Loud cheers this morning from the tax paying classes as the ‘provisional wing of the Tax Payers Alliance’ (we”ll never improve on that description from Guido!) move into the apparently abandoned and derelict ‘main home’ of Labour MPs Alan and Ann Keen.

Hounslow Council had earlier threatened to take possession of the house under the Labour legislation designed to penalise those nasty capitalist property developers….. but the squatters have beaten them to it.

Photographer ‘Chromazone51′ was invited in by the ‘new’ inhabitants, and emerged with a remarkable set of photographs showing the lifestyle of a ‘two MPs salary’ family in the their main home. Quite why they have a plastic statue of a man’s torso in their living room is any one’s guess, I don’t like to speculate. Tempted to, but No!

Even the squatters are complaining about the state of the place!

Here in France the Calais Police have been fighting pitched battles with a group of anarchists who were determined to enable 2,ooo economic migrants to beat the security designed to prevent them entering Britain. So far they have arrested 47 anarchists.  In a typically French move, 2,000 specially trained riot police have arrived in the town – one for each of the migrants. They don’t believe in failing for lack of manpower over here.

There is more than a whiff of anarchy in the air these days – the government is obviously aware of it, the police have been receiving better training and equipment than the armed forces lately.

Last night e-mail messages and personal callers were offering the squatters champagne and unlimited supplies of food – Matt Davies is drumming up support for a march on parliament.

Gordon Brown would do well to ponder on this middle class support for anarchy and law breaking. Last night it was announced that receipts of income tax from the docile middle class fell short of the amount paid out in benefits. If the tax payers decide to go on strike, or leave the country, he will have a riot that will make the French Revolution look like a Sunday picnic.

Keen to Support Squatters? is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Profligate is good.

Gordon Brown has been sounding like a cracked record of late, stuttering his way through Prime Minister’s Question time, pausing only to expose his slack tongue in the floor of his open mouth in that curious manner reminiscent of the village idiot, to the obvious delight of his mimics.

“We now know that the Tories want to cut public spending by a savage 10 per cent.”

In the parallel universe inhabited by Gordon and his cronies, cutting spending when you are up to your eyes in debt IS A BAD THING.

It can only be achieved by cutting the very things government should be spending on, teachers, nurses, soldiers, policemen. Otherwise known as education, health, defence and law and order.

It positively cannot be cut by failing to provide IVF to Afghani one legged transvestite single mothers, nor can it be achieved by ignoring pleas for funding by raddled feministas with a mission to see men changing babies nappies, nor loons consumed with a belief that second hand smoke is damaging your parrot’s health. Nope, you can only achieve these cuts by leaving the elderly out on a cold Welsh mountainside to meet their fate, feeding premature babies to the sea lions at London zoo or sending our soldiers out to Afghanistan in second hand Playboy bunny outfits.

Our, we, the taxpayers, trouble stems from the disconnect between the consumer, and the payer. Our MPs are supposed to be the barrier between the one eyed King’s tax raising incursions on our honest labour, and ourselves.

Profli-Gate has shown that far from being a barrier, they are part of the problem. Their financial survival depends, not on us, but on supporting the one-eyed King. Thus they are blind to his lunacy.

This morning The Times has published the latest public borrowing figures. Almost £20 billion in May, the highest figure thus far recorded.

Howard Archer, chief UK and European economist at IHS Global Insight, said: “Tax revenues continued to be decimated across the board by contracting economic activity, declining corporate profitability, elevated and rising unemployment, markedly reduced bonus payments, the VAT cut, and low housing market activity and prices. Meanwhile, significantly higher unemployment is also resulting in increased benefit claims, thereby pushing up government expenditure,” he added.

Gordon Brown said yesterday that he was determined to get the public finances back on track without cutting spending.

“I will continue to do whatever is necessary to ensure sustainable public finances, reducing borrowing and debt — while continuing to invest in public services and infrastructure,” he said.

Ask the public what they would like to see cut, Gordon, because we would like to see cuts, not just to get ourselves out of debt, but because we never did agree with half the hair brained schemes you squander our money on. Let us just spend on education, health, defence, and law and order for a while. Skeleton spending. If any of us feel strongly enough regarding the plight of those childless one legged transvestites, we’ll just have to dip our fingers in our own personal pockets, and stump up for their IVF. It’s called charity, not the fake kind, real charity, and the British used to be rather good at it.

Let’s see some figures, from you and Cameron, for the state of the economy if we stop spending on all the fripperies, get back to basics, as Major used to say. Let us decide.

Ah, whoops, that’s an election, though, isn’t it? You don’t do elections.

In the land of the one-eyed King……….. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

NuGordon must have seen the light
Quite early on last Thursday night
When it was clear that Everyman
Had had enough of Gordon’s clan
And didn’t want NuLabour back,
But wanted him to get the sack;
The votes flew fast and flew fast in
For anyone except for him.

“Hurrah!” said all the Eton chums,
“We’ll fill the House’s seats with bums
All Tory Blue and NuBlood soon,
We’re jeering out that cuckoo Broon
Who’s sidled in without the Land
Supporting his sham ‘prudent’ stand;
Tonight’s results mean he must go!
Ya-Ha!! Boo! Sucks! We told you so!”

“His Party’s o’er” the newshounds cried
Excitedly as spokesmen tried
To claim the PM had their faith
While their own seats proved far from safe;
And – shock of shocks – in second place
The Lib Dems came up through the race,
As Britain’s voters made it plain
They didn’t want old Broon again.

“Ssssssssssss’not looking good for you, my dear”
Hissssssed Mandleson in Gordy’s ear;
“Leave the rebel horde to me
And get yourssssssssssssself on the TV
And sssssssssssssound as if you’re in control,
Ignore the fact you’ve losssssssssssst the poll;
Promisssssssssssss Lordships to your men
And you’ll ssssssssssssecure their backing then.”

And so it was that Gordon’s plight
Evaporated overnight
And all the voices of dissent
Were silenced: “No, we never meant
To heave you from PM-ship, No!
We never thought that you should go!
We all think you are ‘fit-for-purpose’
Now Mandy’s strangled all usurpers.”

My ire was up, my gander got
When I beheld that shameless lot
Of Cabinettes who smirk again
And keep Herr Brown in Number 10;
In nice, new, shiny suits and shoes
They grin, impervious to boos,
And show ‘us oiks’ that they are willing
To take (and bank) Herr Gordon’s shilling.

Gloria back with us in fine form……. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

So, the wrong kind of voters (pace Hain) have elected the wrong kind of MPs (pace Howard) under our great democracy that we seek to export around the world; by force where necessary.

After ninety minutes deliberation, a council of partially unelected members, presided over by an unelected Prime Minister, is going to rectify this. Is it really so simple? I doubt it.

I worked in the Lord Chancellor’s Office the last time Labour (under Tony Blair) made one of their knee jerk attempts at reforming the constitution to suit themselves.  Blair got up one morning and ‘abolished’ the Lord Chancellor.  Chaos ensued.  Entire departments of civil servants tending to the needs of the vulnerable were paralysed – eventually a top level deputation was sent to his office to inform this ‘lawyer’ in charge of a cabinet of ‘lawyers’ that there were over 600 pieces of essential legislation dating back centuries, which vested power in a ‘Lord Chancellor’, whomever he might be. He could fire Derry Irvine if he pleased, but abolishing the role of Lord Chancellor had just negated all the legislation that protected the weak and vulnerable – the very people who Labour claimed to act on behalf of.

‘Quelle surprise’,  Blair, he of the third class Law degree, hadn’t actually thought of that. Cue smart back peddle.

Blair fared slightly better when he tinkered with the rules of his own party, removing the role of the party conference in placing the Prime Minister, or even writing the manifesto. Brown is answerable to no man or woman other than his majority in government. He is laughing at we ‘pawns’ in his game – he can afford to. Unfortunately, so is the rest of the world.

I want to be a fly on the wall when we return to Iraq or Afghanistan and explain to them that we are going to ‘nuke’ them all alive if they don’t install a system where an unelected leader can refuse to leave office, where he can appoint his cronies to any office he wishes, where he can cheerfully ignore the criticism of the world, and blame everything on America, where he can drive the country into bankruptcy, where ‘secret courts’ condemn ‘enemies of the state’, where the citizens are under permanent surveillance, where democratically elected representatives are chased off the streets by government funded thugs, where medical treatment is doled out on ideological grounds, where children are snatched from their families to be raised by the state,  where the police allegedly use torture to interview suspects, where the citizens are frightened to speak out for fear of retribution.

I am ashamed that we have bombed and maimed so many Iraqis into complying with ‘our’ vision of democracy. Perhaps when they have recovered from the carnage and mayhem we inflicted on their country, they will have the decency to come and sort the UK out.

Inexorable Choices. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

The British Honours system stinks. It must be about the best honours system that money can buy. Knighthoods and life peerages are doled out to time-serving chancers, place-seeking chanty wrasslers, party hacks being put out to grass, and deep-pocketed donors to party funds. New Labour’s Honours list keeps up this tradition. Substantial donors to New Labour funds were suddenly found to be such estimable citizens that knighthoods and peerages were the least a grateful Government could bestow.’

Jimmy Reid, The Herald, July 1998.

Was it really only two years ago that Gordon Brown announced that he was to ask local newspapers and TV stations to get their readers to nominate ‘kind hearts’ and ‘everyday heroes’ for honours in future, in a major overhaul of the honours system?

What happened to the ‘every day heroes’ idea? Submerged in a sea of patronage! We have Lord Sugar of Apprentice, Lord Digby Jones, Lord West, Lord Carter, Lord Darzi, Lord Myners, Baroness Vadera, Lord Mandelson – to be shortly joined by Baroness Kinnock of Windbag, just as soon as she can settle her pension arrangements with the European Parliament to her economic satisfaction.

More to the point, why this reversal of promised constitutional reform? It would appear that 350 Labour MPs are of such low quality and talentless that they don’t warrant inclusion in Gordon’s ‘government of all talents’.

Labour parliamentary parties control who stands for parliament – why would they nominate candidates who are not considered up to the task of governing? We now have an unelected Prime Minster, choosing to appoint unelected Ministers to control our national life – and to ponder and pontificate on the ‘National Council for Democratic Renewal’.  A ‘spoof website’ would have been hard pushed to come up with that scenario.

Peter Hain struck an ominous note yesterday on the news. Asked to comment on the new found enthusiasm for Conservatism in Wales, he replied that he didn’t think it existed, ‘what had happened’ he said, ‘was that Labour voters stayed at home’…….it is an excuse worthy of inclusion alongside British Rail’s ‘wrong kind of snow on the line’, highly amusing on the surface, but deeply worrying that this is one of the men who will be contributing to the ‘National Council for Democratic Renewal’. The logic of his comment is that only the ‘right kind’ of voters are worth listening to.

Gordon has manifestly demonstrated that he doesn’t think Labour’s democratically elected members are fit to govern, only he and his close friends are fit to serve the country. He has manipulated the honour system to admit them to cabinet. Hain doesn’t think the ‘right kind’ of voters were represented in the elections in Wales.

Can there be any doubt about the outcome of the ‘National Council for Democratic Renewal’ ? Do we need to wait for its putrid offerings, or can we take an educated guess now?

Kind Hearts and Coronets is a post from: Anna Raccoon

When serfs knew their place, there was some logic in sending the Lord of the Manor to speak for them in parliament. The local land owner, the local employer, possibly was the person best suited to auditing the King’s power of taxation and warmongering.

Parliament has been left behind in in the surge of education and equality that has taken place in the last 50 years. We need to uproot the ancient method of choosing a representative.

The great ministries of state are highly technical; there should be true competition amongst those technically qualified to be put in charge of them.  There is little more facetious than finding that our Chancellor of the Exchequer requires an accountant to fill in his own tax form.

Yet we continue to vote into office those who can kiss the most babies, we continue to support a system which allows the men in grey suits to allocate the safest seats, where the electorate are most likely to vote on tribal grounds,  to their friends.

Can you imagine the English football team being selected on a similar basis – we expect the team to be selected on their ability to fulfil particular positions, not on their gender, nor on their ability to donate money to the FA.

Dawn French as outside midfielder (she’ll be popular with the voters), David Blunkett as striker (showing our commitment to diversity), best put John Prescott  in as offensive midfielder (been in the party a long time) and then we need a place for Bernie Ecclestone  (given us a lot of money) – OK, he can go in goal……..there would be uproar!

Why then can we not have open competition from highly qualified people for the great offices of state – they can still have allegiance to a party, but let us hear of their formal qualification and achievements, not their gender, not their ‘loyalty to the prime minister’. Let us have no more idiots promoted on the patronage of the Prime minister based on their ability to ensure his survival.

It is the survival of Great Britain that really matters, we as shareholders in UK Plc. should be up in arms and fighting for this, rather than carping about the bath plug requirements of the past.

If we are to have a ‘coup’, let us take advantage of it, and restructure parliament as the professional place it should be to run the country. There should be no place for a re-run of  ‘Blair’s Babes’, picked for their gender, no place for the politically adroit footsoldiers, rewarded for their leaflet posting ability, no place for the ‘Buggin’s Turn’  geriatrics, no place for the patronage of titles to enable ‘friends’ to be parachuted into government; a straightforward competitive tender for the various jobs that need filling, including that of Chief Executive.

I want to see a man with real experience of war deciding whether our soldiers need to be killed; I want to see a man who has fought along side them deciding what equipment they need. I want to see a man with exceptional experience of high finance and the wily ways of bankers in charge of our Exchequer.

Leader of the Opposition should be renamed ‘Leader of the Audit team’ – and be voted into office based on his ability to dissect the activities of the Ministries of State – and he will be judged on his ability to point out any wrongdoings on  the part of Ministers – not keeping his powder dry in the hope that he might be the next Prime Minister.

There is too much conflict of interest in the present system, too much patronage, and not nearly enough thought for the electorate that supports it.

The Fantasy Football Team Kicked into Touch. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Whatever I was going to write this morning has just been outclassed by this……….

H/T The Crown

The Apprentice fires God. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

How can you re-shuffle a Cabinet that’s already shuffled off?

Move over Darling wouldn’t, so he had nowhere to put his Balls.

Six gone to spend more time with their family and because they hadn’t done anything wrong, so he replaces them with Mandy, who has already done something wrong, and doesn’t have a family…..and Hain……..

Flint drapes herself over a sofa as ‘top totty’ and then leaves because ‘she’s just window dressing’ – so he replaces her with someone who’s been window dressing for years…..

Beckett’s off to spend more time with her caravan….

Postman Pat’s in charge of  PC Plod…..

Hutton’s suddenly remembered he thought Gordon would be a ‘disaster’, so he’s gone home to Mummy….

Alan Sugar is going to be sitting in the cabinet office as a gift to comedian’s everywhere…….

Plato is reporting that Labour came 6th in St Ives…after the Monster Raving Looney Party who managed a credible 4th. (All that canvassing was not in vain – you know who you are!)

What next? Ronnie Biggs for Treasury, Gerry McCann for Children’s Minister? Sarah Brown resigns as Minister for Concealing Unusual Proclivities?

This Government has passed on, it is no more, it has ceased to be, it’s expired and gone to meet its maker. This is a late Government. It’s a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. If the Labour party hadn’t nailed this Prime Minister to the perch, he would be pushing up the daisies.

Time for the antimacassar Gordon.

H/T to Saul……..

“Carry on up the Government”…….. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Nokia Testing Station No 10………. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Labour MPs watched in silence as Gordon Brown was returned to 10 Downing Street after PMQ’s today.

William Hague said yesterday that the government are ‘a row of political corpses now’.

If that is so, then someone somewhere is artificially ventilating the Brown cadaver, for by all the laws of putrification he should be decently buried by now. His Home Secretary, His Cabinet Minister, His Communities Secretary, His Children’s Minister, have fled – not fired, which might have reinforced his authority, nor reshuffled, which might have restored his credibility, but  simply run screaming out the door – ostensibly for reasons, which have been valid for some weeks, but which suddenly proved irresistible two days before an important election.

The rolling news is reminiscent of listening to the football results on an old valve radio……Backbenchers 2, Cabinet Ministers 4………Hurrah! we all shout, as we fill in another cross on the coupon. We should cease feeling so elated – for these are ‘own goals’, handed to us on a plate – we, the electorate, have no power to insist that any of them leave until next year. The Queen has no power to insist that any of them leave until next year. The Labour party has no power to insist that Gordon Brown leaves.

The convention is, that a Prime Minister, so patently mistrusted and disliked by his own ‘team’, never mind the electorate, would do the honourable thing, and step aside out of embarrassment. PMQ’s today was an atmosphere of pregnant expectation, street theatre as Cameron and Clegg played to the gallery, knowing full well that they were suffering from ‘Constitutional Droop’ and firing verbal blanks.

The loyal troops – Toynbee advising her devotees not to vote Labour, the Guardian helpfully publishing a ‘wish list’ that involves Gordon Brown being forced from office by June 9th,  have deserted him, even the party political broadcasts cannot find anything positive to say in Brown’s favour, they leave him out of their broadcast altogether and focus on the ‘terrible alternatives’.

‘Better Brown than Dead’ seems to be the message.

Is it a case of the oft hinted autism that leaves the man able to deliver his wooden message of ‘it started in America’, ‘hard working British families’, parodied to such ruthless effect, without hint of appearing to notice the anger around him, or is someone,  somewhere, stiffening his resolve, persuading him to hang in there, for some greater good – theirs for instance?

I had even started to wonder whether Mandelson was on that ill fated flight 477 from Brazil, so quiet has he been.

Le corps politique est une ‘corpse’ qui est ventilé artificiellement. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Listening to Gordon Brown going three rounds with the incomparable Evan Davis this morning was like settling down to one last Yuletide showing of  ‘Escape to Victory’. You know exactly how it will end, how improbably white the t-shirts will be, but there is something reassuring in listening once again to the familiar phrases, the implausible plot lines……..then it finishes and you realise that you have wasted precious hours of your life and are no better off. The debris of the Christmas party is still there, waiting to be cleared up.

So it was this morning.

‘What I’ve seen offends my Presbyterian conscience’ sayeth the Son of the Manse. The Iron Chancellor for 10 years. The Prime Minister for 2 years. An MP for 26 years – has he only just seen it? Did he submit his own expenses for 26 years and not realise what was going on? Can he really be that socially inept that he has never had a conversation with another MP and realised that they were all on the gravy train? As Chancellor, did he never query the vast amount of tax payers funds that were accounted for by MPs expenses? ……and he never said a word until the Telegraph rolled its presses? No wonder the economy has crashed – we’ve had a Chancellor for 10 years who couldn’t see the money dripping out right under his own nose.

He says he wants to see ‘more citizen involvement’ and he will set up a ‘National Council for Democratic Review’ – and bring in large numbers of people from ‘outside the political process’ to run it.  If they are people ‘outside the political process’ then they are outside the democratic process – unelected in common parlance, albeit presumably they will be ‘citizens’ in their own right, but don’t bank on recognising them as such, the definition of citizen is pretty elastic these days. How can anybody, with a straight face, tell us that we can improve democracy by undemocratic means?

He says he has ‘a duty before we go to the country’ to clean up the process. He says he wants ‘constitutional reform’ – would that be the same ‘constitutional reform’  he said only six months ago that he didn’t have time for – make time, you’re running the country remember? He says he has ‘a duty’ – he has had that duty for 26 bally years, I’m not a Presbyterian, but does a Presbyterian conscience only kick in when bludgeoned by bystanders – isn’t it supposed to be sniffing around for any opportunity to do its moral work?

He says ‘if someone is on trial for fraud’ then they are ‘likely’ to have been ‘suspended from the party’ and not be a candidate……likely? How likely exactly? ‘Likely’ implies that they could possibly still be standing as a candidate – in which case it is even more ‘likely’ that the voters will have lost patience and the candidates are even more ‘likely’ to be suspended, not from the party, but from the nearest lamp post.

Asked about Margaret Moran and whether she has the authority to represent her constituents, he says ‘ she is going through a due process by the authorities in the Labour party’ – what Gordon? Your Presbyterian conscience is salved by the idea of fraudsters judging other fraudsters? Are we not taking the Magna Carta’s  ‘judged by your peers’ a little far here? He says he has wanted to reform the system for years, but couldn’t, ‘because it was a matter traditionally left to Parliament – not the government’……..isn’t that what an Early Day motion is for Gordon? In 26 years you never thought to bring one yourself, to suggest to the Government that they debated reform of MPs expenses? What about last July, when Jacqui Smith, Margaret Beckett et al, voted down suggestions for reform? Or January, when Harriet Harman proposed excluding MPs expenses from the Freedom of Information Act? You were the Prime Minister for God’s sake, you have absolute privilege in the House of Commons, why didn’t you speak up? What were we paying you for as an MP? What were we paying you for as Prime Minister? Where was your compass pointing all that time?

On Damian McBride he say ‘when someone makes mistakes, they are sacked, they go, that is the end of the matter’ he admits that senior Cabinet Ministers may have come to him and suggested that McBride was not a person to be at the heart of the Government, but he says, ‘there is controversy surrounding all press advisers, Alistair Campbell, Peter Mandelson, some people like them and some people don’t like them’ – too much tittle-tattle so so his moral compass fails to register!

He says ‘with the record he’s had in the past’ that he is ‘in the best position to clean up this political system himself”. His past record includes 26 years of failing to notice the financial shenanigans that his 645 immediate colleagues were engaged in until a newspaper was about to publish them, 2 years of failing to listen to the ‘tittle-tattle’ of senior Cabinet advisers on the suitability of his key strategic advisor until a blogger revealed his misdeeds, 10 years of failing to regulate the financial system he was in overall control of until it crashed to the ground, and 58 years of misreading his ‘moral compass’.

I don’t understand a moral compass that has to be threatened with exposure, or penury, or legal action before it swings into action. If Gordon does, I don’t want him running the country.

Deconstructing an Erratic Compass is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Throw money at the problem, it’s Labour’s answer to everything.

This morning Sir Stuart Bell has come up with a spiffing wheeze to control the profligate spending of MPs. He’s going to set up a new unit which will ‘reassure the public that we do take fully into account their concerns’.

This audit body will be staffed by ‘skilled people’ from outside parliament.  The new unit is expected to cost around £600,000 a year to run.

I have news for Sir Stuart.

The Government already has just such a unit.

It has skilled staff who specialise in overseeing the expenditure of other people’s money. It has a case management system designed to look after up to 50,000 individual cases a year, it won’t bat an eyelid at another 646.

It has an investigatory unit which will actually go and physically look at the bath before sanctioning a new bath plug – just to make sure that it is really needed.

It has sour faced civil servants who will put every possible obstacle in the way of releasing money.  It cares less if your wife is going to divorce you if it doesn’t pay out before Christmas.  It releases no money until it has receipts it is totally satisfied with.  It goes through those receipts with a tooth comb.

It requires that those who are spending other people’s monies lodge a hefty deposit with it to indemnify it against possible fraud.  It never fails to prosecute those who commit any fraud.

It is perfect, and perfectly fit for purpose.

It’s called the Public Guardianship Office, and it’s duty is to look after the finances of those who are vulnerable and who cannot supervise the expenditure of their money directly.

There is no other body of people more vulnerable than the tax payers at the moment.

The money go-round. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Phil Woolas, the Immigration Minister, has denied a report in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph that he had claimed for the cost of women’s clothing

He called the allegation “disgusting”, however the Telegraph are not backing down (as yet)

The Tesco bill, dated Aug 12, included a pair of women’s shoes for £23, two packets of disposable bibs priced £2.98 each, a bottle of nail polish at £5.75, three comics for £5.14, two packs of babies wipes at £1.44 each and a ladies’ jumper at £5.

A Tesco receipt for £110.20, showed he spent £1.48 on panty liners, £1.19 on tampons, £2.99 on nappies and £15 on a ladies’ blouse.

Two of those items particularly interested me. Not just because unless Mr Woolas has had a spectacularly successful sex change operation, he has no personal need for the tampons and panty liners, but because it is particularly irksome to see anyone attempt to justify them to the Fees Office as being:

Irksome because for many years now there has been a campaign running to have VAT removed from these items, on the grounds that they are an essential item for women.

Since the 1970s, campaigners have been calling for sanitary products to be eligible for a zero rate of tax. In more recent times, a campaign led by MP Christine McCafferty petitioned the Labour government for a reduction in the tax rate, describing tax rates of 17.5 per cent as ‘offensive’.  And things are getting better. From January 2001, the rate of VAT for sanitary protection products was lowered from the full rate to 5 per cent, in line with EU restrictions

VAT does what it says on the tin – it’s a value added tax on items deemed to be ‘luxuries’, rather than ‘necessities’.

The Government does rather well out of the VAT on sanitary items.  Some £25million a year out of designating them as ‘luxuries’ rather than ‘necessities’.

So this morning I have written to Harriet Harman – surely she will find time to answer me? – to ask her, with her new found interest in matters of Equality, to explain to me how the humble tampon manages to be both a ‘luxury’ for a woman, and a ‘necessity’ for a man, and a tax payer funded ‘necessity’ at that.

Her reply should be interesting, I shall share it with you.

It used to be that MPs buying items of women’s clothing were notoriously conservative. How times have changed.

Who’s a Pretty Philly then? is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Police Reform Conference – Jan 15th 2005

Speech by Hazel Blears – Police Minister.

“Accountability…. is vital for public confidence. And for our desire to increase community engagement. We want to clarify and strengthen the present arrangements. On a very basic level – people pay taxes and want to know that their money is making a difference”

Hat tip to Inspector Gadget.

Accountability is for the little people……. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

This morning as the Telegraph tumbrils continue their relentless journey towards Canary Wharf, exposing the mighty to the condemnation and indignation of we peasants, my eyes lit upon one particular carriage.

Can there be any more deserving passengers in this week of the Gurkhas’ rejection than that of those insatiate monsters, Sinn Fein MPs  Martin McGuiness and Gerry Adams?

To learn that five MPs, who represent the political wing of the IRA, have not even taken up their Parliamentary seats and yet have claimed £500,000 for second homes in the same breath as we are told that we ‘cannot afford’ to allow some 1500 Gurkhas, who have fought in every major theatre of war, from the first Afghan war through to Bosnia, the Falklands and more recently Iraq, on behalf of the British Army, to settle in the UK, and yet we can ‘resettle’ the old ‘soldiers’ of the IRA in London, complete with ‘Samson’ 28-inch wide televisions, and DVD Sony cinemas surround systems, in a £5,400 a month – a month! – house in London.

Truly, the Gurkhas must this morning be wondering whether they were aiming their guns at the wrong soldiers.

Gordon Brown used a ‘fabric of falsehood and fantasy’ in claiming that it would cost taxpayers 1.4 billion pounds to let Gurkhas live in Britain, according to campaigners.

The sum was based on the number of Gurkhas claiming a pension in 2004 – 36,000 – with the assumption they would each bring two dependents. More recent Ministry of Defence – figures state there are only 26,500 Gurkha pensioners. On the basis of two dependents each, this brings the figure down to 75,000 applicants. In fact only 1,550 Gurkhas and dependents have tried to unsuccessfully settle in the UK under the former discretionary policy and there are a further 1,350 immigration appeals pending.

The Sunday Express has exclusively revealed that MPs have already voted themselves an additional £16 million in expenses this year.

More than sufficient to resettle those Gurkhas who are desperate enough to apply to live in a country that must surely be on the verge of revolution.

The tumbrils rattle towards the printing presses today – tomorrow the guillotine.

‘Snub’ nosed bullets for the Gurkhas. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

A provocative farce of unremitting horror, the finale can not come soon enough.

The script is packed with devious manoeuvres and well-honed fiddles.  646 fine actors, under the parliamentary fees office inventive direction, execute slapstick accounts and deliver receipts with near-perfect timing. But the onslaught of escalating troughing seems to grow more desperate as the intermissionless show goes on. It excites a demand for justice which is never satisfied.

With its splendid grasp of the effective pause, the Daily  Telegraph brings out something easily missed by a mere reader – the pure narrative value of loose ends left hanging.  Let moral values go hang themselves: Robert Winnett enjoys himself immensely with his tale and so do we.  Sympathy may not be stirred but interest is securely held.

This production has managed to capture the tragi-comic nature of the tax payers’ endless struggle with the thieving gits in parliament perfectly whilst emphasising the desperation of the human condition. It will undoubtedly go down as one of the “did you hear?” performances of the decade due to the spectacular performances by Jacqui Smith and Tony McNulty – a showcase of two world class rip-off artistes working together in perfect harmony.

The penultimate scene of the bulimic, adulterous, croquet playing,  over-weight steward on the old Rangi line, queuing at the fees office to be recompensed for his latest shattered toilet seat was one of undignified pathos, relieved only by the thundering cloven hooves of Scotland Yard’s finest beating a path to the door – not of the thieving gits – but of the whistle blower who exposed them.

In a crowded year for Best Political Scandal direction, Heather Brooke should receive an Oscar.

Two loos, two jags, two homes, two women, two chins…… is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Is this woman……..

Heather Brooke is a journalist and writer living in London. She is the author of ‘Your Right to Know’ (Pluto Press, University of Michigan Press), a citizens’ guide to using the Freedom of Information Act and accessing official information.

Most recently, Heather won a High Court case against the House of Commons for the full disclosure of MPs’ second homes allowances. The ruling has resulted in full-scale reform of the Parliamentary expense system. Heather was runner-up for the inaugural Paul Foot Award for investigative journalism and her project ‘Justice by postcode’ for The Times was one of the first examples of computer-assisted reporting in the UK. She is a visiting fellow at City University’s Department of Journalism teaching students about FOI and how to analyse electronic data. She has worked as a consultant for several documentaries for Channel 4 television, investigating such topics as Tesco loyalty cards, the DNA database and surveillance technology.

Heather is the UK project director of the Open Society Justice Initiative’s anti-corruption survey and she is monitoring the accountability of three large public-sector projects: the London 2012 Olympics, the NHS Programme for IT and the oil extraction industry. Already, several of her findings have led to front-page news stories.

Heather has been interviewed on a number of radio and television shows and she writes articles for The Times, Sunday Times, Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Independent, Evening Standard, New Statesman and other national magazines. She has spoken at conferences hosted by the House of Commons, Lexis Nexis, British and Irish Law Librarians Joint Study Institute, the Society of Editors and the Association of Chief Police Officers.

Heather previously worked at the BBC as an assistant publicist in International Television; a copywriter and, for BBC magazines, a freelance editor, writer and subeditor. Before moving to Britain, she worked in the United States as a newspaper reporter covering state government and criminal justice. For the Spokesman-Review in Washington state, she used the state FOI law to uncover politicians’ misuse of public funds for travel and personal election campaigning. In South Carolina for the Spartanburg Herald-Journal she uncovered flaws in the state’s forensic crime lab and exposed dangerous practices in funeral homes. Both investigations resulted in changes to state law.

Heather is available for training and research on topics related to using the Freedom of Information Act, Environmental Information Regulations and other access laws. She currently teaches the FOIA and investigative journalism course for the National Union of Journalists. She has trained journalists at The Guardian, Financial Times, Independent, Trinity Mirror newspapers, BBC News and BBC World Service.

Without her we would never have heard the truth of the MPs expenses.

Bookmark her web site – she deserves every plaudit going.

http://www.yrtk.org

Behind every shamed man (and woman)….. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

I am trying to fathom the moral compass of the Daily Telegraph. The needle swings too fast for me to read it correctly.

Last month they were coming over all ‘sniffy’ and not only declining to ‘entertain’ the McBridal bouquet that Guido lobbed at Gordon Brown, but went so far as to break a confidentiality agreement and  alert 10 Downing Street to its imminent publication.

The pungent aroma of that bouquet proved too much for Gordon Brown and McBride was divorced with precious little ceremony.

‘I divorce thee’ followed by three Hail Nokias, according to rumour.

With McPoison out of the picture, and safe from reprisals,  last night they proudly announced that they were publishing the contents of the DVDs listing MPs’ expenses which had been expensively touted round Canary Wharf for a couple of weeks now.

This begs a number of questions.

Would they have published Guido’s e-mails were it not for their relationship with McBride?

Is it just that McBride is out the picture that has emboldened them today, or is it the fact that Conservative MPs are also targeted in their revelations.

Have they ‘come into money’ in recent weeks, or been given a budget, and can now pay for stories? Is there any connection between this and the recent announcement of a crack down on Tax havens, which must be hugely inconvenient for the Barclay Brothers.

Have they lost their ‘inside source’ of stories and decided to bat for the other side once more?

We really should be told, it is all too confusing for us mortals.

The ethics of the unethical. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Damian McBride, the Downing Street aide forced to quit over e-mails smearing top Tories, has “disappeared without a trace”, a senior Labour MP has said.

Tony Wright said he had wanted Mr McBride to give evidence to the Commons public administration committee.

He “seems to have disappeared without a trace and despite our best endeavours we haven’t been able to trace him”, committee chairman Mr Wright said.

Apparently not so much as a knarled, curled toenail remains. Even a bucket of quick lime couldn’t work that fast!

Perhaps he has voluntarily removed himself out of range of flying Nokias,  Excoet missiles, and all the other armoury at the disposal of an irate and embattled Prime Minister.

Still, one good sign, the BBC are reporting this snippet, so even they have accepted that Gordon’s days are numbered.

‘Whoosh-Clunk’ another of the McMafia disappears. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Gordon Brown May 5th 2009, Prendergast School, London.

It will come back to haunt him…….

A picture paints a thousand words…… is a post from: Anna Raccoon