasn’t talking about Binyam Mohamed.

Away from the calamity and misery Blair’s government visited upon brown people, have you seen the misery and calamity his successor’s is visiting upon brown people?

How about…

A group of women being held at Yarl’s Wood immigration centre are refusing food for a fifth day in protest over the length of detention and being separated from children… On Monday, day four of the hunger strike, a group of about 50 women tried to move around the centre and were locked in a corridor. The women say they were held there for hours on end without water or access to a toilet. They told campaigners some of them had fainted.

…or…

Claims that asylum seekers are mistreated, tricked and humiliated by staff working for the UK Border Agency are to be investigated in parliament… Louise Perrett, who worked as a case owner at the Border Agency office in Cardiff for three and a half months last summer… alleges that one official boasted to her that he tested the claims of boys from African countries who said they had been forcibly conscripted as child soldiers by making them lie down on the floor and demonstrate how they shot at people in the bush. Perrett… said interviews were conducted without lawyers, independent witnesses or tape recorders. If a case was difficult, Perrett claims, she was simply advised to refuse it and “let a tribunal sort it out”. Only cases raised by MPs appeared to be dealt with properly… One of her cases involved a Congolese woman who had the right to remain in the UK. Perrett says a superior nevertheless decided the woman and her children should be removed…

The BNP’s immigration aspirations are enough to bring people onto the streets. And yet the active and dangerous immigration policies of a so-called Labour government elicits barely a squeak much beyond refugee advocacy groups. It’s time to give less attention to the damage a potential (and impossible) Griffin government might do to refugees and time to start having a look at what damage a very real Brown government is doing to refugees.

Where’s the outrage? Where are the eggs and howling mobs for the people who are actually doing this rather than the the people who will do it if a billion-to-one psephological chance comes to pass? How about taking a little bit of the anger reserved for fools like Nadine Dorries and directing it at the thugs of the UK Border Agency?

You can say a Tory government would be worse than New Labour on immigration and the way it treats refugees but the way New Labour has treated refugees over the last 13 years is one of its deeper shames amongst many. It cracks wide open the big shitty lie of Gordon Brown’s claim of having a ‘moral compass’.

Like I said, where’s the outrage? All I can hear is a Daily Mail silence. A Tory silence.

(More information at the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns where you can sign up for email alerts and help campaigns.)

So anyway. While Alastair Campbell gets the collywobbles over being asked to give a straight answer to a straight question and Tony Blair is whinging about the ‘conspiracy theorists‘ that won’t leave him alone (it’s great to know it really bothers him), how are things in long-forgotten Iraq?

(You remember Iraq, don’t you? That place out east that this is all about in the first place. It’s easy to forget that what with all these politicians’ fragile egos, reputations and book sales to worry about).

It seems that, seven years after the war, achieving democracy in Iraq remains very much an ‘aspiration’ (New Labour, after all, loves a good ‘aspiration‘; they’re so pleasingly lacking in concrete and promise). When giving evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry, Blair said: ‘It is too early to say right now whether the Iraqi democracy will take root and will function effectively, although… there are really hopeful signs.’

Really hopeful signs?

Last month, an unelected commission held over from the early days of the US occupation of Iraq, the Justice and Accountability Commission, issued a shocking ruling banning more than 500 candidates from taking part in the election, including a number of members of the current parliament running for reelection… Secular politicians, nationalists, former Baathists with low-level positions, dissident Baathists who left the party in the 1970s (such as Allawi and Mutlaq), and many others are painted as blood-stained criminals and “Saddamists.” The fact that Maliki has descended to such bitter and petty name calling signals that the prime minister has abandoned any pretense of trying to rise about sectarianism to become a national leader. For the election, at least, Maliki has thrown his lot in with the pro-Iranian clique. *

The Justice and Accountability Commission is run by Ahmed Chalabi. He, for those who don’t remember, was the Iraqi exile and ‘convicted fraudster‘ who helped supply the piss poor intelligence on Iraq’s WMD that made the ‘case’ for war. Funny how all the comedians with a hand in doing that are still around and doing well.

So much for the ‘really hopeful signs’ for Iraqi ‘democracy’ (does that jackass even read the newspapers, do you think?) How are things for ordinary Iraqis? Let’s have a look…

More than 40 sites across Iraq are contaminated with high levels or radiation and dioxins, with three decades of war and neglect having left environmental ruin in large parts of the country, an official Iraqi study has found. Areas in and near Iraq’s largest towns and cities, including Najaf, Basra and ­Falluja, account for around 25% of the contaminated sites, which appear to coincide with communities that have seen increased rates of cancer and birth defects over the past five years…

Just super. Anyone see ‘really hopeful signs’ there? And to think Tony’s worried about his toxic legacy.

* Thanks to Mr P for the link.

Hello you. How are things? What have I missed?

I didn’t see much news in the last couple of weeks but the headlines from the Chilcot Inquiry managed to waft their way to my holiday bolthole. Claire Short and former Foreign Office lawyer Elizabeth Wilmhurst may have got the applause but for me the stars of the inquiry so far have been two other faces from the squalid past, namely Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell.

(more…)

God, it’s going to be a long few months before the general election and we get the privilege of rubber stamping the next elected dictatorship. Does the mind not reel at the prospect of having to listen to week upon week upon bloody week of this kind of horse’s doings from the likes of Harriet Harman?

“We have to understand that we now have a new cohort of well, active, healthy older people. The role that they play in their families, in the economy and in society must be recognised and responded to. We must recognise the emergence of the “wellderly”.”

You can just picture the warm little thrill she got when she said that, can’t you? I bet she did her best ‘aren’t I clever’ look. I sometimes think that some people are against all-women shortlists for parliamentary seats for no other reason other than the fear that such a system might turn up another Harman.

Anyway, her talking down to the electorate got me thinking. There must be loads of condescending does-he-take-sugar neologisms that New Labour could half bake in order to patronisingly pigeonhole thinking, breathing human beings. How about…

We now have a new cohort of well, active, incontinent older people. We must recognise the emergence of the “smellderly”.

…or…

We now have a new cohort of well, active, sexy older people. We must recognise the emergence of the “bombshellderly”.

…and…

We now have a new cohort of well, active, anti-social older people. We must recognise the emergence of the “neighbourfromhellderly”.

…then there’s…

We now have a new cohort of well, active, healthy older people aghast at the destruction of our civil liberties under New Labour. We must recognise the emergence of the “orwellderly”.

Then we’ve got the ‘farewellderly’ (never going to vote New Labour again).

One would think and hope that, in their attempt to overthrow Gordon Brown, Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt acted alone and under their own initiative.

The alternative is too fantastical to contemplate. Imagine a darkened office in the Palace of Westminster where the Brownout plotters are gathered in the shadows. A hand reaches from the darkness for the telephone which is on the desk lit by an angle-poise lamp. Its silhouetted owner’s voice says into the mouthpiece: ‘This is a job for our top operatives. Get me Hoon and Hewitt’. Doesn’t work, does it?

The less said about Patricia Hewitt and her ‘would you like an ice cream, little boy?‘ demeanour the better. Geoff Hoon, should we forget, once suggested ‘that mothers of Iraqi children killed by cluster bombs would “one day” thank Britain for their use.’ Jacob Bronowski he most certainly is not. If these two were the finest minds the shadowy anti-Brown conspiracy has to offer, it’s well and truly knackered.

(See also the much used ‘Gordon Brown is the best man to lead this government’ line. Unfortunately, for a hollowed-out and intellectually bereft New Labour, he is.)

See also: ‘Who would rally to Geoff Hoon’s flag? Who would die in a ditch with Patricia Hewitt?‘

Unfortunately in these circumstances, silence is seen as treachery – ministers has to say something to avoid the appearance of complicity. What they should have done was get together and agree to pretend they’d heard nothing about the ‘plot’.

So when a journalist asked : ‘Minister, what do you think of Geoff Hoon and Patricia coup attempt?’ They could say: ‘Hoon? Hoon? Where do I know that name? Ah, yes. Didn’t he make the tea during the war?’ or ‘THEIR WHAT?’ and then walk away laughing uproariously and shaking their heads.

Fans of barely restrained fury and sneering condescension should make a note in their diaries for next week. That’s when Alastair Campbell makes his appearance before the Iraq Inquiry. I just hope for his and the inquiry members’ sakes that he remembers to visit the stationery cupboard beforehand…

One of the most vivid details to emerge from the [David] Kelly affair was that Alastair Campbell had used a pin held in the palm of his hand to control his temper while testifying to the foreign affairs committee. Each time he felt the explosive urge, the story went, he would squeeze on the pin and the pain would distract him from the immediate provocation. Like many stories about Campbell, this one wasn’t entirely accurate – it was actually a paper clip – but the gist was true.

It’s good to know this man spent so long at the heart of government.

I’ve lived in Hove and Portslade for ten years. There are a lot of foxes around and about the place. I like them very much. I was once woken in the night by five of the cheeky so-and-sos having a Mexican stand-off in the street. It was ace.

In the time before the fox-hunting ban I don’t once recall seeing a contingent of red-jacketed horse-riders galloping across Hove and Portslade’s urban parks in pursuit of a foxy quarry. So I’m a little puzzled as to why the local MP Celia Barlow, who has a hyper-marginal majority of just 420 votes, is taking the time in the middle of a recession to remind her constituents that it’s the 5th anniversary of the less than incredibly successful fox hunting ban.

(I’m less puzzled as to why she copy’n'pasted her template press release like other New Labour lobby fodder automatons such as Clive Betts, Wayne David, Gillian Merron, Vera Baird, Jacqui Smith, Nick Ainger. The unreachable in pursuit of the immaterial.)

It’s very good news that the thousands of children sent to the British colonies in the mid 20th century, only to suffer terribly at the hands of those supposed to care for them, are about finally receive some small recognition.

It also means that another group of migrant children, taken against their will and abused in government institutions only have forty or fifty years to wait for their own apology.

And there there’s… These children shouldn’t worry either. We as a nation will one day – sometime mid-century if the convention is followed properly – also look back on their treatment with a sense of shame. Today, not so much.

So the Home Secretary Alan Johnson sacks Professor David Nutt as chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs because Nutt’s recent pronouncements ‘cause confusion between scientific advice and policy‘.

There you have it in black and white – the writ of the Daily Mail reading classes trumps science. As Jamie Kenny says, ‘what does it say about any scientist who would agree to work for the government under these conditions?’

Still, we can probably expect a rush of new policy initiatives from the Home Office now they’re being open about the dissonance between policy and science…

- Alan Johnson bans antibiotics saying ‘we must instead trust to the graces of Saint Dymphna and not confuse scientific advice with policy.’

- Alan Johnson says prospective female MPs are to be vetted with trial by drowning. ‘We must not confuse scientific advice with policy,’ he says.

- Alan Johnson announces the introduction of daily human sacrifices to ensure sun comes up. ‘We must not anger the Fire Gods or confuse scientific advice with policy,’ he says.

- Alan Johnson says he is to have Galileo exhumed so he can sack him because his scientific advice does not reflect policy.

That damned science. You just can’t trust it. I mean, where’s it got us, all that scientific study? Poor Alan. The whole world must have him in a constant state of terrified confusion. I bet he keeps running around the back of his telly so he can try and catch the little Eastenders inside it. My dog does the same whenever a cat comes on.

Still, at least scientific advisers to the government know where they stand now. They can tailor their advice to the counter-Enlightenment mores of little Englanders – and the prejudices of desperate ministers with their eyes on the dole queue – or sling their hooks. As Jack Pickard says, this government cherry-picking of science makes it difficult to trust any of its scientific advisers to tell the truth. Unless, that is, they are immediately sacked afterwards for telling it.