Gulp!

It's a point that probably doesn't need highlighting, but the news that the Speaker's wife is in some legal difficulty comes as no surprise. Not only another symptom of the fall in the prestige, and purpose of Parliament, but an outcome that in this case was entirely inevitable.

Michael Martin was ousted as speaker for the first time in over 300 years (created as a life peer afterwards as a punishment), so it is entirely appropriate for the ancient office of Speaker to be brought into such disrepute again as a sign of how far we have fallen.

Complete Contempt

Following my previous post, something I was unaware of until today was that the PCC election is being held using the Alternative Vote. The same system that was comprehensively rejected by the voters. They're laughing at us and can't even be bothered anymore to hide it.

Still, at least we can take some small amusement from the comment below from Tim Montgomerie on Facebook who is "In the eyes of most MPs, Montgomerie ... now one of the most influential Tories outside the cabinet."

Just voted for Angus Macpherson as Police and Crime Commissioner for Wiltshire. Voted UKIP as 2nd preference.

Not Voting

Funny how when I turned 18, the right to vote seemed to be a huge privilege and one I was proud of. I missed voting in the 1992 GE by 2 months but had the opportunity to vote for the first time in the Newbury by-election a year later. It was a privilege which meant I consciously made the symbolic effort to myself of walking to a polling station rather than postal voting or voting by other means.

I've always tried to exercise my right to vote, whether it be a General Election, a local election or even, through very gritted teeth, EU Parliamentary elections. Today though I will break that habit. I will not be partaking in the election of a Police Commissioner. I have shredded my polling card, thus boycotting the process.

Revealingly as politicians' have recently sensed the public discontent about our political processes and lack of accountability, as presciently foreseen by the notorious 1971 FCO 30/1048 document on the consequences of joining the EEC...

...the transfer of major executive responsibilities to the bureaucratic Commission in Brussels will exacerbate popular feeling of alienation from government.

....they seek to confer upon us as a consequence ever more voting: devolution, more devolution, the stitch up that was the AV referendum and Cameron's failed policy of English mayoral referendums earlier this year. The right to put a cross on a bit of paper is a tool used by politicians to pretend they believe in democracy so by implication arguing to give power to the people, but in practice it means nothing at all.

It's the reason most unaccountable institutions use voting on such terms as a means of trying to establish legitimacy; obviously the EU Parliament, the Supreme Soviet and there's a very good reason why referendums are banned in Germany. Voting means nothing without being backed up by real power.

And so we come to another fake 'election' - those of PCC candidates. Conservative MP Nick Herbert, who in the Spectator seems to argue that the solution to low turnouts is have another election which will have a low turnout, says:

What proportion of the vote permits [the BBC] to declare any election a failure? Because Parliament didn’t set one.

Hilary Benn was elected to the Commons in a by-election on a turnout of less than 20 per cent. Was he declared to have no standing as an MP? What about the councils that rule with a fraction of the votes of their local electorate? And forgive me if I’ve missed it, but when did the BBC ever question the legitimacy of MEPs (turnout in 1999, 23 per cent), never mind the European Commission?

Yes, declining voter engagement in all elections is a real issue. But as the former President of the Association of Chief Police Officers, Ken Jones, said on Monday, this is a bigger question, a trend which PCC elections can hardly be expected to buck.

 So then he argues without a sense of irony:

[PPCs] will hold office by will of the people, not the patronage of politicians or the wisdom of an appointments commission

No it won't, the very likely low turnout will ensure the office is not by the will of the people. Not only that, will it solve; lying cover up or even the Police acting above the law? We all know the answer to that one.

So very few positives to this latest gimmick, but oh boy are there negatives. What we will have in return is a politicisation of the Police force. It's bad enough already, as the case of Damian Green shows, but now it will be legitimate. A point illustrated via Witterings:

“This morning a Labour spokesperson said that while Labour initially objected to the role of Police Commissioner being created, they had decided to enter Labour representatives for the post to enable them to hold the government to account for all the police budget cuts. Great.  Not to represent the local people as intended – but to yet again use and abuse a position in order to attack the Coalition.  Just what we need Mr. Oborne ? I thought this article may be a wind-up – but the last two sentences suggest otherwise.”

Inspector Gadget calls it fantasy politics, and rightly so. No-one needs a degree in history to workout the consequences of politicised police force in times of economic troubles.

How long, one wonders, before a scandal erupts, where a PCC of a certain party persuasion is advised by a government of the same party to lean on 'his' police force whose constables are investigating a corrupt MP of the same party?

It's a disaster waiting to happen.

Fed Up?

David Cameron is 'fed up'. Remember this supposedly is the Prime Minister (The First Lord of the Treasury) of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland who admits he's "completely fed up":

Prime Minister David Cameron says he is "completely fed up" about the release on bail of Abu Qatada after the Muslim cleric won his deportation appeal.

Abu Qatada was earlier freed from prison after a UK court ruled he might not get a fair trial if deported to Jordan to face bomb plot charges.

He goes on to say:

Mr Cameron said ministers had "moved heaven and earth" to try to deport him and would continue to do so.

This is a lie. 'Moving heaven and earth' means removing ourselves from the foreign laws that bind us in order to facilitate Abu Qatada's deportation. He has the power to rectify this situation. Cameron has failed to do that. He's admitting that it is better to be powerless than executing the power which his office allows via an election.

Cameron is fed up because his impotency is self inflicted, I'm fed up because our own impotency is not.

Put Up Or Shut Up

On one level, as Richard North says, the saga raises a wry smile at the massive pickle the Government have got themselves into over the release of Abu Qatada and the Human Rights Act.

One can also take a small crumb of comfort that this is yet another nail in the coffin that is our EU (and Council of Europe) membership. No longer is it about 'bent bananas' but real tangible, easily understood and toxic issues.

As always though there is a price to pay. And that price is the sight of the odious slime Nick Clegg faking concern:

Mr Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, said the government would appeal the ruling.

“We’re determined to deport him,” he told ITV’s Daybreak. “We strongly disagree with the court ruling, we’re going to challenge it, we’re going to take it to appeal".

“We’re absolutely determined to see this man get on a plane and go back to Jordan. He doesn’t belong here, he shouldn’t be in this country, he’s a dangerous person. He wanted to inflict harm on our country and this coalition government is going to do everything we can to challenge this every step of the way to make sure he is deported to Jordan.”

Utterly shameless, here he is in 2011:

Nick Clegg has issued a trenchant defence of human rights laws, setting out their strengths and saying his party will not let Conservatives water them down should there be a fresh push to renegotiate legislation.

I'm not a man usually prone to violence, but I'm thinking of ways that I can herd Nick Clegg et al over the nearest Buffalo Jump.

I'm heartily sick of it.

28 Gate

The climate change issue is not really my forte, so I tend to leave it alone to better informed others. This though is worth noting. Days after blogger Tony Newbery lost this legal case against the BBC...

Newbery wanted the list of "scientific experts" who attended a BBC seminar at which, according to the BBC Trust, they convinced the broadcaster to abandon impartiality and take a firmly warmist position when reporting climate change. When the Beeb refused to divulge who these people were and who they worked for, Newbery took the corporation to an information tribunal. Now the names and affiliations of the 28 people who decided the Beeb climate stance - acknowledged by the Corporation to include various non-scientists such as NGO people, activists etc - will remain a secret.

...those names are now freely available on the internet thanks to the persistence of Maurizio Morabito.

Despite legal arguments, a biased Judge, the BBC spending years and huge sums of our money and a 'very flexible' interpretation of the Freedom of Information Act to keep this information from us, all was undone by a simple copy n' paste of a broken url link into WayBack Machine.

Here's the list in full:

Specialists:

Robert May, Oxford University and Imperial College London
Mike Hulme, Director, Tyndall Centre, UEA
Blake Lee-Harwood, Head of Campaigns, Greenpeace
Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen
Michael Bravo, Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge
Andrew Dlugolecki, Insurance industry consultant
Trevor Evans, US Embassy
Colin Challen MP, Chair, All Party Group on Climate Change
Anuradha Vittachi, Director, Oneworld.net
Andrew Simms, Policy Director, New Economics Foundation
Claire Foster, Church of England
Saleemul Huq, IIED
Poshendra Satyal Pravat, Open University
Li Moxuan, Climate campaigner, Greenpeace China
Tadesse Dadi, Tearfund Ethiopia
Iain Wright, CO2 Project Manager, BP International
Ashok Sinha, Stop Climate Chaos
Andy Atkins, Advocacy Director, Tearfund
Matthew Farrow, CBI
Rafael Hidalgo, TV/multimedia producer
Cheryl Campbell, Executive Director, Television for the Environment
Kevin McCullough, Director, Npower Renewables
Richard D North, Institute of Economic Affairs
Steve Widdicombe, Plymouth Marine Labs
Joe Smith, The Open University
Mark Galloway, Director, IBT
Anita Neville, E3G
Eleni Andreadis, Harvard University
Jos Wheatley, Global Environment Assets Team, DFID
Tessa Tennant, Chair, AsRia

BBC attendees:

Jana Bennett, Director of Television
Sacha Baveystock, Executive Producer, Science
Helen Boaden, Director of News
Andrew Lane, Manager, Weather, TV News
Anne Gilchrist, Executive Editor Indies & Events, CBBC
Dominic Vallely, Executive Editor, Entertainment
Eleanor Moran, Development Executive, Drama Commissioning
Elizabeth McKay, Project Executive, Education
Emma Swain, Commissioning Editor, Specialist Factual
Fergal Keane, (Chair), Foreign Affairs Correspondent
Fran Unsworth, Head of Newsgathering
George Entwistle, Head of TV Current Affairs
Glenwyn Benson, Controller, Factual TV
John Lynch, Creative Director, Specialist Factual
Jon Plowman, Head of Comedy
Jon Williams, TV Editor Newsgathering
Karen O’Connor, Editor, This World, Current Affairs
Catriona McKenzie, Tightrope Pictures catriona@tightropepictures.com

BBC Television Centre, London (cont)

Liz Molyneux, Editorial Executive, Factual Commissioning
Matt Morris, Head of News, Radio Five Live
Neil Nightingale, Head of Natural History Unit
Paul Brannan, Deputy Head of News Interactive
Peter Horrocks, Head of Television News
Peter Rippon, Duty Editor, World at One/PM/The World this Weekend
Phil Harding, Director, English Networks & Nations
Steve Mitchell, Head Of Radio News
Sue Inglish, Head Of Political Programmes
Frances Weil, Editor of News Special Events

This meeting, described by the BBC as one which had “the best scientific experts”, was the one that decided future BBC policy on climate change reporting, thus breaching fundamentally its legal duty to remain impartial. Funnily enough only 3 scientists appeared to have attended. the rest are made up of activists, charities & environmental pressure groups...

No wonder the BBC were so determined to keep it quiet. One would like to think this is another hole below the waterline in what is left of the BBC's credibility - one that will undoubtedly be ignored by the legacy media at large.

Next up must be the release of the infamous Balen Report in 2004. Autonomous Mind has an interesting take on how the suppression of this can be challenged again.

Nice Work If You Can Get it...

This is just taking the piss...

Mr Entwistle, who resigned on Saturday night after just 54 days in the job, leaves with a £450,000 lump sum on top of his £877,000 pension pot, which was described as “unjustifiable and unacceptable” by one MP.

The BBC Trust said Mr Entwistle had been given a year’s salary, which amounts to £8,333 for every day he spent as director-general, to “reflect the fact that he will continue to help the BBC business” by giving evidence to a series of inquiries into the Jimmy Savile affair and “to effect a speedy resolution and allow the BBC to move on”.

Autonomous Mind makes a similar point but expressed more eloquently than me

Stealing 'Our' Votes?

One thing you encounter pretty quickly as a UKIP candidate, either in local or national elections, are arrogant accusations from the Tory party that "we're stealing their votes" or letting pro-EU candidates in like Lib Dems or Labour.

Both accusations are obviously completely false. There are no such things as 'Tory votes' which get stolen; they are votes which belong to the electorate - you earn them or else. It reminds me of this quip by American Republican Scott Brown - 'it's the people's seat, not Ted Kennedy's seat'

That somehow the Tories are any different to Labour or the Lib Dems when it comes to the EU is an argument that has been well rehearsed on here many times.

Yet still the same excuses keep on coming in defeat:

A LEADING Conservative councillor has accused the UK Independence Party (UKIP) of costing his party victory in a by-election.

Leader of the Royal Borough, Cllr David Burbage, made the remarks following a narrow win for Liberal Democrat Cllr Simon Werner in the Pinkneys Green by-election held on Thursday last week.

Cllr Werner beat Conservative candidate Catherine Hollingsworth to the seat by eight votes- 839 to 831 - with UKIP candidate George Chamberlaine finishing third with 152 votes.

Cllr Burbage said: "It is unfortunate that, largely thanks to UKIP, the residents of Pinkneys Green have missed out from electing a very effective councillor in Catherine Hollingsworth. The last thing that people who voted UKIP would have wanted would be a boost to the pro-EU Lib Dems."

UKIP Cllr Tom Bursnall said: "We have made it very clear we wanted to have a strong alliance locally. This has not happened so they shouldn't be surprised if UKIP stands as its own party locally. A partnership might have led to something like this not happening."

This is not a unique experience to UKIP, just symptomatic of an arrogant disdain for us as a whole. Even as power drains continuously away from the Tories, it's a case of "we deserve to govern", fingers in ears and "la la la we can't hear you"

Their priorities lie elsewhere.

hattip: Bloggers4Ukip

We Will Remember Them

Today is the time to remember all those who have given their lives for peace and freedom. A day to pause to reflect on the sacrifices made by our brave service men and women with services and laying of wreaths at the foot of memorials erected in villages, towns and cities across our nation.

Behind the names on memorials are stories of heroism and courage that is left unsaid by the cold pragmatism of a simple name engraved.

However away from town squares, war memorials can be found in the most unlikely of places. Shown above is one such memorial in Wallingford, Oxfordshire, which is tucked away on an anonymous housing estate - well away from the busy town centre - that I pass every day on the way to work. A tale of self sacrifice and courage that is one of many which we should remember today.

The inscription speaks for itself (click to enlarge):

All Publicity Is Good Publicity?

Thanks to a comment on a previous post, alerting me to the appearance of Nigel Farage as a guest on last night's HIGNFY, I made the effort to watch, something I've been reluctant to do since the first episode this series.

Doubts were made at the time about how wise that would be and as it turns out not entirely without foundation.