Enjoying Yourself Too Much

What in the PRC really
did impress him?

A deeply depressing political weather front has swept in from the East with the return of our dire Prime Minister to these shores. As gloom ridden as this news is I suppose that at least the feeling is likely to be mutual. Most of us feel a bit of sadness when a holiday comes to an end and judging by the first known pictures of Gordon Brown looking genuinely cheerful, especially in China, and considering the hopeless mess of a government he returns to head, at least in name, it's hard to believe his feelings are any different.

I'm not going to make advance any fatuous theory that Brown is some form of wholly reconstructed Maoist, nor that he would like reduce the real democratic powers of the British people all the way down to that enjoyedenforced in the People's Republic other than in the ways dictated to him by Brussels.

It was though a bit disconcerting to see the very apparent warmth of old Incapability in the company of those who, for all the modernisation of their Economy and the opportunities that this may offer to this country, remain serial abusers of human rights with a typically warped leftist view of the relative positions of the citizen and the state. One can only imagine his fantasies about Hain, Harman, Alexander et al. when he heard about the Chinese method of dealing with incompetent or corrupt officials, especially if the bullet is still rechargeable to the family.

For all its economic liberalisation, in many regards China also remains one of the last naive believers in the centrally imposed 20 year plans and all such failed authoritarian dogma, so I guess with North Korea still being somewhat beyond the pale it's hardly surprising the Brown clearly enjoyed this leg of the trip so much. So much did he seem to enjoy his time there that I struggle to remember another visit by a western leader where the obligatory words on human rights where so few in number, nor so quietly and indirectly spoken.

Sadly the grin was wearing off a little even before heading home during his visit to India. While Indian democracy is imperfect, with some areas perennially subject to allegations of ballot irregularities and intimidation, it does look on the whole to be a vibrant and more or less functional pluralistic democracy and is getting better on this front with age. Not, perhaps, a comfortable place to be for a man who seems hell bent on several fronts on alienating his own electorate who he seems determined to treat with utter contempt on many fronts.

I really can't help feeling that Gordon would fit in so well into China's central committee, assuming that they make him chairman of course, in a way so painfully different to the way he abrades against every instinct of most people I speak to here, in terms of what we expect from our own leaders.

I'll even offer to buy him a ticket back to his spiritual home.

Life Out of Office

With Blair making notably little progress in his chosen post Prime Ministerial career relating to the Middle East, it seems that reporters are starting to turn their mind to what he is actually up to at the moment. It appears that the Guardian has found part of the answer in a piece entitled "Blair lands role in Bush's doggie video". Please note that it is "doggie", not the more familiar Blair adjective of "dodgy", nor does it relate to anything remotely pornographic.

The full version of the edited down video from the Guardian is presented in all its appalling splendour below. Be warned though, you will soon want to fast-forward to around 5 minutes and 10 seconds to see that unlike in America where a B-list actor can become a great president, it seems that here in the UK a reverse process applies to mediocre Prime Ministers.



For those that cannot stomach even a short cameo by Blair, here is his part of the script:

FORMER PRIME MINISTER TONY BLAIR: Congratulations Barney and Miss Beazley on becoming Junior Park Rangers. Well done.

As someone born in Edinburgh, Scotland, it's always good to see the Scots doing well.

Source: whitehouse.gov

For the uninitiated 'Barney' and 'Miss Beazley' are the Bush's two Aberdeen Terriers. It's noticeable that he finds it easier to congratulate dog's of distant Scottish heritage on fictional appointments than certain Scots to real jobs.

Then again, as ever, Blair speaks carefully in saying "it's always good to see the Scots doing well", as until Brown does something well, a somewhat distant prospect, he clearly feels little need to offer the same fulsome congratulations to his former chancellor.

Making the Worst of a Bad Job

Brown and Miliband try on the new official Foreign Office treaty signing uniforms

Gordon Brown has been struggling with his decision decision over how involved he should be in the proceedings surrounding the signing of the rebadged EU constitution.

Yesterday he appeared to have two options to select from. Should he show a bit of nerve and show his personal support for the treaty he used to loathe so much by turning up in person to be photographed signing it? Alternatively, would he rather take the shifty and cowardly way by not wishing to be frozen for posterity with his pen hovering over a a document that will probably be causing bad headlines for years to come?

Even amongst those of us who are not that keen on the document in question and are even less happy with the fraud perpetrated on the electorate over the promised referendum, many would probably have preferred the former option. Not for once to further embarrass the walking embarrassment that is Gordon Brown, but because, at least in my case I felt that to be the only leader absent would look like an act of petulance that would reflect badly not only on Brown, but on the whole nation. The latter option would have been much more in character for Macavity Brown; cynical, calculating and counter-productive.

Amazingly though, the Prime Minister has truly excelled himself by coming up with a third option, worse than either of the two he was initially weighing up, by turning up late, missing the incriminating photographs and signing the treaty in private over lunch.

I don't like the treaty, but whether our Prime Minister should sign it is a private debate within this country, as much as the likes of Barroso may wish otherwise, just as although I'm sorry that the Danish Prime Minister has also lacked the courage to involve his own people in the way they clearly wish, that is purely a matter for the Danes.

If though, on the public stage, the treaty is going to be signed by our government, I would prefer it was done with a little dignity, but sadly that's another quality Brown lacks entirely.

A Momentary Lapse of Incompetence

Mad, bad and dangerous to know

It should not be forgotten amongst the myriad tales of govenment woes that even the most abysmal of governments do on occasion, even if it is by accident, the right thing.

It's only fair to say that on a couple of issues in the last week or two Brown's miserable administration have been on the angels. The score might be about 10-2 but the consolation goals deserve a limited respect.

First of all, as already highlighted by the Thunder Dragon, the government has stood firm in its stance over attending the EU-Africa summit because of the presence of the thoroughly evil Robert Mugabe. As I've often posted here I have nothing but contempt for those who attempt to deny any form of platform to those the spongiform minds of those afflicted by tertiary leftism try to dictate should be silenced simply for their wrongthink. There is a huge difference between evil thoughts and evil deeds though, and one that places Mugabe in a different league to the Griffins and Irvings of this world. As appalling as these people are they do not even advocate violence, let alone practice it as Mugabe does through a thousand proxies. It is actually quite worrying that there are people who see some sort of moral equivalence between the cases.

As for the alleged controversy over Clare Short's comments on the reasons why Baroness Amos was chosen to be sent to the summit, I'm loathed to intrude into what seems to be purely Labour party private grief. I would differ slightly from the Thunder Dragon's view on her attendance in principle. As far as I can see Baroness Amos seems perfectly well qualified to act in this capacity and it would have been reckless in the extreme to leave the UK completely unrepresented and leave everything to the sometimes suspect judgement of some of our partners.

The other thing the government deserves some praise for which, while a little faint, is not intended to be damning is it's resistance this week to the EU's continued attempts to impose a mindless working monoculture on us all, this time by demanding that the full panoply of supposed workers 'rights' on temporary agency workers virtually from their first week on any given assignment.

In the whole range of employment related directives dreamed up by feather bedded bureaucrats in Brussels, there seems to be little or no understanding that there are a significant number of people who choose of their own free volition to adopt work patterns very different to their own. Yes, there is exploitation at times that needs to be tackled, but in the mindless drafting of broad directives Brussels machinery only achieves new rights for this group at the cost of stripping rights from another.

For the first few years of my working life I worked some ridiculous hours, and rarely took more than a handful of days off in the course of a year. I was not compelled to do so, but I was well rewarded for it. Every day of holiday not taken was repaid at time and half at the end of the year. I worked the hours to best exploit the performance related pay schemes that were in place, and my efforts my employer, my clients and myself were all very happy. Now already the first practice, of paying for untaken holiday, is outlawed by the EU, and they desparately want to end my right to opt out over their legislation on the latter.

It's not a way of life everyone would choose, but I liked it. We don't all, over the entire course of our working lives want the same couple of weeks off in the summer, a week at Christmas, and so on and so forth. When I've worked in FSA regulated businesses and been forced to take a week off at a time when I had no real yearning to go on holiday, I resented it badly. My prefered way of life was to take a few months off at a time either between jobs or on occasion with the willing blessing of my employers. I've made good use of these kinds of sabatical to enhance my life in ways that a fortnight in Ibiza never would.

It wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea, but it was mine, and the thrust of the EU employment legislation is already half way through stripping me of my rights to persue my working life and career in the way that makes me most happy. Where are my rights? Removed to make us all fit the views of some civil servants, doubtlessly with precious little exposure to the real world, of what the ideal working life is like.

The same arguments hold against the plans over agency working. I'm sure there are agency workers who are treated badly and if so there may need to be some narrow, targeted legislation. Narrow and targeted is not the the Brussels way though, their legislative arsenal is filled only with various forms of blunderbuss. I've done temporary and agency work at various times, always for very positive reasons. The lack of security or supposed rights was well compensated for in the financial rewards, and both those companies which employed my services and myself were happy with the flexibility the arrangements afforded us.

At another end of the scale even this government understands the simple message that is lost on the befuddled minds of the EU that what they call 'rights' becomes translated to 'responsibilities' for an employer and the more responsibilities they seek to heap on the shoulders of the employers, the less inclined they will be to take the risk that such responsibilities represent to the business. Also they realise the vital role that such temporary work can play in getting the unemployed back to work, the old corporatist EU sees only one model of employment, and in their discomfort over more progressive models would rather see work as being an 'all or nothing' situation, not an 'all or something' choice.

It is faint praise for the government in that they have already allowed much of the damage in the area of employment law to be done, but the fact that they are prepared to fight for some last vestige of free bargaining between employer and employee to remain should be accorded some respect.

OK, even adding these two issues together is not anywhere close to balancing any single one of Labour's manifestly poor acts of government, but it's something.

Bolt Holes

There have been a number of very tedious stories that have dominated the mainstream media in the last couple of weeks, but none more overblown than the exotic but hardly earth shattering tale of alleged fraud that is 'canoe man'.

Today's headlines have focussed on what the Telegraph calls his "Canoeist's 'Narnia'-like secret passageway" in what seems to be a popular literary allusion attached to this story.

I've become bored stiff of this story even more quickly than that of the teddy bear teacher but, for all that, I can't help wondering if there isn't at least one other person in the country who is thinking that a secret passage leading from his current residence to his old one is actually quite a good idea. After all you never quite know when there will be a policeman knocking at the door rather than standing outside it, not that is, if you happen to be the leader of the Labour party.

That said, over the years Brown has shown himself to be the master of the disappearing act even without the help of such props.

Succession Planning

Bottling it Again?

Could it be that the Prime Minister is finally beginning to wonder if his tenure in Number 10 may be somewhat shorter than he may have hoped? After all, at Prime Minister's questions on Wednesday he did seem to be getting in some practice for what would almost certainly be a very brief spell of cross-examining a future Prime Minister Cameron from the opposition benches.

Now it appears that, perhaps with one eye to his legacy, a convenient diary clash has been arranged such that it makes his attendance at the signing of the EU reform treaty highly unlikely. Of course, it is protested, that he would love to be there but let's be honest the dates of both the treaty signing and the Commons liaison committee must have both been known for some time and it seems improbable to say the least that something could not have been arranged.

It would seem that the general opinion that Brown wouldn't be able to perform his Macavity act once elevated from the Treasury to the top job may have underestimated the depth of the Prime Minister's cowardice.

It looks then that the face that will loom from our TV screens over each fine leather bound copy of this most illegitimate of treaties will be that of David Miliband. Each time the European Court of Justice renders one of the much vaunted 'red lines' worthless it will be the same images that will be replayed, of a Foreign Secretary who Brown has already ritually humiliated over by taking the headmaster's red pen to his last speech on the EU.

Naturally, in his own opinion at least, the Prime Minister is a man of the greatest personal integrity, so to suggest that he would wish to poison a potential political rival with a slow acting political toxin would be ridiculous...wouldn't it?

It's the Issues Wot Count

50 Million Tiny Millstones

There have been so many polls to comment on of late, but most convey the same message about changing attitudes to our current government. I enjoy these as much as the next man who has deep concerns about the man at the top; feelings which I never had to the same degree about the Blair administration, but ones that more and more I find others have come to share.

The classic response from the Brownites is "ahh, but it's the issues that ordinary people really care about". Well, for a start that is now nothing more than an assertion of dubious provenance, not really an argument. I know many people significantly more left leaning and less attuned to the day-to-day goings on in Westminster than myself who are starting to worry about the kind of mood music that drifts out from the Brown Camp. More than that though, it's the kind of statement that assumes that not only is the policy fundamentally right, but that ordinary people agree with that assessment, with the airy complacency and arrogance of the current government that more and more are coming to detest.

On one policy, that Brown could so easily have ditched, with nothing but credit to himself for doing so, it may be that he has made another major misjudgement. It was without surprise, but with pleasure nonetheless I read the report of the first YouGov poll showing a majority of Britons who oppose the ID Card/National Identity Register scheme. True, this comes after the HMCE data scandal(s), but it also comes well before the real costs start to hit the wallet directly and before such joys as a trip to the registration centre become an everyday reality. It's hard to see anything other than a ratchet on this one, as the unsustainable arguments in favour of the scheme wilt in the sunlight, just as even the practical objections alone to the scheme begin to ripen in the public's mind.

I suspect Brown doesn't really care one way or the other about ID cards on a personal level, but saw it as a 'tough and decisive' buoyancy aid to his premiership. There's really not been much in the smoke signals about what he believes about this subject, and frankly it would be odd if even the most political of beasts didn't really have the occasional "frankly I don't give a damn" issue where you just try to read the polling runes. In this type of analysis though, it may well come to pass for Brown that this buoyancy aid may increasingly seem more like a rather large and costly millstone. It couldn't happen to a nicer bloke.

As for the government line that the HMCE data fiasco is in fact an argument in favour of handing more data to the government, I'm frankly too tired to give it the contemptuous treatment it truly deserves.

I haven't even tried (and nor has any minister as far as I can see) to understand the argument they are peddling. Are they really saying that for every piddling little transaction we must present ourselves for our biometrics to be checked (no phone banking, no use of your plastic on the Internet, even if unconcerned about the government having such detailed information on our day-to-day lives anyway)?

Or is it simply a case of poorly informed, inadequate political figureheads spouting what institutionalised civil service mindsets, befuddled by the sales pitches that I know the major consultancies can cook up, tell them to say?

The intellectual incoherence of the government line on the subject is offensive enough even before consideration of whether it springs from politically motivated dishonesty or simple inadequacy.

The Roots of Distrust

Do They Mean Me?

I while ago I came across an article on ZDNet on ten classifications of bad managers. It was generally meant to be about IT managers, but really could apply in any walk of life. Sadly I couldn't find it back at it's original home, but fortunately found a pretty accurate version of the core classifications reproduced elsewhere, as it does seem to have a particular relevance right at the moment.

I wouldn't actually title these as 'classifications' of bad managers, but more characteristics of them, as anyone who has encountered such creatures will know that the woes they bring tend not to come singly, but usually in a fairly full featured package deal. Actually, I think it is possible to suffer from one or two of the lesser defects and still be a pretty effective manager, once you get to three or four then you're in an organisation that is likely to have some pretty serious headaches.

Anyway, with no more ado:

Type one: The "Anything for the good of the company" Manager / LeaderThis Manager has a distinctive cry that sounds like this: "Look at me! I worked Christmas day and even when I had cholera. I walked to the office for six weeks after my car crash, even though both my legs were broken. Why can't you stay another hour each night without pay? I would."

Type two: The Mean and Nasty Manager / Leader
This manager is of the old school, a right scoundrel. Their idea of being a good manager is to be unapproachable or, in their words, "hard but fair". They are neither. After sacking a member of the team, they might be heard to say: "I had to let them go; they weren’t showing the right level of commitment. They want you to work rather than let you attend your mother's funeral. “What do they think we're running here? A holiday camp?"

Type three: The Non-stick Manager / Leader
This manager has sloping shoulders from which any blame will easily slide. They will not give a straight answer to a straight question, just in case you might quote them at the court martial. Whenever something goes wrong, they will produce documentary evidence that they were somewhere else at the time. They are more of a nuisance and a waste of salary than a danger, unless you happen to be the victim of one of their decisions.

Type four: The Missing link, or "What Manager?"
They seek him here, they seek him there, Those workers seek him everywhere.

Type five: The Flashy Brass
This manager has a sign on their desk or office door, a badge or some similar marking of rank. If they thought they could get away with it, they would wear pips on their shoulders or gold bands around their jacket cuffs. They will take outrageous liberties, like instructing a junior member of staff to wash their car or go out to collect their dry cleaning. When you question this, they will point to this mark of office and say the immortal four words: "THIS says I can."

Type six: The "I don't want to hear it" Manager / Leader
This is probably the manager of a department near you. When the team gives an honest answer to an honest question about the timescale of a project, they will throw up their hands in horror and give the cry that clearly identifies them. In fairness, this manager takes the cares of the world on their shoulders and worries about them. They lie awake at night fretting about delivering the monthly reports on time. They present themselves as a tough, go-getter, but are often covering an inadequacy. Be gentle with these managers, but most of all ignore them. It's easier that way.

Type seven: The Buzzword Manager / Leader
Often found, after a long search, in deep water wearing the latest Ralph Lauren concrete collection, Buzzwordia manages by use of a string of clichés and ideas that they heard at management seminars. Meetings with them are not for the weak-stomached, and it is advisable to keep a bucket handy, just in case. Think about the last person you heard say: "There's no 'I' in team." "Assume makes an ASS out of U and ME." "I can't spell success without U."

Type eight: The Best Mate
This is a well-padded, red-faced manager, given to back-slapping and calling in favours, even before any are owed. They make unreasonable demands in the name of friendship and invite you to their children's birthday parties, even though you can't stand kids unless they have been barbecued. These managers make you want to slit your throat as they ramble on about the fantastic time they had on their last sales seminar or golf tournament.

Type nine: The Two-Minute Manager / Leader
This is the type of manager who asks for an update on what has been done during their absence, then abruptly cuts off the answer after two minutes with a cry of "I don't have time now. I want a report on my desk first thing Monday morning."

Type Ten: The Patronising Manager / Leader
Nobody can do it quite like them. They were there when they landed on the moon. In fact, they designed and built the entire communications system. They also cabled Canary Wharf using only a pair of pliers, a cotton bud, and a cocktail stick. They won the Paris to Dakar rally in a car they built themselves from old beer cans. They caught the biggest fish, had the best golf handicap, and is, of course, a close personal friend of the Managing Director.

So, how would the person in the most important managerial position in the country stand in this light:

Charge One: Guilty. "And he came back from holiday...floods...blah blah...not like Cameron sunning himself in Rwanda....blah blah...nuff said"

Charge Two: Guilty. I think that those that think about it have always suspected that Brown would be a bully in the office. The evidence is seeping out as well highlighted by Thunder Dragon and the original Spectator source. The nice, cerebral Mr Brown is the thinnest of veneers. Expect stories like this to outnumber even the funding fuck-ups in the next few months. We've all met the like of Brown, and as surely as night follows day...

Charge Three: Guilty. Even the most one-eyed commentator must be astonished by Brown's ignorance of anything happening in the inner core of his own party.

Charge Four: Guilty. I can't think of anyone I know who would dispute this characterisation of Macavity Brown, including those I know who actually still like him.

Charge Five: Not Guilty. Let's be honest...this is not Gordon. He couldn't do it if he wanted to. All of his predecessors could, but to pull off the big set pieces was, and continues to be beyond Brown's limited capabilities.

Charge Six: Guilty. To be honest, it's the most fair minded explanation of the Prime Minister's ignorance of what has been happening within his own party. It's still not good.

Charge Seven: Guilty. True it's a challenge to think of a cabinet minister of either colour not guilty of the charge, but in his career as Chancellor it was more obvious than most that big words were being a substitute for for good policy.

Charge Eight: Jury Out. Ok, he tries the big dumb grin, even when being challenged on why our personal details are now in the public domain. Does Brown simply just not care, or is he simply a grinning village idiot. I'll be fair and assume the latter, but frankly we don't know.

Charge Nine: Not Guilty. Yes, Broon's instinct is to demand a 'report' or a 'commission' on everything, but let's be honest, it's for different reasons. His objectives is to buy time to spin up the spin machine. The bullying side is covered under other headings.

Charge Ten: Guilty. Even sensible Labour supporting friends worry about the patronising tone of senior government figures. 'Patronising' faces stiff competition but is likely to be one of the top three defining adjectives of NuLab's time in office.

I've tried hard to be fair, but I've been in organisations where what has floated to he top has not always been the cream. 7 1/2 out of 10 on the unfitness to manage scale is something I only once could have tagged a real world person with the same outlook when I was personally involved in making the choice. I assumed that time that it was a bit of a joke from a recruitment agency that we had more than a few social relationships with, unfortunately Gordon Brown is already Prime Minister.

My flippant comments are based on the public domain Mr Brown. The really worrying thing is that he fits a certain recognisable role so well that I can't help feeling that the real thing is even worse.

Another Non-Policy?

Sacrificial Victim?

Much of the comment on the last weekend's BBC politics output has rightly focused on the 'Calamitygate' story surrounding the Chris Huhne's bid for the leadership leadership for that eternal political calamity, the Liberal Democrat party.

I would have to admit to enjoying the acrimonious exchanges; real Punch and Judy stuff from the party that thinks we are all stupid enough to believe their baseless assertions that they are above that kind of thing. If anything, it actually fell short of the level of intellectual warfare to count as Punch and Judy politics, being more like a scrap between two five year olds watching the show at a seaside stall, which, after all, could be said to be a metaphor fore the role of the Lib Dems in UK National politics more generally. No more Mr Nice Party then. Good, they never really were; no worse than the other two main parties certainly, but not the morally superior force they manage to hoodwink the gullible into believing them to be.

My eye, or rather ear lest I thought to be a very sick puppy, was more taken by the appearance of the ever strange Ruth Kelly with Andrew Marr earlier in the day and what she had to say, or rather not say about plans for airport style security at major railway stations. It was only a few days since I posted my thoughts, for what they are worth, on this ridiculous plan and from the obvious downgrading by of the scheme by Kelly from a headline initiative to an 'option not to be ruled out' it would appear that the government may finally have thought through the implications of the scheme too.

This type of oft repeated story, especially under the current government, leaves the likes of myself, who has never worked inside the political bubble, scratching my head about how such daft ideas ever come to see the light of the day in the first place.

Ignorant of any real insight of the process I am forced to speculate that it must run something like this, with the only known facts highlighted in bold:

• Policy announcement - 3 days: Weekend of media criticism of visionless government


• P - 2 days: PM summons meeting of top secret eye watering initiative team at Number 10, memo sent to all cabinet ministers demanding ideas. Lists of remaining civil liberties that can be dispensed with and things that could be banned circulated.


• P - 1 day: CabinetPM selects least stupid idea from unknown minister, who is informed that it was the PM's idea.


• P day: PM delivers weak speech to House of Commons to announce his idea and is derided by opposition MPs who suspect the policy is unmitigated crap.


• P + 5 minutes: All intelligent life outside the Labour party realise that the policy is indeed crap.


• P + 1 day: Print media splash lurid headlines about PM's bold initiative, some though already comment on inside pages on the fact that the policy is crap.


• P + 2 days: Even slower elements of the media realise that the policy is crap, as do more sophisticated Labour MPs without ministerial sinecure.


• P + 3 days: PM informed that the policy is in fact crap and angrily summons the overworked Labour crap policy disposal team.


• P + 4 days: Expendable minister dispatched to non-announce the strategic non-advancement of a policy, in place of the Home Secretary whose political health was too weak to allow her to deal with what was fundamentally a Home Office issue.


• P + 5 days: PM slinks off back into hiding ahead of what he, unlike Parliament, already knows will be a week of disastrous news for his disintegrating government. Next eye catching initiative placed in production, illiberal line failed, so try banning something next time....plastic bags?

...and so the weekly cycle begins again. Well, this kind of knee jerk rubbish has to come from somewhere.

Ceding the High Ground

Celebrating Gordon's Gift

The arguments over government proposals for further supposedly anti-terror legislation, especially on pre-trial detention, have continued to rumble on today, and so they should.

I'm sure there is nobody rationale who would want anything other than to see the would be perpetrators of the types of outrageous crimes that have occured from time to time in recent years thwarted, caught and punished. This does not however mean that every 'get tough' policy from the government, should, as Gordon seems to believe, be nodded through simply because the police would like the additional powers.

You don't even have the type of passionate belief in individual liberties and basic values, such as a person's fundamental innocence until properly convicted to understand why the type of measures the government appears to be considering should be treated with the greatest of scepticism. All you really need to do is a very simple, though unpleasant, thought experiment and just for a moment put yourself in the shoes of a terrorist leader, and try and imagine how he will have reacted to recent announcements.

Will he have slammed down his fist in frustration on his desk or whatever he may have his dank cave and torn up his plans for attacking the UK overland train network? I suspect not, I think he will probably joined his brethren for a little jig firing volley after volley of AK-47 ammunition into the air. Why wouldn't he? After all he has forced, in his mind at least, a western state to consider placing a highly visible daily reminder of the threat his and similar organisations pose in 285 of the busiest railway stations. This is a measure he will know will have to all intents and purposes zero impact on his ability to operate but will create a very real sense of threat in the minds of the loathed infidels and that after all is his primary objective. As for pre-trial detention, he needs to nothing but wait for the first case of mistaken identity or bad intelligence leading to prolonged imprisonment for an innocent member of a very sensitive community.

As is so often the case with the current government it is the most headline grabbing initiatives that stand up to the least scrutiny. After all to grab headlines is their raison d'être, not actually to be effective. Try another thought experiment. You've got a backpack full of explosives and you want to blow up a packed commuter express just as it comes into London Waterloo during the morning rush hour, but the 285 busiest stations have airport style security scans; do you abort your mission? I've not read the Al Queda training manual, but off the top of my head I can think of a dozen or more ways I could render the inconvenience to those standing in the queues for the scanners completely worthless.

This particular suggestion is at best a symbolic gesture to show the government is doing something, albeit at enormous cost in cash and inconvenience terms. At worst things could take a rather more sinister turn. After all, once the National Identity Register is up and running, what better way could you find to 'encourage' us to file into the registration centre for processing like the mindless sheep the government wishes us to be, than introduce a 'common sense' ID check at these security bottlenecks.

I guess you could clamp down on all train and tube stations, with full airport style checks at all stages even for, say, a ten minute trip from Battersea to Waterloo. I guess there would even be those whose knee jerk reaction would be to say yes to this, just as they squeal 'nothing to hide, nothing to fear' on ID cards. Fine, but all you would have achieved by this draconian action is a displacement to fear of buses, and so it goes on.

Airport type checks are appropriate for airports. They are relatively few in number, making the checks practical, the vast majority of journeys are of sufficient length to make the time spent going through security checks seem acceptable, the limited amount of weaponry or explosives needed to cause an outrage make them essential.

This particular gesture, for that is all it is, is about making Gordon Brown appear to be the tough man we all now know he isn't.

The suggestions on pre-trial detention are worse. They should outrage any fair minded person, as should the denunciations of those who speak against them. That said, I'll wait until we know what the government position is once all troublemakers have reported to Number 10 for their reeducation session, before venting my spleen on this subject.

Personally, the greatest tragedy of Labour's response to the terrorist threat, is a growing difficulty to feel proud of my country, in the sense of the values it demonstrates through actions not words to the outside world.

Up in Smoke

In need of an update

Bonfire night hasn't ever had the same appeal since my father bought a dodgy batch of fireworks that fell of the back of a lorry a few years ago. Once you've seen an oversized rocket doing a mid air U-turn a couple of seconds after lift off and somehow fitting through the narrowest of re-entry windows (in this case a patio door opened only to a ventilation setting) and explode in the family lounge nothing else will quite match the excitement.

It's that whiff of gunpowder and controlled danger that I've always liked and I desperately hope the health and safety zealots fail in their annual whining for yet more draconian restrictions. They don't seem to publicise the annual injury toll on TV news outlets anymore, which is probably a sign that the numbers are becoming fairly small and un-newsworthy, but if true that would not deflect the zero risk brigade from their crusade.

There have also been the usual questions raised about the appropriateness of an annual celebration of Catholic burning from the usual suspects of political correctness as well as from more considered sources. I've got no particular views on Catholicism one way of the other, but I am inclined to believe that it is one area where perhaps we could include a little more diversity. A pub conversation last night covered some potential candidates to replace the historical Guido Fawkes, so I have now come up with my considered top 10. I've tried to stick to just a single victim from any given sphere or institution, otherwise I'd have just been able to cut and paste from a list of members of the current cabinet.

So here goes then…my top 10 for the bonfire kindled, of course with the entire print run (if that is sufficient) of The Independent, in effigy:

10 - Jonathan Davies
Davies is a fine rugby player in both codes of the codes, with an encyclopaedic knowledge of both games. That said, the Welsh accent can be a beautiful thing, but his isn't. If some digibox offers a 'mute Davies commentary' feature I will be out to buy one in a second.

9 - Jose Manuel Barroso
I was tempted to include two people from the commission so that, in EU style, it would be possible to satisfy the sensitivities of those both in Brussels and Strasbourg. In my opinion the more common hate figures of the Eurosceptic movement, such as Santer and Delors at least had a degree of honesty of what their ultimate goal was, even if they were not so open about how they were achieving it. Some may say that Barroso is just the EU village idiot and unworthy of the accolade, but I'd love to see him go up in his Napoleonic bicorn hat.

8 - The Poison Dwarf
Ok, a bit parochial. Those outside the Village will just have to trust me when I say that never before in the field of pub bores has so little knowledge been expounded so long and inaccurately to so many.

7 - Kate Moss
OK, it wouldn't add much to the blaze, but the Kate Moss effigy is there as a symbolic representation of British Tabloid culture at its worst. The mention of her name in the broadcast media used to be a cue that all the serious news had come to an end and you could switch off and go and do something else, now it's likely to somewhere up in the top three stories at some point in any given week.

6 - Quentin Davies MP
We have far too large a legislature for a country of our size so the back benchers must take their share of the cuts as well as the cabinet. Not only would Davies' oily bulk make up for Moss, but as people at least since the days of Dante have known, there is a special circle in hell reserved for traitorous scum. I suspect there are still plenty of his newfound colleagues that would help me drag his heavy effigy to the top of the bonfire.

5 - Richard Corbett MEP
The smug grin that the deputy leader of the Labour MEPs has worn since his wish to have the desires of the British People extinguished seems to have been granted is truly revolting. The stupefying dishonesty of his attempts to justify the most politically dishonest act of my lifetime are offensive in the extreme. His fervent hope that the gradual stripping away of real democratic control from the general public will continue is reason enough to give him a portent of what generally happens when self selecting elites scorn the people, in seeing his effigy meet the same kind of sticky end that ultimately befell many of his political forebears.

4 - Robert Mugabe
It's a rare person who can unite a vast swathe of the political spectrum in universal loathing. There are others whose leadership has turned their country into a complete mess, but so often it can be attributed to an obsession with failed and discredited ideologies. With Mugabe I'm not sure I could even credit a plea of insanity; I believe he knows what he is doing is wrong and where he is leading his nation but these issues are small beer to him in comparison to his desire for unfettered power and wealth for his friends and himself.

3 - Lord "I'll never accept a peerage" Kinnock
Kinnock becomes the peer for the pyre on many counts. At least seeing the Kinnock effigy burn would be a more upbeat experience than some of the others where the frustration that in a civilised society we cannot really burn the person depicted would be a bit of dampener. Just as traditional bonfire festivities celebrate, to an extent, an event that never came to pass, so too would the roasting of this trough pig's effigy be a celebration that he never actually became Prime Minister.

2 - Sir Ian Blair
Had this particular Blair done a job that had inspired confidence in anybody outside left wing political circles then I would have been defending him to the hilt over the recent ridiculous Health and Safety conviction for the Met. In truth though he has being doing an important job badly for several years now with an astonishing disregard to the damage he is doing to the image of his forceservice.

1 - Gordon Brown
Well, it had to be, didn't it? If I'm only going to burn one member of the cabinet in effigy it has to be the top man. I understand he has another in his series of books on courage about to hit the shelves. It's the only way he will ever see his name on the cover of a book on that subject. Utterly worthless.

I know there are so many other worthy candidates but it's a start and we do have to consider our carbon footprint.

Killjoy is Here

Seasons Curses on LibLab Alike

My plan to defy the latest edicts of the medical community by imbibing an allegedly unhealthy amount of red meat and red wine at the Base Camp have run aground thanks to the fact that it appears to be holding a Halloween theme night.

It's all rather annoying especially as my customary haggard appearance has not met the qualifying criteria for fancy dress and the associated free cocktail.

I'm not a great fan of Halloween and am pretty sure I never was. Part of it is the plethora of tat that flies off supermarket shelves and all over otherwise pleasant dispensaries of alcoholic beverages, but it is the importation of trick-or-treating that I like least. I'll be honest and say I'm not that good with kids at the best of times, and Halloween is not the best of times to encounter kids. Let's be honest, very few sensible parents let their offspring wander door to door and so most of the nice ones in decent costumes are usually packed off to themed parties instead leaving the scumbags of the future to wander round and piss off the adult world clad in torn up bin liners.

It's the moral aspect that truly worries me. What kind of message are we sending to our children? No, I don't give a flying fig about the occult overtones of the festivities. The message that worries me is that reward, often in the form of cash can be gained simply by the application of veiled threats.

Are we really trying to breed a generation of new employees for Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs?

Ah well, at least it's an opportunity to take kick a man who deserves it when he is down.

Incompetence Central

Exercising Tiny Minds

For the past week there have been almost daily stories of the government backing down on policies announced just days earlier, using dodgy figures to mask the failures of their existing ones, or the wholesale adoption of Conservative material to fill the gaping void in their own vision.

It's really hard to pick which one has been the most humiliating for Brown and his team. I suspect that many would opt for the admission over the statistics on migrant workers, though my favourite was the climb down over plans to claw back surpluses in school bank accounts.

I delighted to see much of the embarrassment falling on the narrow, in terms of personal courage, shoulders of Brown having being skewered effectively on the issue at PMQs by Cameron. Moreover it demonstrates once again the type of ludicrous thinking that still permeates government. In the private sector the once common practice of punishing departments that have spent their money wisely and run a surplus by cutting their budget in the following year is now universally treated as a joke. Who knows what improvements we could see in the value obtained for we taxpayer's money when one day, and it could be still some time away, similar inanities are swept away in the public sector.

Cameron's most widely reported jibe at the Prime Minister was the "…what makes you think you know better how to spend the money?" line. I'm sure that Brown does think he knows better, as his well known arrogance would allow no other thought to pass his mind. The history of the centralisation of government spending decisions though tells a very different story.

As it happens, the other reason I liked this particular story is that I do have quite an interest in education. In no small part this is because it is the family trade. I'm the black sheep, the only one of my immediate family not to work, or have worked, in the state education sector.

My father was the headmaster of a large comprehensive school before he retired and had one story that illustrates well what happens with excessive centralisation of spending power in education.

Many years ago some bright spark in local government came up with what on the surface of it seemed to be a pretty sensible idea. Centralise the purchasing power of all the schools in the county for most day-to-day needs, and this combined negotiating power and the simple economies of scale could bring enormous cost savings. It makes sense put that simply and indeed in the private sector such effective use of a central purchasing function can, if well managed, deliver good value. This though was local government, which should have set alarm bells ringing, but nonetheless an organisation was born along with an edict that it was obligatory for all schools to use its services.

I won't name the organisation as I think it was mercifully and quietly strangled before the growth of the Internet so facts are hard to check, but I can remember its logo proudly stamped on every exercise book I used while I was going through school and on every pencil and every textbook.

The remainder of the story could be filled in by anyone who has seen what happens with any one of hundreds of similar initiatives. The organisation needed a bureaucracy and not a lightweight efficient one, but a big one with suitable levels of political oversight for pompous councillors and jobs for their offspring and doubtlessly a nice office too.

The result was inevitable. I think it was at a meeting in London that dad went into the WH Smiths at Kings Cross and picked up a single simple exercise book, functionally identical to those that he had to buy from the central purchasing organisation. This being before the widespread use of barcodes the price sticker made the point quite starkly, with the purchasing power of a whole county's schools resulting in a price half as much again as that single over the counter purchase in a London railway terminus.

It turned out to be in no way an isolated example.

The point is for me that, until the public sector can achieve the efficiency levels that can be achieved in the private, very similar schemes that sound good in theory will continue fail to deliver. It seems to be in the nature of government that centralising failure tends to compound, not mitigate that failure. Until Brown has a coherent answer to this as well as understanding that not targets, but the way those targets are set are part of the problem, no, he does not know better.

Hero Worship

It would seem that our somewhat beleaguered Prime Minister has at least one fan who believes that Gordon knows what it takes to exercise high office.

It appears that the front-runner to be the Australian premier after the country's next general election, Kevin Rudd, seems to be determined to ape Gordon in every respect:



Of course he didn't quite get it right. Let's remind ourselves of how a all too real Prime Minister (then in-waiting) does it:



I was going to entitle this 'The Wrong Orrifice' but I thought that some might have got the wrong end of the stick.

So Close, Yet Miles Apart

Bertie...up to the challenge

It was hardly worth tuning in to listen to Brown's pathetic attempts to justify the unjustifiable in his statement today on the Lisbon summit. It was all so predictable, especially the endless gibberish on red lines. What Brown seems to have conveniently forgotten that the in the manifesto commitment to a referendum, it was assumed that exactly the same red lines would be in place in any EU Constitution text that was put to the people.

All it leaves the Prime Minister with, in defending the line that the document is fundamentally different, are the fact that the document has been rewritten to maximise incomprehensibility whilst preserving the intent of its predecessor, and that references to flags, anthems and mottos were dropped. The former speaks volumes on how much our politicians want us to understand their project, the latter I never gave that much of a toss about one way other, given that these symbols will continue de facto to be used in the same way they always have been.

One little self justificatory line he did try to use was that nobody else was having a referendum, apart from the Irish, who, he tried to imply, were only having one reluctantly as a matter of constitutional necessity. Leaving aside what everyone is told as a child about 'everyone else is(n't) doing it' excuse, his line on the Irish position was comprehensively being crushed even as he was speaking.

According to EU Observer:

As the only country so far to definitely have a referendum on the newly-formed EU treaty, Ireland has said other member states should not be "afraid" of taking the same path.

"I think it's a bit upsetting ... to see so many countries running away from giving their people an opportunity," Irish prime minister Bertie Ahern said on Sunday (21 October), according to the Irish Independent.

"If you believe in something ... why not let your people have a say in it. I think the Irish people should take the opportunity to show the rest of Europe that they believe in the cause, and perhaps others shouldn't be so much afraid of it," he added.

Source: EU Observer

I don't think there can be too much doubt about which particular member state, with a leader whose cowardice is now legendary, he is accusing of being "afraid".

It was truly appalling to see the usual supposed supporters of the EU lining up to demand that the people should not speak and thereby ensure that public hostility to the organisation can only grow. Most worthless of all in recent days have been the Lib Dem leadership contenders who have also shown the same yellow streak as their departed leader on the issue; a bad dose of MRSA on both your houses.

It looks likely that the status quo will be maintained. In the UK the EU will remain a distrusted plaything of the political classes while just over the Irish sea it will be a project the people are part of. I suspect that if I had grown up in Eire, and that if suitable provision was made in Irish law to ensure that the self-amending elements of the treaty did not make the vote next year the referendum to end all referenda, that I would probably be inclined to vote in favour of what is on the table.

Bertie Ahern has more than his fair share of scandal and sleaze clinging to him, but on this matter, in terms of integrity and principle he outclasses our vile troll. The sensible side of the pro-EU debate must realise that those that engage with their people positively and willingly are their real allies, while those like Brown are the worst of false friends.

Clinging on Coat Tails

Dr De'ath writing over at the Devil's Kitchen has set the stage nicely for this evening, picking up on Will Greenwood's piece in the Telegraph on his memories of the 2003 victory:

"Tessa Jowell, the Minister of Culture, Media and Sport, is in the room for some reason. God knows who invited her. There is a highly amusing moment when a group of us are trying to have our photographs taken and she is trying to slide in on the shot from one side. As we are taking our positions Mongo Moody turns to the Minister of the Crown and says: "Look, sweetheart, I don't know who you are, but can you f**k off? Can't you see we're having our picture taken?"

Source: Daily Telegraph

Were England to pull off an unlikely victory today, I'd like to think that the obligatory invitation to Number 10 might receive a similar response, considering the Troll who lives there's propensity to shafting England.

Speaking of shafting the country, the Devil himself has a fine assault on David 'Boy Blunder' Miliband's pathetic justification for the weapon of mass deception he and his vile boss are attempting to unleash on us all.

Same S***, Different Treaty

Stitch-up Done

To call the documents that have emerged from the process that culminated with last week's Lisbon summit opaque is, to say the least, an understatement. Considering the fact that when Parliament debates the reform treaty in the New Year even they will not have a consolidated version of the treaties, as revised, to consider, this well-planned incomprehensibility comes as not the greatest of surprises.

Whatever one's views on the policies of the various components of the Independence and Democracy grouping in the European Parliament, they at least seem committed to informing the public debate in a way that more Eurofanatic organisations either only pay lip service to or actively despise.

This report from their EUWatch, on the impact of the treaty changes, is typical. True, in some of he commentary and choice of quotations they make clear their stance on the wretched project, but the heart of the document is a level headed analysis of what really is in the documents that the EU, and member states' governments so badly want us not to understand.

The simple statistical analysis is damning for Brown:



Even with four 'red lines', even if we are to take hope over experience and believe they will prove effective, it is abundantly clear that there is still a hell of a lot of substance to he proposed changes. To return to the ludicrous 'tidying-up exercise' argument is simply insulting to anyone other than the most rabid Eurofanatics or those without the wit to care.

Once more an organisation might have had promise and genuine worth to the people of Europe, has proved to be nothing more than a politician's plaything. Once more its latest incarnation is born in a climate of deceit and contempt for those that it claims to serve.

Winning Ugly

A win but no knockdown

A win's a win, and most seem to have chalked today's PMQs up as a win on points to Cameron, but it wasn't an especially good showing.

He gave his opponent too much latitude to manoeuvre back onto safer territory on the hospital questions.

He needed the EU referendum attack, one that is to all intents and purposes indefensible by Brown, to consolidate a comfortable but unspectacular win. As strong as the EU line is by Cameron, he can't use it every week.

If it wasn't for basic incompetence by Brown, he might actually have managed to have given his troops something to cheer or jeer about spontaneously, but in the space of a few minutes he managed to:

• Exhibit basic dishonesty by referring to Cameron as an economic advisor to the Norman Lamont, in order to try and score some additional 'Black Wednesday' points, whereas every biography going into details describes his role as being a political adviser.


• Show that he has not the slightest self-knowledge of his weaknesses by completely stuffing up two simple jokes


• Ironically make a hash of his pre-prepared soundbite about Cameron's supposed love of pre-prepared soundbites.


• Succumb, after Miliband's schoolboy whining yesterday, to wishful thinking by referring to William Hague as Foreign Secretary.


• Demonstrate an inability to think under pressure, by continually making jibes at the Liberal party, unrepresented in the current parliament, rather than his intended target, the Lib Dems.

Overall though, Cameron is on the right lines. One person who does have some work to do on the Conservative benches is George Osborne. In the attacks Brown made on the Conservatives, only one was not based on a dubious regurgitation of ancient history, that of the alleged £6 billion 'black hole' in funding Tory plans. How he used it - it seems to be the only punch the great clucking fist has to throw at the moment.

If Osborne's team can either restore faith in his original funding proposal, or find some other revenue source that would receive popular support, they will have dealt the Prime Minister another body blow, and leave him almost completely out ammunition.

On a more consensual point Brown offered very sincere sounding congratulations to the England Rugby team, and best wishes for the final. I will try and put aside my scepticism about to what extent our Scottish Prime Minister will truly be rooting for Vickery and the team at the weekend, even in view of this fine article from the Times on NuLab's inverted snobbery about any sport other than chavball.

In a recent article on the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, The Observer's political editor Nicholas Watt, made great play of unearthing the fact that as an 11-year-old Miliband was a terrible goalkeeper who once let in seven goals in a schoolboy match.

He goes on: “Cabinet colleagues have rallied to Miliband's defence. Aware there is no place in the New Labour tribe for non-footballers.” So there it’s official, you can’t help run the country unless you’re into football.

...

Maybe one day we’ll have politicians with the courage to openly admit their preference for rugby over football – just don’t hold your breath!

Source: The Times

I can't remember which blogger made the comment about New Zealand Prime Minister, Helen Clark's joyless, miserable face when attending the France v All Blacks quarter-final, even before her country's team began its familiar choking routine (no, not the haka).

To whoever it was, I am the bearer of bad tidings. It has been confirmed that Brown's miserable mug will be putting in an appearance at the final.

SNAFU

Same old rubbish

I only managed to catch a few snippets of the Barroso/Brown joint press conference, but it looks like Brown really is out of the game at the moment. This was a much safer environment for Brown, despite the subject matter, when compared to the full assault by the press core earlier in the week, or his Commons destruction, but still he seemed unsure, hesitant and distinctly not Prime Ministerial.

Daniel Hannan's blog post at the Telegraph may be taking it a little far, but it does seem as if the events of recent weeks have opened up a whole new range of psychological flaws in Brown.

Sadly the media kicking I was expecting looks unlikely to materialise, other than in the usual quarters, simply because in essence, bereft of anything useful to say, they fundamentally said nothing new at all. At least someone seems to have beaten it into Barroso's thick skull that the 'R' word is one best avoided entirely by people such as himself whose democratic legitimacy is so thin.

One thing that both failed to do in any sense whatsoever was to add even the slightest semblance of credibility to Brown's almost universally derided position.

What I heard was, frankly, incredibly dull even for someone interested in the subject, and I suspect that was the plan. For more interesting thought on matters Brown a propos the EU treaty, you'd be better off musing on Dizzy's interesting hypothetical.

It sounds quite plausible, but fundamentally it's hard to assess the likelihood of such a play, you'd need to know which Brown has in greater abundance, cowardice or a propensity to cynical opportunism and that's a damn tough call.

Bad Timing

Prats from the same pod

McStalin desperately needs something that will allow him at least the semblance of a fight back against Cameron's resurgent team. Some kind of big name visiting Number 10 would help. Mandela, Sarko, Merkel, Putin, even George W. would probably help restore some force to the great clunking fist and give Gordon a break from his now daily diet of domestic humiliation and allow him to play statesman for a day. Unfortunately for the dour one, the Prime Minister's next big public engagement is with Manuel Barroso, the ever unpopular president of the largely despised European Commission.

If you want to restore trust in your premiership, who worse could you go into conclave with than one of the few people more generally distrusted than yourself?

As someone who does not especially like, to put it mildly, Gordon Brown, the knowledge that he goes to bed knowing that there is no remotely likely positive outcome from this meeting that will leave him anything other than more damaged than his is already suits me just fine.

The meeting will, as we all know, be focussed on how to pull the wool over the eyes of the people of this country, rather than looking for positive outcomes for the UK, or for that case the EU. They could show true grit by coming to the decision that the only way to get the British people to support their decisions is to involve them, in the form of a referendum. That though would require courage and vision, qualities that it is becoming increasingly obvious that both are pretty much completely devoid of.

They will stand outside Number 10 and praise each other. Barroso will tell us all that Gordon has skilfully negotiated some fantastic red lines, Gordon will tell us how different the reform treaty is from the proposed constitution. They will join in unison on the key point, that the British people must never, ever be allowed to let their opinion on the veracity of their statements be properly heard.

They will beam, and smile and indulge in mutual congratulation. There is though, one little fly in the ointment. The majority of people in this country don't believe a single word they say.

I suspect that even Brown's closest friends wish it was anyone but Barroso lined up for Thursday. His now open hatred for anyone but the elites having a say in how we shall be governed will be a huge problem for a media team looking for the slightest glimmer of a good headline, when even members of the grim one's own party are openly questioning the truth of their leader's own vacuous assertions on the reform treaty.

This time tomorrow I'm pretty sure Brown will be back on the floor receiving the kicking he deserves, or at the very least skulking in private ignominy behind closed doors as wee Millibore takes it on behalf of his weak boss.

Brown will be back in his corner now, the blood washed away from his multiple knock-downs in the last few rounds, but it's far from over. Things can only get worse Brown.