Day 5283: Elephant v Home Office

Friday:


The story so far…

At the Leadership hustings on Wednesday, Mr Tim the Tim Lord challenged us not to let the Party of Grimond, Penhaligon and Kennedy die on our watch*.

And Mr Norman "Conquest" Lamb impressed me with his radical proposals on prison and drugs policies.

And I described the Home Office as our "natural enemies".

In reply to a comment, I said I would defend this idea. The Home Office want increased security. It's their job. But mostly they do this by reducing liberty. Defending liberty is OUR job. This very naturally puts us on opposite sides.

(Though, as I also said, as with most things I say, it WAS supposed to be amusing/satirical rather than extremely literal, too.)

This is ALREADY a big issue, what with the Conservatory Government dropping their manifesto pledge to abolish the Human Rights Act even before Mrs the Queen had sat down for her first speech.

Lord Chancellor Michael "Gollum" Gove Sheepishly Presents the Speech to Her Majesty, sans British Bill of Rights

But the Speech did contain…

…an "Investigatory Powers Bill" aka Return of the Snooper's Charter, to collect your every random browse on the Internet;

…and a "Psychoactive Substances Bill" that plans to ban anything that might legally give you pleasure;

…and an "Extremism Bill" to ban "extremist groups", "extremist mosques" and "extremist broadcasts"… presumably to be followed by "extremist thought crimes";

…and an Immigration Bill to make "illegal working" a criminal offence and extend the principle of "deport first, worry about whether they've survived to appeal later" to all immigration cases;

…and a "Police and Criminal Justice Bill" because, what the heck, it's an annual tradition nowadays and we can sweep up anything left we've forgotten to criminalise into that.

So it's not like the Home Office ISN'T BUSY driving a tank across everything the Liberal Democrats were protecting during the Coalition.

Not to mention Mr Balloon's frankly TERRIFYING speech stating that:

"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'.".

So, even if you obey the law they're STILL going to come and get you.

What happened to Habeus Corpus? Did Magna Carta die in vain?

And now the Prime Monster is saying British Muslims are (quoting the BBC's headline): "…'quietly condoning' IS ideology"; perhaps it's time someone told him to stop LOUDLY ADVERTISING for the terrorists!

(and things are getting pretty DIRE if I'm agreeing with the Grauniad's numpty Owen Jones .

Next thing, I'll be saying Pollyanna Toytown is right about wind farms!)

In a time of AUSTERITY, people feel afraid, afraid for their jobs and the security of a roof over their families' heads. And it's all too easy for politicians to tell them that (to quote Tim again) the blame lies with the foreigners for taking their houses rather than the politicians for not building the houses in the first place or the voters for not voting for politicians who’ll build and reduce their house prices.

The treatment of migrants and asylum seekers and the people daily being people-trafficked across the Med (or drowning in the attempt) is urgently topical.

Government ministers' talk about "pull factors" and "encouraging more" is, quite simply, OBSCENE when people are dying. These are human people and they have left their homes, fled across continents, because of PUSH factors – War, Famine, religious genocidal maniacs – which massively outweigh any trifling "pull" considerations.

It seems there are really only three possible solutions:

1. Let them drown!
2. Annex dirty great chunks of the Middle East and North Africa to establish new, secure safe zones where they can build cities and jobs for themselves protected by our military, i.e. a new IMPERIUM, exactly what we're accusing Russia of doing (and bearing in mind that we would need to spend an awful lot of money and possibly lives to do this properly)!
3. Actually do our bit and let them come here.

Call me old fashioned, I favour option THREE.

Iraq, and to a lesser extent the bombing in Libya, has demonstrated the limits of our ability to control foreign interventions given the amounts of money and lives that we are willing to expend (i.e. not very much of either).

Instead it seems that we are going to leave them either in the water, in terrible danger in their own countries, or in effectively concentration camps in Italy and Greece (Greece! As if the Greeks weren't in enough trouble!).

Immigration is GOOD for the country – any country! It drives growth in GDP. It could be good for OUR country.

But to feel that benefit we need to ensure that we build the houses, services and infrastructure to support the people here. But building those things CREATES jobs, including the fabled "British jobs for British workers" (and also British jobs for anyone else willing to do them!).

We should be LEADING the call – as Paddy Ashdown did when saying we should give British passports to citizens of Hong Kong in the lead up to the hand back to China – for not a few hundred or a few thousand but for a few HUNDRED THOUSAND rescued migrants to come here to start a new life. Britain will DO OUR DUTY and stop blaming it all on poor, impoverished Greece and the EU.

Meanwhile, a lot of anti-EU rhetoric is being driven by the spurious claim that we are unable to deport foreign criminals.

We should be telling people loudly that this is a sign of PATHETIC WEAKNESS in a Home Secretary!

If people are criminals then we should be prosecuting and punishing people HERE. If you are so WEAK that you need to chuck them out of the country and make it someone else's problem, then probably you are not FIT to be Home Secretary let alone Prime Monster.

And IF we are so PROUD of British Justice, then why would we NOT be willing to hold it up to international scrutiny? Our record is INCREDIBLY GOOD, and we win VERY NEARLY ALMOST ALL of the cases that go before the Court in Europe.

(And let's be clear: it's a Court of UNIVERSAL Human Rights IN Europe, not Rights OF Europeans or OF Europe – we'd have a GLOBAL International Criminal Court one excep, China and America refuse to live up to their protestations of upholding Human Rights! Even Russia is technically a signatory!)

Once again, we should say that if you think we need to withdraw from scrutiny then you clearly don't think British Human rights are UP TO MUCH.

Well, I rather think they ARE, and that the Conservatories are a bit PATHETIC for not trusting that we DO uphold Human Rights.

But nobody is perfect, and having an outside body that can look from time to time and say where we might – might – have to consider that we could be wrong… only a SOCIOPATH thinks they're never wrong.

As I went on to say in that comment: I think saying the Home office wants to increase security is being NICE to them. I'd suggest that very often the Home Office does things that reduce liberty and do NOT increase security:- counter-productive measures like stop-and-search or "go home poster vans" which generate resentment and breed threats to security; and ludicrous security theatre - like ID cards or the snoopers charter - which is in the business of looking like it's doing something but actually wastes resources, money, time, manpower, on activity that achieves NOTHING.

We have had more than three decades of the Home Office making more and more grabs for power – and over the same time saying that they can do less and less to protect us; three decades of Home Secretaries and Shadow Home Secretaries trying to outbid each other on toughness, outflank each other to the crackdowns, racing to the bottom of the Civil Liberties barrel. Michael "of the night" Howard sending pregnant women to give birth in chains; Tony "Lord" Blairimort, brutally profiteering from the horrible death of Jamie Bulger; Jack "the sinister minister" Straw; David "detention without trial" Blunkett, and the declassified reclassified cannabis; Charles Clarke, the safety elephant; "nice" Dr John Reid and the I.D.iot cards; Jacquie Spliff, the Second Home Secretary… the list goes on, each more authoritarian than the last; most recently we've had Teresa "nuts in" May and Yvette "the Snooper" Cooper vying to be worst yet.

And yet for all their "strong on crime" posturing, for all their "not giving in to terror", every last one of them CAPITULATES instantly, the moment someone (from security or the police) comes along and SCARES them with talk of "the bad people".

"Oh, we need more money, or more powers to arrest people, or to intercept their Instagrams, or to look inside their fluffy brains. Only then will you be safe, only then can we protect you from the paedo-terror-drug-militants… at least until the next time we ask."

It is, quite literally, a PROTECTION RACKET.

And if Her Majesty's far too loyal Opposition will not OPPOSE the madness, then by all that's fluffy WE fluffing well should!

Day 5022: Conference Season – Now Everyone Wants to Be the Liberal Democrats*

Wednesday:


Welcome to Glasgow, Liberal Democrats (though for wedding reasons Daddies can’t be there).

What with Hard Labour out to steal our Mansion Tax and the Conservatories shamelessly trying to claim our raise in the Personal Allowance, it’s beginning to look a lot like the agenda for the next government is already being set by the Liberal Democrats.

Ah, Party Conferences – a Tale of Two Nitwits, as Charles Dickens very nearly had it.

“It was the worst of times; it was the most hilarious of times,” Mr Balloon might have said, or Mr Milipede might have forgotten to say.

So there were the leaders’ speeches: Mr Milipede promised to save the NHS, but omitted to mention the one thing he’d rather not talk about, namely the steaming great black hole of an economy we’re still left with; and then Mr Balloon promised to save the NHS, but managed to misspeak that he resents the poor, before going on to not leave a tip at the posh burger hut.

Somewhere the ghost of Dr Freud is having a chat about satire with Tom Lehrer.

There was the traditional roll-out of “tempting” new policies. For Hard Labour, a pledge to make employers pay minimum wage earners an extra £1.50 by about 2020. And a promise to sweep away the problems of the health service with a massive two-and-a-half billion in extra cash, totally dwarfing the extra, er, three billion pounds injected by the Coalition. Just this year.

Too little too late.

It could be Hard Labour’s next election slogan. The Country is crying out for a genuinely BOLD alternative to business as usual, a change from the Rich and the City doing very nicely while it’s austerity all round for the rest of us, but the best Labour can come up with is more of the same but a little bit less so.

Mr Milipede’s “don’t mention the economy” moment (he didn’t mention it once and didn’t get away with it), is just too perfect a metaphor for the emptiness of Hard Labour’s offering. It’s actually the sort of error that it’s impossible to recover from – because there’s no way the Tories or the Tory press are going to let him – but with six months to go, Hard Labour are saddled with him and he with them. If he loses, it will certainly have the fluffy foot of fate pointed at it as the defining moment of his failure.

But, if it is possible, what was worse than the TIMIDITY of suggesting a rise to a mere £8 an hour after five more years of inflation, was Mr Milipede trying to sell us this on the grounds that it RAISED MONEY FOR THE GOVERNMENT. The poor workers get to pay more in taxes and receive less in tax credits, so Mr Balls is quids in in the Treasury, but whatever happened to helping the low-paid?

Make the Minimum Wage £10 an hour. From 2015. And don’t tax people on it. That would be a GAME CHANGING, not to mention VOTE WINNING promise. Give the people who need it most MORE of their own money to spend and see if it doesn’t boost the economy AND lift people out of poverty.

I want to be EVEN MORE radical! I want to see an economy that genuinely shares its successes – a kind of John Lewis Partnership of Britain, with a British Dividend, a share of the GDP for everyone, so that you’re rewarded for work but not totally dependent on your job. Because success comes from companies that work together, not from bosses and workers trapped in a them-and-us conflict.

Labour just want to tinker with the already broken system that enslaves people in zero-hours jobs and poverty pay.

The Conservatories, on the other fluffy foot, want to abolish your Rights. And if that doesn’t persuade you, how about some money!

Seriously, though, if you ever wanted reasons to vote for the Liberal Democrats, you just have to tot up the Tories shopping-list of TERRIBLE IDEAS that we have STOPPED them thrusting down your necks in the last five years:

• a tooth-grindingly tough freeze on in-work benefits; 
• a stomach-churningly butch new payment card to control what your benefits are spent on, that won’t in any way humiliate or allow the government to keep tabs on you, and of course won't even work – a sort of I.D.(S) card, in fact; 
• an eye-wateringly tighter squeeze on the benefits cap…

I’d say it was all an exercise in willy-waving, but, er…

And finally, of course, there were the Party Games. Pin the Tale on the Dimbledonkey. Call My Bluff. Do the In-Out-In-Out Hokey-Cokey. And of course Hunt the West Lothian Question. First Mr Balloon managed to derail Hard Labour’s agenda, by making the talk of their conference all about English Toasts for English Muffins. Sauce for the goose, then, when Mr Froggage the Kipper managed to derail the Conservatories’ agenda, by making the talk of their conference all about which rat would be next to jump ship.

(You can probably understand the kind of crossness that prompted inept Tory Chairperson Shan’t Gaps to bawl from the platform: “he lied and lied and lied”, but it was… let’s just say UNWISE. You didn’t need to be Mystic Meg to foresee UKIP’s reply: “Mr Balloon promised a referendum on Europe, he promised to cut immigration; he promised to balance the books: he lied and lied and lied.”)

It’s not that there ISN’T a good answer to the “English Votes” question. The answer, OBVIOUSLY, is that England does not deserve SECOND-CLASS, SECOND-HAND MPs.

Why should people in England ONLY get one overworked MP when every voter in Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland has BOTH an MSP/AM/MLA to address their devolved policies AND an MP to represent them at the national level? Mr Balloon is trying to SHORT-CHANGE the English YET AGAIN.

You do have to admit, the Pie-Faced – not to mention TWO-faced – Prime Monster… mmmm, two pies… I’m drifting… Mr Balloon is good at pulling a FAST ONE. His turn on the steps of Downing Street the morning after the referendum before was as cunning as fox coming out the henhouse claiming that all those feathers were because he’d been doing the dusting. Mr Milipede OUGHT to have shut that down FAST by WELCOMING the forthcoming SCOTLAND BILL and saying how much he looked forward to the discussions that would lead to an ENGLAND BILL to follow.

After all, the question of “devo max” has been very fully discussed in Scotland; the question of what the English peoples want has barely been touched upon. Certainly it’s not something that can be answered by Mr Balloon pondering it over his cornflakes and deciding, you know what, the answer must be what Tory policy has been all along and nobody wanted.

Instead Milipede Minor gave us his famous “Wallace-caught-in-headlights” look. It was as if he’d forgotten to think about something. Again.

For a so-called Political Wonk, he’s really not good on the issues very much, is he?

So in the Red Corner we’ve got a promise to be REALLY hard on skivers and you’ll get a bit more money, eventually, sometime, paid for by someone else, if they can afford it, maybe. And tears about the NHS. And in the blue corner we’ve got a promise to be REALLY REALLY hard on scroungers and you’ll get no Human Rights but a bit less tax, and more if you’re rich. And tears about the NHS.

It’s almost like they’re all trying not to win the next general election. Is it like getting the Defence Against the Dark Arts job at Hogwarts?


*Except, probably, for Theresa "British values will prevail against extremism and that’s why I’m abolishing them!” May.

Our Hoax Secretary would rather make an outrageous speech that tries to cover up for her own department’s inadequacies with a “won’t somebody think of the children” and a claim that Liberal Democrats protecting your Internet records were somehow responsible for her losing data and failing to act.

Day 4657: If Theresa May Was A Terrorist – a Thought Experiment

Tuesday:


This week Theresa May accused Cap’n Clegg of Hating Britain* for putting the Human Rights of terrorists and criminals above ordinary people.

That’s because Ms May does not understand that Human Rights are not to protect terrorists, they are to protect people who get called “terrorists”.

So, as an experiment, let us imagine that Theresa May is a terrorist.

It’s not that hard to imagine… she’s the head of an organisation that preaches messages of hate to frighten people, snatches people off planes for intimidation, targets certain people in the streets and, of course, occasionally shoots innocent people dead.

Er, okay, this is just a thought experiment, isn’t it?

Anyway, since Ms May doesn’t believe “terrorists” deserve Human Rights, then let’s see how well she does without them, shall we?

Let’s call her a “terrorist”.

Shouldn’t we have to prove that?

Well, a Fair Trial is one of her Human Rights, so I guess not.

So we’ll lock her up.

Oh, no we can’t do that because Liberty is one of her Human Rights… oh hang on.

But shouldn’t she be allowed to hire a lawyer at least?

Well, we’ll just seize all her money. No protection of Property without your Human Rights you see.

But we can’t just do that because of what she thinks… can we?

As it happens Freedom of Thought is another of those pesky Human Rights.

Isn’t she allowed to protest?

Aaaaactually, guess what, Free Speech is one of her Human Rights, so that’s gagged her too.

You can’t actually gag her though, that’s cruel and unusual!

But, since you mention it, Protection from Torture and Degrading Treatment is, guess what, a Human Right.

If you carry on like this you’ll end up killing her!

Funnily enough, I was just coming to that…



So Ms May, if you want to abolish the Human Rights Act, which rights don’t you want? It’s not hard; there’s only ten of them:

1. the Right to Life
2. the Right to Protection from Torture and Degrading Treatment
3. the Right to Protection from Slavery
4. the Right to Liberty and Freedom
5. the Right to a Fair Trial and No punishment without Law
6. the Right to respect for Private Life, including the right to Marry
7. the Right to Freedom of Thought, Religion and Belief
8. the Right to Free Speech and Free Assembly and Protest
9. the Right to Freedom from Discrimination
10. the Right to Protection of your Property


*Or was that was the Daily Heil.

Day 4394: The Turn of the Tide

Friday:

Never give up hope.

Would I personally have celebrated the halfway point of our shackling to the Nasty Party by voting for a 1% cap on most working age benefits, another miserable compromise, watering down slavering Tory attacks on the less well off, because something is better than nothing?

Would I want to be in a place where anyone has even heard the phrase "triple dip"?

Would I call the first half of this Coalition a SUCCESS? After TUITION FEES, the NHS bill, the AV debacle, Lords Reform failing, and just Jeremy Hunt...

But Hard Labour want to ban FROSTIES.

The considered response of Her Majesty's Loyal Opportunists to the economic crisis and the health of the nation is... to outlaw a sugared breakfast cereal*.

Ladies and gentlebums, things could CLEARLY be a WHOLE LOT WORSE!

I wouldn't be QUITE so smug if I were the Labour Party on 40% in the polls given their historical propensity for dropping 10% between their mid-term and polling day, often just over the course of an election campaign.

At the moment, if you want to voice discontent, or even just grumble about the state of things, then as opposition goes they're the only game in town.

But if you look at what they're OFFERING it's just MORE OF THE SAME – more borrowing, more PFI schemes, more borrowing, a temporary VAT cut, did I mention more borrowing – another meal of reheated TURKEY, leftovers from the Mr Frown era, based on the assumption that NOTHING HAS CHANGED (except a few banks are not so popular anymore) in a World where EVERYTHING is different.

Their answer to the question raised by the 1% benefit threshold – "how would you tackle the alternative of a three billion pound overspend on the benefit bill?" – is the simply fatuous "we would have more people in employment". If Governments could DO that, do you think the Coalition wouldn't? (Actually, some people DO think that, but we'll take sane commentators only, please.) Governments of all colours have shown again and again that they are VERY BAD at creating jobs (except by directly employing people which, by simple maths, costs MORE than any possible "savings").

Labour's NEW policies have not yet been tested because, well, (banning Frosties aside) they haven't GOT any new policies. Mr Balloon tried the tactic of having no policies and springing "the Big Society" on us during his manifesto launch. History tells us this that is NOT the strategy of a WINNER.

HINDSIGHT makes it SO easy to score hits off the Coalition, and off Cap'n Clegg (now on Pirate Radio!) in particular. No one has EVER done this before, a Coalition in the era of Presidential Politics, and Parties considered to be monolithic rather than the fluid pre-War groupings. I don't remember ANYONE mapping out a way to do this, let alone a BETTER way to do this.

So if you think we should have gone for DIFFERENTIATION sooner (from Day One)... you're forgetting that we were OPTIMISTIC, we wanted this government to be SYNTHESIS, a great reforming government, the best of Liberal AND Conservative traditions, and that the Coalition Agreement looked like it could deliver that. AND we were OPTIMISTIC that the voters would see what we were doing and approve of it as "grown up politics" – kind of like the voters always SAID that that was what they wanted.

OPTIMISM isn't WRONG. OPTIMISM is what you need if you are to be creative; it's the power you need to drive great change and to carry people with you.

DIFFERENTIATION is a strategy for when SYNTHESIS isn't working. DIFFERENTIATION is for when voters are BLAMING you for compromise rather than AGREEING there must be give and take. To have adopted DIFFERENTIATION from Day One would have been to abandon any chance of greatness for this Government.

Of course it DIDN'T WORK. It's a classic PRISONER'S DILEMMA – the optimal strategy is for BOTH SIDES to work together. But GAME THEORISTS tell you your PERSONAL STRATEGY is always better to SHAFT your partner. There were a determined band of Tories (up to and including Master Gideon) who WERE practising differentiation from Day One. But that wasn't down to us.

Did they "outplay" us? That depends on whether you think being in Government is a GAME or a serious attempt to make things BETTER for people. And that's not to say that certain parliamentarians (up to and including Master Gideon) DO think of it as a GAME.

In those terms, in the short term, the answer is yes. Obviously yes. They set out to destroy Lib Dem policy after Lib Dem policy (or, still more accurately, COALITION POLICY after COALITION POLICY) and won quite a lot.

Mind you, the price is that they have made the Conservative Party unelectable FOREVER. At least as it is presently constituted. There will never, ever be another majority Conservative government. Too much of their Party now will not come in from the RIGHT. Up to and including Master Gideon and his lust for a tax cut which, by giving handouts to the rich, broke the Tories in the opinion polls. And EVERY Tory Prime Minister of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Century from Balfour through to Lord Blairimort will tell you you can ONLY win from the Centre.

Which doesn't help build a Liberal Agenda for the SECOND HALF of this Coalition.

It is hard to remain OPTIMISTIC.

That's not to underplay the areas where we ARE making a big difference: in GREEN ENERGY and GREEN ECONOMY; or the work Mr Dr Vince is doing to create APPRENTICESHIPS and support and invest in British success industries; or the prospect of EQUAL MARRIAGE.

But we see ever more BARKING MAD policies being brought forward by our Conservatory uncivil partners – this week: "let's privatise the probation system!" – while constitutional and institutional reform founders.

(And the Prime Monster tosses us a bone of "fixing primogeniture" – our process for picking a Head of State may be undemocratic, promote privileged and the corruption that goes with a fixed establishment, and strangle innovation with nostalgia, but at least it will no longer be inherently sexist! The inclusion of persons married to a Catholic, who would formerly have been barred, does not WIDELY increase the pool of potential candidates. Prince Charles – more in sorrow than anger no doubt – declares his opposition to even this little reform lest, get this, some future second child should try to take the country to the European Court because HE thinks HE should have inherited ahead of his SISTER. As though a court case like that wouldn't end the whole monarchy problem for us right there and then. Charlie has always been a big one for his PRIVILEGES and, unlike his mother, never really grasped that it's actually about his DUTIES.)

As a Party we are not immune to the voices of complaint and the "I told you so" tendency. It's all too easy for us to fall back on scorn and mockery when the Party hierarchy try to suggest a "message".

We NEED a "message" if we're going to be heard at all when the LANGUAGE of the national debate has become increasingly STRIDENT and DIVISIVE, with the Parties on BOTH sides of us seeking to DIVIDE and CONQUER. If it's not outright CLASS WAR, setting poor against poorer, then it's taking INFLAMMATORY ANTI-IMMIGRATION rhetoric right up to the edge of borderline racist... and sometimes jumping right over. And if this is an age of UNREASONABLE debate, let us not ever forget Labour's contribution: screaming "TRAITOR" without rhyme or reason for two years solid. How exactly was THAT going to lead to nuanced comment?

To be halfway fair to Hard Labour, in the IMPOTENCE of OPPOSITION and the ABSENCE of POLICIES, all they've GOT is NAME CALLING. The Conservatories however are discovering the IMPOTENCE of being in OFFICE – taking the BLAME for EVERYTHING and able to change NOTHING. And last year's Budget put them fully in the frame, no longer having us as their lightning rod.

In part because we're "centrists" but more because we encourage DIVERSITY – including in opinion – Liberal Democrats are HILARIOUSLY BAD at this sort of SLANGING MATCH politics. ("Alarm Clock Britain" anyone?). We, far more than the one-idea-fits-all Parties, need to be able to EXPLAIN ourselves. Hopefully Cap'n Clegg's half-hour-a-week broadcasts – talking in SENTENCES – will do more good than any number of silly SOUNDBITES.

We need to EARN ourselves a hearing and – very gradually – we ARE winning back the right to be heard.

And then we need to have something WORTH hearing.

Far too much of what our MPs and especially our Ministers come out with is TECHNOCRATIC and MANAGERIAL. Let's have something to say that is a wee bit POSITIVE. It doesn't have to be EXPENSIVE; just LIBERAL will do.

For example:

Our parliamentarians need to be more OUTSPOKEN in OPPOSITION to the creeping SECURITY AGENDA – it's not just about the taking of liberties, it's EXPENSIVE too, and we can really make a case for NOT wasting millions and billions on security theatre.

We need to say that our aim of FAIRER TAX also means aiming for SIMPLER TAX – fewer loopholes, harder to dodge. Master Gideon has proved himself as much of a TINKERER as Mr Frown. We want to be saying we will cut through all the complex rules and make a tax system that people – not least the people at HMRC who have to run it – can actually understand.

And we need to speak more positively about FREEDOMS – freedom of speech, pushing the changes to libel laws much further; freedom to exchange and innovate on the web, reforming copyright laws to encourage creative talent, not monolithic rights holders, and supporting open-source programming though government and civil service choices; freedom from conformity, so let's talk more about ROLLING BACK the things that are illegal and less about making more crimes. The law should be there to PROTECT people, not INTRUDE on and PUNISH them for being different.

And while were' about it, we should be much more positive about how HUMAN RIGHTS are a GOOD THING. And that they are GOOD RIGHTS to HAVE: the right to NOT BE KILLED; the right to NOT BE LOCKED UP without a fair trial and a good reason; the right to HOLD OPINIONS; the right to MEET OTHER PEOPLE. They're all very simple. And people DO NOT lose their human rights – not even very bad people, in fact ESPECIALLY not very bad people – because YOU wouldn't want to be in IRAN or KOREA or RUSSIA or GUANTANAMO and suddenly told that you've lost YOUR human rights! ALL humans have human rights, and if you say otherwise, you're saying people are SUB-human and, well, there was a WAR about that.

Basically, we need to say why Liberal Democrats will make things BETTER!


So let's play FLUFFY NOSTRADAMUS for a second.

Mr Stephen Tall says we shouldn't count on TOTAL Liberal Democrat Wipe-out at the next election, so what MIGHT happen?

The election of 2015 becomes increasingly interesting. Or rather the electionS of 2015. Because I think there's every chance that we will see at least two if not THREE(!) elections next time.

We and the Tories WILL lose seats, no doubt about it. But Labour won't have done enough to achieve a majority on their own. And they'll play SILLY-BUGGERS about doing a deal with surviving Liberal Democrats. So they will try and run a minority Government (what they secretly – and not so secretly – wanted all along). And it will collapse, possibly as soon as they try to get a Budget through the House and it triggers a Sterling crisis.

Repeat THAT a couple of times over the Summer and people might just start to get the message that Coalitions are better than Hard Labour's monomania too.



*Cornflakes were, of course, invented as a cure for... well, never minds that; "They're Grrrr...ievously contributing to the obesity crisis!" says a Labour spokesperson.

Day 4219: The Law is a (Naked) Ass. Again.

Friday:

For a minute, it looked like flash of hope, maybe even SANITY, was creeping into things.

Sure, there's been military coup in the nation's capital that has transformed homes into missile launch pads and sees Apache helicopters buzzing our flat on an hourly basis...

And yes, that pie-faced cretin Mr Balloon is planning on using VOODOO to tell who is and isn't a dangerous child-offender...

But at least the Kafka-esque nightmare of the Naked Rambler was over, and he'd been allowed to walk away from prison. Naked.

Only now they've locked him up again.

In so many ways: BUM!

As a FLUFFY ELEPHANT I am USUALLY naked too. Unless I put on a NICE TIE for special occasions like getting nonimated for Blogger of the Year. (Yes, I am ELIGIBLE again this year. Do not forget!)

Nobody is shocked by MY fluffy bottom. So I really don't see the problem. Honestly, the only people making a fuss are the ones ARRESTING him in case he "offends" someone. And you do not have a "right" to take offence at what other people are not doing. Not believing the same things, not saying the same things, not WEARING the same things, it's all much the same.

And yet one minute there's one bunch of folks demanding people burn their burqas. Next there's another wanting them swaddled up again lest they frighten the horses. Just let people wear – or indeed NOT wear – whatever they want!

(And for people who say you can't let people see WILLIES, WILLIES are FRIGHTENING, I say go and watch ALIEN and you will soon see that the GIANT EVIL WILLY is ONLY frightening when it STAYS HIDDEN!)

I realise, in the grand scheme of things (especially today) that the plight of this slightly odd-seeming beardy bloke does not seem very important at all.

But he's not actually done anything WRONG

Eccentric, I'll grant you. Weird, I wouldn't disagree. You might even go as far as to think he's a bit peculiar. But not CRIMINAL. Because where's the crime in wandering about in his own skin doing no harm to anyone? And yet the full might of the state has been brought to bear/bare (hoho) and seen him locked up, mostly in solitary, for SIX YEARS.

If there's any CRIME here, it's the one that the STATE has committed against HIM.

NOBODY benefits from bullying this man to conform. In fact, a bit less diversity means we're all just that little bit worse off.

This country has already been HUMILIATED by an Olympic Five-Ring Circus that has proved that it puts the CORPORATE GREED of "official sponsors" ahead of the entrepreneur spirit of anyone who might have boosted the economy with some local initiative (and the UNIONS have nothing to be proud of either); that it puts the privileges of the elite in their Zil lanes ahead of the ordinary people of this city whose taxes have paid for those roads; that it puts SECURITY THEATRE ahead of FREEDOM or FUN.

Great Britain is SUPPOSED to be a Nation that celebrates ECCENTRICS and INDIVIDUALS and supports the UNDERDOG.

Day 4065: Abu Qatada Crisis – Home Secretary Deported By Mistake

Friday:

Confusion still seems to abound concerning why we can't just send a man who has been convicted of no crime to a country where they probably obtained the evidence against him by torturing some other people until they were willing to say anything. I'll spell it out for you: BECAUSE IT IS WRONG!

I'm sure it won't be long before some MORON comes along saying "what about the human rights of our womens and childrens"... oh, look, here comes the egregious Conservatory idiot Mr Peter Bonehead to say "What about the human rights of all our citizens - our men and women and children?"

Listen, numbskull, the thing about Universal Human Rights is that they're either Universal or they're worthless. Once you start making EXCEPTIONS for SPECIAL CASES then you open the door to letting any Tom, Dictator or Harry say that YOUR human rights are a SPECIAL CASE. Immediately before applying the electrodes.

Thankfully we've got a Liberal Democrat like Lord Alec Carlisle to say: "It is extraordinary that this man should remain in the United—" oh for fluff's sake.

Look, I have no doubt that Mr Qatada is a VERY BAD MAN. Which is surely all the more reason to KEEP HIM HERE where we can KEEP AN EYE ON HIM rather than just booting him out of the country and hoping that he'll be somebody else's problem. If he breaks the law, prosecute him and send him to prison. And if he doesn't... then what's the problem?

And now we learn that the government – the first government with PROPER LIBERALS IN for almost a century – wants to tinker with the Human Rights Convention.

Right now, we are begging the Syrian government to stop blowing up their own citizens, and trying to persuade the Chinese to be a bit less brutal, and MPs are going to debate Bad Vlad and the Russians' human rights record. So we WANT these people to look to the human rights court – the court that WE, Great Britain, were PROUD to set up following World War Part Two – and we WANT them to see responsible countries – like, maybe, US – obeying the rulings of the court. Because that way maybe EVERYONE gets a few more human rights. So are we REALLY choosing NOW to start bad-wording about with the court? Please tell me this is a BAD CHEESE DREAM!

Qatada released
May Sent to Jordan
Russian Rights
British Wrongs

Day 3934: Things Wot I Was Going to Write This Week

Sunday:



Having a job is a good thing, I suppose (I'm a baby elephant; I wouldn't know!), but it doesn't half get in the way of Daddy Richard writing up my diaries!

It's a bit of a BUGGER though, wot with having spent last week taking pops at Hard Labour for talking rubbish, that this week the Conservatories have been giving me JUST AS MANY opportunities to mock, but daddy's had no time to write 'em up.

It all LOOKS a bit PRO-Conservatory. Ugh!

So here, to set the record a BIT straight, is a taste of what we've missed:

Day 3931: Mrs May and the Cat that Didn't Bark in the Night

Thursday:

Our Home Secretary, Mrs Theresa Nuts-in-May, gave a perfectly HORRID speech at the Conservatory Conference saying how much she wanted to oil the delegates' soft spots by abolishing the Human Rights Act, but managed to make a fool of herself with a story about a cat monster that turned out to be FICTION.

But there's a serious point too.

Her "complaint" about Human Right is that they "get in the way" of the Home Office doing "its job" by which she means: "whatever it wants to". Well, NEWSFLASH Mrs Nuts-in-May: THAT'S WHAT THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO DO!

Human Rights law is the thing that defines our relationship with the STATE: it says what the state ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT do to people in its care (at least not without going through a proper procedure). That's things like "not kill you", "not torture you", "not lock you up for no reason".

And while we're on the subject, human rights are about our relationship with the state and NOT with other people. That would be CRIMINAL LAW.

So people saying "what about the human rights of so-and-so's victims" are talking HONK. It's NOT a "breach of human rights" to murder someone. It's a CRIME and it's called MURDER! And that's why we send murderers to JAIL.

You don't have to fulfil some arbitrary notion of "responsibilities" to receive your human rights (that's ANOTHER thing we have Hard Labour to "thank" for); you get them just for being alive because THAT'S how we say decent governments SHOULD behave.

You don't "give up" your human rights by breaking the criminal law; THAT'S why they're called INALIENABLE.

And one last thing, Mrs Nuts-in-May. It might be more CONVENIENT for you to deport terrorist subjects to foreign states where we have no friends and no controls, but PERSONALLY I'd much rather keep terrorist suspects WHERE I CAN SEE WHAT THEY ARE DOING.

And I'm sorry that you think DOING YOUR JOB makes doing your job harder.

Day 3930: Do You Understand the Paradox of Thrift? Neither Does the Prime Monster

Wednesday:

Mr Balloon was going to tell people to pay off their credit card bills until someone brighter than Master Gideon pointed out to him that the fabled "growth strategy" depends rather heavily on people spending their money on STUFF in shops and NOT vaporising it by clearing their debts.

If your debt is UNSUSTAINABLE (i.e. more than you can afford to keep paying for in the medium to long run) then OF COURSE you must control it and pay it down. Like wot the government are trying to do. (To a certain value of "paying down" given that we are actually adding MORE to the debt mountain faster than ever; we're just trying to add to it less faster than ever than Labour planned to do. If you see what I mean.)

But if your debts are under control then ACTUALLY the government would probably rather you kept on spending. A bit. Please.

Which brings me to…

Day 3928: Why Plan A Isn't Working. Why Plan B Wouldn't Work Either

Monday:

Astonishingly, the best speech of the week seems to have come from Master Gideon, with his upbeat, "we can do it together" mantra, suggesting that someone may have finally sat him down and told him that all the "we're doomed" dialogue may have been playing badly with CONFIDENCE in the economy.

Now, if we can just persuade him that that VAT rise was bonkers…

Really, though, there is a truth that no Chancer or Shadow Chancer will admit, which is that there is almost FLUFF ALL that he/she can do to stop the economy being in DOOMED mode.

I'm NOT saying it's gloom FOREVER. Something WILL come along. "The Next Big Thing". Whatever it is.

Look back at history and you will see that each period of recession comes to a turning point, a new idea or discovery or fresh resources, and people start to think that there is money to be made again and, almost by magic, they start to make money.

The early Thatcher recession ended when council houses started to be sold off. It wasn't Mrs T's PLAN, it wasn't in any manifesto, it was just a lucky strike that the wheeze seems to have started people making a FAST BUCK which in turn got the economy going. (Though it COULD equally have been something else, maybe the surge in confidence after winning the Falklands War.)

The nineties recession turned around after the Internet revolution. The dot-com collapse was turned around by the Federal Bank throwing open the taps of cheap credit (though that kind of deferred rather than prevented the crash, so we got a SUPER-CRASH in 2008).

And rather INFAMOUSLY the Great Depression is said to have been turned around when governments started rearming for another go at a World War.

So SOMETHING will come along.

But it's almost impossible to predict – let alone ENGINEER – what it IS.

You may recall that Mr Huhney-Monster has introduced the New Green Deal and is bringing in the Green Investment Bank and both of these ARE – at least in part – an effort to use the Green revolution as a kick-start for "the next big thing".

If it works, it's GENIUS. If it doesn't, you can't say we're not TRYING. But I bet lots of people WILL!

Day 3933: Appeal

Saturday:

Now, you might know (if you were paying attention during his conference speech) that Daddy Richard is trying to write a book. I know. Without my help! What does he think he's DOING?

He has convinced a couple of mugs volunteers who have agreed to have a bit of a read and tell him if it's any good at all. (To whom he's VERY grateful, and hopes they'll understand this is in no way about that!) Except, because they are excellent and busy people, they're a bit pressed for time actually to DO any reading.

So, if anyone would happen to fancy reading – including proofing and critiquing – a novella which daddy describes as "Casablanca if it were set during the Time War", then you might drop me a line and I will pass your message on.

He's a bit NEEDY so you'll have to be prepared to be NICE (but honest!).

Also, anyone who thinks they might be able to do some cover art...!

Fankooo!
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Day 3314: Holocaust Memorial Day – You May Avert Your Gays

Wednesday:


It's UNSUBTLE isn't it, to have to bring up the Equality Bill when we're remembering the ultimate HORRIBLE consequences of NOT just treating people as people. And yet here we are: STILL not learning the lessons of history.

Let's be fair, six MILLION Jewish people being murdered for NO REASON is way more than the quarter of a million Gypsy/Romany people being murdered for the identical NO REASON and the quarter of a million differently-abled people being murdered for not fitting into a BONKERS and completely-ignorant-of-how-evolution-works EUGENIC stereotype and the we-don't-actually-know-how-many gay people murdered that we DON'T ACTUALLY KNOW because when the surviving Jews and Romany and Polish Slavs and black people and prisoners of war and the rest got liberated the Allies DIDN'T liberate the gay mommies and daddies because being gay was STILL A CRIME!!!!!

But it shouldn't be the SIZE of your holocaust that matters, but the fact that it happened AT ALL. That some people could pick a community to blame and vilify and ultimately destroy is WRONG. IT doesn't matter whether that is a community of millions or one of hundreds. Every single person is uniquely different and that should be a reason for CELEBRATION not an excuse to put people in boxes. And then LITERALLY put some of them in boxes.

So now, the much trumpeted Liberaling of Britain revealed by the British Social Attitudes Survey, shows that since we've gone from the heady days of Conservatory Section 28 and Colin and Barry on EastEnders to swinging modern Civil Partnerships and, er, Christian and Syed on EastEnders so the public have swung from two in three agreeing that cuddles between people of the same gender is always wrong to ONE in three agreeing that cuddles between people of the same gender is always wrong… oh, we have a LOOOOOOOONG way to go.

And yet STILL the Bishops of the Church of England whine on about wanting SPECIAL RIGHTS so they don't have to follow the same laws as everyone else, just because they BELIEVE that they have a right to be NASTY. Suppose they demanded the right to fire people just because they weren't WHITE enough. No one, but no one would give them even a SECOND before ticking them right off. But if they want the special right to treat people as second class because they aren't heteronormative enough…

Sigh.

Steps towards treating people AS people have been made, sometimes in the face of the government kicking and screaming and having to be dragged to the European court and made to behave like a grown up. And, mark you, that's the CURRENT Hard Labour Government, never mind the preceding Conservatories. But it's FRAGILE and the forces of Conservatism are bringing their full evil might to bear. It would be all too easy for Mr Balloon – with his history of throwing bones to his right wing nutters, and his alliance with homophobic Parties in the EU Parliament – to cave and bring in Section 28 II this time it's personal… again!

So the BEST way to remember the Holocaust and all its victims is to ask yourself this: what are you doing to stop it ever happening again?


.

Day 3305: the Naked Truth – How Scottish Justice wastes HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of POUNDS on LITERALLY NOTHING!

Monday:


So it's 2010 and the VICTORIAN ERA is still well and truly in full complete-lack-of-swing here in ye Olde Grande Britannia, as Mr Stephen Gough, aka the Naked Rambler, is released from Prison only to be re-arrested six paces later. Again. Because he's still NUDE!

Apparently he could spend the rest of his LIFE in and out of jail (well, "out-for-a-matter-of-minutes") as this cycle goes on forever!

And it COSTS a bleedin' FORTUNE to keep him (in the buff) in chokey.

Yet the Sherriff has the NAKED CHUTZPAH to accuse HIM of having no concern for the public purse!

Murderers, terrorists, MPs even… we don't send them to the Big House for the whole of their natural lives. And yet this man seems to be a worse criminal than ANY of them! What COULD he have DONE?

Well, Mr Rambler first became famous for his naked hike from Land's End to John O'Groats in 2003.

He was arrested several times over the course of his odyssey.

Nevertheless he completed his journey in 2004 and hailed it as a success!

In 2005, he announced his intention to repeat the epic voyage.

And got arrested again.

In 2006, he flew back to Scotland to appeal against the charge of indecency. Stripping off while on the plane in order to appear in court naked.

He was sent to prison for four months.

The following April, he successfully defended himself against the accusation of breaching the peace on the grounds, get this, that no one had ACTUALLY been alarmed or disturbed.

Yes that's: "naked man in NOT ACTUALLY FRIGHTENING shocker"!

But he remained in jail awaiting further contempt hearing… because he wouldn't get dressed to appear in the dock.

By November 2007, after nineteen months in jail already, he was found guilty of contempt and sentenced to another three months in jail.

January 2008 and – still naked – he is released from prison. He gets SIX PACES before he is re-arrested and banged up again.

December 2008 and it's the same story. He's taken back to court, appears naked – quelle surprise – and is charged with another breach of the peace.


Are our court officials REALLY so easily startled? Goodness knows how they cope with a REAL crime; they must just SWOON a lot.

Six months later and it's not so much déjà vu (with it ALL still on vu of course) as a revolving door policy at the court.

Sherriff Richard McFarlane, presiding, even pathetically claimed he had "no choice" but to send Mr Rambler back into clink. Yeah, because you should ALWAYS go for the Nuremburg Defence when quashing a man's liberties.

And then the good Sherriff starts on about MONEY! As though Mr Rambler had a penny in his pockets. Or even had pockets for that matter.

"Would you like to estimate how much it has cost as a drain on the public purse to keep you in prison?

"You don't care about the public purse or the public generally."

Message for you your worship: YOU are the one pouring the public's money down the toilet by insisting that it be spent on keeping a man in prison when he is NO THREAT to anyone.

Keeping him in prison for wearing nothing, that's literally keeping him there for nothing, has cost hundreds of thousands of pounds already.

But never mind THAT because actually there's something more important than JUST wasting public funds because you're scared of his gentleman's area.

SERIOUSLY, what is more offensive: a glimpse of WINKEY or a MAN'S LIFE in CHAINS?


And in fact, we are ALL in chains. Because this farcical law applies to us ALL.

Equating NAKEDNESS with BADNESS harms every single one of us.

We have SERIOUS intimacy issues in this country because we are always being told to cover up, put up barriers between each other. We have SERIOUS body dismorphia hang ups in this country too, with people OBSESSING over being too fat or too thin or too the wrong colour or too airbrushed (er)…

Some even go so far as to assert that a naked people must be a "threat to the children". ("Oh won't somebody think of the children!") Because OBVIOUSLY naked people MUST be exactly the same as PAEDOPHILES. And as soon as you can make THAT connection then WHOAH! anything goes! So long as it STAYS ON, obviously!

That is why it is USUAL at this point to wave a big surrender-flag of disclaimer and say something like "but being naked isn't about the SEX! (shock! horror! cover the fluffy elephant's eyes!)".

But I'm NOT going to say that because I'm not willing to surrender!

I have had a "TALK" with my Daddies.

Sometime being naked IS about being "sexy". Whatever THAT is. And we can't go around saying "the sexy sort of naked is the bad sort", because that just gets us into even MORE of a fuddle. For hundreds of years society and the church used that sort of brainwashing as their best means of CONTROL – 'cos controlling the most INTIMATE aspect of people's lives makes it SOOOO much easier to control the rest.

Sometime being naked IS about being sexy. And that's got to be all right. And sometimes it's NOT. And that's got to be all right too. And sometimes DRESSING UP is about being sexy. Apparently.

(And I'm only TEN so that's as far as "THE TALK" with Daddy has got, so far!)

What I'm saying is that it all seems MUCH TOO COMPLICATED to just say "you've got nothing on so you're BAD!"

The Law is locked up in a PURITAN CHASTITY BELT because it was written by people so SCARED, so AFRAID, so buttoned-up TERRIFIED of their sexuality that they made their PIANOS wear DRESSES! Is it any wonder, this country is SERIOUSLY warped!


So here is the test. If you are a Liberal Democrat, it says on the front of your membership card:

"we exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society… where no-one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity."

This man is enslaved by conformity.

We EXIST to save him.

SO WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE JUST STOP THESE MANIACS SENDING HIM TO PRISON!

PS:

In New Zealand, naked bicyclists get off with a safety warning. Isn't that better all round?



.

Day 3144: I'm SOOOO glad that Britain's Top Spook can stand up under questioning

Monday:


After the Secretaries of State for Home and Away, Mr Johnson and Johnson and Mr Millipede, assumed what can only be described as the "Ms Mandy Rice-Davies position", it fell to the Head of MI6 and former Chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Sir John "Captain" Scarlet, to DENY EVERYTHING.

Agent Scarlet: We always stick to our principles.

Sinister BBC Questioner: Meaning we don't torture?

Agent Scarlet: We do not torture!

Sinister BBC Questioner: and we're not complicit in torture?

Agent Scarlet: Um, er, um, well, er, no, no we're not, as it we're, um complicit, um no. Sorry.

He's hardly likely to win a round of "Call My Bluff" let alone defend the Secrets of the Nation from a determined interrogator from Pakistan, Morocco or, um, Americaland, is he?

Seriously, is there ANYONE who DOESN'T at least vaguely SUSPECT that we are up to our fluffy NECKS in complicity with the torture of British and former Gitmo resident Mr Binyam Mohammed?

Oh it could all be an enormous COINCIDENCE, couldn't it? By an incredible MISCHANCE, British MI5 agents JUST HAPPENED to be in the cell in Pakistan asking him questions BETWEEN some rather unpleasant bouts of what they no doubt innocently assumed to be physical exercise.

And then by a truly ASTOUNDING stroke of misfortune, one of the same agents was merely passing by in Morocco during what can only have been some dreadful misunderstanding with the electrical contractors. Three times.

Other establishment stooges respected senior figures spinning the party lie line included Environment Secretary Mr Benny Hill on the Andy Marrmite (aka Sophie Rayworth) Show and Mr Dr Kim Philby Howells, Labour chairman of the no-intelligence and no-security committee on the The Today Programme.

"We are resolutely opposed to it, and that remains the case," said Mr Benny firmly, before completely undermining that with his Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free Card (not applicable in Pakistan, Morrocco, etc): "Other countries, they're responsible for what they do, but the position of the British government is absolutely clear."

Translation: it's not OUR fault.

And Mr Dr Kim was even less SUBTLE:

"We can't give a guarantee, and no government on earth can give a guarantee that somebody who's picked up and held in another country hasn't had their... human rights abused in some way."

No, you can't guarantee that no one will be tortured. More is the pity. But if you had an OUNCE of HONOUR what you COULD guarantee is that you would NAME and SHAME any Government up to and including our own, that uses even by extension torture; you could guarantee to refuse sharing of intelligence with such regimes, because exchanging OUR intelligence for the PROBABLY-WORSE-THAN-USELESS products of forcing someone to say what they think you want to hear is just pouring resources down the very-unsanitary TOILET.

You could even, my goodness, INTERVENE to try and put a STOP to it! If you know someone is in a cell with the man in the rubber apron, send in the ambassador; if you realise that the unscheduled aeroplane en route from Talibaptistland to Talibanland via a British airstrip is probably extraordinarily rendering someone, stop it taking off again.

Freedom, prosperity, human rights, not being EXPLODED, not being TORTURED. These are the things that we are SUPPOSED to have on offer, instead of the certainties of a theocratic tyranny.

Can we PLEASE try and remember that.


Remember: Captain Scarlet's feeble excuses are indestructible; yours are not. Do not try to imitate him.


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Day 2663: Mr Frown versus The Pope

Wednesday:


To Amercialand to watch the World Heavyweight contest to see who can be the STEAMINGEST hypocrite.

In the BROWN corner: the Right Honourable Mr Frown, Prime Monster of Great Britain, justly proud of his record on tackling POVERTY by increasing TAX on the lowest paid workers.

But in the WASHES WHITER corner: His Holiness Mr Pope Benelin* née Rottweiler, Bishop of Rome, Head of the Inquisition and Junior Nazi League Come Dancing Champion 1944, SPECTACULARLY claiming that his lot are responsible for human rights.

In 1215 AD, Mr Pope Innocent III took just ten weeks to annul MAGNA CARTA.

It's all very well saying that Magna Carta was mostly about the rights of Barons in castles and Knights in suits of armour, but nevertheless it was the very FIRST time that anyone anywhere had established the principle that the STATE (in the then person of Mr the King) had to obey the law too.

And THAT is where all human rights COME FROM.

But it's not all ANCIENT HISTORY for Mr Pope Benelin, who spent twenty years being the previous Pope's ENFORCER as head of the "Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith", ruling with a ROD of IRON (although no longer the RED-HOT PINCERS of PERSUASION).

There he expressed such LOVING and GENTLY-BENEVOLENT opinions as the "inclinations" of Gay Daddies being "a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil"; or voting for candidates with a permissive stance towards abortion would be "cooperating in evil"; or that issuing of condoms as part of an anti-AIDS campaign "would result in at least the facilitation of evil".

This reminds me of the MAD LADY on the radio, writer for the Catholic Time Ms Joanna Boggling, who claimed that society sexually abuses all of us, equating availability of condoms and education about "that sort of thing" to the abuse scandals within the Catholic Church.

Yeeeees, slightly different there, madam: one is about informing and empowering; the other is about taking power away. Might want to make sure you don't confuse those two.

Ms Boggling was responding to the news that Mr the Pope had met with victims of his clergy's abuse.

He called the scandal a "deep shame" and "gravely immoral behaviour". Which is lovely compassion from the man who tried to have it all hushed up.



Naturally, Mr the Pope won the big fight after Mr Frown performed an unnecessary U-TURN and tripped over his own laces.


*Benelin: nasty medicine that tastes sickly-sweet. May cause drowsiness.

Day 2655: Olympic Torchwood: May the Farce be With You

Tuesday:


Stormtroopers, it would seem, are IN.

At the High Court in London, the Jedi Master of Lucasfilm, Oh-Beardy-One Kenobi (George "don't do that" Lucas), defends his right to use SITH LIGHTNING against anyone who tries cashing in on his multi-billion dollar merchandising EMPIRE.

Meanwhile, in London, Paris, San Francisco and worldwide, the People's Liberation Army Formation Jogging Team of China – "handsome" and "mighty" according to the China News Service; "thugs" according to the less diplomatic Lord Olympics & Coe
– have been manfully keeping alight the Torch of Freedom by, er, oppressing anyone who tries to get close to it.


The Olympic Committee are said to be considering doing away with the FORMAL SPECTACLE of the host country being forced to take it on the chin from all the people round the would that they've really p… bad-worded off.

I think that ending this ritual humiliation would be a SHAME, as it would deprive everyone of the chance to give Great Britain the reception we would deserve if we do not shape up our act. And anyway, SELF-FLAGELLATION is an Olympic event we'd be really GOOD at!

On the other fluffy foot, Mr Balloon thinks that we'd be world class at DITHERING – at least if Mr Frown were to put himself forward as a competitor.

(Mr Balloon is TOO MODEST: he and Master Gideon show great promise for the two by shall-we-shan't-we-privatise-the-Northern-Rock relay.)

Of course Mr Balloon is only trying to catch up with everybody else who has ALREADY said Mr Frown should not go to the opening of the Olympics in China.

Mr Clogg LED THE WAY, calling for a boycott last week.

Then Ms Hillary-Billary urged a boycott of the opening ceremony.

And so did Senator Barry O.

Finally, Mr Frown finked out of showing up.

BUT… he went and ruined any POSITIVE MESSAGE that he might have sent to the Chinese government, or to the rest of the world, by claiming that he had NEVER been going and confusing pretty much everyone.

"This is not a boycott," claimed No. 10, "we're just not going."

Riiiiiiiight.

In his letter to Mr Frown, Mr Clogg reminded the Prime Monster that the Chinese PROMISED to improve their human rights record before the Beijing Olympics, a promise that they have NOT kept:

"Recent events in Tibet, broken promises over media freedoms, ongoing human rights abuses and intransigence over the humanitarian catastrophe in Darfur demand a response."

he said.

"Serious concerns cannot be swept under the carpet for the sake of ceremonial duties. Unless and until China takes steps to honour the spirit of the Olympics, as laid out in the Olympic Charter, I do not believe that the British Prime Monster can attend the Beijing Games in good conscience."

Mr Frown has completely missed the point by saying he won't be there for the opening – he's STILL lending his support to the brutality of the Chinese regime when he turns up to ceremonially collect the official Zippo torch-lighter and keys to the Olympic shed.

Rather than taking the opportunity to stand up for Freedom and Human Rights alongside the other leaders of the world, Mr Frown has managed to make us look small and stupid and wasted another chance to help the people of Tibet.

"Too often Gordon Frown does the right thing under pressure, rather than out of conviction," commented Mr Clogg.


It is just SILLY to think that there is no POLITICS in SPORT. If that were true why would there even BE bidding for the Olympics?

To quote the Olympic Charter:

"Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy of effort, the educational value of good example and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles."

What could be MORE political than "universal fundamental ethical principles"?

The Chinese promise to clean up their Human Rights record was a POLITICAL STATEMENT too, and every response to them breaking that promise – protesting against it OR saying it's not your business, doing nothing and letting them get away with it (and yes, I DO mean the athletes as well as Mr Frown) – that is a POLITICAL response.

I fully understand that for many people this may be their only chance to take part in the Olympic Games and that it could be a very difficult choice to decide between your personal ambition to take part or the nebulous and probably unachievable goal of supporting Human Rights for people you've never met.

But at least our athletes – and Prime Monster – live in a country that LETS them make the choice for themselves.

Now, the question is, will Mr Frown's new CEREMONIAL BLACK ARMOUR for the closing ceremony get him SUED by Oh-Beardy-One Kenobi?

Day 2608: Extraordinary Apology!

Thursday:


Mr Millipede, Secretary of State for directing passengers though the Airport Lounge of Airstrip One, has apologised.

He has apologised on behalf of the Foreign Office for misleading the House of Commons, and, as I am sure you realise, that is quite SERIOUS.

It is ILLEGAL to put people on aeroplanes against their will and fly them off to countries that practice torture with the aim of having them tortured on your behalf, since you are reluctant to be seen with their blood on your fluffy feet.

That is, WE call it "illegal". The Americans call it "Extraordinary Rendition".

We are signatories, without reservation, to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, which states explicitly under article 3:

No State Party shall expel, return ("refouler") or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.

The very SECOND that any plane lands in British Territory, anyone and everyone on board should be subject to the FULL FORCE of British Law and all protections that are owed to them.

So it is ILLEGAL to let someone (i.e the Americans) do this, or to allow them to do this out of our airspace.


The Foreign Office had said that the Americans had NOT flown ANY of their rendition flights into, out of or over British airspace. That turns out not to have been completely true.

Flicking through their back catalogue, they discovered that a couple of their EasyTorture Airways flights DID touch down for refuelling on the lonely British atoll of Diego Maradona.


There IS an argument for saying that the British Government did not know anything about this… but that just shows that they were allowing a dangerous foreign agency go completely out of control on their watch.

Of course it is a LITTLE bit harsh to blame the barely-out-of-short-trousers Mr Millipede, since he wasn't the one in charge when this happened and he isn’t the one who told FIBS to the House of Commons.

The ACTUAL Foreign Secretary at the time, was of course fleshless Mari Lwyd Mrs Margaret Bucket.

She was on the Andy Marmite show over the weekend, trying to brush it all under the carpet.

Mr Andy pressed her on the claims that between 170 and 200 CIA registered flights had been spotted landing at British airports like Glasgow and Prestwick. Ms Charming Chakrabati of Liberty had called for an inquiry; shouldn't Mrs Bucket, as Foreign Secretary, have set one up?

"But there have been inquiries," she protested.

You can picture the scene:

Bored American voice: "good mornin', CIA inquiries desk, how may I help you today?"

Mrs Bucket: "ah, hello. I'm calling from Her Majesty's Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, her Dominions and Territories, etc. I was wondering about all of these planes of yours that are flying in and out. DO any of them have, well, er, anyone on their way to be tortured on board?"

Bored American voice: [flicks through magazine for a minute]: "no, ma'am"

Mrs Bucket: "oh, well, good, that's jolly good"

Bored American voice: "you have a nice day, ma'am"

Some how I do NOT think that that was the sort of inquiry that Ms Charming had in mind, do you?

Anyway, Mrs Bucket isn't the Foreign Secretary any more. Mr Frown has put her in the chair of the Intelligence and Security Select Committee.

So, it's good to know that our security and intelligence are in capable hands.

That's "capable hands" meaning "the hands of a complacent incompetent" and "good" meaning "utterly terrifying".


The CIA responded to the news with a statement

"Torture is against our laws and values"

they said, for some reason inexplicably forgetting to continue:

"…so we redefine what the word "torture" means, 'cos it don't half look cool when Jack Bauer gets to do it!"

Day 2573: Chinese Takeaway

Friday


From Tiananmen Square, that huge, implacable face stared out at us – yes it was Mr Huw Edwards doing a BBC News report, live from China as Mr Frown flew in to ask, very nicely, if we couldn't have some jobs please.

Chairman Frown

There is a NEW formula, nowadays, for talking to the People's Republic of China – avoid all talk of PEOPLE. And anything to do with being a REPUBLIC. And don't call them CHINA either – it's Chung Kuo.

Anyway, apparently it is OKAY to talk about global warming – that way you can be mildly CRITICAL and they can say "ahh, but we are improving and anyway, you did all this first". What you MUST NOT do is mention human rights, because they are not interested and frankly they think we have got to be kidding anyway what with our record of Guantanamo Bay, Abu Grahib, rendition flights and Celine Dion.

President Sarcastic of France kept to this formula, and managed to flog a whole load of ATOMIC POWER STATIONS as a result. The Monkey-in-Chief went and talked to the Dalai Lama and since then the Chinese have CRUSHED HIS CURRENCY like a bird's nest in soup.

Great Britain, of course, has a LONG history of FRIENDSHIP with the region, going back to the Boxer Rebellion and the Opium Wars. Er… they probably won't remember that though, will they?



For us in the West, Human Rights in the Middle Kingdom remain a VEXED and COMPLICATED question. We cannot just IGNORE them as we have in the past and pretend that they are some poor country cousin, especially as they grow in POWER, both diplomatically and, perhaps more importantly, financially.

Because, although remaining "communist" in name – in fact the Communist Party has basically replaced the old Imperial Bureaucracy, a sort of bizarre feudal meritocracy-cum-corruptocracy – the truth is that the PRC government has changed its policies considerably since the 1970s, and particularly since the economic powerhouse that is Hong Kong was absorbed back into the Republic in 1999.

However, that financial success may in fact be the key, as a burgeoning middle class, with higher income levels and better, broader education may lead to more freedom of thought in the East just as it did – eventually – in the West.

Day 2235: Well Done, Lord Woolsack!

Tuesday:


I have ESP, you know – Elephant Special Powers – more on this story later…[*]


It is not often that I get to say something NICE about the Labour – it not often that they get something RIGHT! – so I will seize the opportunity with both fluffy front feet!

Lord Blairimort's chum the Lord Woolsack, also known as a proper Charlie, has been doing some GOOD for once, by deciding to stand up for the HUMAN RIGHTS ACT. And he is to be CONGRATULATED for it.

He has started with a Blitz on this "human rights nonsense" and now is saying how Human Rights help fight terror!

A LONG time ago, in 1950 in fact, Great (as we were then) Britain was one of the founding members of the Council of Europe and together with other nations of Europe agreed that there should be a UNIVERSAL PROTECTION of the Human Rights of all people.

And they set up a Court and signed a big long declaration to say they meant it.

Ever since then, ever since 1950 remember, you and me and every other person living in one of the nations who have joined the Convention have had our Human (and Elephant) Rights GUARANTEED and we have been able to appeal to the Court in Strasbourg to get those rights protected.

1950 is IMPOSSIBLY long ago! The Prime Minister and his goons are fond of saying that it was a DIFFERENT AGE. They could not have imagined the threats that we would face today, says Lord Blairimort.

Yes, he is RIGHT: just five years after fighting a WORLD WAR against all the might of the Axis WAR MACHINE which cost MILLIONS of lives, I think that the Council of Europe would have found it VERY DIFFICULT to imagine a time when the richest most powerful countries on the planet totally secure from the threat of conventional war, were nevertheless wetting themselves because they had been threatened by a sick old man hiding in a cave.

I think they'd find that VERY DIFFICULT to imagine INDEED!

Incidentally, Article 17 says specifically that you CANNOT use one of the Human Rights to try and limit or abolish another of the human rights. Possibly worth remembering every time one of those Labour Ministers starts saying "we must limit this Human Right to freedom from being flung into a dungeon without trial in order to secure the Human Right to not be blown up!"

They are BREAKING THE LAW when they say that!

Going to Strasbourg, though, is a LOT OF TROUBLE. It would be much easier if the Court in THIS COUNTRY could save you the bother by guaranteeing the same protections much closer to home. Well, in 1998 Lord Blairimort did something GOOD (he was very young at the time) and passed the Human Rights Act so that the Court in this country could do exactly that. Hooray! Save everyone a lot of time and bother.

(Actually, he did say that judges could not overturn those Acts of Parliament that are in conflict with the Convention, but only say "bother, that's in conflict with the Human Rights Convention" so sometimes you might STILL have to go to Strasbourg.)

Since then, though, the Human Rights act has become a bit of a CONVENIENT thing to blame when there is a COCK UP. Not least by, er, Lord Blairimort and his ministers.

The Conservatories too are very keen to pretend that all our woes flow from what is supposed to be the government making a promise not to abuse the people it works for. Blaming the Human Rights Act is the new POLITICAL CORRECTNESS GONE MAAAAAAAD. It is a MYTH, based on URBAN FAIRY STORIES and MISREPORTED anecdotes.

But it isn't half handy if you've got no excuses (if you're Lord Blairimort) or no policies (if you're Mr Balloon) and want a handy SCAPEGOAT.

In fact, Mr Balloon says he wants to abolish the Human Rights Act altogether. That would be RATHER POINTLESS, unless he is going to ask Mrs the Queen to tear up the treaty that she signed. We would still have those rights and the right to go back to Strasbourg and get them.

It makes you wonder about his commitment to civil liberties, when he says he won't stand by a promise to defend them, doesn't it!

Meanwhile, Lord Blairimort is keen to lock people up without trial on the say-so of trying so hard not to be out of his depth Home Secretary nice Mr Dr Reid.

"Lockses them up, my precious, in chainses and ironses." That sort of say-so.

It's about this point that someone trundles out the usual excuse…

"Oh, won't somebody think of the CHILDREN!"

…but it turns out we might not be very good at THAT either!


[*] In other news… the American's ESP lab to close!

…I bet they didn't see that coming. I did!

Day 1961: What EXACTLY is the problem?

Wednesday:


Another EDIFYING day of squabbles about how many immigrants - legal, illegal or eddy the eagle - there are in the country, is capped by Newsnight with some woman from Wehateforeignerswatch saying "there could be almost ANY number of illegal immigrants!!!!"

Well, call me a silly fluffy thing but I do not think it could be ANY number. I think it is a bit UNLIKELY that there are, say, six BILLION illegal immigrants here – you know, I think we'd notice if the rest of the world was EMPTY!

But really, I do wonder why this is such a PROBLEM. If the country was going BANKRUPT with welfare payments then you might understand, but it is NOT.

(If anything is going to bankrupt the country it is Mr Frown's payments to "management consultants" but that is an entirely other diary.)

We are happy and wealthy and safe and healthy and unemployment is low and employment is high and apparently there are lots of hotel rooms available for the World Cup in Germany. So if there IS all this illegal immigration, it hardly seems to be undermining the FABRIC of our NATION or leading to starvation on our streets.

The age-old cry of "they're coming over here and taking our jobs" needs the answer of "No! They're doing the jobs that WE WON'T!"


For that matter, why are we not selling visas? People are going to pay ten thousand pounds to EVIL people traffickers just to get stuck in an airtight container lorry or selotaped to the underside of a Eurostar. Wouldn't we be better to let them pay that to HM Treasury for a three-year or five-year or ten-year visa and then we will KNOW when they are coming and they will be able to WORK for their upkeep – like they pretty much all want to – and we might put a crimp in the profits of those EVIL people traffickers. And after three or five or ten years if they ARE working and contributing then we can give them citizenship then. So it's an INCENTIVE.


There IS a separate problem about HOUSING, particularly in the South-East, and the British Nasty Party has taken advantage of this issue. And there is a BIT of a problem about there being more people than water in the South-East too.

But if we make it a bit more easy for LEGAL immigration then it might be a bit easier POLITELY to ask people moving to the country to consider living in the North where there are houses and also RAIN.

If people want to come and live here then GOOD. If they want to come here and build a PIPE for water from the North to the South then TERRIFIC!

We should stop waffling about "incompetence at the Home Office" – yes, the safety elephant was an incompetent buffoon but he's GONE now, and the next incompetent buffoon hasn't had time to get a grip yet, so leave it.

The Labour and the Conservatories are competing to be as NASTY as possible. Well BLEURGH to them.

We should have a BETTER ANSWER.

Day 1956: Balloon Hijack

Friday

Mr Balloon has come out with a firm new policy. He is to reform, replace or abolish humans.

Maybe.


This is about the case of some people from AFGHANISTAN who got on an aeroplane and then stole it and all the people on board and made them fly ALL THE WAY to Britain. Where they were caught red handed!

At the time, February 2000, Afghanistan was being ruled by some VERY BAD people called the TALLIBAN who had taken all the rules of their religion and turned them up to ELEVEN. They were very mean to women and to television sets. And by the end of 2001 Britain would be at WAR with them. So by and large we can agree that they were not VERY nice. Even though it was a VERY BAD THING to steel and aeroplane and all those people you can sort of understand why DESPERATE people might do it.

(And haven’t I seen JAMES BOND do something like that?)


Mr Balloon says:

“It is wrong to undermine public safety by allowing the human rights of dangerous criminals to fly in the face of common sense”

Is he saying that he thinks that these men will hijack ANOTHER planeload of people and fly them BACK to Afghanistan???


Lord Blairimort had said that the court (who are the people who looked carefully at the facts of the case) had made a decision that was an “abuse of common sense”, so it interesting that Mr Balloon is so clearly saying that the government is wrong by, er, agreeing with Lord Blairimort.

Does anyone remember what “LIBERAL CONSERVATIVE” meant?

Day 1926: Zimbabwe

Wednesday:


Daddy Alex often asks me “Are you an African Elephant or an Indian Elephant, Millennium?” and I have to remind him that you can tell an Elephant by his EARS: if he has BIG ears he is an AFRICAN elephant; if he has SMALL ears he is an INDIAN elephant. I have PLUSH ears because I am a FLUFFY elephant. This ought to be EASY to remember!

Anyway, all this is by way of saying I hope that if Mr Blair’s stormtroopers catch me they are NOT going to deport me to Africa.

However, the odds do not look good as this week, Mr CHARLES CLARKE, Mr Blair’s FOGHORN in the Home Office has won in the court to send some poor people back to ZIMBABWE even though they have the DEATH PENALTY for VISITING ENGLAND there.

This does NOT seem very good.

After World War Part Two was over, the UNITED NATIONS was set up and they agreed an INTERNATIONAL agreement called the CONVENTION ON REFUGEES. This says, basically, if someone has had to run away from their own country because they are in fear of being PICKLED LIKE A HEWWING or otherwise DONE OVER by the local “ministry of justice” then they should be looked after by OTHER countries.

(This is because people SHOULD have done that during and before World War Part Two, and they didn’t and so rather a lot of people got MURDERED!)

Nowadays, Mr Blair’s government wishes that they had never been saddled with the obligation to look after PEOPLE IN NEED! And they are doing everything they can to PUT A STOP to people in need getting here. They won’t let you in without a passport and they say you are not in danger if you do have a passport. They fine aeroplanes and lorries that carry people into the country and they force refugees into the hands of PEOPLE SMUGGLERS and then say people are BAD for using the people smugglers!

This is a SHAME for two very important reasons.

First, Britain used to have a very good reputation for being a place where HUMAN RIGHTS and JUSTICE were very important and we could be PROUD that people WANTED to come here. This is the sort of reputation that Mr Blair has lost by INVADING random Middle Eastern countries on the say so of a pet monkey.

Second, people do not lightly move all the way around the world and those who do are pretty HIGHLY MOTIVATED and usually the well educated middle class (i.e. what DICTATORS call political troublemakers!). These are the sort of people who work hard if they were given the opportunity and contribute to a community that welcomes them. This makes it DOUBLE STUPID that Mr Blair WON’T let them work but instead gives them silly vouchers for not enough money to feed a GERBIL let alone a persecuted person and STILL cost more to run than giving them a living amount in proper money would!

Zimbabwe is NOT A VERY NICE PLACE to live.

Also, it is run by their own version of Mr Blair, so you can see that people would rather not live there. We should not be punishing people because they happen to live in a nasty place, especially if they only want to come here to make a living.

Mr Blair talks a lot about RIGHTS and RESPONSIBILITIES. Someone needs to point out to him that HE has RESPONSIBILITIES too – and he should stop trying to WRIGGLE OUT OF THEM!