This could be interesting

It was fun to see Jonah Brown making an appearance in Parliament to try and stick the boot into his old mate Murdoch and News International. Turns out all he said was a pack of lies and an attempt to rewrite history, so nothing new really showing that the inverse Midas touch he has will simply not go away.
Express.

GORDON Brown faced embarrassment yesterday when his claim that civil servants blocked plans for an inquiry into phone hacking were contradicted by official ­documents.
The former Prime Minister, in an extraordinary Commons tirade earlier this week, insisted that his demand for a major probe into allegations of newspaper wrongdoing during his time in Downing Street was wrecked by opposition from officials.
But records of the advice he received at the time – released on the orders of Civil Service chief Sir Gus O’Donnell yesterday – showed that he was told that the ­decision was ultimately his.
Shockwaves from Mr Brown’s outspoken intervention into the hacking row continued to reverberate around Westminster yesterday. Nick Clegg accused him of “rewriting history” with his attempt to distance himself from Rupert Murdoch’s News International empire.

Where it gets interesting for the politicians though is that Rupert Murdoch now intends to come to Parliament to attend a select committee meeting next Tuesday and he knows where the bodies are buried (metaphorically speaking... probably)
It's a bit like the old sticking your head into a lions mouth trick save I suspect that the politicians don't realise just who is the lion here. There are a lot of leftist politicians still smarting over News Internationals move to support the Tories in the last general election after 10 or so years of supporting Labour and who are anxious to stick the knife in. Save only that I suspect they are equalled by a similar number of MP's and the higher political classes who really, really don't want Murdoch to appear and tell the world just who has exactly been up to what. Influence does go both ways in this case after all.
The dilemma facing the political classes is if they push too hard, Murdoch probably has the means to retaliate good and hard, at least I hope he does.
It's probably too much to hope for, but I can dream of a massive falling out by all concerned leading to the downfall of the political class and a change of government to one run by honest people.
I can't think of a finer legacy for the curse of Jonah Brown.

More about → This could be interesting

I can't be the only one surely?

Sometimes you have to read between the lines in a newspaper article, to what's not being said.

Telegraph.

Scotland Yard has launched an attack on those it accuses of undermining the police investigation into alleged illegal payments to police by deliberately leaking information about the inquiry. 

The statement, widely interpreted as an attack on News International, was released this afternoon.

The force has taken the rare step of explaining how detectives believe that information known by only “a small number of people” has been selectively leaked to “divert attention from elsewhere”.

The Metropolitan Police statement then goes on to detail meetings between News International and the force, saying that all parties had agreed to keep the details of the investigation confidential.

The statement was released in response to an Evening Standard article, which said that personal details about the Queen and her aides were sold by royal protection officers to journalists working on the News of the World.

Now, I'm reading this as "undermining the police cover up" if only because the leaks aren't diverting attention away from suspects, but rather opening a bigger can of worms. After all, the more information out there, the bigger the investigation becomes and the less chance that guilty parties might just slip under the radar as their names aren't in the public domain or have been pointed too via the leaks.
At the moment what appears to be a major witch hunt is going on and everyone is looking very closely for scapegoats, particularly those whose hands are dirty over the deal yet hope that by deflecting some of the blame onto others, their part in the whole shoddy business will be overlooked. More information out there, more overload there is and more blame to go around.
No-one is going to come out of this mess smelling of roses, save perhaps the victims and many of them I'm highly unsympathetic towards, Gordon Brown for one. Yet despite my disdain for the political side of the mess, the fact remains that peoples privacy and grief were intruded upon and the law was broken and appears to have been broken with the connivance of certain police officers.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes clearly applies in this case and if those found to have collaborated in the privacy breach by either bribes or turning a blind eye are caught and convicted, they should have very harsh penalties to face. That's why the more information out there the better, certain bloggers and others will not let this go and no amount of cover up will work if all the details are in the public domain.
The more we know, the less chance there is of anyone getting away with it, trying to hide the information looks suspiciously like a cover up to me.
That's what I read between the lines anyway.

More about → I can't be the only one surely?

Why are we paying for this?

Seems every time I look at the activities of those involved in the maintaining of public services from management to unions I keep finding stories of corruption and waste. At one time the UK ran an empire that controlled about a quarter of the globe and managed it with about 1500 civil servants, I know times have moved on and life is a tad more complex now but the over-manning, waste and general corruption is truly shameful especially as it comes out of the pockets of the taxpayer. This is one of the little scams that the unions have to get paid for doing their job out of the public purse rather than out of their members subs.

Telegraph.

More than 360 civil servants are working full-time on trade union duties, figures obtained by The Daily Telegraph show.

The cost of the officials to the taxpayer is estimated to be nearly £19 million, an increase of more than £2 million in the past year.

The Ministry of Defence employs 66 full-time civil servants working on trade union duties and 321 working part-time for unions, the figures released under freedom of information laws show.

The figures were obtained by Dominic Raab, the Conservative MP for Esher and Walton in Surrey, amid concern among ministers over the spread of militant trade unions in the public sector.

The civil servants are entitled to work full-time on trade union business, including representing workers’ grievances and negotiating over pay and other perks. Some ministers suspect they are privately building support for strikes.

There is simply no justification for this, if people want to be involved in union activities, then it's not the job of the taxpayer to be paying for them to do so, that should be down to the union members to pay for any full time officials. There is no way such practices would happen anywhere other than the public services with their magic money trees, even if (predictably) the unions have the nerve to blame it on Tory reform laws.
I expect as the public services go on strike over the next few weeks that a lot of these stories will come out of the woodwork as the government lays the ground to gut the public service unions.I also think the unions are going to be quite surprised at the low level of public support they will get too, those of us who work in private industry having little or no sympathy with those who want to keep their perks and gold plated pension at our expense and that at the end of the day is the crux of the matter, the public services do what they do at our expense, no-one expects them to do without necessities, but we do expect them not to take the piss either and using the public purse to pay for your union reps rather than doing the job they are supposed too is seriously taking the piss!

More about → Why are we paying for this?

Living high on the hog

They still don't get it and it's looking increasingly unlikely this side of the revolution that they ever will, because there are no consequences really to their actions. I'm talking about various public bodies spending taxpayers cash like it's an inexhaustible fountain, which I suppose to them it really is as no government in recent memory has actually tackled the bastards and made them accountable to both the government and the public. Take the Audit Commission (please) in any ordinary set of circumstances you'd expect the people there to have a tight rein on what they are spending our cash on, after all it's supposed to be their job to keep an eye on what every other government department is spending our cash on.

Telegraph.

Senior figures at the Audit Commission, which polices spending at local authorities, NHS trusts and other government bodies, spent almost £20,000 of public money over the past two years on luxury goods and services.

The body is thought to be the first government organisation to release details of spending on taxpayer-funded credit cards. Thousands of other civil servants also have the cards, which have been used for spending of about £1  billion, leading to warnings of a public funds scandal.

The credit card receipts disclose that Audit Commission executives enjoyed meals costing more than £600 at L’Escargot and Coq d’Argent in London. Hundreds of pounds were also spent at a brasserie owned by Raymond Blanc, the French chef. In total, £11,390 was spent on fine dining in two years.

Executives also made 30 purchases at florists, costing more than £1,300, and also bought goods from HMV and Thorntons, cinema tickets and doughnuts.

The details were released to Eric Ollerenshaw, a Conservative MP, and will be officially disclosed to the House of Commons this week. 

A government insider said that another “MPs’ expenses-style scandal” could emerge if details of credit card expenditure across government were published. Senior mandarins are understood to be privately seeking to block such a release.

The government procurement cards are Visa cards issued by several banks for small office expenditure, including travel. Some Whitehall departments insist that the cards are used for all spending of less than £5,000, which is automatically paid off from public funds.

It really beggars belief at times the profligacy and corruption of taxpayers cash at the top of the public services, if anyone tried that in my company their feet wouldn't even touch the floor as they were kicked out and means set in motion to recoup the money through either civil or criminal courts. Though most expenses wouldn't even be allowed to reach the stage that these troughing pigs have managed, they'd just look at the receipts and say we're not paying that. But in the weird world of the public services such basic safeguards don't seem to have a place in the culture of waste and mismanagement at the top of the tree, though I suspect the junior ranks might just struggle to get a replacement paperclip from the stationary store such would be the paperwork involved.
It will be interesting to see if senior mandarins in the civil service do manage to block the release of credit card expenditure on their Visa government procurement cards after all, they can spend up to £5,000 on them and it's paid off automatically no questions asked, well at least until now, people like Eric Ollerenshaw MP are asking and seem to be trying to get to the bottom of the foetid stink of corruption that emanates from senior civil servants.
Will he succeed? We can hope so. Will heads roll? We can hope so too. What we can be sure of is that the senior mandarins will fight like trapped rats to prevent even a hint of their largesse ever coming to the attention of the public or even MP's if they can help it. It's one of the reasons they have to go, or be strung from the lampposts as and when we get around to them after hanging the MP's and lawyers etc.
It's a long list and it just keeps getting longer and possibly always will at least until they show a lot more respect to the long suffering taxpayer and really start giving value for money.

More about → Living high on the hog

Non Jobs

When it comes to giving value for money, local councils have got to be at the bottom of the pile. Yes I know that some tasks they undertake are required by law whether they like it or not (food hygiene standards for one) but some of the things they get involved with just seem to be excuses to throw council tax payer (and taxpayers via government) cash at to increase their budgets for next year. That's part of the bureaucratic mindset of local authorities not necessarily the councillors, but of the chief executives and their minions down the ranks of the council itself.

Telegraph.

Community Development & Equalities Officer - Tewkesbury; £24,646 to £26,276

Healthy walks co-ordinator - Forest of Dean; £14,733 to £15,444

Project support worker (Voice of My Own) - Scottish Borders, £19,024.64 to £21,135.84 pro rata (fixed term contract)

Family Lifestyles Officer - Rugby; £19,126 to £21,519 pro rata

Active villages co-ordinator - Teignbridge, £10,228;

Life Skills and Positive Activities Officer - Ryedale; £19,000 to £21,500 pro rata (fixed term contract)

Workplace travel plan coordinator - Havant; £20,198 to £22,221, part time, pro rata (fixed term contract)

Gypsy Romany Traveller Community Cohesion Officer - Herefordshire, £22,221 to £26,276

New media improvement assistant - Perth and Kinross; £16,086 to £17,587

Woodfuel development officer - West Sussex; £32,800 to £35,430  

Nice work if you can get it, but probably not something councils should be involved with and certainly areas in which savings could be made. You can practically be certain though that the jobs that will go are the ones of most value to the public, bin-men, nurses, policemen, road and street light repair crews. I very much doubt looking at that lot that the diversity co-ordinator brigades are quaking in their boots with the thought of impending redundancy because if they can still advertise for those types of jobs then the government clearly isn't getting to grips with waste spending. Though I am coming to the conclusion that the government isn't really in control of anything anymore and that civil servants at local and national levels are running rings around them and thwarting any attempts to rein in the bureaucracy. Perhaps the government should have opted for lopping off the top 3 layers of the civil service in all departments, oh I'm sure there would be screams about how much experience we'd be losing, but frankly I suspect it would actually improve things by allowing things to get done rather than obstructed. Certainly put the fear of God into the rest of them.
It's time and past time that the bureaucracy was trimmed in this country and the non jobs removed, but as with most governments, I'll not hold my breath on the chances of it ever happening if only because there's no incentive amongst the bureaucrats and ministers to actually do something about it.

More about → Non Jobs

I don't get expenses for this, why should they?

Seems our troughing MP's just can't resist having the taxpayers stump up for their perks and privileges.

Express.

TAXPAYERS will soon have to pay millions more to fund MPs’ expenses.

An anti-sleaze watchdog has agreed concessions with them, including allowing more to claim rent for a home in London.

Other changes include paying housing and travel costs for children over the age of five and raising staff budgets. MPs will also be able to use Parliamentary credit cards more to ease “cashflow’’ problems.

Officials would not say what the changes could cost but one said it would be “a very few million at most”.

The proposals by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority should take effect next month, the deadline MPs had given the body to reform or face an overhaul. MPs complained that the system put in place after the expenses scandal is too bureaucratic and leaves them thousands in the red.

Commons Leader Sir George Young welcomed the steps “towards a regime that better enabled MPs to do their jobs”.

My company wont pay travel costs for over fives and would laugh at me if I even tried, plus if I have cashflow problems, that's my concern, not theirs. It seems like the MP's were hell bent on fleecing us anyway as their threat to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority to overhaul it. Nor can I understand how an MP on at least £64,000 a year can be in the red. As for being better enabled MPs doing their jobs, well that's just bull anyway, they don't do their jobs, they rubber stamp EU legislation most of the time and drag us into pointless foreign wars whilst taxing us to the hilt to pay for their expenses, their bureaucracy and their imbecilic ideas on power generation.
I've been of the opinion now that MP's should whilst working in London stay in travelodge style accommodation and not be allowed to buy a second home on expenses, nor indeed furnish it at our expense. If I were to be working away from home by my company, they wouldn't do anything other than that anyway.
Seems as if our corrupt troughers really haven't a clue how the common people really live, or if they do, then don't give a toss about how their dipping into the public purse to fund their lavish lifestyles looks.
I just hope payback will be an utter bitch for them if or when we finally decide we've had enough.

More about → I don't get expenses for this, why should they?

Justifying paedophilia

There is a problem in the Pakistani Muslim community and it isn't just that they are Muslims. For years now the some of the young men in that community have been preying on and grooming under age girls from outside their community, not just white, but Sikh and Hindu girls as well. Finally the MSM had the courage to break the story and various other minions of the state poked their heads above the parapet to tell us yes they knew about it, but dared not report it further because it might be deemed "racist" if they did. So you'd think the Muslim community as a whole would be keeping their heads down and coming out with various platitudes such as "it's only a minority" and doing their best to use the term "Asian" rather than "Muslim" or "Pakistani" like most of their useful idiots on the left and in the MSM have been doing, though the Muslim talent for public relations and how to get it totally wrong is utterly astounding.
So, into the breach steps Lord Ahmed of Cartexting Rotherham to explain why these scum behaved as they did and it's all due to marrying their cousins (even the ones who weren't married it seems)

Express.

BRITAIN'S first Muslim peer last night attacked arranged first-cousin marriages for contributing to a spate of sex crimes committed by Pakistani men.

Lord Ahmed of Rotherham said the marriages were being used by depraved young men as an excuse to prey on “vulnerable girls”.

His comments follow a succession of court cases where Asian men have been prosecuted for targeting white teenage girls.

The Labour peer, who wants an end to cousin marriages, claimed Asian men target their victims at a young age because they feel there is less chance of getting caught.

He said: “They are married to girls from overseas who they don’t have anything in common with and they have children and a family but they are looking for fun in their sexual activities and seek out vulnerable girls.”

Last month, former Home Secretary Jack Straw provoked fury after claiming some men of Pakistani origin view white girls as “easy meat”.

The Labour MP for Blackburn spoke out after two Asian men who abused girls in Derby were given indeterminate jail terms.

Research suggests about 55 per cent of British Pakistanis marry their first cousins, who are typically from abroad.

Marriages between first cousins is lawful in Britain, but they are generally frowned upon.

So there you go, marrying your cousin turns you into a sex mad paedophile according at least to Lord Ahmed. The truth is rather more brutal of course, these men behaved in a depraved manner because people in authority and in their own communities chose to look the other way. Yes some of the blame must also be laid at the feet of the parents of these children too, though in some instances at least they may not have been aware of what was going on, or even cared. But the vast majority of the blame has to be laid at the feet of these men who deliberately sought to target vulnerable children from other communities because they knew full well what would happen if they did target their own. There is no justification in the world for what they did, nor any excuse and Lord Ahmed would have done well to have simply continued his campaign to end first cousin marriages without trying to excuse or justify these perverts behaviour.
I am sick to death of this stupid blame game played out in the MSM and our political elite over the rape and prostitution of these young girls. I'm sick to death of the avoidance of the discussion of the amount of men queuing up to pay to molest these children, some in their 50's following the example of their sick prophet no doubt, after all if it was good enough for Mohammed... And well past the age where they're over the distress of being forced into marriage if they ever were. I'm sick to death of the term Asian being used to disguise the fact that this is a Pakistani Muslim problem. It's not a Sikh problem, it's not a Hindu problem it most certainly isn't a Chinese problem and they are all Asians and sick to death no doubt about being tarred with a Pakistani Muslim perversion. I'm sick to death of people like Taji Mustafa, media spokesperson of Hizb ut-Tahrir who objects to the claims that Islam had anything to do with the issue as various newspapers had claimed. He said:

"Islam promotes respect for women regardless of their race, religion and ethnicity. In Islam, you are not allowed to drink, take drugs, engage in pre-marital sex or even have a girlfriend. So how can Islam be blamed for these heinous crimes?"

 I suspect the fact that it was Muslims doing this that gives the game away, not Asians but Pakistani Muslims, despite the vast generalisation on the matter of who was actually doing it in the press and amongst politicians as well as the silence of various socialist groups like the SWP and the UAF who would be all over this if it was white guys preying on Muslim girls screaming racist no doubt. Since 1997, 56 people with an average age of 28 have been convicted of offences related to on-street grooming of girls aged 11 to 16. Of these, three were white and the rest Asian, of whom 50 were Muslim, with the majority British Pakistani, with more and more cases coming out of the woodwork. I'm totally sick of the stench of cover up as this seems to have been going on for years, even the fact that at the time the UK's youngest mum was only a mum because she was gang raped by Pakistani taxi drivers back in 2002 and still nothing was done other than for Labour to open the floodgates to even more immigration to rub the rights nose in multiculturalism. Well if this is one of the benefits of multiculturalism then count me out as a fan of it, not that I ever was, watching from the sidelines as all that was good about England was denigrated and contemptuously cast aside by Labour, the left and their pro British anti English mind set, which allowed this outrage to go on unchallenged until it could no longer be brushed under the mat and even then I reckon it would still be hidden and Jack Straw et al saying nothing and pretending the problem doesn't exist had not the Times finally got brave enough to do an article on it. I even remember Nick Griffin of the BNP being vilified  and prosecuted back in 2005 for saying it was going on. Since then the establishments, both legal and political, have ignored the continuing abuse and violence solely for their own benefit and to avoid getting accused of racism themselves. 

I am absolutely horrified by this, authorities across the country knew this was going on for many years yet did NOTHING significant to effect the cessation of these vile acts, but elected instead to hide them under blankets of secrecy! They were culpable in withholding relevant information that would have helped to protect our country's children from abuse at the hands of Muslim paedophile gangs.

What gets me as well, is that as soon as these scum have done their time they'll vanish back into their communities and not be despised like we would despise.

That this could happen in my England is the most damning verdict on the Labour years in power, not the war in Iraq, not the financial waste and irregularities, but the despoliation of young girls by an alien culture encouraged to settle here and aided and abetted by a wall of silence by the authorities.

More about → Justifying paedophilia

The turning wheels

Climate change, Climate disruption, Global warming (what the hell I'm a traditionalist and I like nailing warmists to the mast) started to unravel almost as soon as the phrase was invoked. A lot of scientists went along with it following the money, but a hard core dug their heels in faster than you could say hockey stick and said, hold on a minute this doesn't match what's actually going on. Unfortunately politicians had decided that they needed an excuse to wave in front of the public to justify their raid on our money via taxation for all those lovely bird choppers and climate levies on our fuel bills. So essentially truth became a casualty in the ongoing debate of whether or not mankind was responsible for warming the planet up, but the fightback was growing apace and slowly but surely the warmist camp were being forced onto the back foot as data continually showed they were talking out of their adjusted figures, 3 cold winters on the run didn't help either nor their support from the wilder side of the environmental movement. The so called "climategate" or "CRUtape" leak however tipped the balance, the "proof" skeptics had been looking for was suddenly out into the public arena and for all it's taken a couple of years and two cover ups investigations finally some politicians are taking note of what's going on in the minds of people in the real world.

Express.

TWO inquiries into claims that scientists manipulated data about global warming were yesterday condemned by MPs as ineffective and too secretive.
The row, which became known as Climategate, erupted in 2009 over allegations that researchers had deliberately strengthened evidence suggesting human activity was to blame for rising temperatures.
MPs on the Science and Technology Committee have now concluded that both probes into the scandal had failed to “fully investigate” claims that scientists had deleted embarrassing emails.

The investigations were set up after around 4,000 leaked emails and documents appeared to show that scientists at East Anglia University’s Climate Research Unit had manipulated data to strengthen the case for man-made global warming.

UEA’s Independent Climate Change Emails Review was led by Sir Muir Russell, while the Scientific Appraisal Panel was led by Lord Oxburgh.

But the MPs said they had “reservations” about both inquiries.

They criticised the brevity of the appraisal panel report, at “a mere five pages”, and said both investigations should have been more open to the public.

The committee also said the emails review “did not fully investigate the serious allegation” relating to the deletion of emails and instead relied on a verbal reassurance that the messages still exist.

Though the committee was split over the credibility of the inquiries, an amendment put forward by Labour MP Graham Stringer which said that they had not been independent was voted down by members.

He said Lord Oxburgh appeared to have a “conflict of interest” because of his links to green businesses while the Emails Review panel included a former Climate Research Unit scientist.

He maintained: “We are now left without a clear understanding of whether or not the CRU science is compromised.”

Yes, it's mostly MP's covering their arses, but it does give the first official signs that some MP's are starting to get worried by the web of lies and deceit implicit in the leaked documents and aren't very happy with the findings of the two investigations. It's a shame Labour MP Graham Stringer's amendment didn't get through, but that I suspect would have taken a miracle and run headlong into the administrations ultimate policy of milking us for all we're worth.
The warmists are losing the battle, they know this, but are still hell bent on getting as much cash for research out of the system before it all goes tits up, same with the government, one day someone will pull the plug and scapegoat hunting season will begin. MP's are notoriously good at shifting the blame, pro warming scientists and environmental groups should remember this, it wont be MP's who are hung out to dry, they'll just claim they were badly misinformed by the scientist and enviroloon movement. MP's will move onto the next great cash cow, probably biodiversity unless we hang them all first.

More about → The turning wheels

Africa, the Awful Continent

By Alan Caruba

As long as I can remember, for seventy-plus years I have seen photos of sick and starving African children. Now that Africa is home to seventy percent of the world’s cases of AIDS that image applies as well to too many of its adult population. As far as I can tell, it is an awful continent.

That is a vast generalization, of course, but I suspect that a lot of Africans would agree. In 2005, Martin Meredith’s book, “The Fate of Africa”, was published. Its subtitle was “From the hopes of freedom to the heart of despair: A history of 50 years of independence.” It is as definitive as any book I have read about Africa and it is a horror story.

“Since independence,” Meredith wrote, “Africa has received more foreign aid than any other region of the world. More than $300 billion of Western aid has been sunk into Africa, but with little discernible result. Aid fatigue has become a permanent condition.”

I was reminded of this while reading a briefing paper by Greg Mills, the director of the Brenthurst Foundation in Johannesburg, South Africa. Titled “Why is Africa Poor”, it was published by the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty & Prosperity.

While America and Europe struggle with economic problems of their own making, the general poverty of Africa defies the imagination. “Africa is not poor because its people do not work hard,” says Mills, “but because their productivity is too low. African states have resisted western innovations of large-scale farming, so too many Africans survive on subsistence agriculture.

“Nor is Africa poor because of it lacks natural resources,” says Mills. “Compared with Asia, it is a treasure-trove of natural resources from agricultural land and precious metals to wildlife and hydropower. Yet, with few exceptions (Botswana is one), those resources have been used only to enrich elites, spread corrupt practices, and divert development energy and focus.”

It is not a stretch to say that the best thing that happened to Africa was colonialization. It brought measure of development that Africans would never have achieved on their own. Following the end of World War II, the European colonial powers were confronted with indigenous demands for independence and fairly swiftly, if not happily, they abandoned their control of much of the continent from the Maghreb in the Northern tier to South Africa at the tip.

“In a half century of independence, Africa has not realized its potential,” says Mills, warning that Africa’s youth, “a huge source of talent” is widely regarded “as a destabilizing force because it is largely unemployed and uneducated. This is not only a threat to Africa’s security. By 2025, one in four young people worldwide will be from sub-Saharan Africa.”

Africa reeks of corruption by a few, oppression of the many, poverty, and the potential for enormous conflict because its so-called leaders are a horrid bunch of dictators and thieves. Few have shown any interest in improving the lives of those in their nations.

“African leaders have successfully managed, with the help of donors, to externalize their problems, making them the responsibility and fault of others,” says Mills. This condition is the result of “a relative lack of democracy (or to single-party dominance) in Africa.” In other words, socialism.

Not mentioned in his analysis is the role of Islam in much of Africa, a religion devoted to the complete submission of Muslims and resistance to anything that passes for modern governance or advancement. Another factor not discussed is tribalism. It was the cause of a terrible Rwandan genocide.

For this reason, more than a half century after independence arrived, “Getting to Africa is difficult. Moving around Africa is similarly onerous. It would take no donor money to keep borders open around the clock” notes Mills.

One thing is certain. All the money donated to African nations is largely stolen by its elites and the provision of aid for education and health exists only when donor nations and non-governmental organizations exercise close control over it.

The rot that exists in Africa in human terms, in the failure to modernize, in the vile corruption of a few, will persist and, fifty years hence, there will likely be more books and briefing papers that reflect those being written today.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

More about → Africa, the Awful Continent

Quote of the month

A very lovely lady from the EDL forum pointed me to this article...

Standpoint.

" I shan't miss some locals' assumptions that, being a white woman, if I was outside after dark, as I occasionally was, usually to walk the few metres between my house and the church, I must be a prostitute eager to give them a blow job"

A brilliant summary from the vicars wife of an inner city parish struggling and losing against a tide of immigration from the middle east. The full article is well worth a read and places in context the real destruction that multiculturalism is putting on the embattled native population of England. It also shows the mind set of those who took it upon themselves to groom young girls from any faith other than their own for sexual purposes because at root they don't see women as equal to men and particularly don't see women of other faiths or beliefs as even being particularly human, simply something to use and abuse.
Yet even now after all the publicity over the cases you still have some out there desperately trying to excuse these vile acts or shift the blame to all. Despite mounting evidence that it is endemic in certain communities.
This is a statement issued by the organisation that ran the 'islamophobia and racism' UAF conference - the conference where the prestigious speakers ripped up the photos of black people in EDL, and attacked the Jew, Pakistani, homo and cameraman who had "stormed" the conference by paying at the door.

Link.

Jack Straw chose to make a damaging and unsubstantiated intervention, whipping up the Islamophobic responses to these cases. In a television interview he claimed both that these crimes are rife in the Muslim community as their cultural background means they do not have a sexual outlet, and – most shockingly – that they target white girls in particular as they are seen as ‘easy meat’.

Unsubstantiated? The guys doing this and others arrested were all from the Pakistani Muslim community, if you want to check out the MPAC forums, you'll find lots of evidence of them trying to shift the blame as well in some instances that they think those poor girls were asking for it.

There's something rotten going on at the heart of England, it's something vile introduced by politicians who allowed unrestricted immigration into our country. It's something evil protected by those who believe that multiculturalism works. It's been ignored by the mainstream media for years, it's caused communities to disintegrate, ghettoism, intolerance, misogyny, homophobia, prostitution and a belief that it is above criticism and presents a silent front to all who investigate its misdemeanour's, seeking only to excuse or shift blame. It's called Islam and I believe it has no place in a civilised country, not until it reforms root and branch and outs those within it who do these despicable acts!

More about → Quote of the month

9000 reasons to cut government spending

It comes to something when the (supposedly) most powerful man in the land the Prime Minister earns less than over 9000 public servants. Oddly enough I don't think Cameron is going to insist on a pay rise either, though at £142,000 he's clearly not short of a bob or two in earnings.

Telegraph.

Public sector pay: 9,000 on public payroll are paid more than the Prime Minister
More than 9,000 public sector employees earn more than the Prime Minister, according to most comprehensive analysis of state pay levels ever undertaken. 

In a stark illustration of the financial rewards available to workers in the NHS, schools and police forces, the study found a total of 9,187 earning more than the £142,500 paid to David Cameron. There are also 38,000 who earn more than £100,000 a year.

The study, by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism for the BBC’s Panorama programme, is the first to put an overall total on the number of state employees earning more than the Prime Minister. The figure is substantially higher than previous estimates suggested by surveys of civil servants, council or NHS workers. 

The research threatens to undermine calls by trade unions for “civil disobedience” and co-ordinated strike action over the Coalition’s proposed programme of cuts to public sector pay and perks.

It follows official statistics last week showing that state employees earn an average of £74 a week more than their private sector counterparts.

Public sector workers also enjoy more generous pension packages and have traditionally had greater job security.

Business and workers’ groups called last night for urgent steps to bring high public sector pay “back to reality”.

The British Chambers of Commerce said “messed up” incentives were undermining the economy by tempting talented people away from the wealth-creating private sector.

GPs, head teachers, policemen and BBC executives are among the public servants identified as earning six-figure salaries in the latest study.

Nearly 6,500 NHS staff are paid more than the Prime Minister, with two GPs earning about £475,500 a year. Another 10 GPs are earning more than £300,000 a year.

In the education sector, 385 teachers in England earn more than £100,000 and 17 get more than the Prime Minister.

The best paid was an unnamed teacher from Essex on £232,500, followed by Mark Elms, the head teacher of Tidemill Primary School in Lewisham, south-east London, on £231,400.

The highest-paid policeman is Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson on £280,489, while his deputy, Tim Godwin, is paid £246,969.

In the Armed Forces, 832 individuals earn more than £100,000 a year – excluding civil servants working in the Ministry of Defence – and 2,013 working in the judiciary are on six-figure salaries.

Local councils employ 362 people on more than or the same pay as Mr Cameron. The highest paid council employee is Gerald Jones, the chief executive of Wandsworth borough council in south London, who earns £299,925 a year. Peter Gilroy, the chief executive, is paid £243,388.

The figures were obtained for Panorama through more than 2,400 Freedom of Information requests.

I've heard all the excuses, that they need to offer competitive salaries to attract the best, but quite frankly this looks more like largesse run wild, no-one in the public sector should be on more than the Prime Minister who (technically, though not in reality) can call upon our nuclear forces to obliterate the odd small(ish) nation, and no I don't think Cameron should earn over £299,925 either, the amount is obscene!
These people need to be removed from the public services, expertise or not, these people are the ones the Unions are calling upon civil disobedience by the general public to defend their wages! This is the direct result of New Labours profligacy over the last 13 years where public services have taken the extra money provided to them and boosted pay rather than improved services in general. They took on administrators before frontline staff, in short they lined their pockets and then had the nerve to blame bankers and their bonuses as an excuse for industrial action.
This all comes from taxation either local or national, these people and those that hired them played fast and loose with our money and now have the sheer bloody nerve to complain when the government says enough is enough, looking to cut doctors, nurses, teachers army regiments rather than look to where the real dead wood lies. The civil service, both local and national looks out for the civil service, not the public and certainly not the government, the bigger the budget, the more the salaries, the worse the service provided, they forget who the paymasters are, like several corrupt MP's did. It's been many years now that the politicians had a measure of control over the public services, after all it's the public servants who provide the politicians with the information that they use to make decisions. Easy enough to "massage" the data given to support the public services budgets and needs, I doubt any politician would even know where to look to find the independent data needed to make decisions on cuts. But a good start would be to remove any and all public servants earning more than the Prime Minister.

More about → 9000 reasons to cut government spending

Greed

Most of us if we were responsible for looking after funds to help the poor wouldn't use the funds to enjoy a lavish lifestyle. Then again, most of us aren't quangocrats either who didn't think twice about billing the taxpayer for a £700 a head lunch.

Express.

HIGHLY paid executives at an anti-poverty quango have stayed at five-star hotels and dined in top restaurants at the taxpayer’s expense.

Damning documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveal eye-watering expenses claims by officials at the Commonwealth Development Corporation.

Taxpayers were billed for a £700 dinner by Sir Malcolm Williamson, the CDC’s chairman for five years up until 2009, at London’s Michelin-starred L’Autre Pied restaurant.

Another executive at the Government quango, Anubha Shrivastava, claimed £530 for a night at the Four Seasons Hotel in Hong Kong, while Richard Laing, the chief executive, who is paid £970,000 a year, claimed £7,414 in expenses.

The CDC was set up after the war to invest in the world’s poorest countries. It has access to Government funds of £2.5billion.

For the past 15 years, the CDC says it has been “self-financing”. It is owned by the Department for International Development, but any profits it makes are “reinvested” in its projects. It has been criticised for departing from its original remit by targeting the rapidly growing economies of China and India.

Last night the department confirmed that International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell had launched an “urgent review” of the situation.

John Hilary, executive director of the charity War on Want, said: “CDC has completely abandoned its mandate of poverty reduction in favour of wealth creation. It is a travesty.” However, Miriam de Lacy, the CDC’s communications director, said: “The expenses we incur are reasonable.”

 Reasonable expenses? £2.5 billion budget and they squander some of it on themselves, spending more than a years wage for an unskilled Kenyan worker (£500 to £700pa) on a meal or hotel room.

Whilst I'm a great believer in charity beginning at home, if we are to help the poor in other countries, I expect the cash to go to them and whilst I don't expect those charged with distributing it to work for nothing, I do expect them to keep expenses to a minimum, I don't expect them to squander it on themselves. Though frankly I'm not that surprised that they do, profligacy in quango's is a well known corruption and these people are plainly corrupt to the core.

Just another justification for a bonfire of the quango's that the current government never seems to get around too despite all their promises.

More about → Greed

Another day, another scandal

Despite the denials, followed by the half truths that their might be a problem, followed of course by promises to do something about it Labours disaster of an immigration policy devised on the ludicrous lines of rubbing the "rights" face in multiculturalism continues to rumble on after they really ought to have been buried in the polls over it.

Express.

IMMIGRATION officials were last night accused of covering up a massive backlog of asylum claims that could take years to clear.

Fresh evidence of the asylum chaos left behind by the Labour Government has come to light with confidential figures revealing that the UK Border Agency is failing frequently to hit official targets for processing claims.

And thousands of failed asylum seekers are staying in Britain for months or even years rather than being sent to their country of origin.

A series of Freedom of Information requests made in an investigation by Channel Five News found that just 40 per cent of asylum cases are dealt with within six months compared with a Home Office target of 75 per cent.

And just three per cent of asylum applicants who arrived last year were removed from the UK within six months of arrival, statistics revealed.

The figures contrasted with official claims that 60 per cent of asylum claims are concluded within six months, and that overall half of asylum seekers are sent home. But officials rejected the cover-up allegations, insisting the new figures were based on “regional snapshots” of the system rather than the national picture.

Angry critics last night accused the Border Agency of “manipulating” statistics to hide the chaos. Tory MP David Davies said: “I’m appalled at the manipulation that has been going on at the Home Office.

“These figures suggest that month in, month out, only a tiny percentage of asylum seekers who shouldn’t be here, are removed, except for the month they like to release where they got rid of significantly more.”

 First off part of the problem is the "Human Rights Act" introduced by Blair ostensibly to protect the rights of citizens but in my view, more to do with giving his Mrs a nice little earner. The Act also protects those who have abrogated the social contract of this country too making it difficult if not impossible to remove them particularly if they are being sent back to countries where they may face worse punishment. The act also means that they don't or can't be forced to integrate with us and allows them to ghettoise themselves and lock their culture away from mainstream society creating an atmosphere of hate and suspicion on both sides.
Secondly, the Home office as is most ministries of government in the UK, not fit for purpose, it's rationale is the preservation of the Home office, rather than do its job efficiently, the bigger it is, the more powerful it is as the mandarins running it can't measure success by profit or efficiency, merely size. It's not in the interest of the Home office to sort this mess out, if they did, what would they do? Heads might roll, so chaos suits it just fine. This is the problem most governments face, politicians come and go, immature politicians see the opposition parties as the enemy, whereas the real enemy is the civil service whose very existence now is to preserve the civil service rather than serve the people. This in a sense is why the senior levels of civil servants are pro EU and deftly shape government policy along those lines, the EU is a corrupt bureaucracy and like seeks like.
Democracy in a sense has failed the UK, the civil service ignores politicians and panders to their own little games keeping them well away from the levers of power, a politician gets too near and scandals emerge and he's removed from the picture.
The end result is usually a bloody revolution or civil war, then the whole ghastly business starts over again, drip by drip.

More about → Another day, another scandal

Bleating

David Laws is claiming that he has paid a high price for trying to keep his sexuality secret.

BBC.

David Laws has said he never sought to exploit the expenses system and had paid a "high price" for wanting to keep his sexuality private.

Mr Laws, who quit as Chief Secretary to the Treasury after disclosures about his expenses, said he should have been "more open" about his circumstances.
"I accept I should have set a better example as a public figure," he said in a statement to local media.
He said he hoped to remain as Yeovil MP, if his constituents backed him.
The Liberal Democrat resigned as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, saying he did not feel he could continue with the "crucial work" of sorting out the nation's finances after it emerged that he claimed expenses to pay rent to his partner, James Lundie.
Under rules introduced in 2006, MPs are not allowed to lease accommodation from a partner.
Mr Laws had already apologised for a breach of the rules, referred himself to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner and agreed to repay £40,000.
Senior politicians from the coalition government have praised Mr Laws and said they hope he can return to office some time in the future.

He actually paid a very minor price for cheating the taxpayer, not for concealing his sexuality. We're I to misappropriate £40,000 from my employer I very much doubt I'd be demoted with a chance of promotion in my future. I suspect I'd be looking at the sack and criminal proceedings leading to a jail term of 1 to 4 years. Yes I've heard the arguments from some who say he could have claimed more if he'd declared his sexuality and got the second mortgage payments. I've heard the argument that even today his sexuality could have cost him his vocation and it's possibly true. However I also know he's a millionaire and could have quite easily just forgone this payment and kept his private life, well private. However it seems he chose to deceive friends, family and colleagues (although it appears to have been an open secret in the Westminster bubble) and then also chose to profit from this deception, to the tune of £40,000.

So, no David Laws, you didn't pay a high price for being gay, you cheated the taxpayer when you didn't need to, that makes you a thief, no matter your sexual preferences, you still have a job, you still have the pension and no doubt you still have access to the expenses.

I call it a damned disgrace.

More about → Bleating

They have the nerve for anything

You'd think after all the mudslinging, the court cases, the shame, the payments back and the ongoing troughing that MP's would back away from going after benefit cheats, at least openly.

Times.

Thousands of council tenants who make profits by illegally sub-letting their homes will face tough new measures to be announced by ministers this week.

John Healey, the Housing Minister, plans to introduce penalties for cheats and give councils greater powers to track them down, The Times has learnt.

Sub-letting fraud is a civil offence punishable by a modest fine and the loss of tenancy. But Mr Healey intends to make it a criminal offence so that the courts can recover the profits made. Those convicted could also face larger fines and prison sentences.

Some tenancy cheats are making up to £20,000 a year by moving out of their council home and renting it to friends, family or private tenants. In a minority of cases council tenants have been found sub-letting two or three properties after moving between different authorities.

£20,000 is a lot of money, not as much as your average MP claims in expenses though and even when they do cross the line, all they are expected to do is pay (some of) it back, apologise and carry on troughing.
• Hazel Blears, the Communities Secretary, claimed money for three different properties in the course of a year, and spent almost £5,000 on furniture in just four months after buying a third property.
• Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, claimed back twice as much for his council tax as he had actually paid. He later repaid the money and apologised for the error.
• Paul Murphy, the Welsh Secretary, splashed out more than £3,000 on a new hot water system for his second home, explaining in a letter to the parliamentary fees office that his water was too hot.
• Harry Cohen claimed more for his second home  and expenses than any other MP in London, in fact his annual expense claims of £123,718 are £30,000 higher than neighbouring Walthamstow Labour MP Neil Gerrard’s claim of £92,228 and greater than Chingford Tory MP Iain Duncan Smith’s allowance of £104,222.


If we do that sort of thing they are threatening to lock us up, they are giving councils extra powers (big mistake) to track down cheats whilst continuing to cheat themselves and make cheating the system a criminal offence.
Though I suspect that MP's will be exempt due to some small sub clause being inserted into the bill at committee stage.

We really need a purge of Parliament, not an election, no current sitting MP should be allowed ever to stand again, I know this is drastic and there are (possibly) some good MP's, but the entire system is corrupt to the core and we need a new broom to free us from the taint of the trough as well as the clutches of the EU, an even bigger set of thieves than we have.

More about → They have the nerve for anything

Power corrupts

Politics is all about power and the use of power. We elect politicians to fulfil a set of promises (aka their manifesto) in order to make our lives better or sort out a set of issues that's currently making our lives less pleasant. Or that was the theory anyway. I know we've always had corrupt politicians, occasionally they've been outed and dealt with, sometimes by political pressure from their parties, oft times enough by public outrage forcing the hand of the political parties. Yet I've noticed recently that the stench of corruption has become that much greater in this current government (including the government in opposition) and it seems to be tied to a lack of conviction politics coupled with a lack of vision for the country as a whole. By this I mean a positive vision, it's become ever more apparent that Gordon Browns vision encompasses Gordon Brown, his leadership cabal, the Labour Party/anything anti the Tory party, Scotland and the UK in pretty much that order. Cameron seems equally to be surrounding himself with people that think his way as well as parachuting like minded and obliged candidates into safe seats in a sort of Romanesque patron client system.
Yet it all boils down to the same, politicians are increasingly putting themselves and their parties first and no longer seem to have the best interests of the public at heart but rather hold their own masters in the EU and elsewhere's interests first and foremost.

Yet all governments suffer a recurring problem in that power attracts pathological personalities. It isn't that power corrupts, but that power is a magnet to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on political power, a condition to which they become addicted and this has never been so apparent in UK politics over the last 13 years, though I suppose some would point to Thatcher as at least a catalyst for the current rogue crop of corrupt/corruptible politicians. Yet what we have is a situation where politicians will hold onto power and influence way beyond the bounds of decency and good taste, even returning to said power after the heat dies down (Yes I'm looking at you Mandelson and Blunkett).

What this situation eventually leads to is reform, either internally (best way) or by revolutionary means, complete with the hijacking of the revolution by extremists, usually of the left and usually leading to oppressive dictatorships in the name of the people but not remotely connected to them.

So, where will the UK be in say 5 years time if the current leaders (and their successors) follow the paths to EU serfdom and/or the deliberate destruction and dismemberment of England? I suspect support for the BNP and UKIP will rise to the extent of threatening the status quo in UK politics and some excuse will be found to crack down on them, there's already a civil contingencies act in place to do this. We'll be further burdened down by an intrusive authoritarian state interfering in areas of our lives it really has no business being in. Political dissent will become increasingly harder to do, bloggers will probably be open to libel actions by the states secretive paymasters all in all we'll be heading towards revolution as dissent is crushed and people see the iron fist beneath the velvet glove.

The winners will probably be the extremists, though they'll just sow the seeds of the next revolution.

More about → Power corrupts

Here we go again

Seems the corrupt and venal EU Parliament has decided it's time for a new EU commission and commissioners.

BBC.

The European Parliament has voted overwhelmingly in favour of the new 27-strong team of European commissioners.

Each commissioner had previously faced a hearing in the European Parliament.

The Commission is the EU's executive arm, responsible for drafting EU laws and ensuring that the 27 member states comply with the EU treaties.

Bulgaria's first nominee, Rumiana Jeleva, failed to convince MEPs about her suitability for the job, so she was replaced by Kristalina Georgieva.

MEPs cast 488 votes in favour of the Commission, 137 against and there were 72 abstentions.

You'd have thought they'd have learned the lessons when bad accounting, along with bad management, nepotism and the fraud that resulted from it, brought down the entire European Union Commission, then headed by Jacques Santer. Or how about the Eurostat fraud committed under the all seeing gaze of Neil Kinnock? Who then went on to sack the investigator Marta Andreasen.

15 years of not having signed off the accounts, the CAP, the destruction of our fishing industry, the demented green energy regulations complete with poisonous light bulbs (complete with a carbon burning trip to Strasbourg from Brussels every month), expenses corruption that dwarfs our own parliament, undemocratic, referendum ignoring, corrupt to the core the bloated bureaucracy that is the EU.

 

H/T 13th Spitfire  

We are slowly but surely losing our country.

Can we leave? Now!

More about → Here we go again

Not just the politicians

Fiddling is a factor of life, doesn't matter where you work or even don't work, you usually know someone who's on the fiddle assuming of course it isn't yourself. Often it's minor, a few additional miles on the motoring expenses, free pens and stationary, even the use of the photocopier for personal stuff.

Our politicians are at it too, save only on a far larger scale than most of the public would dream of doing, well not without worrying about the possibility of prison anyway. But it's not just the Politicians, it's also our civil servants, those who implement government policy.

Independent.

Crooked civil servants have cost government departments more than £12m over the past three years through a series of frauds, including bogus benefit claims and expenses fiddles.

Managers caught more than 1,000 staff responsible for £4.2m worth of thefts and fiddles in the past year alone, an analysis by Treasury bosses has shown. The figure comes on top of £4.2m last year and £3.85m in 2006-07.

The toll of 1,320 cases in 2008-09 was almost double the total uncovered in the previous 12 months – and at least one of the cheats was caught selling their stolen goods on the internet site eBay. However, not all the perpetrators were reported to the police or confronted with internal disciplinary action.

The disturbing findings open up a new front in the campaign against the misuse of taxpayers' money, following the long furore over MPs' expenses.

The Treasury's study of 45 central-government bodies, including all main departments, found that 25 had discovered fraud in 2008-09. It noted a "significant increase" in the number of cases, particularly those exploiting assets and information, travel and subsistence fiddles and theft.

The most expensive payment fraud was carried out by a member of staff who banked more than £350,000 by creating false records and authorising fraudulent repayment claims. The employee was dismissed and faces legal proceedings.

Another fraudster cheated their department of £246,400 by creating invoices for a non-existent supplier, quoting a virtual office address and fictional Companies House and VAT registrations.

So, it's not just those making the laws, it's those who implement them too. Not that every civil servant is a crook in pretty much the same way anyone who makes a genuine mistake on a benefit claim isn't a crook, though you'd be hard pushed to get the government to admit that, at least in the case of the benefitee.
Corruption seems to be endemic throughout our society, in one sense it's human nature, but in another it's also an indicator of a change coming on how society views itself. I suppose it's also a sign of decadence amongst those who rule perhaps as well as hypocrisy in that what they allow themselves to take without prosecution they will not allow anyone else. It will be interesting to see when (or if) an enough is enough moment comes. Where those who purport to rule face the wrath of the public. Perhaps though it will not and we'll go quietly robbed into the night saving only our anger for an X Factor voting dispute.
They say people get the government they deserve.

Perhaps we have, perhaps we have.

More about → Not just the politicians

Changing the rules mid game.

It's often true enough particularly recently that any political party on the verge of losing their majority and hence their ability to govern look to change the way we vote in order to shore up their political careers.

Labourlist have a letter from 34 Labour PPCs asking Gordon Brown to have a referendum on the current political polling system. I don't know who any of these people are, but I'll hazard a guess that they are all in seats likely to fall to other parties (probably Conservative) in the next general election. The real bit of political chicanery is in this paragraph...

A referendum on polling day on a system that delivers real voter choice would see hundreds of Liberal Democrats switching to Labour, hundreds more stay-at-home Labour supporters coming out to vote for the government and every Tory opponent on the back foot trying to explain why the failed old system is worth keeping and why Cameron wouldn’t give the people a say. So we just need to switch the date and fulfill our 1997 manifesto pledge.

It's all just a vote grabbing effort, a means to steal Lib Dem votes in marginal constituencies in order to secure their political careers. This is truly an act of desperation and one I have no doubt that Gordon Brown will consider doing. It takes scorched earth policies to new heights all simply to spite their political opponents and keep power and privilege in Labours grubby little hands.
Why didn't they honour their manifesto pledge back in 1997? Simple really, the current system got them re-elcted, why do they want to honour their pledge now? Simple, they are going to lose their seats.
Now don't get me wrong here, I believe political reform is a necessary and ongoing thing, but, it should only be attempted at the beginning of a governments assumption of power, not as a last gasp attempt to change the system to ensure that a political party in trouble will benefit.

This is corruption in a higher form, a truly disgusting attempt at keeping power despite the unpopularity of Labour in general, I don't know if Lib Dems would be any too happy with it either even if it means reform, they'd be seen to be siding with an out of touch corrupt government desperate to try anything to win votes.

If Labour adopt this, they should be ashamed of themselves, that they wont be ashamed, is a given, because all they care about is holding onto power and not the best interests of the country. They have spent the last 13 years driving this country into the ground, spending taxpayers money like it will never run out and when the chickens come home to roost, they propose altering the rules to keep themselves in power.

How terribly New Labour, they make me sick!

More about → Changing the rules mid game.