Love and Liberty

What an unfortunate week for former oil baron and newly unelected baron Justin Welby to become the last Archbishop of Canterbury. The week he screamed ‘Gays! Know your place!’ and ‘Ex-kings! Know your place!’ The week that the Church of England looked more like a useless and vindictive relic than any week since, oh, the last one (‘Women! Know your place!’). With the established church wielding vast power and money but refusing to do its few jobs as a minor nationalised industry – births, marriages, deaths – how long before the country says ‘We know your place – the scrapheap’?

I don’t imagine that unelected Lord Welby will be any worse than his predecessor as Archbishop of Canterbury, that hypocritical, canting bigot-fancier Rowan Williams, but he faces a church in an even worse state of decay. Church attendance continues to decline, while the only issues on which the Church of England speaks with passion – or shrill desperation – and consistency are as the BNP’s vicars on Earth.

The Church of England – Moral Evil Moderated Only By Love of Money and Power

The Church of England is on the wrong side of history, but still screams with privilege – not to mention power and the love of money. The only thing the establishment of the established screams louder about than upholding vicious evil bigotry is upholding its holdings. The less influence it has on society and the less interest anyone has in it, the more they hold onto their unearned goodies.

No-one votes for their bishops, who must on pain of death never be women or gays, but they get to sit in their palaces and in our Lords to literally lord it over the rest of us.

Major church decisions are made not on theology or faith, but on what will get through Parliament and retain their cash and comfy red leather benches.

While other churches without all the state money and power can choose who they perform services for, the established church is meant to be the nationalised industry that has to do the cheap and cheerful ceremonies for anyone who asks. But though their talk is cheap, can anyone call them cheerful? Not when they put up snobby block after snobby block to prevent people they disapprove of from calling on their increasingly narrow ‘love’.

This isn’t just a lazy bunch of pampered bigots trying to get out of doing any work for their power, wealth and prestige. It’s shrivelling the pitiful excuse for a moral sense that the established church still pretends to, their very establishment nature gnawing away daily at Christianity in this country while they blame everyone else for it.

Does anyone – does even any bishop saying it – not cringe as they bear false witness about their vicious campaigns of hate? When thirty seconds’ online search on Hansard proves the bigot bishops liars who screamed against and voted against every liberal move on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights that they now mendaciously claim they always supported, just no further? That they now ‘support’ the civil partnerships that they warned were the end of the world?

No wonder they screamed so much about civil registrars not having to perform civil partnerships – the ones they loathe and fear but feel compelled to lie about now approving, and which they made sure had nothing to do with religion? They protect evil bigots who want to take all the money but not do the job. Can anyone be surprised, when that’s exactly what the Church of England itself does, writ large? Has anyone on Earth previously had a special law passed in order to ‘protect’ themselves from doing the only job they’re meant to do?

And does anyone think for a moment that anything will get easier for them?

Two Predictions For Within the Next Ten Years – More Marriage, Fewer Lords

More ‘redefining’ marriage:

• Once people have got used to same-sex marriage, as they did civil partnerships, with surprising speed, it will seem more and more absurd that there are two separate sets of laws for the same institution. Within a couple of Parliaments’ time, there will be a Marriage Bill, simply equalising the laws to bring them into the understanding of most people not stuck in the wrong century.
  

• Same-sex partners will not be singled out to be penalised in their pensions. Carrying on the constant redefinition of marriage that English law has practised across the centuries, more antediluvian legal hangovers from the days of wives as property will be removed. For one, female partners in mixed-sex marriages will no longer uniquely have the defence that they’re wilting, helpless Victorian victims of brain fever when they conspire with their husbands to break the law. Not that any woman with a brain and a career would ever shelter behind such a humiliating sexist pretence these days.
  

• Mealy-mouthed bigot MPs who pretend that the only reason that they vote against people having any sort of marriage to a partner of the same sex is a never-before-spoken commitment to absolute letter-of-the-law equality will lose their last fig opportunistic fig leaf, when they’re no longer able to bleat ‘I would truly, honestly be all for the horrible stomach-churning gays if only the law specifically mentioned adultery and non-consummation for them, which means that I’m pretending not to know that “unreasonable behaviour” includes both and that for me the only thing about the gays is THEIR TERRIFYING[ly tempting] SEX AND WHY DO THEY GET SO MUCH OF IT AND SURELY MARRIAGE SHOULD INSIST THEY CAN’T GET EXTRA!’
  

• And, perhaps most importantly, all religions will get the right to marry or not marry any consenting adult otherwise free to marry under the law. Except the Church of England, the only church for which all reason (and all they get in return for it) says should, alone, as the nationalised church of everyone, by law have to marry anyone who asks, which will instead shout and scream that it needs a special law, again, to excuse it from performing its only public duty. While still getting paid.

An elected ‘House of Lords’:

• Almost certainly from a Labour Government that wants to vote through out of spite something they voted against out of spite. But I’m not a shitty hypocritical toe-rag like every Labour MP, so next time they say ‘Only Labour can deliver (because we’ll gang up and vote against everything we pretend to believe in to stop anyone else doing it)’ I will grit my teeth and support their move on principle, even though they don’t have any.

• And does anyone think that, given another few years of the Church of England’s decline, they’ll keep the failed sop to Conservatives of holding onto their unelected block of Bishops voting for evil bigotry and without anyone able to vote them out?

• Though it’s much more certain that the wing of the Church concerned with grabbing unaccountable power and which doesn’t give a toss about tradition if it gets in the way of that will mount another panicked rush to say ‘OK, we’ll give in on women – eeeww – as long as we keep the power we don’t deserve and keep the gays in the pit we say they deserve’.

The Monarchy – An Embarrassment to the Church of England (or vice versa)

Many of the bigot bishops will surely be praying for a swift end to the monarchy. Not only is it a constant reminder to everyone in the country to point and laugh at the church founded on the one holy aim of Henry VIII having a divorce (and more) explicitly forbidden by the same Jesus who never mentioned gays pretending that their never, ever redefining marriage is the pretext for their bigotry, but it’s only a matter of time before we have a gay or bi heir to the throne who wants to marry their same-sex partner.

With the monarchy falling in public esteem at a far slower rate than the crash-diving established church, there would be no faffing about with abdication next time. Imagine the public outrage if the Church of England tried to insist that the princess or prince could not marry and could not become monarch because of the bishops’ bigotry. No; once again, the reality of money and power would collide with the Church of England and it would suddenly find that it could accommodate a change in the law when the alternative is having to take a vow of poverty and political impotence.

The bigot bishops might, with straight faces, say that all is needed is a special exceptional law, so that the Queen or King can marry someone of the same sex but no-one else can. Oh, sorry, I apologise. I’m being too cynical. That would be like the Church of England having a woman Supreme Governor but saying that, at the next rung down, women bishops were icky and silly flibbertigibbets that no right-thinking man could tolerate. No, wait – bad example.

This week, of course, Richard III’s body was dug up in Leicester. He was a Catholic King, whose power base was at York and who wanted to be buried in York Minster. Obviously, the only question should be whether to honour his spiritual or his temporal wishes, and bury him either in a currently Catholic cathedral or in York Minster, with a possible outside bet of Westminster Abbey to honour a monarch. Equally obviously, the Church of England insist that he’s theirs to do with as they wish, that they refuse to have him at York, and that he’s to be kept in Leicester. Where he was dragged by the Tudor usurper with a slim claim to the throne whose son founded their usurper church with a slim claim to Christian tradition. No wonder the Church of England want to keep him as close to under the car park as they can.

Jesus is an embarrassment to them, too. He called the Church his Bride and he the Bridegroom; Justin Welby in his private prayers must no doubt scourge himself for those many more than thrice public denials before the cock, every time he insists that he’s only the deity’s civil partner.

Not Today, Not Tomorrow, But, Inevitably, Disestablishment

The only job the Church of England has that most people see in their everyday lives – and even then only at infrequent points in them – is officiating at births, marriages and deaths. And they’re so determined to avoid doing even that tiny thing for the people of England to justify their money and power that they’ve had a special law passed exempting them from their only point.

There’s no point to the Church of England for lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender people.

There’s no point to the Church of England for women generally.

There’s no point to the Church of England for honest believers.

There’s not even any point to the Church of England for the monarchy.

Beyond the point of no return, it’s time to disestablish the Church of England. Obviously.

This is the only point at which I regret that the Liberal Democrats are in coalition with the unstable Tory coalition of half rudderless Cameroons, half ungovernable loonies, and not with the 1980s Conservative Party of Mrs Thatcher. If she were the Prime Minister we were dealing with, then we’d be able to break up the last and most failed of the nationalised industries. The Coalition could disestablish the whole wreck, sell off the vast wealth and use the money to help the people left in the cold by the church’s gold-plated empty words, and let every local believer-franchise decide on its own genuine theology rather than have to present one-lie-fits-all compromises for Parliamentary approval.

Win-win, surely? But, as obviously as it’s time for them to go, the Church of England will no doubt carry on as a zombie establishment on the wrong side of history for another century. How much more harm will it do before it’s put out of our misery?

Labels: Bigotry, British Politics, Corruption, Gay, History, Lords, Religion

For some people, it’s ‘Danger: high voltage’; for others, ‘This won’t hurt’, or ‘For the children’. For me, the most threatening three-word combination in the English language is ‘New and Improved’. Usually, it heralds that sinking feeling when you return from your local Giant SupermarketTM to find your favourite korma sauce, scotch eggs or even shower gel suddenly cheap and tasteless, with whatever it was you liked about them jettisoned to cut costs.

After five decent-ish years with Waitrose Broadband, Richard and I returned from Brighton to the new and improved John Lewis Broadband. Can you guess what happened next?

John Lewis Broadband Plus Plusnet Equals No Internet

I remember the shopping around we did after several terrible ISPs to find Waitrose Broadband, and it had mostly worked for us since, the odd problem and the odd oh-dear-we’ve-gone-over-our-download-limit-and-it-costs-how-much? aside. But it couldn’t last. They’re winding up the service into a new one. Improved, of course. And who are the new providers for our forced upgrade to an alleged cheaper, faster, unlimited service?

John Lewis Broadband, the epitome of respectable reliability, actually supplied if you look carefully at the small print by Plusnet, which claims to be good, honest broadband from Yorkshire. What could possibly go wrong?

Everyfuckingthing.

Us having made the shift in early September and them having taken a few weeks to action it, despite promises (warning signs there), we got home from Conference to eight days of zero internet and increasingly weary phone calls to find out what the hell was wrong. And they don’t even play Heaven 17 on hold.

As it happened, Richard had become very ill while we were away at Conference in Brighton, and once he’d recovered just enough to drive us home, I came down with it and was, as my rather too frequent saying goes, much more ill than usual. So things were quite fraught to begin with (and not being able to get online to NHS Direct. Obviously).

Imagine, then, the timbre of our phone conversations when we rang them three times on our first day back, for a total of two and a half hours, including the 45 minutes on hold after which they just hung up and made us go back to the start.

Imagine doing that – ringing them every single day for the next week for between one and three hours – each time having to slowly explain the problem all over again to a new munchkin, and do exactly the same tests because obviously it must be us, and not them… Until they admitted that they’d detected 2361 rejected (by their end) attempts by our correctly programmed (by us) router to connect, not all of them manual but by God it felt like it, and that it was in fact their fault after all.

They just couldn’t identify that fault correctly. Worse, they kept making promises. Here are just a few of them that we made a note of:

• Switch your router off for 65 minutes and it will reset, after which you will be able to connect. No, that was a lie.

• We have reset your details at our end and it will be ready in the morning. No, that was a lie.

• Our faults team has identified the fault and I have actioned a modify order that will apply the fix and have you fully online in exactly 24 hours. No, that was a lie.

• That modify order was incorrect, but I have actioned a new modify order that will have you online in the morning. No, that was a lie.

• It is your fault after all – our faults team has identified that you can’t receive Broadband on your number. In that case, can we have a full refund for all the money we spent on what was therefore imaginary Broadband from you for the past five years? No, because that was a lie.

• We will ring you within 24 hours because I have personally made sure it will be corrected with the faults team and my line manager. No, that was a lie.

• I apologise that you’ve had to ring because we failed to call you back, and I won’t lie to you, I can’t fix it myself because I can see that they’ve been making the change you need on our server and for some reason our server won’t accept it, but I will call our faults team if you will wait on hold for just two minutes. Seventeen minutes later: no, that was yet another lie, probably not best for our blood pressures after using the words “I won’t lie to you”. At least on that particular day we were only on the phone for 47 minutes, because we were weary and fatalistic rather than icily polite in a furious way.

• And, of course, when I staggered out to our local library (which, being a Labour-and-Labour-Splitters Council, randomly blocks most of the sites I read) in a vain attempt to plough through hundreds of emails that were backing up, finding daily “Your broadband service is ready” emails from John Lewis Broadband. No, that was, very demonstrably and supremely aggravatingly, a lie.

At long last, Richard got a short and sheepish phone call to say that they’d found a workaround that involved reversing several things they’d said they’d done and that they’d told us to do from the start, and that it would be working in the morning.

Imagine my genuine gobsmackery when, at long last, on merely the ninth day, this turned out to be the truth.

We’ve now had a connection back for a week, and I’ve caught up with most of the things I wanted to catch up with; it’s remarkable how something as simple as being internetless makes me feel crazed, depressed and as if I’d been exiled to Flatland. And I’m still physically very washed out, but mostly only as ill as normal.

Now I just need to gather my strength for the bills, and to ask, ‘Shouldn’t you be paying me?’

New and Improved Labour

On the bright side, during our week of never-ending phone lies, at least we weren’t at the Labour Party Conference in which they attempted to rebrand themselves as Nineteenth Century Tories. Well, I can see a direct line in my own party and philosophy from the ones who were opposed to the Tories in the Nineteenth Century and are still, despite everything, far less conservative than Labour, so I can’t say I was impressed. Still less that it wasn’t even genuine Disraeli, who despite being an utter shit at least paid lip service to “One Nation” meaning that everyone had to get on: only the hollow marketing exercise that is today’s Labour Party could rebrand as One Nation founded on class war and hating the rich and not spot the contradiction in that.

But what do you expect, with Ed Balls boasting on the Today Programme that thirteen years of disastrous Labour Government left literally no economic problems at all? Or with Ed Miliband calling the Lib Dems “accomplices”, an accusation so ‘brave’ (as Sir Humphrey would say) that it would be a delight to see Mr Miliband’s face when charged as an accomplice to the Labour Government’s illegal war, illegal war crimes, illegal rendition, illegal collusion with Murdoch, and mostly legal but amazingly stupid total financial collapse. Accomplices? Bring it on, Inspector Knacker.

None of which meant there will ever be any chance of me switching to New and Improved Labour.


This morning, to come briefly up to date, I see that the Tories are out to demonstrate that they have not improved, and that they’re still at their old tricks. With the Conservatives having teamed up with Labour to protect the interests of the Tory Nineteenth Century and stop democracy coming to the Lords, the Lib Dems told them they could go fuck themselves over their preferred changes to Parliamentary Boundaries. This morning, it’s reported that the Tories have a brilliant idea to get the Lib Dems to change our minds: no, not actual democracy. That would be madness.

That Tory plan in full: ‘We’ll slip you a few million quid, and you change your vote. Deal?’

That’s not new (and certainly not improved). It’s exactly the way the crooked Tory Government in the Nineties – and the crooked Labour Government in the Noughties – were open for business, but unlike the other two, Lib Dems have never been for sale. If we move an inch on this, I’ll eat my blog.

Labels: Conservatives, Corruption, Customer Service, Labour, Lords, Personal, Technology

Have you voted yet? The ballot boxes are open until ten for local councils up and down Britain and, where I voted this morning, for the combined London Mayor / Police and Crime Commissioner and for all the London Assembly Members to hold him to account. I’m proud to have voted positively for the Liberal Democrats and Brian Paddick – a Liberal London, fairer, greener, and safer, a serious team and a Mayor with thirty years of police experience. Both in London and nationally, Lib Dems get tough on real crime by stopping wasting police time on petty political targets. In London, Mayor / Commissioner Brian would stop police chasing people for cannabis possession; nationally, the Lib Dems in Government have just made The Protection of Freedoms Act law, rolling back some of Labour’s petty, intrusive, unnecessary powers. Both have the same idea: tackle real crime; don’t waste resources; more freedom. All reversing Labour’s authoritarian, far-right but useless posturing of a new pointless law every day that only caught headlines, not criminals.


I might well go further than Brian, or than the Lib Dems can in London. But I cheered when I saw Brian’s poster – at last, a politician with real life experience and with the guts to say that the thousands of Londoners using cannabis shouldn’t be encouraged but shouldn’t be criminalised, and that the police should get on with catching the real crooks and getting gangsters off the streets. I only wish the Lib Dem campaign had the cash to put that poster on every street – not least because it might make the indistinguishably authoritarian Labour and Tory posers who pretend one joint is the end of civilisation’s heads explode, and then we’d have a clear run for campaigning. Predictably, Labour and Tory politicians have screamed and attacked Brian for it – while bigot UKIP, obviously, have been busy complaining of bigotphobia, saying gays are all insane and should be locked up, and marching through Soho burning pictures of Brian (so much for the mainstream).

Vote Positively for Brian and the Lib Dems – and To Stop the Others, Too

There are negative reasons to vote, too. Because I’m proud that Brian and the Lib Dem team for the London Assembly would do good, but I also want to stop Labour the Tories doing wrong.

It’s a deep-rooted Labour instinct to say ‘Lock people up!’ without thinking – without thinking if it’s possible, or if it’s right, as long as it’s right-wing. I’m very proud of Brian for making a stand on a Liberal policing that doesn’t waste police time when times are tough. I’m proud of his ‘You break it, you fix it’ campaign, championing community service for criminals to pay back, not just disappear into the system to become career criminals.

I don’t trust the Tories an inch when they talk about ‘freedom’ but only for themselves and their mates: remember laid-back Boris’ first Mayoral campaign? Remember his live-and-let live feel? But remember how he attacked Brian over cannabis policing and said coppers should always arrest cannabis users, who are more likely to be poor or black, even though Boris Johnson himself and his mates got away with using cocaine, a much harder drug – but, hey, what’s the point of being privileged if you can’t exercise your privileges and get away with things ordinary people can’t? And I remember how the first thing laid-back Boris did, within hours of becoming Mayor, without ever saying a word about it in the campaign, was to ban alcohol on London Transport – prohibition for the proles, less freedom and just more wasting police time.

I don’t trust Ken Livingstone an inch for the way he and the Labour Government corrupted the police, always getting their cronies to do their bidding to the extent that even some old cronies can’t stomach him any more, worst of all crooked political poodle Ian Blair, supposedly London’s chief copper. And I remember, too, of all the many things to remember about Labour, how the rotten, bullying Labour Government we threw out two years ago inflicted 4,400 new laws on the UK – more than any other government in British history – and how the Lib Dems in Government have pushed against Tory instincts to do the same by putting through the The Protection of Freedoms Act, something we said we’d do in Opposition, and now in Government cutting away snooping powers, state DNA records on innocent people, fingerprinting schoolkids, and clearing the names of people criminalised long ago for consensual same-sex sex. There’s a long way to go, but the Lib Dems are making Britain a more Liberal society, not giving the state more and more power to bully every bit of our lives.

Priorities for a Liberal Democrat Mayor and Assembly

In Government, even with Labour blowing the economy to bits and leaving an incredible debt to repay, and even having to compromise with the Tories over what they want to do, the Liberal Democrats have still achieved the top four General Election pledges on the front of our Manifesto and more: raising the income tax threshold and cutting taxes for 23 million ordinary working people; the Pupil Premium to help out poorer schoolkids; a fairer economy, tackling the banks, record numbers of apprenticeships, green jobs and the new Green Investment Bank open for business; more open politics; delivering the ‘triple lock’ guarantee for pensions.

You can read Brian Paddick and the Liberal Democrat team for the London Assembly’s Manifesto, too, packed with sensible solutions for London, but here are their five priorities before you vote this evening:

• A fairer London, with realistic fare cuts targeted at those who need them most: a One Hour Bus Ticket; Early Bird discounts; and Part-Time season tickets.

• A greener London, with electric buses, taxis and vans by 2020.

• A safer London, with police who listen to the concerns of local people and work with them against the criminals.

• Serious solutions to London’s biggest problems, such as tackling the housing crisis by building 360,000 new homes.

• Creating a network of Youth Hubs to give young people a positive alternative to gangs.

As for Brian Paddick himself – I know his record, I know him, and I trust him. Thirty years of London policing, from the street to the top, showing his abilities and not afraid to stand up for what’s right – even when his bosses tried to shut him up. The UK’s highest-ranking out gay police officer. Someone who pushed the Met to act on police racism, when they pretended there was no problem. Someone who reduced crime by focusing his officers on hard drugs and dealing instead of cannabis possession while commander in Lambeth. Someone who told the truth about the shooting of the innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes, which ultimately cost him his job. Someone who’s shown he can and does build trust in the police across all communities, both to make policing fairer and to make sure the police can police more effectively, and who above all will make London a more equal, more united city.

And what about Boris and Ken? Well, they might talk the talk about equality of opportunity, but they’ve never walked the beat. Boris, laid-back Boris, didn’t bother turning up for the riots last year – when it’s Brian who’s been critical of the police commanders who followed their Mayor’s lead and just sat it out, somewhere else, letting it get worse. And Boris, foot in mouth Boris, well, he says things that offend people, but he doesn’t really mean it – he’s just like that. He just doesn’t give a toss. Then there’s Ken, Ken the tax-dodging hypocrite who does know what he’s doing, Ken who’ll say anything to anyone, anything to get elected, anything to put Ken first. Ken who says rich people shouldn’t be allowed to vote – but then dodges millions of pounds in taxes because, like all rich tax-dodgers, he says he can spend the money better and let all the rest of us ordinary people pay more for everything. Ken who uses the shield of actions against discrimination in the past to excuse his nasty dog-whistles to try and appeal to the homophobic vote and the anti-Semitic vote. Who, me, he says – yes, Ken, you. Always ready to divide London just as long as it gets you on top of it.

If you live outside London but have yet to vote for your local councillor, of course, remember that Lib Dems have always run the greenest local councils; that Lib Dem councils have frozen council tax to help you cope, and that the independent Local Government Chronicle says Lib Dem councils are twice as likely to give pay rises for the lowest paid council workers; and that while Tory and Labour councils are closing libraries all over the place, no Lib Dem council has closed a library. Or you could just vote on national issues, and ask: ‘What have the Lib Dems ever done for us?’ [Click to enlarge]


Quite a lot, you know. Hat-tip to Mark Pack, who shows it all much bigger.

For more, Millennium Dome, Elephant is proud of Brian, too, while Cicero remembers how the Labour Party crawled to Rupert Murdoch for nearly twenty years and only ever criticised him once they were out of power and he’d dumped them. How the Tories crawled to Rupert Murdoch and did his bidding, too (and now, shockingly the Tories on the Culture Select Committee still do). And how the SNP crawled to Rupert Murdoch… In fact, only one political party ever showed any integrity or any balls around Rupert Murdoch: he tried to bribe us, he tried to threaten us, he told Vince Cable he’d bring down the wrath of god on us if we tried to stand up to him… And, guess what? Only the Lib Dems ever – and always – stood up to Rupert Murdoch before he suddenly fell, after which it took no balls at all to jump on the bandwagon.

Labels: British Politics, Conservatives, Corruption, Gay, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Local Government, London, Meddling In Things That Are Nobody's Business But Your Own

The Labour Government promised Lords reform. They delivered a House of Cronies stuffed with Labour appointments, and ignored House of Commons votes to set up a fully elected Upper Chamber.

Labour got rid of most of the peers who held seats by hereditary inheritance (by an amazing coincidence, overwhelmingly Tory) but only replaced them with swathes of new Life Peers holding seats by time-serving political inheritance (by an amazing coincidence, overwhelmingly Labour).

So they replaced no democracy with no democracy, and rewards for favours to kings centuries ago with rewards for favours to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in office.

Then, five years ago today, the House of Commons voted for a wholly elected Upper Chamber (as well as backing, by a smaller majority, an 80% elected / 20% appointed Upper Chamber). The Labour Government opposed both of these votes before they took place, but I was foolish enough at the time to think that, the votes having taken place, the Labour Government would act on them. Of course, they didn’t. They flat-out refused the democratic will of the Commons to extend the democratic will of the people.

Who can explain why this anti-democratic decision was made? Except that the Labour Party made so much money by selling peerages that it would have left them many millions short had people been forced to stand for election rather than just pony up, no questions asked.

M’learned friend tells me that the Labour Party was not officially selling peerages, as the police investigation presided over by now-Lord Blair (no relation), who was then by an amazing coincidence given a peerage by the Labour Government (quite a strong relation), didn’t prove that they did. It’s merely that, as I noted yesterday, by another amazing coincidence, every single person giving Labour a million pounds got a peerage or knighthood in return.

Labour spokespeople, with no breath of shame for their lies and hypocrisy, attacked the Coalition Government for ‘creating the largest number of peers at once that the Lords have ever seen’ in the first new set of appointments after the General Election. Before taking that seriously, you should remember two facts. That the previous Labour Government, over their time in office, loaded up the Lords with by far the largest number of peers in history in order to stuff a Labour lead into the Upper Chamber… And that the majority of that ‘largest number of peers at once’ created shortly after the last election were outgoing Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s resignation honours, using his last power of patronage to fill up the unelected House with even more Labour cronies after the Labour Party had been thrown out of the elected House by the voters.

Democracy Is For Government, Not Just For Election-Time

A hundred and one years ago, the Liberal Government passed the Parliament Act, beginning the process of subjecting the Lords to democracy. Now that we’re back in government after a small interregnum, the Liberal Democrats are getting back on with it. Even though Labour are – surprise – still looking for ways to sabotage the process, along with some former Liberal leaders who’ve gone native now they have cushy jobs for life (Lord Steel, be ashamed), though by no means all.

The media coverage of Lords reform keeps stating that only the Liberal Democrats are interested in an elected Upper Chamber – as if no-one else could object to retired politicians, bribing businesspeople and never-elected bishops being able to boss all the rest of us about with no chance of us poor plebs ever getting rid of them. Of course this just assumes, probably rightly, that the Liberal Democrats mean what they say when they put something in their manifesto, and that the other two just pretend to be interested in democracy at election times but are really lying through their teeth.

So here’s something for both the Labour and Conservative Parties (and too-cosy Lib Dem peers) to remember. This is what the three main parties promised to get elected:

“Replace the House of Lords with a fully-elected second chamber with considerably fewer members than the current House.”

Liberal Democrat General Election Manifesto 2010

“We will work to build a consensus for a mainly-elected second chamber to replace the current House of Lords, recognising that an efficient and effective second chamber should play an important role in our democracy and requires both legitimacy and public confidence.”

Conservative General Election Manifesto 2010

“We will ensure that the hereditary principle is removed from the House of Lords. Further democratic reform to create a fully elected Second Chamber will then be achieved in stages. At the end of the next Parliament one third of the House of Lords will be elected; a further one third of members will be elected at the general election after that. Until the final stage, the representation of all groups should be maintained in equal proportions to now.”

Labour General Election Manifesto 2010 – which, you may have noticed, was the only one that still wanted to rig the Upper House so that, whatever the voters decided, it would still have an entrenched Labour plurality for fifteen years!

“We will establish a committee to bring forward proposals for a wholly or mainly elected upper chamber on the basis of proportional representation… In the interim, Lords appointments will be made with the objective of creating a second chamber that is reflective of the share of the vote secured by the political parties in the last general election.”

Coalition Agreement between the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats, May 2010

So to say that this is only a Liberal Democrat thing not only ignores how the whole House of Commons voted five years ago, but assumes that only Lib Dems tell the truth and that the other parties are liars.

Any Labour and Conservative politicians reading, why not prove that wrong?

Labels: British Politics, Coalition, Conservatives, Corruption, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Lords, Things To Remember About Labour

I see that Lord Lee of Trafford (a figure of such great repute that I’m sure you’ve all heard of him) is threatening to resign his Liberal Democrat duties because the party is threatening to fulfil a democratic promise that it’s held steady to for a century. That of abolishing his cosy job for life (but no personal interest, of course).

Anyone would have thought that this might be some cautionary tale about how even the Lib Dems have treated the Lords just as some sort of patronage-a-go-go by doling out peerages to every time-serving Tory who happens to join us after their career is over in the pathetic hope of encouraging more defections, rather than thinking of the Second Chamber as a serious part of Parliament that might need people in it with Liberal principles that might make legislation more Liberal and not more conservative.

And that the moral of the story would be that unelected patronage running part of our laws sucks, whoever appoints the old cronies to their jollies, and that therefore Lord Lee is accidentally making the precise case as to why he and all his peers should be abolished – even the good ones.

But, no, that would be madness talking.

Labels: British Politics, Corruption, Liberal Democrats, Lords

My 7th reason to vote YES! to the Alternative Vote tomorrow is quite negative again; that’s what often happens with lower preferences. But as negative campaigning sometimes works… For goodness’ sake, just look at the No campaign! The BNP. Rupert Murdoch. Labour’s authoritarian dinosaurs, with all the Labour reformers voting YES! And most Conservatives – with all the No campaign’s vast cash outspending change coming from the usual Tory millionaires. Why on Earth should the people who have always screamed to stop any change in the history of ever be lying to make you scared of change? It’s a toughie. And why is 0.036% suddenly the biggest number in the world? Read on…

If you made a list of Britain’s most conservative, nasty, authoritarian, reactionary, greedy, tribal, power-hungry, illiberal, unpleasant, wealthy, self-interested, fearmongering, warmongering political rip-off merchants… But look! There’s no need to – the No campaign have saved you the trouble. It’s them.

And from their side, what’s the biggest threat they can muster? ‘We’re afraid of the Liberal Democrats!’ Well, I’m tempted to say, it’s about bloody time! But if you want big scary beasties – why not look to the ones who’ve always had all the power and all the money, not the little fighters who are trying to change it?

Rich Tories

The No campaign have got so many sleazy Tory millions rolling in to back them and so many lying newspapers on their side that David Cameron’s been ashamed every time he’s been asked to take responsibility for it all – even though it’s his party and his donors who’ve created the whole mud-slinging pile of bollocks. No wonder he’s been so desperate to keep under wraps who paid for posters like the infamous ‘be very scared, or the baby gets it’.

So congratulations to those Tory reformers who stick to their principles and support a YES! to the system that the Conservative Party uses in its own elections, even when most of them pretend it’s too good for the rest of us! I wish I could say the same about the honesty of their Leader, but here’s Andrew Rilstone on why David Cameron is a liar.

Poor Ed Miliband

It’s a shame that the Labour Party is split down the middle, as it is so often – or we’d long since have had the referendum they promised, had absolute power to deliver, but never did – between progressives and nasty old conservatives. I feel sorry for poor Ed Miliband, a prisoner of the dinosaurs stomping around him. The Labour Leader, Ed Miliband, supports the Alternative Vote – but most of his MPs want to keep their noses in the trough and ignore him. The last Labour Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, put AV in their General Election Manifesto last year – but most of the MPs elected on that manifesto are ignoring it, too. And the former Labour Leader Neil Kinnock is doing what poor Ed can’t and laying into the Labour dinosaurs who are helping the Tory campaign for a crooked, broken old system that’s helped the Tories more than every other party.

If you’re a Labour voter, why not vote YES! to help poor Ed Miliband?

Paddy Says – Make the Dinosaurs Extinct!

The greatest former Leader for me is still Paddy Ashdown. Unlike the sleazy No-mongers who pretended to speak for our armed forces in claiming our soldiers hate democracy, he’s been a soldier under fire. So forgive me for quoting what he said a couple of weeks ago – it packs a punch:

“I’ve been in politics for a long time. There’s nothing wrong with people of any age getting involved, from a teenager to a centenarian. We can all make a difference.

“But when almost every politician at the top of the ‘No’ campaign was already a dinosaur by the time I was first elected to Parliament in 1983, you have to wonder about the freshness of their arguments.

“Think of the changes Britain has seen during my lifetime – and theirs:

“We’ve joined the European Union. We’ve established a Parliament in Scotland and an Assembly for Wales. We’ve voted in proportional representation elections for both – a far bigger change than AV – and the sky hasn’t fallen in.

“And government, always the last to change under Tory and Labour alike, has often been the last to wake up to the incredible social changes that have changed Britain for the better.

“So when those old Labour and Tory hacks gang up to tell you to be afraid of a long-overdue but frankly much smaller change, it tells you far more about their fears than those of the British public. Of course they’re against change. They want to hang on to the present system because it makes life easier for politicians. Well I am more interested in a system that makes life better for the voters!

“I have always tried to appeal to the politics of hope. But too many votes have been decided by fear – and that’s all that the ‘No’ campaign dinosaurs can offer.

“Not one of them can stand up to say ‘Vote positively for First Past the Post – we know it’s a wonderful system!’ They know it’s broken – but they also know it gave them unbroken power – and that’s why they want to hang on to it.

“What could they say? ‘First Past the Post gives you strong government.’ Like that of John Major or Gordon Brown, then? ‘First Past the Post protects you from coalition governments.’ Well I happen to think that coalition Governments are not bad for the country – they’re good for it. But if you disagree then think of this: Australia has had this system for 70 years and has had fewer hung parliaments than Britain has?

“The ‘Yes’ campaign has a powerful message of hope – yes, the current system is broken. But you don’t have to be afraid that nothing can change, and you don’t have to be afraid of that change – take courage! We’re offering a change for the better.

“Here are some facts: in the last twenty years, the governments elected in British General Elections under First Past the Post have had the smallest shares of the vote in our nation’s history, down as far as absolute power on just 35% of the vote. That’s not a popular mandate, when two-thirds of the people voting vote against you.

“The Alternative Vote would make sure that every MP has the support of a majority of their voters. It wouldn’t make every government perfect. But it would give every MP at least the firm democratic basis that so many of them lack today.

“No wonder people are so turned off by politics, when most of them get MPs they voted against.

“At last, the Liberal Democrats in government are delivering a referendum to let the people – no that politicians – decide on making a positive change to a system we’ve said is broken for decades.

“The power for change is in your hands. Will you have the courage to take it?

“Don’t let old fears decide your vote. With the Alternative Vote, there’s hope that things can be better.

“Take courage. Make that change.”

Listen to Paddy. Send an AV asteroid crashing down on that bunch of frightened old dinosaurs lying to you because they’re terrified that the rotten system that put them into power for so long is about to crumble.

No To All Those Lies (Part VI) – A Big Lie, But They’re So Crap the Biggest Number They Can Make Up Is 0.036%

All those Conservative millions have made it much easier for the No Campaign to send out so many lies, lies and more lies, while the poor little YES! campaign’s been strapped for cash. And who but the reactionary millionaires wanting to hang onto a system that gives them more power than their votes deserve who make up and keep repeating lies about the cost of a “Yes” – to distract attention from how much “No” can afford?

With the usual breathtaking chutzpah of a wholly negative campaign, the “No” millionaires made up a number, doubled it, then told everyone it was true. They make up numbers that everyone from the Electoral Commission to the Australian Government, which has been elected by AV for a century, tell you are absolute fiction (electronic vote counting machines? No-one needs them. Totally made up. They do use them in the USA, of course… To count the “first past the post” system we have now. It’s a good job the YES! campaign aren’t as big liars as the No-mongers, or they’d claim ‘keeping the current system means you’ll have to pay for vote-counting machines, even though we don’t use them and never have and no-one wants them!’). And then they tell us Britain can’t afford the numbers they’ve just made up.

They say that a “Yes” would cost £250 million (actually, they can’t add up even their own lies, but I’ll come to that in a minute), and that “We can’t afford it”. Well, even apart from their figure being almost completely made up… Is that the best they can do?

Not only is it a big lie – it’s a really crap lie.

The British Government is to spend £701 billion this year. The huge, immense, bankrupting, unaffordable figure that the No sleazy millions are scaring you with… Is just 0.036% of that spend.

Seriously, that’s not just a stupid and obvious lie, but a rubbish one. ‘An extra 0.036% of Government spending will bankrupt you all!’ Do they think nobody can count? And do they think we’ll all be swayed by the idea that dictatorship is cheaper than democracy?

And, as a third of their figure – the only bit that’s just about true (but still exaggerated) – is the cost of holding the referendum itself… OK – so, if “No” wins, that must mean the taxpayer doesn’t have to pay for the referendum. Are the sleazy No-monger millionaires offering to pay the cost if they win, then? Or is that just another lie?


The biggest and best of all articles about the two systems up for grabs in tomorrow’s referendum is by Tim Gowers. It’s detailed, fair – it gives the downsides to the system he favours, too – and it’s brilliantly argued.

You should put aside some time to read it for yourself, but here’s a scathing excerpt knocking down the lies about the cost:

“Here is how the NO2AV campaign breaks down the cost of AV.

“The referendum itself: £91 million.
“Electronic vote counting machines: £130 million.
“Explaining AV to voters: £26 million.

“This adds up to £250 million (or rather, they say it does — actually it adds up to £247 million). We can take that straight down to £156 million with the help of the following simple observation:

“THE REFERENDUM IS HAPPENING ANYWAY! DUH.

“Just to make that point clear, imagine that a group of friends want to go to the cinema. Some people want to see Avatar, which is the film showing in a single-screen cinema just round the corner. But others are not so sure, so they suggest catching a bus to a large multiplex cinema where there are three films that look promising, one of which is Avatar. This plan is agreed upon, and when they are at the multiplex a discussion ensues about which film to watch. The Avatar supporters argue that the cost of the bus fare is an argument against choosing another film, since it would have been possible to watch Avatar without a bus journey. The rest of the group laugh in their faces.

“£156 million is still a lot of money. Luckily we can take it down further: it is a straightforward lie that AV requires electronic vote-counting machines. That gets us down to £26 million.

“Does it take that much money to explain AV to voters? If so, could I please please be the one who is paid £26 million to say ‘Put the candidates in order of preference until you don’t care any more’?”

Not completely convinced yet to vote #Yes2AV? Try 1 of my other YES! reasons. Or 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or 8…!

Labels: British Politics, Conservatives, Corruption, Labour, Paddy Ashdown, Referendum

After my 1st, 2nd and 3rd reasons to vote YES! to the Alternative Vote on Thursday, here’s number 4. You know that, thanks to the current system, in over two thirds of all seats the current MP “won” last year despite over half of their voters voting against them. Well, it’s worse than that in a lot of seats: though most people rejected them, some of these ‘biggest losers’ remain so safe they get jobs for life. But AV means those two thirds of MPs have to work harder, and the ‘safe’ ones suddenly get shocked out of their smugness.

Because AV is an evolutionary change, not a revolutionary one, it’s not quite powerful to eliminate every ‘safe seat’. But it’s worth voting YES! to our one chance for change to shake up most of them! Some MPs will always work hard, and listen to you no matter who voted for them. And some will be forced to do so because the result in their seat was quite close. But there are a lot in the middle who can sit back and be sure that they’re never going to lose their seat, because even quite sizeable majorities against them are so disorganised between different parties. AV kicks away that unfair prop by letting your preferences get organised enough to kick them out. If you’re the MP in the two thirds of seats where most people voted for someone else and you want to keep your seat, “first past the post” means you can sit back, vote the party line and not listen to anyone but your Leader. If you want to keep your seat under AV, you have to work harder at listening to your voters.

Which would you rather? MPs only listening to each other, or being forced to listen to you? Vote YES! to fairer votes to make MPs work harder.

The safer the MP and the less they have to listen to you, the fact is that the more they ripped you off in that big expenses scandal a couple of years ago. The safer they are and the more they can get away with just trousering their ‘safe’ cash from the taxpayer without working for it, the more likely they are even to take extra jobs when they’re supposed to be working for you, to coin even more cash! It’s common sense – if they think they’ve got a job for life, they don’t care what you think about them. Well, AV makes a lot of those ‘safe’ MPs suddenly scared for their jobs.

Say YES! to fairer votes make your MP scared for their job and keep their fingers out of the till!

I’ve just turned on the telly and seen historian Dan Snow explain simply how AV makes the majority heard. It’s common sense – if you want to get elected, you should need to reach out to the majority in your seat, and AV’s fairer votes make you. Remember that simple illustration of how it works:




Vote YES! to stop MPs being complacent, to cut back their jobs for life, and force them to start listening to you!

No To Lies, More Lies and More Lies Still (Part III)

With the No Campaign telling nothing but lies, more lies and more lies still because they can’t come up with a case in favour of the current broken system, there are too many lies for me to deal with all in one post. But, unlike me, Paddy Ashdown is brilliant, so he can manage it – read how Paddy takes on the lies and negative campaigning and gives them a damned good thrashing.


Not completely convinced yet to vote #Yes2AV? Try 1 of my other YES! reasons. Or 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 or 8…!

Labels: British Politics, Corruption, Paddy Ashdown, Referendum

Want to know my second-best reason to say YES! to the Alternative Vote on Thursday? My first’s to stop two thirds of MPs being elected – as they were last year – even though they were losers for most of their voters, with most people voting against them. My second choice reason’s pretty strong, too. Remember all those MPs caught milking our money a couple of years ago? Voting YES! makes it much easier to gang up on a crook and throw them out! And by an amazing coincidence, those MPs most against change were on average the biggest crooks. Gee, wonder why they want to keep the current system?

AV isn’t a magic bullet – if people vote for crooks, they’ll still get in. And some voters love being ripped off, and re-elect fat cats. No electoral system can overcome voter stupidity – though the No campaign reckon every single one of us is too thick to count, and only capable of marking a crude X as we wipe drool from our sagging jaws.

Can you count “1, 2, 3…”? Then you’re capable of voting in an AV election.

And that’s the beauty of it. If you have a crooked MP who you’re longing to get rid of, with AV you don’t have to try and guess who’s best-placed to beat them, and risk splitting the vote so they still get in even though most people vote against them – like a whole two thirds of current MPs. With AV, you don’t have to choose whether to pick someone you don’t like all that much in order to beat someone you hate, and make it look like the candidate you like most isn’t very popular. Just put your choices in order, and the system does the adding up for you to have the best chance of beating the crook!

Voting YES! to AV gives you the power to choose who you want most, and still gang up against your local crook.

Here’s how AV works – Giving Your Vote More Power

In the most detail, top thoughtful blogger Andrew Rilstone explains.

If you prefer someone to explain in person, here’s a video of TV historian Dan Snow explaining the system.

And, most simply of all, a graphic (from here) that sums it up:

No To Lies (Part I) – Those Leaflets and That Video

Meanwhile, the No Campaign have been telling lies. And more lies. And a lot more lies on top of that. They don’t think anyone could possibly support the current “first past the post” system (where usually the biggest loser “wins” when they’re nowhere near the “post”) on its merits. Well, except for the two thirds of the MPs who owe all their salaries, all their perks and all their power to the current system letting them “win” when more than half their voters vote against them. But ‘Let me keep my salaries, all their perks and all their power even though most of you hate me’ isn’t a winning argument, is it? So all they’ve got left is telling lies to make you too afraid to vote YES!

In fact, there are too many lies to deal with all in one post. So here’s a start.

You know the “No” leaflet you’ve had through your door? Here’s a simple guide to why it’s all a lie.

And here’s a leaflet that “No” haven’t actually produced, but give them time (note: this isn’t a lie. It’s satire).

And did you watch the “No” video? No, better things to do with your time, probably. But it turns out that’s all big fat lies too!


Not completely convinced yet to vote #Yes2AV? Try 1 of my other YES! reasons. Or 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 or 8…!

Labels: British Politics, Corruption, Referendum

In today’s ‘You couldn’t make it up’ news, multi-millionaire Conservative candidate tax-dodger Zac Goldsmith has furiously defended his “non-domicile” tax status… Because he gives away some of his tax-dodged wealth.

As he nearly said,

‘How dare you criticise me, you plebs, just because you get taxed for working hard for a living and I dodge tax on my unearned millions! I spend all my money how I like, and if I’m bountiful enough to drop a few coppers to paupers, they should be jolly grateful, so I’m jolly cross they don’t doff their bally caps. Let them eat environmentally-friendly cake!’

Thanks to Paul Walter for this latest eye-boggling story of aloof Tory arrogance. Liberal Democrat Voice also have a comprehensive round-up of newspaper and blogger comment on Mr Goldsmith’s tax-dodging. Even that well-known far left rag the Financial Times thinks he’s a bit out of line with his tax avoidance. Uncannily, only Tories seem to think he’s done nothing wrong. Fancy!

It’s not yet known whether Mr Goldsmith has been defended by billionaire tax exile Tory bankroller Lord Ashcroft – perhaps he’s too busy buying the next election – but, apparently, millionaire Tory bloggers have backed him. Bless.

Every time the Tories delight in putting the boot into the poor with shrill accusations about ‘benefit scroungers’, I wonder just how many thousands of actual rather than rhetorical benefit cheats they’d have to find to save the same money they’re happy for just one mega-rich Tory donor to pocket as bonuses from the taxpayer for dodging their taxes (good news, though: the tax authorities may yet catch up with Mr Goldsmith, whose tax-dodging may not be as clever as he thought it was).

Tax Fairness From the Lib Dems

In unrelated news, the Liberal Democrats yesterday launched our new tax policy, aiming to reverse the disgusting situation where the richest in Britain pay a smaller proportion of their income in tax than the poorest. Under Lib Dem proposals, income tax allowances will be raised so that no-one earning under ten thousand pounds a year will pay a penny in income tax, paid for by green taxes, cutting tax giveaways for the very rich and putting a very modest 1% tax on mansions worth over two million pounds.

Of course, we won’t be able to tax all of Mr Goldsmith’s inherited mansions, because some of them are in other countries. I wonder why, while refusing to back the Lib Dems’ plans to cut income tax for everyone on low and middle incomes, the Tories are so keen on giving handouts to the spoilt children of millionaires in inheritance tax…?


And now my arm’s got very painful, so I’d best stop typing for a bit…




I was also linked to (that I know of) here, here, here (snarkily) and here (which is very worth reading). Corks!

Labels: British Politics, Conservatives, Corruption, Liberal Democrats, Tax, The Golden Dozen

What should be done – what can be done – when Britain’s most powerful newspaper breaks the law and breaks people’s personal security literally thousands of times? When the massive media multinational owning it has both denied any further wrongdoing when the tip of the iceberg emerged three years ago, and paid millions of pounds in hush money to stop all the rest of it coming out? And when the Labour Party, the Metropolitan Police, the Crown Prosecution Service, the courts and the “very relaxed” (ie bricking himself) Conservative Leader are all apparently compromised by Mr Murdoch’s money and power?

The Guardian has today broken a story that’s actually shocking. When there’s corruption in politics or journalism, it’s easy to affect being shocked, when actually you know that either it’s not that significant in the grand scheme of things, or you always assumed a bit of it went on, or both. The News of the Screws hacking into three thousand people’s phones with impunity – again, literally with impunity, as it appears that the legal authorities knew about it but, far from doling out punishment, helped cover it up – is a type and scale of law-breaking that left me open-mouthed.

You can read in The Guardian and, I imagine, many more outlets today about The News of the World’s massive programme of illegal phone-cracking – including the then Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister with responsibility for the media, which looks like a multinational using its money and might to compromise national security in quite a significant way – about their massive hush money pay-outs as part of an incredible cover-up, about what some of the victims have to say for themselves and about Andy Coulson, David Cameron’s Director of Communications, who edited The News of the World when it was riddled with this criminal culture (if indeed it’s stopped today).

No doubt debate over a privacy law will erupt again. I’m wary of it, but in any case it’s irrelevant to this case – they’ve broken the law several thousand times anyway. Adding another law is hardly going to put them off. It’s not as if anyone was enforcing the existing laws, is it?

My main worry is over the enormous power wielded by a giant multinational company that’s enabled it to duck all the laws that apply to the rest of us – even when all the relevant authorities were involved.

The People Who Should Have Acted – And Didn’t

We know that the Labour Party has been crushingly afraid of Mr Murdoch’s press ever since it was defeated in 1992. We know that they’ve kow-towed and changed their policies, first to get The Sun’s backing to get into government and then, in government, not to lose it. It’s no surprise that, with defeat looming and every indication that Mr Murdoch does not back losers, Labour people are suddenly today starting to be critical of News International – too little, too late. Particularly when their immediate reaction to someone stealing people’s privacy on a massive scale must be, ‘but that’s our job!’

We know that David Cameron has been desperately attempting to get the same sort of deal with Mr Murdoch that Mr Blair once did. Part of that was to appoint as his head PR man the disgraced former News of the World editor Andy Coulson, who was one of the fall guys when a tiny, tiny fraction of this story came out three years ago. Mr Cameron has now said that he is “very relaxed” about his far-right-hand-man being a criminal gang boss, apparently because the hush money was paid out after he left. Well, hush money to cover up a crime isn’t usually paid to the victim before the crime takes place, is it, but when they eventually find out? After having such a massive hit with Gordon Brown’s PR man Damian McBride sending just a couple of e-mails that were legal but nasty, Mr Cameron must be sweating buckets when his own equivalent led a team that was committing thousands of crimes.

The power that The News of the World, its stablemates and its master exert over the two biggest political parties is bad enough. What’s terrifying about this case is that the authorities that should have acted not only didn’t, but actively assisted the cover-up.

• The Metropolitan Police didn’t fully investigate – and, astonishingly, though they managed to find evidence that many people’s phones had been broken into, they didn’t even tell any of the victims that a crime had been committed against them, nor that their security might still be compromised.

• The Crown Prosecution Service brought charges against one designated fall guy, then did bugger all with all the rest of the evidence.

• The Press Complaints Commission ‘investigated’ to no effect whatever. What’s the point of this press establishment club?

• The Parliamentary Select Committee that ‘investigated’ the last case were lied to by senior News International executives, and went no further.

Were they all afraid of Mr Murdoch’s power? Asleep on the job? Incompetent? Or even influenced by his money?

As Liberal Vision pointedly puts it this morning, “Rupert Murdoch: I liked it so much that I bought your country’s legal system”.

Is There Any Punishment That Would Matter to Murdoch?

This is vastly more serious than MPs’ expenses. Surely it’ll be hammered just as hard and just as long in the… media… Ah. I see the problem. So, with the Labour Government and Conservative Opposition compromised, with the press authorities, legal authorities and Parliamentary authorities all failing, who on Earth will hold this conspiracy to account?

Freedom of the press is vital. Giving the government power over it is deeply worrying. But while the government itself should play no part in individual cases, it must set a framework within which action is taken. The Labour Government has been such an overwhelming bully over our personal lives that it’s easy to forget that, just as the media, the courts and the rest of us have to keep watch on its power to bully, part of the point of having a government at all is to stand up to other bullies on our behalf.

I have no legal background at all, but I suspect it may be too late to do anything about this case on the scale of punishment that it deserves – even if the various authorities belatedly get off their arses. The simple fact is, a fine on the scale any of us have heard of before is unlikely to cut it. News International is simply so huge that it can take a few million here or there without breaking stride. It’s an occupational hazard – it’s no punishment, let alone deterrent (and the mind boggles at how a corrupt media giant might be induced to undergo any form of rehabilitation).

What this deserves is for any paper so riddled with criminal activity to be either closed down or sold off, and its owner barred from buying any replacement – and the whole British arm of the Murdoch empire to be dissolved if investigations reveal that other papers or TV channels were doing it too. I suspect our toothless media law framework has absolutely nothing like the power or inclination to deal with this sort of endemic institutional corruption. The Liberal Democrats should commit to changing it to something with a whole lot more bite before the next time this sort of thing emerges (and it will).

Three years ago, we saw one individual journalist apparently hung out to dry by the Murdoch empire when a tiny fraction of this exploded into the limelight. He said it was only him; The News of the World said it was only him; News International said it was only him. He went to prison. We now know that he was just the tip of the iceberg, that every single News International employee who commented on this was lying through their teeth, and that any who took the stand were perjurers.

Like gangsters who agree to take the fall and not name everyone else involved, what was the price for his silence? Another job? A big pay-off? Surely a police investigation into perverting the course of justice has to start today.

So, while going after individual journalists who have been implicated in this vast conspiracy is necessary, it is far from sufficient when the corruption and illegal practices are blatantly systemic in at least this one newspaper. Given the massive hush money ladled out by Mr Murdoch, The Sun and the rest of News International’s UK pawns must be thoroughly investigated, too. As well as officers of the police and the courts, whose competence, judgment and probity are all now under serious question.

If it’s true that fines are the only shot in the armoury for newspapers themselves, then surely News International have already set their own market rate. They’ve paid three sets of cash that we know of in secret compensation to their victims, totalling around a million pounds. It turns out there are something in the region of three thousand victims in total. That’s a nice easy sum to do, then, isn’t it?

One billion pounds, please, Mr Murdoch, and after that we’ll look at who goes to prison.

Labels: British Politics, Conservatives, Corruption, Labour, Meddling In Things That Are Nobody's Business But Your Own, Newspapers, The Golden Dozen

It’s difficult to get excited by today’s contest for a new Speaker. There was a brief flicker of excitement that things might change, but no, it looks – and I hope to be proved wrong – that Establishment stitch-ups are smothering the cleaning-up of Parliament all over again. We’re almost a quarter of the way into the hundred days that Nick Clegg timetabled for a reform programme to take back power, and bugger all’s been done. Worse, what’s the smart money on by the end of the day? Speaker Bloody Beckett. Give me strength. How has it come to this?

The short answer is, it appears, that neither Labour nor the Tories give a toss about reform, openness or even making the House of Commons look a bit better, and have instead seized on three priorities: find someone who’ll protect their interests against the nasty world outside that’s been mean to them; stick two fingers up at each other across the chamber; and stick two fingers up at the voters.

Even this Parliament deserves better.

The one hope, and it’s incredible that I find myself writing this, is another dose of secrecy slaps onto the process that means that no-one quite knows if the old Labour-Tory stitch-up is actually going to work this time. I’m very wary indeed of a secret ballot within Parliament; generally, MPs should be held to account for how they vote on our behalf. Let’s see how it works on this one type of vote, though. No doubt if they end up picking someone good, I’ll say it’s a vindication of a system that defeats the whips as I predicted all along, and if they end up picking Mrs Beckett some appalling establishment hack, I’ll say that it’s no surprise, as I’d always said what a disaster it would be to let MPs vote on protecting themselves without fear of scrutiny.

Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg has called for radical change and an end to the establishment domination of Parliament, telling Andrew Marr:

“I want to see a Speaker who transforms the role from the traditional role, which is as a defender of the status quo – almost a shop steward of the rights and privileges of MPs – into a people’s Speaker, into a Speaker who opens up Parliament, turns it from this Nineteenth Century institution into a modern, transparent, open, publicly accessible Twenty-First Century Parliament.”

And I agree with every word except one. “People’s” sounds like a Twentieth Century communist dictatorship or, almost as bad and slightly more sickening, Tony Blair. I wish Nick would give up the habit. Anyway, I back Nick’s call. But then, Nick called for a massive programme of reform that could take place over a hundred days, and after 22 days, Parliament’s done bugger all. So I suspect that bugger all will flow naturally into Buggins’ Turn.

I wrote a few weeks ago that the new Speaker shouldn’t be some old grandee. There is no worse time in British history for Parliamentary tradition and Buggins’ Turn to be followed. I said it should be someone with a proven track record of calling for and voting for reform before it was fashionable, if Parliament’s to crawl back to any sort of credibility at all. I suggested (much as I dislike and disagree with him) Frank Field as someone who does seem to have credibility with a lot of the media, which might help rebuild some trust in democracy. For me, the perception of a person who wasn’t part of the establishment and could command wide respect as a reformer was even more important than the action of reform itself (which will take much longer and will get far less press attention, so it’s vital to make a simple, visible statement by picking someone who embodies reform).

Well, stuff that, as no-one fitting the bill has gone for the job.

So what’s left? Ten people, five of them with knighthoods. Good grief. It’s not that I’m against knighthoods per se – well, I might be, actually, but that’s not the point – but can you think of a better way to say ‘we’re all out of touch and doing it the old way’? And there’s the fact that gongs are usually handed out for long service; where a reformer should ideally be someone who’s been an MP for no more than two or three Parliaments, Sir Anything is likely to have gone hopelessly native. No knights, please. What could be worse? Only a timeserving government minister who’s been deeply partisan for as long as I’ve been alive and wants the job as a pay-off for recently being sacked…

So What’s the Uninspiring Choice On Offer?

I’m deeply suspicious of the Speakership going to Labour for the third time in a row. It smacks too much of the Labour Government trying to control Parliament from beyond the grave. But I’m wary of a Tory, too. The most likely outcome of the next General Election at the moment seems like a Conservative government; the new Speaker should be able to spur on Parliament to hold them to account, not hold their dinner jackets. And I get downright frosty when people always suggest a Liberal Democrat for an ‘apolitical’ position, because frankly being in third place for ninety years means you have to have a lot more backbone in what you fight for than MPs who coast along with whoever happens to be winning at the time. Of course, it would be absurd to have an SNP or Plaid MP who doesn’t believe in the Westminster Parliament anyway, and as for the Northern Irish parties… Independents get my goat, too. Egomaniacs with a free ride.

Er, I guess that means I’ll just have to look at the people up for the job rather than analysing which party would be best for the place.

Margaret Beckett
Oh, please, no. Anyone but that. And I don’t think there’s room in even one of my articles for all the many reasons why. First and foremost, she is the single most partisan and tribal candidate for the job. She is a creature of the Labour Party through and through – long a spokesperson, a minister in many departments, combining bitter arrogance and thoroughly undistinguished service in all of them. Can you remember a single thing she’s done, as opposed to what she’s been? Oh, yes: as Foreign Secretary, she was Tony Blair’s liar-in-chief for the Iraq War. She was even Labour’s Deputy Leader and then interim Leader – hardly qualifying her as a referee. And after all that, she was still given the sack a few weeks ago, so it’s difficult not to see her going for Speaker as just a consolation to keep her in the highly-paid style to which she’s become accustomed, particularly now that her massive and roundly jeered-at expenses for gardening are unlikely to be upheld (some of them, for hanging baskets, tubs and planters, took the piss so much that even the Parliamentary Fees Office rejected them).

If all that wasn’t off-putting enough, she’s the only candidate for Speaker who’s refused to back several key reforms – such as letting MPs choose Select Committee Chairs, rather than the government doing it – and the Labour Whips (with help from the Conservatives) are blatantly twisting arms on her behalf as the anti-reform candidate. They’re relying on her record and manifesto of the executive controlling Parliament, as it long has. If all that doesn’t convince you that she’s by far the worst of a bad bunch, remember her performance on Question Time just after the expenses scandal started breaking? The worst reception I’ve ever seen, as the audience booed, hissed and jeered and she sneered, lectured and told them off in return. In every conceivable way, she just didn’t get it. If she’s elected Speaker, expect those clips to be all over the news, and the public’s view of the House of Commons to sink even lower than the incredible low it’s at now.

John Bercow
Well, what to say. In theory, he’s the best-placed ‘reform’ candidate; he might actually shake things up. He also seems to understand that he needs to open communication with the public again. On the down side, he appears to have most support among Labour MPs who don’t actually like him but know that his fellow Tories loathe him, as they have ever since he lost his Tory front bench position for voting for gay equality legislation. That might endear him in a small way to me, but it’s no way to build credibility across the aisle. Plus, he’s been so obviously gagging for the job for years, which makes my eyes narrow; like Michael Martin, he wouldn’t so much have to be pulled to the chair as peeled away from it. Besides, my one encounter with him was stunningly unimpressive. In 1997, I was the youngest candidate for any party standing in the region (however you count it; for short, ‘the bit above London and before the Midlands’) and was called on to do a lot of media and other debates around Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and so on. I debated against him at a youth rally in Milton Keynes when he was a hopeful Parliamentary candidate (admittedly, with a lot more reason to be hopeful than I did!), and I went along knowing his record as a near-fascist former Tory youth leader, a barking mad right-wing firebrand. Yes, I was pretty much expecting the anti-me. Instead, he was one of the most boring and out of touch speakers I’ve ever been put up against. Ever since, he’s seemed to me to have gone from firebrand to vacuum.

Sir George Young
Oh, look, a grandee. Huzzah. Apparently the other ‘favourite’, he’s the current Chairman of the Standards and Privileges Committee – yes, the one that’s fucked up so appallingly. Like the Conservative London Mayor and Conservative putative Prime Minister, this Conservative putative Speaker went to Eton. In isolation, that’s no reason to criticise any of them, but put together, you do wonder if the country’s top political jobs can’t find a wider talent (or indeed gene) pool. On the plus side, he’s one of only four candidates to go public about their twelve sponsors (refusing even to be open about who’s backing you doesn’t bode well for a commitment to transparency). The ‘carry on as you are’ continuity candidate. Oh dear.

Sir Alan Beith
Here’s the other candidate that I’ve met – quite often, in this case, and we’ve always got on quite well, despite my discombobulating him more than once in our years together on the Liberal Democrats’ Federal Policy Committee with my rather different worldview. He’s a genuine reformer, a fair and nice man, and one of only four candidates to go public about their twelve sponsors. The trouble with Alan is that only his mild manner prevents him from looking like the embodiment of the establishment (though, having sat on committees with him, he does have some steel to him – I don’t want all this “nice” and “mild” to add up to Sir Humphrey’s famously undermining praise, “Ah, the lay preacher!” Although Alan is, in fact, a lay preacher). He’s been in Parliament since the year after I was born, and I still remember Steve Bell’s 1992 cartoon of him as “Alan Beith – in leather!” for its hilarious absurdity. I can’t quite see Alan capturing the public imagination. He also came under fire for splitting his expenses with his wife, Diana Maddock, a peer. As far as I can make out, they didn’t claim for anything dodgy between them, but it looks dubious. And people will make up their minds on the new Speaker unfairly quickly. Were I in Parliament, I’d consider voting for him.

Ann Widdecombe
No, seriously? A partisan bruiser with a reputation for being slightly unhinged isn’t the most obvious choice for Speaker, but in her favour, she might capture the public (meaning press) imagination – or blow it to pieces. She’s also one of only four candidates to go public about their twelve sponsors. The down side, other than anyone who’s ever heard her speak on any issue – I’ve never met her, but once had a letter printed in a national newspaper ridiculing her stance on cannabis when Tory Shadow Home Secretary – is that although she poses as a fearless battler for ordinary people, her record on reform is the most shameful of any of the potential Speakers, persistently voting in Parliament to prevent any of us finding out about MPs’ expense. She’s also only standing to be Speaker until the end of this Parliament. What’s the point of that? Sounds to me like her USP is ‘vote for a media personality to get you through this mess while everyone’s glaring at you, then you can vote for the usual stitch-up in a year’s time when all the fuss has died down’.

Parmjit Dhanda
Another former minister, and possibly one looking to save his seat, his track record’s distinctly unimpressive. However, he’s the youngest candidate and the only one of Asian extraction, and has made some decent noises (nothing definite, you understand) about standing on a reform platform, so he has the capability to make an instant stamp as someone different, and that’s needed. Were I in Parliament, I might consider voting for him.

Richard Shepherd
Despite having been an MP for thirty years, he’s the most credible member of the Tory awkward squad, with a solid commitment to civil liberties and reform, and was one of the first to break ranks and criticise the former Speaker. Independent-minded, clean, an impeccable record on freedom of information… It’s no surprise that he’s thought to have no chance of getting it, nor that, were I in Parliament, he’s probably the candidate I’d be most likely to vote for.

Sir Michael Lord
It’s not a felicitous name if you want to avoid being seen as part of the establishment, is it? He might just be the most establishment candidate standing. This does not endear him to me.

Sir Patrick Cormack
And if Sir Michael isn’t the most establishment candidate standing, Sir Patrick probably is. He’s been in Parliament since 1352 and positions himself as a traditionalist. Save us.

Sir Alan Haselhurst
This knight of the Shires isn’t some anonymous grandee – no sir. He’s a grandee that everyone remembers for pocketing a scandalous £142,119 second homes allowances… Without a mortgage to pay. Plus, he’s been Deputy Speaker for the last 382 years, and thus utterly complicit in the whole rotten system that this election is meant to sweep away. Even though he’s been one of only four candidates to go public about their twelve sponsors, that’s too little change, too late. By far the most gobsmackingly unbelievable candidate. What does he think he’s doing?

The answer to my question, then, is that none of them are really speaking to me, though three would probably be all right, several others look pretty bad and the one the bookies have most likely to win would be an utter disaster. Business as usual, then.

In Other News…

I noticed just before I started writing this that Stephen is also horrified at the thought of Margaret Beckett’s election. A chap of excellent instincts.

If you’re tired of reading about Speaker nonsense, my old friend “Costigan Quist”, a far more radical Liberal than his ‘real-life’ persona suggests, has a typically brilliant piece about the only people who are more pathetically incapable of doing anything in politics than politicians, who at least get off their arses and try – yes, the public are to blame. But will Sir Alan still be able to blog if he’s elected Speaker (damn, I’ve outed him!)?

And finally, have you heard the interview where the newly elected populist bigot Mayor of Doncaster is revealed to be an utter and total fuckwit without the faintest clue what he’s doing? Just a shame that interview didn’t go out before the election, eh…

Update: It appears that opposition to Margaret Beckett is not an unusual phenomenon amongst Liberal Democrats. Except for Mark Littlewood on Liberal Vision, who’d rather have a socialist than a Tory – is he feeling all right? And thanks, Anders!


Today, I have been consoling myself by listening to George Harrison’s greatest hits, Let It Roll. Ahhhhh. Particularly Cheer Down, which is fab and which I was the sole person in the UK to buy as a single when it was released escaped twenty years ago.

Labels: British Politics, Conservatives, Corruption, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Music, Stupid Ideas, The Golden Dozen