State Spongers Fear Pilfering Clampdown: The Little List Begins
There are vast legions of people in Britain who sponge off the hard work and tax money of the honest majority.
They are the creeping parasites who suck dry the savings and livelihoods of decent, hardworking citizens and their families. They filch every last penny from the state for frivolous, fraudulent schemes and fritter it away on bolstering a profligate lifestyle to which they are not entitled and which the taxpayer should not have to fund.
They are the scroungers and scavengers on the state, who are bleeding this country dry.
They have to be stopped.
As Peter Lilley said: “I have a little list”. Except this is not a list of single mothers and disabled people. This is the list of MPs and their families, acolytes, hangers-on and cheerleaders who are all deriving a living from the public purse at the expense of the taxpayer.
BBC News has this:
The row over Derek Conway’s use of his parliamentary allowances may have taken some of the heat off Labour as it continues to suffer from its funding crisis.
But, as the initial furore started to die down, the expression “a can of worms” could be heard echoing throughout Westminster.
And some backbenchers were expressing real fears that there may now be a prolonged and highly-damaging war of attrition as each side attempts to get the dirt on its opponents - something that will do little to rebuild the tarnished reputation of the Commons. [...]
But the fact that some MPs have recently been seen attempting to exempt themselves from freedom of information laws and that there have been ongoing disputes over exactly how transparent they should be over their finances seems to have boosted demands for complete openness.
If the feared war of attrition does indeed now break out, those demands are bound to get louder.
Oh, come on! Haven’t you spongers learnt the mantra you are always trying to foist on the public?
If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.
UPDATE:
The Guardian has this:
MPs should be subjected to greater checks on how they spend taxpayer-funded allowances, a sleaze watchdog said today in the wake of the Derek Conway affair.
Sir Christopher Kelly, chair of the committee on standards in public life, said that the Tory MP censured for paying his student son too much money had undermined public trust in politics.
And he did not rule out a possible future ban on MPs employing members of their families.
[...]
Kelly said: “This case is undoubtedly a very serious breach of parliamentary rules and further undermines public trust in our politicians.
“I understand why there are calls for rules to ban MPs employing members of their families, and indeed, there are international precedents for doing this, and it could be the right thing to do.
“However, it could also seem a rather harsh answer to the problem.
“An alternative approach would be to insist on greater transparency and proper monitoring of existing requirements which is generally better than creating new rules and prohibitions.”
He went on: “This is certainly an area which needs review. Before deciding on whether this is a task for my committee, I would want to see what action parliament itself proposes to take.
“I know that many MPs will share the view that the actions of a few can bring all of them into disrepute.”
It is doubtful whether the actions of a few MPs or the whole lot of them collectively could actually make them appear more disreputable than they already are. There are limits.
Fake War On Fake Terror
The thing about The War On Terror is that nobody actually believes any of it any more.
Nobody, that is, except politicians who have become so embedded in the rhetoric that they are actually inhabiting their concocted fantasy world, like a mentally unhinged method actor; along with their undiscriminating cheerleaders, for whom a politician’s pronouncement is a substitute for independent thought.
Simon Jenkins, in an article in The Guardian, has it just right. He finishes with this:
It is leaders, not bombers, who have the power to balk the advance of freedom. Already those leaders have used the war on terror to introduce the Patriot Act, Guantánamo Bay and a $1.5 trillion war in Iraq. In Pakistan they have used it as an excuse for emergency rule, the imprisonment of senior judges, and the provocation of unprecedented insurgency in the north-west frontier territories. In Britain leaders have used the war as an excuse for 42-day detention without trial, the world’s most intrusive surveillance state, and not one but two contested military occupations of foreign soil.
This so-called war on terror has filled the pockets of those profiting from it. It has killed thousands, immiserated millions and infringed the liberty of hundreds of millions. The only rough justice it has delivered is to ruin the careers of those who propagated it. Tony Blair was driven to early resignation. Bush has been humiliated and Musharraf’s wretched rule brought close to an overdue end. It may be an ill wind that blows no good, but it is hardly enough.
jsbachUSA responds:
It is absolutely, 100%, completely, totally IMPOSSIBLE for any organization (country, state, city, etc.) to protect its members from random acts of violence.
Unfortunately most people are extremely uncomfortable with the fact they could randomly die tomorrow, so they are willing to believe any fool that will lie to them and tell them that the fool has a “plan” that will somehow magically prevent so-called terror.
The reality is, out of 6 BILLION plus people on this earth, the number of crazy people that are trying to kill others for irrational reasons, numbers in the low thousands! Yes, that is the bare truth, the people that are out to kill you are a minuscule number of the people on the earth and there is nothing you can do about it.
No matter how many innocent people you kill, those irrational folks will still exist and just may succeed in killing you or someone you know.
We need to start putting the deaths from so-called terrorism in a better perspective. Sure there were 3000 “innocent” people killed on 9/11 but several orders of magnitude more “innocent” people have been killed in response. The US has more people killed every year from drunk drivers than were killed on 9/11. Is it sad they are dead? yes, but not the huge tragedy that it has been portrayed as. Lets face it, ALL HUMANS DIE sooner or later. Some die fairly young and others die much older (95 for the LDS Church President), but everyone dies. Death is not a big deal and we shouldn’t make more of it than it is.
The sad news is it takes an extremely brave and intelligent leader to bluntly say … “yes it is unfortunate that those people died, and in the future others will die, but there is nothing we can do to prevent it and in fact anything we do will be counterproductive and lead to more deaths. The only thing we can do is quietly hunt down and kill any of the perpetrators that are still alive, since the killers are already dead, there is nothing we can do to them. Fighting any type of war will not solve the problem.”
Bush is an egotistical fool and was able to take advantage of many scared fools to create a phony “war” that while it has succeeded in getting lots of people killed has not actually accomplished anything useful. The irrational idiots are still running around and will randomly kill again until they are killed themselves.
Until the people of the US, Israel UK, etc. realize they can never be safe, they will continue to make stupid decisions that only make their world LESS SAFE.
Jack Straw: The Usual Suspects
Oh, how grand it all once sounded. What a farting little damp squib it has all become.
Once upon a time, we were going to have vast Titan prisons dotted all across this proud land of ours. They were going to be so vast that they would have to be registered as separate countries. Anyone who sneezed the wrong way would be interned in one for the rest of their lives.
Britain would take in prisoners from other countries, like poor people used to take in other people’s washing, and George Bush and the CIA would always have a friend in New Britain for dumping the kidnap victims of extraordinary rendition. In fact, they were going to have to build a new runway at Heathrow just to cope with the extra traffic.
New Britain, in the fevered and power-crazed dreams of New Labour, would become a land less in the image of The Chronicles of Narnia and more like The Chronicles of Riddick. Vast armies of jackbooted stormtroopers would strut around town centres and simply arrest one tenth of the inhabitants and lock them in a Titan prison without charge or trial for 999 days.
Then, of course, reality intruded into the adolescent dreams of the weakling and intellectually stunted rulers of Albion. The fighting talk and grand designs collapsed into mumbled excuses and the wreckage of bitter little psychopathic nightmares.
As The Guardian puts it:
Jack Straw today appeared to back away from plans to build a new generation of 2,500-person “Titan” jails after criticism from the chief inspector of prisons.
The justice secretary told the Today programme there was no “definite” intention to build the Titan jails and the government would take further soundings before making a final decision.
“We are not definitely going to go ahead with them. That’s the default setting. But we want to wait and see what people say,” Straw said.
What language is he using there? It looks superficially like English, but it makes no sense. “We are not definitely going to go ahead with them. That’s the default setting. But we want to wait and see what people say.” You may not definitely be in danger of sprouting long green hair from your nostrils, but it could happen.
Is this ‘wait and see what people think’ idea going to be new government policy? Perhaps Jack Straw should pass that on to Jacqui Smith. Everyone thinks that her idea for 42 day plus internment is a bad idea, but she is hell-bent on going ahead with it anyway.
Probably the best thing will be to just call a halt to new legislation until the next election, when you will really see what people think.
Now for the bit where we see what people are really like when they have fantasies about being tough guys after watching too many Arnold Schwarzenegger films, but are actually just cringing little bedwetters.
Again from The Guardian:
Straw was speaking in response to the publication of the annual report from the chief inspector of prisons, Anne Owers, in which she said the plan to build Titan jails ignored evidence that smaller prisons worked better than larger ones.
The justice secretary said he did not have planning permission for any Titan jails and it was never his plan to build “large warehouses as they have in the US and France”.
There you have it. You know the bloke who built the extension on his house without planning permission? It would seem he has more guts and greater control than Jack Straw.
You would think that an administration which pushes through new laws by the back door every day, even when there are sufficient existing laws could wriggle its way round that one.
However, there is nothing quite like the utter scale of stupidity of politicians. It could almost be called Titan. There should be some law to prevent them from speaking until someone with a real brain, living in the real world has stepped in to check whether what they are saying really makes sense.
Oh, look! The Chief Inspector of Prisons has done just that. (From another Guardian article).
In her annual report, Anne Owers criticises by implication successive home secretaries for the record 80,000 prison population in England and Wales.
“That crisis was predicted and predictable, fuelled by legislation and policies which ignored consequences, cost or effectiveness, together with an absence of strategic direction,” she says.
Owers argues that the emergency measures the government has adopted to meet the overcrowding crisis, including the use of police cells, prison ship plans, and the conversion of former army camps, will do nothing to enhance safety or reduce reoffending. “On the horizon loom the Titans - 2,500-strong prison complexes, flying in the face of our, and others’ evidence, that smaller prisons work better than large ones. They may be more efficient, but at the cost of being less effective,” she warns.
Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust, said: “This is as clear and stark a message as is possible for ministers to hear from an independent chief inspector of prisons. The strain is telling - we need a fundamental rethink on the purpose and use of prisons.” [...]
“It is game, set and match to the Prison Service,” said a Whitehall source.
So, once again, the government and its troupe of ministers does not come out of this looking like Titans of intellectual credibility or administrators of competence and capability. It is like they want their world to be grand opera, only to find that it is nothing but an advertising jingle.
More like a bunch of snivelling lickspittle pipsqueaks with dreams beyond their station.
UPDATE:
Jack Straw may be having cold feet over this nonsense, but his master, Gordon Brown of the massive brain and fallible moral compass, wants to speed full steam ahead with any idea that sounds as macho as this one.
No dithering, no incapability and no thought as to whether it is really a good thing or just political posturing of the worst order. Titan prisons will go ahead. Naturally, if they had been called pixie prisons or pipsqueak prisons, Gordon Brown would be less bothered.
You have to think of the soundbites to come and try to keep a straight face.
The Guardian says:
Gordon Brown confirmed today that the government would go ahead with plans to build new 2,500-person “Titan” jails in spite of criticism from the chief inspector of prisons.
The prime minister spoke just a few hours after the justice secretary, Jack Straw, appeared to suggest that the government was having second thoughts about the initiative.
So, no U-turns and no lack of communications at the pinnacle of power.
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