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.

Ils Sont Tous Hors-jeu!

Best at the Pub, not on the box

This looks set to be a very challenging afternoon. It would appear that my only option for coverage of Biarritz v Saracens match in the Coupe Heineken will be a single web radio station en français.

I normally don't mind a bit of practice for my somewhat suspect language skills, but I've got a suspicion that a live commentary may prove more than a little challenging; after all it's hard enough to understand half of the BBC rugby commentary team when the action hots up.

Normally I like to have some other sporting action on the TV in the background, unfortunately this is not an option with ITV showing the pub game of darts, while that last bastion of taxpayer funded quality television, the BBC, is showing, erm...darts. Unfucking believable, obviously neither has rights to Heineken cup coverage, but have Sky and Setana really cornered the market to such an extent that both our main terrestrial networks are reduced a double helping of darts.

Perhaps, to be fair to the BBC, they felt that their sports audience needed something to calm them down after the excitement of last week's bowls coverage. To be fair to both, at least it's not the triple helping of horse racing that you can sometimes be subjected to on a Saturday.

I'd even settle for soccer at times like this.

Update H/T: The head is hurting a little bit, but there was quite a tribute to "ce monstre de la troisième ligne, Richard Hill" and more to the point, two essais see the score line at Saracens 14-9 Biarritz, so I'm not complaining! Allez les noirs.

Update F/T: Merde.

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.

A Surfeit of Riches

Also available in Earl, Marquis and Duke

Blogging has been light for the last couple of weeks as real, though much less enjoyable work, as well as a surfeit of opportunities to consume alcohol in convivial surroundings have intervened. It's not come at the best of all possible times as wave after wave of opportunities to lay into a struggling government have come and gone.

The media has also had the occasional tale of the bizarre that I've had to pass on too. I thought nobody was going to comment on the man bites/is bitten bymarries dog story of the week, but fortunately Thunder Dragon picked it up in time to stop me making some tasteless reference to Blair (Mk. I).

Other than the Home Office's daily blunder, most of the serious debate has focused, naturally enough on the subjects of the Queen's speech debates. Overall it is a truly abysmal programme of legislation that is proposed, one that if it shows any vision whatsoever, it is a terrifying one. I guess for myself the most repellent items on the agenda will be the European Communities (Stuff the People) to ratify the EU reform treaty and the Terrorism (Unwitting Promotion of) Bills, but the Political Funding (Preferential Treatment for Labour) Bill runs both of these very close.

The unequal treatment proposed, that uniquely benefits one party and the likely further dipping into the taxpayer's purse is pretty a pretty vile blend of greed and corruption. One thing that has been rather interesting in the opening forays over this piece of forthcoming legislation is the relatively emollient tone of the Lib Dems over it, as they prefer to make facile attacks on Team Cameron. Might they fantasise that with one more lurch to the left, some of the less dogmatic unions might choose to buy a little influence with a third party that may hold sway in the far from unlikly scenario of a hung parliament?

I know the passage of this piece of legislation will frustrate me intensely, but that will be more over the principle of it. On a practical level, I hardly think that the attempts of a governing party to pass one of the most self-serving pieces of law in recent times will endear it to the public, and there have been a number of analyses that suggest that the impact on those not blessed by special treatment in any act should, while doubtlessly unwelcome, would not be as disastrous as the baying hoards on the government back benches may hope.

There is though, perhaps one additional precaution the Conservatives could consider taking. Members of the House of Lords, let's be honest, get the tarry end of the stick when it comes to pay and conditions, compared to the Commons trough diners. Surely, it is time for these downtrodden masses to unite.

It is time for the Union of Conservative Peers. If some if its members should opt in, following all of the correct laws, to paying into that union's properly constituted political fund, for disbursement to political parties whose aims they support, who are we to complain?

Ad Astra (per Taxpayer)

One that works - Navstar

Through the ages addiction to 'grands projets' has been been one of the greatest vices of the political class. Successes? yes they do happen, but on a somewhat less of a common basis than the simple toss of a coin would suggest they should, even without totting up the consultancy hours that should have taken whatever assessment was performed out of the realms of uninformed guesswork.

This is not a 'brutal' capitalist assessment. It is one that factors in a lot of pride in the seemingly impossible being achieved that we can all appreciate. The US gave up at the first hurdle, Concordski as I understand it did fly, but never went into commercial operation, but Concorde did and, for all its costs to the relevant exchequers, I'm as happy as mes frères français that it did. It broke through a barrier, that in their own way, so did projects as diverse as Bazelgette's sewerage system and the channel tunnel. Not one of these would have or will ever return cash to the taxpayer, and I don't care. I believe in small government, but on occasion government can deploy the strength of the resources that even the most minimalist of administrations can muster to catalyse something that, even with the best will in the world, the private sector of its own volition would just find to be a little bit of a step too far.

There really are the opportunities a good government should consider big ticket expenditure on; unfortunately we have Gordon Brown, the EU, and Galileo.

GPS was a fantastic innovation. I used to go sailing now and again and its navigational predecessor, in terms of hopping over to the Channel Islands, DECCA, was the most unreliable pile of cack I have seen outside a local government IT department. Along came Navstar/GPS and you knew exactly where you were for the price of a crew night at the only decent subcontinental food emporium in Lymington.

For some though, there is a problem. Not one that actually will ever put lives in jeopardy, something worse than that, it was a project with its roots in the US military. It is true that it is less accurate than the proposed European alternative. So far though, the value in this enhanced accuracy seems to be explained as either the ability to support new and innovative ways of taking more money out of the taxpayer's wallet, or, for reasons I guess to do with frequency ranges, the capability for the new system will work inside buildings too, so that hard pressed bureaucrats can find the nearest lavatories in the Berlaymont after a prolonged lobbying session with all the free booze it may have entailed.

Everyone knows it is fundamentally what one could crudely, but fairly, call a 'dick length' project, even within the governing party:

"What taxpayers in the United Kingdom and other European countries really need and want is better railways and roads, not giant signature projects in the sky," said committee chairwoman Gwyneth Dunwoody.

"The government must stop this folly and endeavour to bring the European Commission to its senses," the Labour MP for Crewe and Nantwich added.

She called for independent evidence that proceeding with Galileo - a rival to the US GPS system - was worthwhile and offered value for money.

Source: BBC News

Ambitious is not a word you would use in its normal tired political context for Ms Dunwoody, but in the idea of bringing the "European Commission to its senses" she does show that a spark of naive optimism cannot be fully extinguished by the mandarins.

Slightly less pleasing from the same story was the BBC commentary that:

In September, the EC said that unused agricultural and administrative funds from 2007 and 2008 could be used to plug most of the £1.7bn (2.4bn euro) hole in the project.

Source: BBC News

How good would have a statement saying "we've saved some money, so we don't need a superinflationary increase in funding this year" have sounded in place of "we've found another wall to piss it up"?

I would comment on whether some of the target dates quoted in the BBC article sound remotely attainable, even with a fair wind, in the context as described, but to do so would be an insult to the intelligence of anyone who can read it, let alone anybody who has run a project of a fraction of such complexity.

Just so long as there are swish launch parties for the the right people, what's the problem?

Time to Go

Dead Man Walking

The general consensus seems to be that Iain Blair (I won't use an honorific that he seems so unworthy of) will continue to inspire diminishing confidence in the Metropolitan police.

As I've posted elsewhere I have more than a little sympathy for the Met on the specific issue of the health and safety prosecution; health and safety legislation and the defence of the realm against terrorism do not mix, period. Civil liberties must be balanced against the needs for terror legislation, health and safety is not worthy of the same consideration in the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

I have no such sympathy for Blair. Watching him over the last few days I've seen a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde. When I hear him speak, I hear all the arrogance of his Labour masters, but when I look in his eyes and at his general demeanour I see a rabbit in the headlights, a man who knows he has blown it.

It has been truly appalling to hear Jacqui Smith's unsupported claims that Blair enjoys public support, while the best evidence available, the body elected to represent London has spoken otherwise. There's not much she could do I suspect, even if she was inclined to hang Blair out to dry. After all he is simply following Labour's new orthodoxy that acts of appalling mismanagement, far from being a a career limiting matters, should in fact offer job security under the mantra of the 'cleaning up your own mess' principle. It's understandable when you look at the fate of Smith's predecessors why she is so keen to endorse this line of thinking. Many heard the distinctive sound of the bottom of a barrel being scraped when she was appointed to her current post and let's be honest, the best spin you can put on her tenure so far is encapsulated in the famous acronym SNAFU.

The most offensive aspect of Smith's piss-poor handling of the whole affair is her petulant whinging about those who call for his resignation. Time and type she, and her acolytes make the claim of 'playing politics' with the fight against terrorism. Blair's appointment was one of the political to the police's top job in recent years and her defence of him, against all decency, is even more politically motivated. If incompetency is no bar to high office in the Labour party of today, hypocrisy never has been. Most of Blair's opponents have had issues about his suitability for the job for a long time and for Smith to expect them to turn a blind eye to his latest misdeeds, simply because there is a tenuous link to terrorism, is frankly ridiculous.

The only redeeming feature is that Blair and Smith now are to a significant extent political Siamese Twins. Smith must be a very nervous woman. Blair can't really afford to make any more mistakes, but on his track record the next cock-up can't be far away. When it comes, Smith knows she will be receiving the dreaded message of 'full confidence' from the Prime Minster that announces to the world that the remaining span of her ministerial career can now be measured in days.

But back to Blair, a phrase often heard these days, albeit about a different Blair. It is perhaps for other offences that need to be taken into consideration that I would like to see the back of Blair, but there is in the whole de Menezes affair one solitary fact that should in of itself mark the end of his time at the top, the issue of his obstruction of the IPCC investigation. As reported in the Guardian:

Just after the shooting on July 22 2005, Sir Ian wrote to the home secretary saying he feared an independent investigation could jeopardise lives. His plea was rejected as the law required the IPCC to investigate any police shooting.

Source: The Guardian

So, there it is, a requirement in law that the IPCC investigate any police shooting and the Commissioner of the Metropolitan police attempted to incite the Home Secretary of the time to break that law. I always thought that incitement of another to break the law was itself an offence, even if it isn't, it is a profoundly unethical thing to do. As for Blair's reasoning for asking for the law he is bound to uphold to be broken, does it sound even vaguely plausible?

Either way Blair is unfit to be part of the police service, let alone to lead it. Almost everyone seems to agree that he is damaged and at times like this we cannot afford to have a damaged top cop. With stories such as those about potential ECJ action likely to run and run the damage will continue as long as he remains in post. I might enjoy the discomfort it causes to the current government, Brown, who seems to be pulling a bit of a Macavity on the issue, apart, but this is two important to wish to see the open wound undressed.

For God's sake, go. A tritely decent man would have done so a long time ago, even a moderately self-aware one would have done so yesterday.

Lines of Thought

One of the hazards of working from home is that you do on occasion expose yourself to daytime TV. It's one of those things that does make me sceptical about the BBC's oft repeated claims to be the last bastion of 'quality' TV, but occasionally you do catch the odd gem.

So here, in tribute to Private Eye's Dumb Britain feature, is a snippet from today's Weakest Link:

Ann Robinson: What 'T' is a gland at the rear of the mouth, often removed in childhood.

Contestant: The Throat.

Source: The Weakest Link (8th November 2007)

Now I've encountered a few kids who I think would benefit from a thoatectomy, but...

Update, early hours: Yes, it is embarrassing to f*** up the title of a posting like this, OK? Most of my 'lines of thought' are polluted with 'lines of though', so maybe it wasn't such a bad title anyway.

Mind the Gap

Next sucker for punishment

Having got used to a lifetime of nuanced meanings of statements by political parties it is easy to become somewhat of a cynic.

I don't have the instinctive distrust that many natural Conservatives have of the Lib Dems.

True they do have their beard and sandal brigade, but to be honest I'm not sure they exist in any greater number than Bufton-Tufton hanging and flogging Tories. They have some ridiculous policies on taxation but they will never get to implement them so they don't scare me. They have a naievety on matters European that beggars belief, other than in the European Parliament where naievety gives way disingenuity but that is hardly a problem unique to the Lib Dems. Their "we like to talk positivly not just slag off the opposition unlike the other two sets of pricks" line is clearly internally hypocritical, but on the scale of political hypocrisies it is small beer. Their ability to sell wholy incompatible story lines in different local situations is annoying, but I guess there has to be some kind of edge to being small to the point of irrelavancy.

The real role for Lib Dems

Electorally, of course, they must fought as the 'NuLab Lite' they are, but for all that I value those times they make an occasional return to classically liberal, small state values. I've no idea how they square this with much of their stated policy objectives, but they do sometimes act as the Jiminy Cricket of the political establishment, sitting on the shoulder of those of our elected representitives, reminding them that just because the state, on occasion, can do does not automatically mean that by implication the state should do.

It is the espousal of these values, consistantly and unambiguously in recent years, by the Conservatives of David Cameron that has made me start to dabble with the idea of rejoining the party. I reject utterly the whining of some Lib Dems that it is some sort of marriage of convenience. To a modern conservative these values are as natural as breathing.

I'll admit that on occasion the Lib Dems do fall on the side of the angels first, but anyone who has listened to the likes of David Davies on ID cards cannot in their hearts truly believe that their opposition to most of the autoritarian claptrap that has emerged from the Labour government in the last decade is anything other than sincere and heartfelt. In fact, sensible Lib Dems should really be considering whether, in the very likely situation that the next general election results in a hung Parliament, their instinctive anti-Tory bile may leave them having to defend the indefensible.

It is then, to reciprocate the general spirit of the Lib Dem's attitude to Conservative pronouncements in this arena, that I comment on Nick Cleggs comments to the Guardian yesterday:

The Liberal Democrats today condemned the policy of holding children's DNA profiles "often without parental consent", as government figures showed almost 150,000 under-16s were on the national database.

The Lib Dem shadow home affairs spokesman, Nick Clegg, described the policy as "disturbing".

"Thousands of these children will have been found guilty of no crime, yet samples of their DNA will remain on file for life.

"The disturbing and illiberal policy of adding a child's most personal information to a massive government computer system, simply on the grounds of an accusation, must stop immediately.

Source: The Guardian

I take it therefore that Lib Dem policy is that it is perfectly fine to harvest the DNA of innocent adults then?

If You Don't Ask...

...you don't get.

Today is a great day in the Village marking, as it does the arrival of free wireless Internet access in the Base Camp. No more need I be subjected to the highly variable temperament of Shrek's occasionally evil twin brother who runs the Mother Ship, should I fancy blogging over aseveral pints of Guinness.

I'm chalking it up as a personal victory. I might have, erm...slightly exaggerated the number of regular Internet users at the competing hostelry to the manager here or rather forgotten to mention that most of them were the kitchen staff. Perhaps too, I might be somewhat more familiar with the provenance of some of the e-mail addresses of those suggesting the facility on the pub chain's corporate web site's feedback page than I really should be.

For all of that I feel I've done a valuable service in doing my bit to see that the good burghers of the Village are provided with such a service in an environment free from the Toxic One.

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.