Your Tax Money At Work - Catholic Priest Murdered By Syrian Opposition

Our Government's decision to send money and arms to these people is already bearing fruit.

Reports that Father Francois Murad was publicly beheaded are disputed - others say he was shot in his church, although photographs of the decapitated head do look like Fr Murad, poor soul.

"The Vatican news agency confirmed that Father Francois was killed on June 23 but said the "circumstances of the death are not fully understood". Two days after Father Francois was killed in Ghassaniyeh, the Custody of the Holy Land issued a press release saying Islamist groups shot the father dead. The press release said he had been given a funeral and buried.

"Islamists attacked the monastery, ransacking it and destroying everything. When Father Francois tried to resist, defending the nuns, rebels shot him," the release stated.

The resort town of Ghassaniyeh, in Syria's Latakia province, which was visited by the Telegraph, has fallen under the control of the extremist jihadist group Jabhat al-Nusra. Father Francois was thought to be one of the last remaining Christian inhabitants. Two months ago four Italian journalists were kidnapped by Jabhat al-Nusra as they filmed inside Father Francois' church, which had recently been desecrated. Susan Dabbous, one of the kidnapped journalists, reported that Jabhat al-Nusra had referred to Father Francois as "a spy". "

Why we're involved in this conflict between the devil we know and the devil we're getting to know pretty quickly, I do not know, but one thing's for sure - it's got nothing to do with the welfare of the people of Syria.

Plan B - "Reinflate The Housing Bubble !"

George Osborne is the Son Of Brown :

"George Osborne is going into the mortgage business. What could possibly go wrong?

...(the taxpayer) is to underwrite £130bn of mortgage loans. They, or we, will pick up the tab if the borrower defaults. This will give banks the confidence to accept smaller deposits of, say, 5 per cent, meaning the borrower can borrow more. It is not hard to see how this will encourage struggling banks to get a racier appetite for risk. Imagine the discussion between the buyer and the mortgage adviser: "Oh yeah, it's underwritten by the government, borrow a bit more!" This is supposed to be the way out of a private and public debt crisis.

Remind me, how did the country get into its current mess in the first place? In America both political parties connived to loosen the lending criteria until anyone who wanted it could get a dodgy loan to buy a house. In the UK too, a private sector debt bubble was facilitated by a cheap money policy encouraged by the government. Combined with financial engineering by the banks, and the financialisation of the economy, the UK economy was made very vulnerable to an international shock. Once again, a big gamble is to be made based on pumping up the housing market."

There's no doubt that this will do wonders for buy-to-let landlords, who'll be able to buy new places to live in while renting out their existing residence (the loans are ostensibly not for buy-to-let) - and that's just what the British economy needs, after all. One wouldn't want the average house price to be affordable by the average earner, would one? As the BBC said this morning, it'll aid "recovery in the housing market" - and recovery is a good thing, isn't it?

In other news "Recovery in the fuel market", "Recovery in the food market", and "Recovery in the energy market"!

Oh, and along with handing over 20% of the price to housebuyers, the taxpayer will be on the hook for a chunk of any losses on the loans (losses to the lenders, of course - who else?) in the event of a US-style price meltdown. Altogether now :

"Privatise the profits -  socialise the losses !"

Obviously we'll need a bit of extra demand to keep rents up, too - so don't expect immigration to come down any time soon - or any time at all. Oh, and that inflation "target" that they don't take any notice of ? Well, they're going to take even less notice of it in future !

I guess this is all of a piece with previous policy, and will continue to drive the remorseless widening of the gap between the elite and the rest of us.

"This is the last territorial claim I have to make in Europe"

Former life assurance salesman turned Tory A-lister Ivan Massow on the Tory Taliban (© Alan Duncan):

“Those same shire people didn’t agree that a man and a man should live together. They are always one step behind the curve unfortunately. But there aren’t many more reforms for them to tolerate. There’s just nothing left after this. When we can get this last thing through the gate I can’t see anything else, any other slights on their lifestyle or their beliefs that they have to tolerate.” 

Also in today's Telegraph :

"The idea that mothers rather than fathers should take charge of raising children needs to be "shattered", a minister said today."

It'll end in tears before bedtime, mark my words. But it all makes a kind of sense from one perspective. It all depends on whether you think that being a Master Of The Universe, high above a shattered, atomised and poverty-stricken mass of competing and variegated cultures, is better than being a more-than-comfortable member of a civil, ordered, prosperous and relatively homogenous society. You and I may go for the latter option. But that's not necessarily what an elite will want*.


(In other news, "a widow has died after being left to starve for nine days as her care agency was closed and the council forgot about her.")





* Laban - "It's true that in a rational economic world, a high-earning working class might be considered a good thing for a nation - and that therefore it's not in our rulers' interest to take us back a hundred years - but that would also have applied for the several hundred years prior to, say, 1860-1960. The post-1945 settlement is not the natural order of things. Before that it was the plebs and the rest - and the will to power, even constrained by Christianity, was strong. Unconstrained, what limits are there?"

Potemkin School

History teaching has moved on from all those Kings and Queens, battles and dates, rote learning* etc. Now, as somebody said, learning is skills-based, not facts-based - students are 'taught to learn' and become self-powered, self-motivated learners, 'accessing and evaluating a range of sources' etc etc.

One of the ways in which they play at being historians is the page of sources - where children are given half a dozen carefully selected paragraphs from half a dozen carefully selected sources, and invited on the basis of same to pronounce on whether the Tommies of World War One really were lions led by donkeys.

My daughter was presented last week with a photograph of a dingy nineteenth-century street in Liverpool (or London - I forget)** , and asked for homework to pronounce on what it told her about poverty in Victorian Britain. A long and hopefully not unfruitful debate followed - during which she suggested that the photographer may have been looking for the worst street, to make a political point, and Laban pointed out that it could also work the other way round. A Government photographer, for example, may be looking for the best working class housing and the rosiest children to snap. I mentioned the idea of the Potemkin village, where artifice may produce a misleading impression.

Now in my daughter's school, there's a special programme for the bad and the unfortunate - the disruptive and nasty kids as well as those with learning difficulties (I fail to see why the latter should be lumped with the former, but it seems to be the way in "special schools" as well). It's called something like the K2 Programme, and the kids are 'the K2 kids'.

Back to Potemkin.

"Just consider", I said, "when the OFSTED inspectors are in your class, whose workbooks are out on display, and who does the teacher ask questions of ? Your bunch, or one of the K2 kids?"

"They can't ask them. When the inspectors come, all the K2 kids get sent on coach trips !"










* (except it hasn't - because the exams are now marked by temporary staff, rather than by people who know the subject. These temps don't have the knowledge to review all-round competence in a subject - instead they look for the "key phrases" which earn the marks. A semi-literate answer with the key words or phrases will earn more marks than a great sentence or paragraph which doesn't include the key words. Now the children HAVE to rote-learn these key words, and we've got the worst of both worlds).


** it bore a remarkable resemblance to the street in The King's Speech which was supposedly the 1930s home of the Aussie speech therapist, but looked straight out of Dickens.

It's Schadenfreude Time ...

Heh :

Supervisors of offenders on unpaid work schemes are increasingly being subjected to threats, and verbal and physical abuse, with many complaining of feeling intimidated and afraid, according to a new survey.

The report, by the probation officers' union, Napo, details hundreds of incidents in London, Merseyside and Hertfordshire over recent months. In Hertfordshire, one offender told a male supervisor he was going to kill him and rape his four-year-old-daughter. Another slashed the car tyres of a female supervisor and told her: "I know here you live and I'm going to get you and your family."

At least two supervisors have had to lock themselves in a vehicle to escape physical violence and one member of staff was left cut and bleeding after a stone was thrown at him by an offender.

The situation has become so serious that a protection system has been set up for supervisors in the south-west of England.

But ... I thought these were the guys who didn't need to go to prison - the nice chaps that Ken Clarke knew how to deal with !

You can see why so many probation supervisors allow their charges to sit around and do damn-all except skin up - as this ITV programme (available for next 25 days) shows us. The report (download is Word doc) is exceeding revealing of just how much contempt the 'clients' have for the organs of the state :

An offender was instructed to work on a garden site and clear weeds. Later in the day the supervisor used the gents toilet, was not able to get out and it became apparent this was because the offender was holding the door shut. Eventually the supervisor managed to get out of the toilet. The offender told him it was a joke. He was told this sort of behaviour was not acceptable. The offender became very aggressive and started to shout at the supervisor saying ‘You don’t know what we do here. Don’t look at me like that, I am going to thump you now you ******* idiot. Are you going to breach me? You can’t do a ******* thing’.

Can't do a thing, eh ?

"The offender was subsequently sent home".

That chap might be a scumbag, but there's nothing wrong with his powers of analysis, nor with those of the criminal who asked his supervisor "why don't you get a proper job you fat ****?"

There is of course a subtext to all this. NAPO wouldn't give the people who pay their wages such a revealing glimpse of what goes on, were there not a pressing need to increase the number of probation officers and to pay them more.

Community service came into being in 1976. The idea was that as an alternative to custody offenders would complete up to 240 unpaid hours of work in the community. The thinking then was that the work would contribute toward rehabilitation, that it would not replace paid employment and that it would be of benefit to the community. Last year over 55,000 individuals were sentenced to unpaid work in the community. About a third were given individual placements, such as in a charity shop, the rest were given group work placements. However Napo has observed that groups that were originally supposed to be at a ratio of one supervisor to six offenders have grown; often over a dozen offenders now attend one group with the same number of supervisors. Staff have also complained that it is now rare to have a probation officer (or even a probation service officer, who has less training) on site. Indeed, placements are increasingly staff by sessional workers who are not contracted employees but are paid on an hourly rate. Often the only contact the offenders have with the service is through hourly-paid, sessional, supervisors who are paid on average £8.50 per hour and who often have full-time paid work elsewhere and use the unpaid work to supplement their income... sessional supervisors are increasingly reporting that they are scared on site and reluctant to report bad behaviour for fear of reprisals.

The report shows not only the increasing anarchy in the non-custodial criminal justice system, but the increasing influence of non-anarchist actors - gangs - in the inner city :

The most recent serious incident occurred on 31 July in Hackney where, as a 19-year-old offender was leaving the community service site at Brook House College in London E5, he was shot five times by an assailant using a handgun...It is thought quite possible that one of the offenders on the group phoned the assailant with relevant information. All the offenders on the placement have been interviewed by officers from Trident. This follows two other recent incidents in North London... Staff are now unable to send known gang members to do placements other than in the individual’s postal district. There are similar constraints on placements in other cities such as Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool.

Note also that the guys getting the crap are at the £8.50 an hour end of the spectrum. If Rod Morgan or Professor Peter King got threatened or had their tyres slashed on a more regular basis I like to think we'd see some radical new crime reduction initiatives being proposed.

Who's The Criminal Here ?

A landlord who lets people smoke in his pub ?

Or a smackhead who steals Poppy Appeal tins from shop counters, hiding them in his daughter's pram (his pregnant 'partner' nicks them, too) ?

The State gives its verdict.

Sentencing Michael Bailey at Oxford Crown Court last week, Judge Julian Hall said he was not going to jail him because the amount of money stolen was 'very little'. He told him: 'One's first reaction is to be quite horrified but I have to stand back a little bit and put it into perspective, having in mind the total amount of money involved is very little and why you committed these offences. It does seem to me they were drugs-driven. I'm prepared to suspend the sentence of imprisonment you so richly deserve.'

























At the same court last week pregnant Sabrina Burton was also let off the hook after she admitted stealing a poppy tin from a Londis shop in London Road on November 6. She also admitted stealing a MS charity box from Frog Orange in Windmill Road on the same day and attempting to steal another poppy tin from a shop on November 9. Judge Hall told her: 'It's the sort of case where everyone has a sense of outrage that you should do this - "how could anyone do something as mean as this?" - but I have to keep some sense of proportion. The monies taken were obviously fairly given for good causes, but they cannot have been huge amounts. I will give you a chance to put your life back in order. Your baby deserves it, if nothing else. It will do your baby the power of good if you keep off the drugs.'

A former pub landlord yesterday became the first person to be jailed in connection with the smoking ban.

Nick Hogan, 43, was sentenced to six months in prison for refusing to pay a fine imposed for flouting the legislation.

"failing to show a commitment to equality and diversity"

I'm just wondering how the NHS suspension of Christian nurse Caroline Petrie in Somerset (for offering to pray for a patient - which apparently shows a failure of 'commitment to equality and diversity') sits with this NHS poster in Tower Hamlets.
















(the poster is in the news because Dr Anwara Ali, a local councillor as well as NHS pinup, has defected from Labour to the Tories)

If wikipedia is correct, the Arabic phrase Assalamu Alaikum ('peace be upon you'), while sometimes used by Arab Christians and Jews, is essentially a Muslim greeting.

Still, mustn't carp - she could well have been in a hijab or burka. Just along the road in Brick Lane people are eagerly awaiting the installation of their hijab gates, part of a council-funded 'cultural trail' which starts at a sixty-foot steel minaret affixed to the Brick Lane Mosque.

A spokeswoman for the council said the concept behind the arch was "loosely based on the sculptural form of a headscarf, reflecting the many cultural backgrounds that have occupied and sought refuge in and around Brick Lane over the centuries".

Using planning-gain funds paid to the council following the development of Bishops Square and Spitalfields market, the trail is intended to bring more tourism into the area and smarten it up. But locals complain that the focus has been too much on the Bangladeshi community, which makes up a third of the Tower Hamlets population.

At the centre of the trail is a 29 metre high minaret that has been attached to the Brick Lane mosque, a grade II listed building originally built in 1742 as a Huguenot church, then converted into a synagogue and now the Brick Lane jamme masjid [mosque]. Tower Hamlets council says the structure "is not a minaret" but a "large steel art sculpture".

Best Educated Generation In History ...

The "Blair generation" will be the best educated in history, the school standards minister, David Miliband, promised yesterday.

My daughter's homework sheet ....

Education News - Burnley

Remember Building Schools for the Future, the giant social engineering project which shut all the (de facto segregated) secondary schools in Burnley and opened five new ones, with catchment areas cunningly designed to produce a 'mixed' school population ? Half of which schools then headed for special measures ?

The idea was to improve social cohesion - a noble aim even if kids pay the price in worse education. Can't make a rainbow omelette without breaking a few lives, and all that.

So they've built all these shiny new integrated schools, which we will doubtless be paying for for years - they're PFI-funded. What's going to happen to the old ones ?

Er ...

The former Burnley College building has been targeted to get a 1,500-pupil Muslim boarding school for girls.

A leading charity has announced it wants to take over the vacated college in Ormerod Road and it hopes to attract girls from all over Europe.

If it goes ahead it will be one of the few Muslim girls’ boarding schools in the country.

Hmm. Were I a Burnley native whose kids have been moved I'm not sure I'd be totally chuffed by this (a/c/t the comments the school will be Barelvi, rather than the more fundamentalist Deobandi). And the new schools are costing approximately £250m. The old college has apparently been sold for less than £2m. Was the building put on open sale, I wonder ? Doubtless time will reveal all.

Petty, Spiteful,Shameful

I wasn't a Thatcher fan. But I recognise that she was a tough cookie and an exceptional leader - and as Britain's first female PM, she'd have been a historic figure even without the considerable impact her governments made.

The Labour Party - or to be more precise, Harriet Harman, have just used our tax money to produce the above list of historic women in politics - all of whom are named - save the most historic of them all.

Someone tell me it's a hoax. They couldn't really be that petty - and that blatant. Could they ?

Churnalism

at Biased-BBC.

By the way, do you live in a local authority area plastered with "a third of food is thrown away" posters by the local authority ? That's what WRAP do - enable your local authority to lie to you - at your own expense !

Read this.

Who would have thunk it ?

'Twas more than four years ago that I noticed Cathy Jamieson's campaign against anti-social behaviour didn't seem to be bearing the right sort of fruit.



Now those wee neds are all grown up :

A man who became notorious for making a v-sign behind Scotland's former justice minister during a TV interview has been jailed for assault. Jamie Smith, 20, is the 25th person to be prosecuted for a gang attack on passers-by in Cumnock, Ayrshire. Smith from Auchinleck, was sentenced to six months in prison.

He was 16 when he was filmed making obscene gestures behind Labour's Cathy Jamieson as she launched a crackdown on anti-social behaviour.

Unlike Ms Jamieson's policies, our young "Superned" is bearing fruit :

The Record told in 2006 how Smith and his then girlfriend Lisa Wilson, both 16, were expecting their first child.

And slowly, inexorably, Nature's majestic benefit dependency cycle makes one more turn ...

Farmer Arrested For Possession of Sickle

But not just any old farmer. A vigilante farmer !

Is This Legal ?

Equality South West is reminding people not to vote for the British National Party in the June 4 elections, like you need reminding… right?

Paul Dunn, chief executive of Equality South West, told the PRSD: “It wasn’t long ago that BNP leader Nick Griffin said he wanted the South West to be a multicultural-free-zone.

“That’s a shocking statement and reveals the party’s true colours. When you also take into account their opposition to mixed-race relationships and homosexuality, their stated desire to stop all immigration and their scapegoating of Muslims and migrant workers, you get the polar opposite of all that Equality South West holds dear.

“We believe in an inclusive, diverse and tolerant society, we believe that different religions and nationalities add richness to all our lives, not just in economic terms, but in cultural terms too.

“Most importantly, we believe that everyone is equal, which is why I strongly urge people not to use their vote for a party that seeks to divide people on grounds of their religion, sexuality or race.”

Isn't Equality South West 100% tax-funded (assuming the Big Lottery Fund to be a tax on stupidity) ?

As I said a while back :

All over the country there are 'funding streams' washing about. Most start at the Home Office and EU, and meander through swamps of bureaucracy before ending up in some sociology grad's budget.

But is a tax-funded organisation allowed to run a partisan campaign at election times ? Anyone know ?

In An Ideal World ...

Neither academic papers nor conferences titled 'Beyond ... ' or 'Towards ...' would exist. What does 'beyond' actually mean here, apart from implying (falsely in this case) some notion of progression ? What about 'different from' ?

BEYOND CITIZENSHIP: FEMINISM AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF BELONGING
An international, interdisciplinary conference
30 June - 2 July 2010
Birkbeck, University of London

Confirmed Speakers
- Sara Ahmed
- Davina Cooper
- Antke Engel
- Katherine Gibson
- Julie Graham (a.k.a J.K. Gibson-Graham)
- Rebecca Gomperts
- Ranjana Khanna
- Gail Lewis
- Lynne Segal
- Margrit Shildrick
- Birte Siim
- Gloria Wekker
- Anna Yeatman

I haven't got time to do the Googling, but I would be amazed if any of these people are NOT funded by the taxpayer in whatever country. I see that as well as Dave Public, the Nowegian government is putting some of those oil revenues to good use by supporting this event. There's a doctoral thesis to be written, if not a whole research arm of a think-tank, in tracking the tax revenues diverted towards the cultural Left.

The language of citizenship has, in recent years, been mobilized by feminists to articulate a wide range of claims and demands.

And the language of English has beem mobilised by feminists likewise, but for a whole lot longer. Nothing wrong with that, mind.

The notions of economic, political, social, cultural, sexual/ bodily, and intimate citizenship, for example, have all been developed and explored in terms of their normative potential and their actual realization.

Zzzz ....

In Europe, in particular, there has been a strong steer from research funders and policy makers towards research agendas which address the question of citizenship in the context of increasingly diverse and multicultural societies.

Aka 'they're crapping themselves about the future' - hence conferences on 'the future of Britishness', Gordo wrapping himself in the Union Jack, and worry about/attempts to rebuild the notion of Britishness.

I must say it's going to be entertaining to watch the feminist response to the cultural challenge of an 'increasingly diverse and multicultural society'. This theme will run and run. I hope the proceedings will be reported.





UPDATE - I'm amazed. It may be that two out of the 13 speakers are not tax funded, although it's hard to be sure :

- Sara Ahmed - Professor of Race and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths. Tax-funded.
- Davina Cooper - Professor of Law and Political Theory, Kent. Tax-funded.
- Antke Engel - Institute of Cultural Inquiry, Berlin, Institute for Queer Theory. Possibly privately-funded via a foundation. I can't find the ICI's accounts.
- Katherine Gibson - Australian National University. Tax-funded.
- Julie Graham (a.k.a J.K. Gibson-Graham) - Professor of Geography, Amhurst. Mass. Tax-funded, although there may be some endowment money, it being America.
- Rebecca Gomperts, abortion promoter and doctor of medicine. Funding unclear, can't find the accounts, but probably not tax-funded.
- Ranjana Khanna, Women's Studies, Duke. If the financial reports are to be believed, only 28% tax-funded. God Bless America.
- Gail Lewis - sociology, OU. Tax-funded.
- Lynne Segal - Gender Studies, Birkbeck. Tax-funded.
- Margrit Shildrick - Gender Studies, Queens Belfast. Tax-funded.
- Birte Siim - Social Sciences, Aarlborg, DK. Tax-funded.
- Gloria Wekker, Gender Studies, Utrecht. Link not work or child-friendly. Tax-funded.
- Anna Yeatman, Citizenship and Public Policy, Western Australia. Tax-funded.

Squander Two on Cameron

"I don't even care why Cameron has said what he's said and done what he's done in the last couple of days. He's right, and he's doing what's right. Sure, you've got to worry about how consistently a man with no principles can be right, but this thing's big enough for the rest not to matter so much. And it's also big enough to significantly shape the behaviour of the party. Overnight, the Tories have become the most principled party, and clearly not because they wanted to, but because they've been forced into it by Cameron. Well, OK, then. I'll take him as Prime Minister."

Discuss.

Losing It ...

Polly Toynbee ...

It's all over for Brown and Labour. The abyss awaits. As long as he remains leader, there is nothing that wretched Labour candidates can plausibly say on the doorstep at next month's European elections. They are struck dumb. Why should people vote for them?

"Gorbals Mick" Martin ...

MPs exchanged looks. Now Norman Baker, who has campaigned long and hard on this issue, arose to mutters of irritation. He was urging the release of more information when Mr Speaker, robes swishing, cut him off.

“Another individual member who is keen to say to the press whatever the press wants to hear!” he announced, embarking on another rant, the nub of which was that Mr Baker had said in the past that the Commons authorities had done nothing on this. “It’s wrong for you to say that!” he said.

MPs just wanted it to end now. Yesterday should have been the Commons at its best, instead we were seeing it at its worst.

He just doesn't get it, does he ?

Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail,

Saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the sabbath, that we may sell wheat, making the measure sold small, and the measure bought great, and falsifying the balances by deceit?

That we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes; yea, and sell the sweepings of the wheat?

The LORD hath sworn by the excellency of Jacob, "Surely I will never forget any of their works".

Let's start with the works of Margaret Moran, shall we ?

Labour MP for Luton, seen here attempting to justify the unjustifiable.

Most MPs on the fiddle (i.e. nearly all of them) flip their 'second home' (which attracts all kinds of expense goodies) between their London home and their constituency home.

This convent schoolgirl flipped her second home between the two in traditional style, but then flipped it last year to a third house in Southampton, 90-odd miles from Westminster and 100-plus from Luton, which was owned by her lover and which she'd just become part-owner of. Immediately she claimed expenses of £22,500 for dry-rot treatment.

Now an uncharitable person might assume that when her paramour discovered the dry-rot, they jointly hatched a plot to get the taxpayer to stump up for it. You just can't stop cynical people having ridiculous ideas like that. That an MP could behave in such a way is of course unthinkable.

On 10 May 2009 she defended her expenses claim on the BBC Politics Show as follows:

Margaret Moran: "I have to be able to have a proper family life sometimes which I can't do unless I share the costs of the Southampton home with him (her partner, Booker)."

Andrew Sinclair: "But why should the taxpayer pay for your home in Southampton when clearly you are not using it for work?"

Margaret Moran: "Well, I... I... I...you could argue that I use it to be able to sustain my work. Any MP has to have a proper family life.

Two points. Strange that she needs to go to Southampton when Mick Booker's Companies House address is given as Luton, and he's also on the electoral roll there, sharing a house with a voter called Margaret Moran. Mick does (or did) indeed work in Southampton - and from this 2002 photograph he's more prepossessing than his mercenary mort. Is Health and Safety Officer at Southampton Uni a more important job than an MPs ? Can't he get up to Luton to keep Margaret suitably sustained and serviced ?

Maybe she had to go down to Southampton Docks to give him a tug.

Second, and this is the one that gets me, is this nagombi about "family life". She's got no kids (like so many other 70s Sociology grads). What family ? Does sleeping with someone constitute a family ? Perhaps we should all have got bigger student grants back in those liberated, unGodly 70s days ? After all, we all had families ... some of us more than one ...

"Well, I... I... I...you could argue that I use it to be able to sustain my work."

For God's sake ! Mark Oaten could have said the same thing about his rent-boys ! Lord Lambton could have said the same thing about his prostitutes - and his dope for that matter. Perhaps we could indeed all do with a quickie to sustain us - but how many of us charge it to the taxpayer ?

What do her fecund, pious Muslim constituents see in her ? I suppose God is the Knower.

This fubsy, fraudulent fornicator is a disgrace even to the disorderly House that is the Commons.




UPDATE - I was going to mention Blears Capital Gains Tax shenanigans, millionaire Shaun Woodward's claims, Jack Straw's dodgy Council Tax deals, the Repairs of the House of Ussher. I haven't the heart. Apart from a few saints like Hollobone and Dennis Skinner, the main difference seems to be that some are bigger crooks than others. Oh, and did you know that all Blair's expenses were "accidentally" shredded ? And that Thursday was a good day to bury the news that Labour's dodgy Abrahams contributions won't be prosecuted ?


I've always been, in Neville Chamberlain's words, a man of peace to the depths of my soul. But I don't know. I'm starting to think that all those ranting commenters looking for lamp posts and hempen rope may not have been as mad as I thought.

UPDATE2 - the first Tories are in. Michael Gove and Francis Maude look in trouble.

More Dirty Dogs ...

Telegraph :

• Barbara Follett, the multi-millionaire Tourism Minister, claimed for private security patrols outside her London home costing more than £25,000. The parliamentary fees office, which is supposed to monitor claims, warned Mrs Follett that her claims may appear "excessive" if made public, but she was not deterred, saying she felt unsafe in Soho after being mugged.

Now this really gets me mad. How many people get mugged in London each year ? According to the Met's rolling 12-month total, "Robbery - Person" is running at 29,318 incidents to March 2009.

29,000 a year. They really meant it about being 'Tough On Crime', didn't they ?

Victims of crime get nothing from the taxpayer except derisory sentences for those who prey on them. Are this lot going to turn into good guys when they come out after their two years each ?

But we are taxed to pay for a millionairess to feel a bit more comfortable in her expensive home, when all over the country poor pensioners live in fear in their own homes.

She should resign. But they all should and none of them do, so all we can do is express our disgust at the ballot box.

M. Poujade was right.

"Throw the rascals out !"

Tautology Alert

This chap calls himself the Leftwing Criminologist. Don't find many of those, do you now ?