Gordon's last stand

I bet Brown doesn't read this blog. And that's going to be something he'll regret, because I know how to save his career and his legacy.

He needs to call Nick Clegg and offer him the following improvement on the existing offer - two seats at cabinet for him and Vince Cable, one of them being that of the Prime Minister. And insists that he or Darling, with Cable's assistance, ride out the financial crisis.

Brown then makes a public speech acknowledging he has been rebuffed as PM, and offers the public change they can believe in - a Clegg-led administration, heavy on the Labour ministers, but with the addition of Clegg and Cable.

And he offers his own expertise as Chancellor to steer Britain out of the crisis with Cable's help.

He then steps down to cabinet and does just that, the one thing he does well - manage the economy, alongside Cable. The markets would believe in that team.

Gordon could step down, and will do if Cameron puts a deal together. It will be the cruel end that most politicians suffer. But there is the chance to stay in the game, redeem his reputation and do the state some service.

He should offer Clegg the poisoned chalice of sitting in Number 10, holding together a rainbow alliance, and the chance to implement their policy in Government.

He should enjoy this one last victory over the Tories and over Mandelson, who would take no part in such a cabinet and would be banished to the Lords, which would then be immediately overhauled.

And he should take this chance, this last stand, to redeem his legacy with one last masterful stint at the job he's good at, rather than the job of Prime Minister.

United Kingdom of Big Brother

CCTV cameras everywhere.

Corrupt police permitted to stop and search anyone they choose without need of suspicion, and arrest them and hold them for months on end without charge.

Endless databases of information about members of the public held by the authorities in insecure environments, including laptops left on trains or in taxis.

Criminal sanctions for not submitting your data to the databases.

Firearms and watercannons used routinely to suppress legitimate protests.

Authorities retaining DNA evidence supplied by suspects subsequently found to be innocent, including from children, despite being told by Europe to stop it.

A leader without a mandate who was not elected by the people, running a government that has no support, implementing laws that the people oppose and ignoring the will of the people on issues they care about.

And now the latest crackdown on civil liberties, the latest suppression of dissent in Big Brother Britain - Cops can break into your home and tear down protest posters.

Britain is now little better than an open prison.

One in the eye for Big Brother

Never mind the TV show.

There is not, never has been and never will be anything relevant or important about sitting on your couch talking bollocks with your mates about the strangers sitting on a different couch, also talking bollocks, that you can see on your telly.

Never was the idiot box a more appropriate phrase than in relation to that nonsense.

But of course, like all entertainments permitted to us poor plebs, it serves as a distraction from the fact that in Britain more than anywhere else worldwide, the government really is watching you.

That's the real Big Brother in action. But thankfully it has for once been stymied in its tracks by the most unlikely of opposition - the European Court of Human Rights.

So immunised to the constant sight of human rights abuses are we today that the plight of people in horror states like Tibet or Zimbabwe just seems to become almost the way things seem destined to be in some parts of the world.

The abuse of people's individual basic rights is so widespread, so ubiquitous that we end up desensitised even to the erosion of our own rights as they disappear before our eyes.

Even with the images of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib before their eyes, American citizens still allowed both 'Patriot' Acts to be enacted with barely a word of protest.

And in the UK, the New Labour regime has presided over a wholesale eradication of basic human rights, with its most extensive public surveillance system in the world monitoring citizens whose DNA it takes without permission and stores forever without justification.

So the news today that the European Court of Human Rights has ruled this practice to be illegal should be celebrated by ALL EU citizens, whether British or not, whether resident in Britain or not.

It's not and never has been an issue of 'those with nothing to hide have nothing to fear.'

We've all lost count by now of how many times public records and sensitive information like bank, medical, military or political affiliation records have been lost, stolen or leaked into the public domain or sold to criminals.

There is a simple principle at stake here. The state apparatus has no right to take and store the DNA of its citizens, especially of those never convicted of a criminal offence. And if the European court rules that it is illegal in England, then it is illegal throughout the EU.

That's one in the eye for Big Brother.

Catch the pigeon!

It appears that the phoney war between Iran and the USA/UK has reached the levels of cartoon comedy already.

According to reports, the ayatollahs arrested two 'spy pigeons' who were flying suspiciously near their controversial uranium enrichment facility, which the Western powers allege is being used to develop nuclear bomb capacity.

The ever sober and responsible online editors at Sky News' website have produced this mock-up below of the errant birds:

However, I'm more inclined to envisage the event something along the lines of this:


Only, Dick Dastardly would be wearing a big, bushy Mullah beard, Muttley would be in a burqa and the pigeon would be sporting a Star of David, of course.

Other Buggers' Efforts

I've blogged about this before, but it really, irrationally, annoys me.

What do Ian Botham,
Salman Rushdie,
the director of Specsavers opticians,
a KGB colonel who defected to the West,
a Persian CNN reporter,
the head of the Loreto Sixth Form College in Manchester,
Michael Eavis who runs the Glastonbury Festival,
a Scottish primary school janitor,
the director of Battersea Dogs Home,
York Minster's organ player,
the head of the Northern Irish Tourist Board,
Stephen Poliakoff the writer,
a 77 year old baseball coach from Kent,
trashy novelist Barbara Taylor Bradford,
blues covers singer Joe Cocker,
footballer Ryan Giggs,
a crofter from the Scottish highlands,
snooker commentator Terry Griffiths,
the British international development officer in wartorn Basra,
the blokes who wrote 'Auf Wiedersehn, Pet',
a black presenter off children's TV show 'Play School',
a restaurant owner from Middlesex,
a hospital radio broadcaster in Bradford,
a milkman in South West London,
a female skiier from Sussex,
a female boxer from Bristol,
a hospital porter from Hull,
cosmetics mogul Liz Earle,
a Welsh auctioneer,
a Scottish highland dancer,
the Sunday Times crossword puzzles editor,
a Welsh Karate expert,
the RNLI press officer in Merseyside,
a playgroup manager in Leicestershire,
an Ipswich rope maker,
a Wigan rugby league player,
an Oxfordshire ploughman,
footballer Teddy Sheringham,
the HR manager in Belfast Passport Office,
the managing director of Sellafield Nuclear Plant,
the head of Halliburton's engineering subsidiary KBR in Iraq,
jazz singer Norma Winstone
and innumerable Northern Ireland Office penpushers, including one aptly named Leach, all have in common?

They all were given honours for the Queen's birthday (the official one that she wasn't actually born on) this weekend.

If ever there was good reason to scrap outdated honours systems like Britain's, surely the list above is it.

Will he make a thousand days?

Sorry for the delays in updates. I've been busy.

So, obviously, is Tony Blair.

It's over 940 days now since our Tone promised to resign. That's nearly three years of lies, war and deceit from 'New Labour.'

Rumour has it he's going to go before the likely-to-be-disastrous Scottish election results.

And about time too.

Try not to cry on your way out the door, there's a good chap.

Ryanair are thieving scumbags

We all know that Michael O'Leary's reign of terror has led to a complete breakdown in the concept of customer service in air travel.

Ryanair's business model includes cramming so many seats on a plane as to make them utterly uncomfortable for anyone but a midget to sit in. It also involves charging people extortionate taxes and additional levies for 'luxury extras' like baggage and wheelchairs.

They are known in the aviation industry as 'Ryanscare - a fright with every flight' for their fast and loose attitudes to safety procedures during their terrifyingly short turnarounds at poorly equipped regional airports.

And their policy of blaring adverts for crap like scratchcards during red-eye flights is definitely going to result in some sleep-deprived passenger assaulting staff one of these days.

But their latest wheeze is an attempt to steal money which they are not authorised to take from their own customers.

Ryanair have sent out an email to any customers who booked a flight out of the UK before the 7th of December for travel after the 1st of February this year. I've included its full text below.

Basically, because Gordon Brown doubled UK Air Passenger Duty in the last budget, Ryanair are now attempting to levy a further unauthorised charge on these customers.

I booked and paid for such a flight. But now, because Ryanair's business environment was changed in the budget, they want to try and up the price of my flight. Sorry, O'Leary, you thieving scumbag, but we had a deal. You offered a price and I took it.

Just because your business climate changes doesn't give you the right to renege on an agreed price and levy further charges at a later date.

My credit card company has been warned to reject any attempt by you to take any further payment from me for my flight. And if you attempt to do so, I'll be in touch with the Consumer Association and my lawyer.

I urge anyone else who received a similar email to behave likewise.

Here's the text:

Dear Customer,

In his budget speech on 6th December 2006, the UK Chancellor, Mr Gordon Brown MP, announced his decision to DOUBLE “UK Air Passenger Duty”. This tax grab which is applicable to every passenger departing from a UK airport will generate £1bn. in tax revenues for the UK Government, but will do nothing for the environment.

Unfortunately, as you booked your flight - confirmation number DELETED before the 7th December 2006 with a travel date after the 1st February 2007 (see the below flight details), we have no alternative, in this instance, but to act as the UK Chancellor’s tax collector.

In accordance, with Article 4.2.2 of Ryanair’s General Conditions of Carriage, the additional tax amount required by the UK government will automatically be charged to the credit card or debit card used to pay for this flight booking. These credit/debit card transactions will automatically take place over the next 2 weeks

UK Air Passenger Duty Rates – applicable per person for each departing flight from a UK airport which was booked before the 7th December 2006 for travel from the 1st February 2007 onwards.

£10*(GBP) per person for each UK domestic flight (£20 on a return UK domestic flight)
£10* (GBP) per person for flights from the UK to an EU/EEA airport
£40* (GBP) per person for flights from the UK to an airport outside the EU/EEA – e.g. Morocco

*or local currency equivalent

Ryanair condemns the UK Chancellor’s unfair and regressive tax on ordinary passengers. And we urge you to write to Gordon Brown MP at ministers@hm-treasury.gsi.gov.uk indicating your opposition to this tax grab which will generate £1bn. in tax revenues for the UK Government, but will not do nothing for the environment.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and France

Documents recently uncovered in British archives reveal that a beleaguered French leadership proposed a full union between Britain and France in the 1950s.

They were prepared to accept the crown, join the Commonwealth and share common citizenship, according to proposals made by French Prime Minister Guy Mollet in 1956, at the height of the Suez crisis.

Needless to say, the discovery of this jaw-dropping proposal, which Mollet quietly shelved after Suez was lost and tensions between Israel and Jordan dissipated somewhat, hasn't impressed French nationalists very much.

And it certainly offers a different perspective of Anglo-French relations to de Gaulle twice vetoing Britain's entry into the EU only a few years later.

Though of course there is a precedent - England did occupy regions of France around Calais and Bordeaux in the early Middle Ages, and they still bear traces of their lost English heritage in the ancient architecture of those regions.

Nevertheless, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and France would have turned Irish and world politics on its head, had it actually happened.

There would have been a different centre to the burgeoning EU than the subsequent Franco-German axis that developed later. There would have been a ready made superpower in Western Europe to offer an alternative pole of power to the Eastern Bloc and America.

English dominance of the isles would have been exceedingly dissipated by French influence. It would be much harder for a country of 45 million people to dominate 100 million of a total union, rather than just the 60 million of the isles.

One intriguing question is whether a UK of Britain and France would have applied sufficient pressure of the stagnant, virtually bankrupt backwater of Fifties Ireland to rejoin the fold.

Certainly had it proved a successful union, I suspect that there would have been moves, possibly even a viable Unionist party in the Republic, agitating for union with Britain and France.

It didn't happen though, and probably couldn't have happened, despite Mollet's flirtation. And we can say 'Vive la difference!' to that. But it poses an intriguing counter history for the latter half of the twentieth century.

Would a Western European UK superpower have suppressed the creation of an EU? Would they have created rival client states in Western Europe to stifle the spread of the Eastern Bloc? Would they have retained their empires, as France largely has done and Britain has not?

Most interestingly, would we now be living in a UK dominated world, with America merely an affluent backwater, had this union come about?