craig

Ben Chapman: A Thief Retires

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New Labour MP Ben Chapman is to retire at the next general election. Having stolen £15,000 from the taxpayer in exaggerated mortgage claims, let us hope Inspector Knacker retires him before that.

Chapman was a fellow retired member of the British diplomatic service, with a notably undistinguished career. As a former Commercial Counsellor in Beijing, Chapman remained a tireless worker against human rights in China, believing trade to be more important.

It is understood that, apart from spending more time with his money, Chapman is expecting to spend more time with his Chinese friends cashing in on his advocacy.

The thief Chapman would of course have been retired by the voters anyway. I will offer 10/1 against New Labour holding Wirral South at the next election.

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Obama – A Liberal Restrained, or a More Plausible Frontman?

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I watched Obama’s speech about national security live today. There were parts which were much better than anything I ever expected to hear from any American Presiident. Like this:

I know some have argued that brutal methods like water-boarding were necessary to keep us safe. I could not disagree more. As Commander-in-Chief, I see the intelligence, I bear responsibility for keeping this country safe, and I reject the assertion that these are the most effective means of interrogation. What’s more, they undermine the rule of law. They alienate us in the world. They serve as a recruitment tool for terrorists, and increase the will of our enemies to fight us, while decreasing the will of others to work with America. They risk the lives of our troops by making it less likely that others will surrender to them in battle, and more likely that Americans will be mistreated if they are captured. In short, they did not advance our war and counter-terrorism efforts ?” they undermined them, and that is why I ended them once and for all.

And this:

There is also no question that Guantanamo set back the moral authority that is America’s strongest currency in the world. Instead of building a durable framework for the struggle against al Qaeda that drew upon our deeply held values and traditions, our government was defending positions that undermined the rule of law. Indeed, part of the rationale for establishing Guantanamo in the first place was the misplaced notion that a prison there would be beyond the law ?” a proposition that the Supreme Court soundly rejected. Meanwhile, instead of serving as a tool to counter-terrorism, Guantanamo became a symbol that helped al Qaeda recruit terrorists to its cause. Indeed, the existence of Guantanamo likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained.

So the record is clear: rather than keep us safer, the prison at Guantanamo has weakened American national security. It is a rallying cry for our enemies. It sets back the willingness of our allies to work with us in fighting an enemy that operates in scores of countries. By any measure, the costs of keeping it open far exceed the complications involved in closing it. That is why I argued that it should be closed throughout my campaign. And that is why I ordered it closed within one year.

All of which was simply great, and what a huge improvement! At last there seems to be some intelligence and common sense applied.

But from the rest of his speech, it appeared military tribunals will resume, detainees will not in fact have access to normal judicial institutions, and some will continue to be detained without trial.

Most of all, how can he understand that torture and Guantanamo recruit for terrorism, but not understand that bombings of civilian areas in Southern Afghanistan recruit for terrorism?

It is something of a conundrum, whether Obama is a good man hemmed in, or whether he is simply a better salesman for US military dominance than the last one. Having watched him today, I am inclined to give him some further credit.

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Congratulations to the Gurkhas

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Having been defeated by the Gurkhas in the Courts and in the Commons, having fought against rights for Gurkhas for years, Gordon Brown is now doing a photocall with them and with Joanna Lumley in the hope of getting good publicity out of his climbdown.

Not only is Gordon Brown sick, he thinks we are all stupid.

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Groom Your Own Terrorist – FBI Agent Provocateur Operation Leads to Terror Arrests

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Headline news is that four gullible black men have been arrested in New York by the FBI, after an agent provocateur operation presuaded them to try and blow up a synagogue and “Shoot down military aircraft”.

The FBI say they are a “homegrown” cell of four with no outside links to terror organisations. The FBI agent provocateur helpfully suggested targets to them and offered to provide them with weapons and equipment. There can never have been a more blatant example of a “Terror threat” generated by the authorities.

Obama of course desperately needed a terror threat to justify his stunning U turns. He is keeping Guantanamo open, continuing fake “trial” military tribunals there, continuing to bar detainees there from UK courts as “non-persons”, continuing the use of evidence from waterboarding and other torture, continuing spying on his own people under the Patriot Act, continuing extraordinary rendition, and refusing to release the photographic evidence of the torture.

Hard to justify all that, given the limited evidence of a real terror threat. But, Hey! Now we have the “Groom a Terrorist” programme. Find four angry and frustrated black men, tell them they can blow things up and offer to give them the means.

Instant terrorists.

The FBI spokesman said the “Leader” of the group (strikes me the leader was the agent provocateur) was motivated by “Anger at the deaths in Afghanistan caused by the US military.” There could not be a more complete rebuttal of the nonesense uttered by both Brown and Obama, that we have to fight in Afghanistan to keep us safe at home.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/04/hillary_and_pak.html

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Two Aspects Of Barca Colours

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As Manchester United prepare to face Barcelona in the Champions League Final, here are two aspects of the Barca colours.

henry8.jpg

Thierry Henry in Barca Colours

avazov.gif

Muzaffar Avazov in Barca colours

Muzaffar Avazov is one of two dissidents who were boiled alive by the Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov. I investigated the case as British Ambassador with the assistance of the now chief pathologist of the UK. There is no doubt that death was caused by immersion in boiling liquid, while Avazov was a prisoner in Karimov’s notorious Jaslyk gulag. Karimov has over 10,000 political prisoners.

Uzbekistan is perhaps the most brutal dictaotrship in the world, but Barcelona receive $10 million a year to promote the Karimov regime and the propaganda “Show club” owned by the President’s daughter.

http://pitchinvasion.net/blog/2009/03/15/bunyodkor-barcelona-and-the-dictators-daughter/

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/03/unicef_must_bre.html

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/03/unicef_must_bre.html

Anyone supporting Barcelona next week is supporting fascism.

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Lord Taylor and Tessa Jowell, Long Term Crooks

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So for offering to change legislation for cash, and then for lying to the committee investigating it with a story they called “Wholly implausible”, Lord Scumbag Taylor of Blackburn has been suspended for a whole six months – for 50% of which the Lords is on holdiay anyway!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8060003.stm

It is another symptom of the failure of the Establishment to understand that the public really are furous at their easy tolerance of corruption among their number.

Taylor has been doing this for years, making millions of pounds as a “Consultant” and “Director” for numerous companies which depend on government contracts, particularly in the defence industry, but he also has a major financial interest in the government’s crazed authoritarian ID card scheme.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2007/08/more_lord_scumb.html

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2007/08/theres_good_mon.html

So in the autumn Taylor will be back in the Lords, peddling Jack Straw’s influence again.

It has been a comparatively good couple of days. While there is little justice, at least there is exposure of some of the criminals that this blog has been pursuing for years. Tessa Jowell paid off her mortgage – three times – with money given to her husband by Blair’s friend Berlusconi, as a reward for lying for him in court.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2006/02/normality_and_t.html

That is undoubtedly true, and has been again confirmed by Italian judges.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8058206.stm

The fact that Jowell is still a minister is quite astonishing, and again says a great deal about New Labour’s toleration of corruption. She still maintains a pretence of having separated from Mills. Berlusconi is no doubt engaged in his normal bribery and threats of the Italian judiciary to keep Mills from having to serve his sentence. I do hope that he fails, and that the Jowells are genuinely separated, for the four and a half year jail term at least.

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Death in Ealing

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I was trying to register to vote at our new address today, but Ealing Borough Council’s website was down. So I telephoned them and got a recorded message saying they had been “forced to evacuate the building.” Presumably more than just a fire drill if the webiste is down.

Anyway, I was googling local news to see if I could find out why, and perhaps get a clue when they might reopen. I was saddened to come across this item

http://www.ealinggazette.co.uk/ealing-news/local-ealing-news/2009/05/15/horror-as-man-dies-in-fire-64767-23633555/

It seems someone was killed on this street – indeed very close to us – on the same day Cameron was born, which is a sad thought.

But like the neighbours quoted in the article, I had myself genuinely been puzzled by the higgledy-piggeldy conversions into flats of several houses on this street. Are there national standards on provision of fire escapes, or is it up to the local authority?

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Blair and Martin Deliberately Dismantled Commons Anti-Sleaze Apparatus

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The memories of political commentators are short. It is remarkable how little the name of Elizabeth Filkin has featured in discussion of the current massive sleaze revelations.

The outcry against Commons sleaze at the end of the Major government led to a toughening up of regulation. The Blair government found this inconvenient, particularly when standards commissioner Elizabeth Filkin was investigating ministers Geoffrey Robinson, John Reid and Keith Vaz.

So Blair and Martin forced her out, replacing her with someone more compliant, on a markedly lower salary and with less resources to do the job.

The culture of sleaze and corruption did not accrue accidentally and innocently. It was entered into quite deliberately, and New Labour ruthlessly eliminated obstacles to corruption.

This is the BBC interview Filkin gave as she was forced out:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1690000/audio/_1693146_filkin08_filkin.ram

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Absentee MPs Can Still Cash In

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One particularly egregious abuse of MPs’ allowances is not covered by the interim measures Lord Martin-in-waitng announced yesterday as agreed by the party leaders.

The additional cost (or second home) allowance exists in theory to cover the extra cost to an MP of having to maintain a home in both their constituency and at Westminster.

But there is nothing preventing an MP from maintaining their main home somewhere else entirely, and then claiming a second home either in their constituency or in Westminster. Most of us expect to have to move to our place of work. MPs don’t have to do that.

This practice of having the main home somewhere else completely is apparently quite common. That must be true, because we have the word of the great Iain Dale for that (or Dorries Dale as he will henceforth be known here). He told us in a comment on this blog:

Craig, there are many MPs who don’t have their first homes in Westminster or in their constituencies. It can be for a number of reasons. In her case it was to do with her family.

I’ve made clear that if it was me I would have my main home in the constituency, as I promised in North Norfolk. But what is right for one individual might not be right for the other. Surely the point is that any claim on the taxpayer has to be for a consituency home or in Westminster. Margaret Moran’s was neither, which is why you were wrong to draw the analogy. Perhaps you’d be good enough to admit that.

Now it seems to me that, if people are stupid enough to elect an MP who won’t live in the constituency, we can’t stop that. But I can see no reason at all why the taxpayer should pay for a second home anywhere, for an MP who insists on having their main home neither in Westminster nor in their constituency.

(The case of Nadine Dorries is an example of this and in fact still worse. She did in fact have her main home in the constituency, but Nadine Dorries lied about it and pretended her main home is in the Cotswolds, in order to defraud the taxpayer of a great deal of money for her “Second home”).

http://www.bloggerheads.com/archives/2009/05/aca_nadine_dorries.asp#comments

This system of absentee MPs funded by the taxpayer is a major abuse and must be stopped immediately.

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British Doctors Hunger Strike at Rafah

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Consultant Dr Chris Burns Cox is among a group of three doctors and five nurses from the UK and Belgium, who are on hunger strike at the Rafah crossing into Gaza, after being prevented from crossing by the Egyptian government. Chris has been on five previous visits to Gaza to train medical staff.

Egypt is under huge pressure from the United States and Israel, but nevertheless plays a most shameful part in maintaining the Gaza prison ghetto. The ethnic cleansing and confinement of the Palestinians remains one of the great crimes of the last century, still unmitigated in this century. The prevention of medical staff from entering Gaza is indefensible.

I have been contacted direct from Rafah and informed that the British Embassy in Cairo is refusing to help with the Egyptian authorities, which sadly sounds all too typical of Milliband. I am trying now with some of my own diplomatic contacts.

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Blogging For Burma

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As the secret trial of Aung San Suu Kyi proceeds, there is a hopelessness in the lack of any serious response from Western governments, and the week-kneed bleating of regional leaders in ASEAN. There is scarcely a ripple in the British blogosphere.

It is difficult to get a media handle on Burma. It does not fit with any of the prevailing narratives. There is no Islamic dimension . There is no continuing communist dimension. There is not even an internal ethnic divide. It is simply a question of a military dictatorship hanging on to power for the personal profit of its leaders, and its own institutional entrenchment. The military now absorbs an astonishing 40% of the country’s wealth.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8050262.stm

The people of Burma already suffer from spiralling poverty. The international community should agree on a complete ban on all imports from Burma. The military will only give up their hold on power if dictatorship is impoverishing them. Of course this means more hardship for the population – but many of them are at subsistence already.

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Where to Stand?

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After Blackburn, I had promised never to put myself again through the horrors of standing as an independent parliamentary candidate. But the sleazthat has been revealed is only a symptom of the moral laxity and low quality of our MPs, as revealed in their endorsement of illegal war, torture, curtailment of civil liberties, the Ponzi scheme economy… I could go on.

But where to stand? After Blackburn, I refuse to stand in any constituency that does not contain at least one bookshop. Nobody can comprehend the true disaster of the collapse of our public education system, without going to Blackburn. No wonder New Labour have to collect in their postal ballots and fill them in for them.

I had pretty well resolved to raise the anti-sleaze banner against Douglas Hogg, but he seems to have run away already. Of course, by-elections may alter the equation, but otherwise I should be interested to hear any suggestions.

Tim Ireland, incidentally, has done Nadine Dorries up like a kipper.

http://www.bloggerheads.com/

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Troughing Toffs Sack The Pleb

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Michael Martin was a rotten speaker, pushed into the job by New Labour because he is the loyalist’s loyalist, having never shown any evidence that he can think. He was never qualified for the job in any way.

But the sight of the troughing toffs ganging up to make a ritual sacrifice of a pleb in the hope that the news agenda will then “move on”, is deeply unedifying.

If this were sufficient of a constitutional crisis for the extreme measure of sacking a Speaker, it is certainly sufficient for the resignation as MPs of the worst individual troughers.

A general election will be best. But unless there are at the very least several by-elections, the MPs who pressured Martin to go will be revealed as simple hypocrites and scapegoat-tetherers.

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Child Porn and Intelligence From Torture – The Correct Analogy

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I was reviewing my evidence to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights. The Committee’s main preoccupation was whether receipt of intelligence you know comes from torture, makes you complicit in that torture in terms of the UN Convention Against Torture. I seemed, at least to myself, the only person who was morally outraged at torture. The question troubling the Committee was, can the government, legally, get away with it?

This, from the uncorrected transcript, is part of their questioning of me on this point:

Mr Murray: I think the essence of the government’s position is that if you receive intelligence material from people who torture, be it CIA waterboarding, or torture by the Uzbek authorities or anywhere else, you can do so ad infinitum knowing that it may come from torture and you are still not complicit.

Q77 Dr Harris: The government say that they condemn the use of torture, do not participate in, solicit, encourage or condone the use of torture and work hard to eradicate it, but they also say in their response to our report on the UN Convention Against Torture: “#Our rejection of the use of torture is well known by our liaison partners. The provenance of intelligence received from foreign services is often obscured as intelligence and security services, even where they share intelligence, rarely share the details of their sources. All intelligence received from foreign services is carefully evaluated. Where it is clear that the intelligence is being obtained from individuals in detention the UK agencies make clear to foreign services the standards which they expect them to comply with.” That does not say what you think it ought to say, but do you accept that their position is different from yours and that their current position is consistent with what Sir Michael Wood essentially said?

Mr Murray: Their position remains the one outlined by Sir Michael Wood, and it was put to me that if we received intelligence from torture we were not complicit as long as we did not do the torture ourselves or encouraged it. I argue that we are creating a market for torture and that there were pay-offs to the Uzbeks for their intelligence co-operation and pay-offs to other countries for that torture. I think that a market for torture is a worthwhile concept in discussing the government’s attitude.

Q78 Dr Harris: In your evidence you assert that Jack Straw himself as foreign secretary endorsed Sir Michael Wood’s view set out in that memorandum?

Mr Murray: Yes.

Q79 Dr Harris: That would not be a surprise in a sense given the government’s position that the Wood memorandum is at least consistent if not congruent with the government’s then, and presumably currently, position?

Mr Murray: What you say about the government’s position is true, but it has done everything possible to disguise its position. I received an email from the Bishop of Bath and Wells who had written to a government minister to say he was worried about the possibility that we were using intelligence from torture as highlighted by the Binyam Mohamed case. He got the reply that was always given which was to refer to the first part of the government’s position that you cited – the bit about condemning torture unreservedly – but not the second part. The government do not volunteer the fact that they very happily accept this information. I make it absolutely plain that I am talking of hundreds of pieces of intelligence every year that have come from hundreds of people who suffer the most vicious torture. We are talking about people screaming in agony in cells and our government’s willingness to accept the fruits of that in the form of hundreds of such reports every year. I want the Joint Committee to be absolutely plain about that.

And this is Philippe Sands questioned on the same point:

Q77 Dr Harris: You describe Lord Bingham’s words as providing a small opening to enable the government to come up with a position, but is it not the case that the government has leapt through it and relied very much on that approach? The 2008 annual report of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on human rights published in March 2009 says: “The use of intelligence possibly derived through torture presents a very real dilemma given our unreserved condemnation of torture and our efforts to eradicate it. Where there is intelligence that bears on threats to life we cannot reject it out of hand. What is quite clear however is that the information obtained as a result of torture would not be admissible in any criminal or civil proceedings in the UK.” They are just saying that is the position and they rely on that. They do not have to work very hard to do that, do they?

Professor Sands: In a sense they are fudging; they are expressing a commonsensical position. You get the odd bit of information that has been provided under torture. It provides information that may head off some serious attack. What do you do? Do you just ignore it? They are saying no. But what they are not addressing is whether or not there is a policy of systematic reliance on such information.

Q78 Dr Harris: What I have just read out is consistent with Lord Bingham’s judgment in your view.

Professor Sands: It may be. What I do not know is the factual background against which that is written. I have information about what is in the public domain. I have access to certain information through my professional practice as a barrister which for reasons you understand I cannot address in this forum. If they are talking about a very limited piece or pieces of information that may be one thing. It is quite another thing, if we take the scenario of those words, to imagine a situation in which Her Majesty’s Government engaged in an arrangement with a country that was known to torture in a widespread way and turned a blind eye to what was going on and received all the information but did not participate physically in the torture. I do not think Lord Bingham had that in mind.

Q79 Dr Harris: But what Mr Murray described as a schizophrenic approach could arise where they worked to stop torture. Let us take the instance of the government being merely a passive recipient of information but they know that it may well have been obtained under torture because they know it happens. They have no intention to use it in any proceedings, to comply with the judgment in A & Ors, but it may be stuff that they feel they are entitled to according to the bit of Lord Bingham’s speech that you read out. They will not know in advance; they cannot say, “Give the information to us next April because we think that it will contain information about a bomb in the House of Commons.” Is it not the case that, even though in Mr Craig’s words it seems schizophrenic, by being merely a passive recipient as long as they do everything else to stop it that is a consistent and possibly lawful policy given the case law provided by the House of Lords decision to which you have alluded?

Professor Sands: I do not think I can give a better answer than the one I have given. It might be depending on the particular facts, the regularity of the flow of information and the context in which the information arrived. I take your point, but perhaps I may turn it around a slightly different way. I have set out the criteria that I believe need to be met on the basis of case law and practice to determine when complicity arises. Essentially, there are three factors. First, there must be knowledge that torture is or is likely to take place.

Q80 Chairman: Does that include constructive knowledge?

Professor Sands: I think it would. In my view turning a blind eye in the face of overwhelming evidence would constitute knowledge for the purposes of the Committee Against Torture. Second – this is the crucial issue ?” there is a contribution by way of assistance. The question then becomes: at what point does the regular receipt of information that is known to have been obtained by torture amount in some way to a contribution? It depends on the factual scenario against which that happens. The third element is some material or substantial effect on the perpetration of the crime. If you go through those three elements you can begin to see a situation in which one-off accidental reliance on information would be in one category but systematic reliance on such information in the circumstances of knowledge of the background to an ongoing relationship with another state might well cross the line into complicity.

Q81 Chairman: It is the contribution by way of assistance that has a substantial effect on the perpetration of the crime, so those are two of the three elements in the wording you identify in the ICTY judgment. I have no wish particularly to defend the government, but in a legal sense it is hard to see why passive receipt – I shall come on to receipt with gratitude – via an email box that you do not close, even with knowledge that torture is taking place and the rest of your embassy is saying, “Don’t torture”, is in itself is contribution by way of assistance or that it has a substantial effect on the perpetration of the crime, because the fact that you are receiving it passively is not the reason they are doing it, is it?

Professor Sands: That would appear to be what Lord Bingham had in mind in the passage I read out, but what I am suggesting is that you must distinguish between different situations. There is a world of difference between the one-off receipt of information that comes into your mailbox and a relationship that is premised on regular, systematic, continual reliance against the background of a broader relationship between two sovereign entities.

You can read the full transcript from here:

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/05/worse_than_expe.html#comments

Or you can view it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF9spgagSHI

In sending in my corrections and clarifications, it occurred to me that the correct analogy with material from torture must be child porn. Child abuse is indeed a form of torture. It is abuse of the helpless. If you possess child pornography, you are viewed as guilty even if you had no part in making it. The law takes the view that you have encouraged the act by creating the market for the material, and that you must be depraved to want it. It seems to me that is all precisely true also of torture. And remember that in Uzbekistan, torture of children in front of parents was indeed one of the techniques used to get the “Intelligence”.

So try substituting “child abuse” for “torture” in the committee’s deliberations, and the argument about just how much Ministers may seebefore they are complicit in its production, takes on a whole new light.

I have included this argument in my comments on the transcript sent to the committee yesterday.

Download file

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Prince Philip on MPs

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Seems that Peter McKay at The Daily Mail has read The Catholic Orangemen of Togo. He published my anecdote about Prince Philip’s views on MPs, a few hours before I did!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1183970/PETER-MCKAY-Crown-sits-uneasy-crisis.html

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/05/prince_philip_o.html

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Dorries and Dale: The Troughing Tories

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brits2.jpg

From Nadine Dorries’ Blog. Republished Without Permission.

This is a photo of troughing Tory MP Nadine Dorries at the Classical Brit awards. The British taxpayer pays over £20,000 a year to maintain her constituency home in Bedfordshire, because she declares she lives at her main home – in the Cotswolds!

Dorries has admitted deliberately concealing from her constituents that she has her main home neither in her constituency, nor near Parliament.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/05/iain_dale_is_a.html#comments

Dorries’ guest and escort on this occasion, the one looking slightly less stupid in the photo, is Iain Dale, the Tory blogger. Dale has robustly defended Dorries’ home claim on the taxpayer on his blog as “Within the rules”. At the same time, Dale has condemned as “Shameless” Dorries’ fellow Bedfordshire MP, Margaret Moran, for having her second home in Southampton, which Dale calls “100 miles from the constituency and 100 miles from London”.

Just like the Cotswolds, in fact. So why is the same thing OK for Dorries but shameless for Moran? Because Dorries is Tory, Moran is Labour and Dale is a hypocrite.

But at least he has a fun and free social life.

Update: More good stuff on Nadine Dorries’ expenses here. I hope that the good voters of North Norfolk note that Dale endorses all of this, and continue to have the good sense to reject him at the ballot box.

http://www.liberalconspiracy.org/2009/05/17/more-questions-about-nadine-dorries-expenses/

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Prince Philip on MPs

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From The Catholic Orangemen of Togo, p. 132, on the Duke of Edinburgh’s visit to the Ghanaian parliament:

“The Prince laughed heartily, and we arrived at the Parliament building in high good spirits.

There he was first shown to a committee room where he was introduced to senior MPs of all parties.

“How many Members of Parliament do you have?” he asked.

“Two hundred,” came the answer.

“That’s about the right number,” opined the Prince, “We have six hundred and fifty MPs, and most of them are a complete bloody waste of time.”

Perhaps Prince Philip had a point.

The striking MP troughing story today is about MP Ben Chapman, who was allowed to continue claiming his mortgage payments despite having paid off his £279,000 mortgage. This still shocks despite eleven solid days of this.

One fascinating thing is just how many MPs appear to have been able to pay off their large mortgages, despite only having a salary of £68,000 per year. That speaks volumes.

Let us pause to remember the biggest criminal in the House of Commons, Tessa Jowell, who not only paid off her mortgage, but did so three times, using Mafia money.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2006/02/normality_and_t.html

Hopefully we will see what Jpwell’s expenses claims looked like during this fascinating period.

Most of you appear to read this blog at work, as readership drops at the weekend. So please do look at this piece I did on the really appalling hypocrisy of Tory blogger Iain Dale.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/05/iain_dale_is_a.html#comments

Iain has the number 1 blog on the Wikio rankings. If people want to read blogs that are simply a vehicle for party propaganda, that of course is their right. But I would hate people to be under the illusion they were getting anything more thoughtful or independent just because it is a new media fomat.

Nadine Dorries’ admission that she deliberately concealed from her constituents that she lives neither in London nor in her constituency, is appalling. Dale and Dorries are close – he was recently her escort and guest to the Classical Brit awards at the Royal Albert Hall (another freebie for the tireless trougher Dorries?). But his defence of Dorries, when he viciously attacks non-Tory MPs for the same kind of offence, shows Dale up for what he is.

Dale is in fact a double hypocrite. Having defended Dorries for claiming £22,000 a year for a constituency home when her main home is in the Cotswolds, but attacked Labour’s Margaret Moran for a similar offence, he then lays in to the Telegraph editor for defending his own friends:

The allegation is that the Telegraph went soft on Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper because Telegraph editor Will Lewis is a drinking and Karaoke buddy of Mr Balls.

When Dale himself had done precisely that for his friend Dorries! The truth is that both Lewis and Dale are both part of an intricately connected metropolitan clique who lord it over the rest of us.

And Dale then goes on to produce a self-righteous ten point candidates’ pledge of his own, which includes:

I will continue to live in the constituency, among the community I serve

Looks like your pledge would exclude Dorries then Iain, doesn’t it?

http://www.iaindale.blogspot.com/

Another one of Dale’s ten personal pledges reveals the weasel nature of his words.

I will be a full time MP with no jobs outside politics

Note the “No jobs outside politics”. Dale has managed to make a good living from hoovering up various streams of Tory gravy for years. Plainly he intends to maintain these income streams inside politics if elected.

Or he would pledge:

“I will be a full time MP with no other job”, full stop.

The real problem is, that the astounding hypocrisy of Dale’s defence of Dorries while hammering Margaret Moran for essentially the same offence, shows he is completely biased towards a Tory, to the exclusion of thoughts of natural justice. And that must cast into severe doubt another one of his candidates’ pledges:

I will serve all my constituents, regardless of their politics

Only serve the Tories rather better than others, one might suspect from the Dorries case.

For a party hack, Dale is remarkably thin-skinned. He commented on my post:

And all because I linked to a post by Charles Crawford which you didn’t like.

I thought you were bigger than this. But clearly not.

Why do you always have to be so personal. “Stinking hypocrite”. No reasoning. Just insults.

I used to really think you were a person worth reading and engaging with. I no longer do.

How very sad you have reduced your blog to this level.

Actually, this has nothing at all to do with Iain linking to Charles Crawford. I was not in the least upset by that. In fact, I was so not upset by it, I’ll do it myself. Here is Charles’ criticism of me:

http://charlescrawford.biz/N5A207442111

Charles has a different political view to mine. We argue fiercely. But he is logical and consistent, and I rather like him.

I am very straightforward, Iain. When I say that you are acting hypocritically, it is because I believe you are acting hypocritically, not because you linked to Charles Crawford.

I have contempt for your view that it is wrong for political opponents to do something, but OK for your friend Nadine Dorries to do the same thing. I have invited you to expound on your defence of Dorries and explain why what Dorries did was morally better than what you (rightly) condemned Margaret Moran for.

Oh, and of course I don’t mean that you smell by calling you a stinking hypocrite. The use of metaphors from smell to describe particularly evident bad behaviour is ancient. As in Shakespeare’s Claudius:

“Oh, my offence is rank. It smells to Heaven!”

.

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MPs: The 19th Century solution

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One of the things I really do miss about the privileged existence I gave up, is the National Liberal Club. Seated with a book in a deep leather armchair by a roaring fire on a cold day, you could watch the shades of Gladstone, Lloyd George and the young Churchill stroll by.

In the Gent’s there is a cartoon of Tory wit FE Smith. The caption informs us that he would saunter, after a good few drinks, from his law practice at the Middle Temple to the Commons, often stopping at the National Liberal Club to use the lavatory. Some members complained, and one day he was stopped in the foyer by the porter:

“Excuse me sir, you do realise this is a private members’ club?”

Smith looked around him and sniffed:

“A club? I didn’t realise it was a club as well!”

Anyway, I really miss the place. I was a member for well over twenty years but I can no longer afford the fees. But why I recall the NLC now, is that it was specifically built following the Reform Acts of 1867 and 1884, to provide accommodation for working class Liberal MPs who could not afford a second home in London.

Sadly the bedrooms were sold off a few years back to the Royal Horseguards hotel, but surely this is the way to go? Out of London MPs should be provided with the use of a small flat in a dedicated block at public expense. That, their salary and travel to their constituency should be all they are given. I can see no evidence to suggest that the quite excessive office and staff budgets they have nowadays, have done anything to increase the quality of government.

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The Derek Walcott Scandal

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I remember sitting under Caribbean skies at the Preparatory Committee for the UN Law of the Sea Convention. As we discussed thorny compromises over the regime to govern extraction of minerals from the bed of the deep sea, my friend Dolliver Nelson would break into flights of poetry. As many Jamaican weeks were passed, Dolliver introduced me to the extraordinary passion for the English language of Caribbean intellectuals of his generation. It was through Dolliver that I started avid reading of CLR James and Derek Walcott.

Walcott is a great poet. It is appalling that the politically correct brigade have drummed him out of the election for Oxford Professor of Poetry.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/5336559/Ruth-Padels-win-poisoned-by-smear-campaign.html

We live in a society in which any expression of male heterosexuality seems to be anathematised. It appears sex is supposed to happen nowadays without the male ever suggesting it, either verbally or by caress.

Nothing has ever been proven against Walcott. The accusations, even if true, do not amount to anything near rape or forced physical abuse. It is alleged that he came on rather strongly, decades ago, and was rebuffed. It is alleged he was petulant after being rebuffed.

It would be difficult to find, for example, great visual artists who did not sleep with their models. Should we empty the National Gallery? Pretty well all the Pre-Raphaelites and Impressionists would have to go, for a start.

Burne Jones and Rosetti. Picasso, Degas, Gauguin? All appalling sexual harassers! Burn their paintings!

Ruth Padel comes out of this very badly. If she had any honour, she should resign. It is plain by her website she is a desperate self-promoter. Her latest poem centres on a fantasy of dominating the male:

He brandishes

his pair of ring-ridged horns, arcing back

like sabres. But mine are one metre fifty.

I force him down, rough him up

and suddenly as he came he is gone

http://www.ruthpadel.com/pages/mother_of_pearl.htm

If Padel’s talent only matched her ambition, she truly would be great. She is already Chair of the Poetry Society, and very much at the centre of the London clique of man-haters who were spreading the word against Walcott. Her protests now against the hate campaign are late and unconvincing.

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