Sim-O

MPs’ expenses.
To paraphrase Frank Skinner…

You’re only sorry and think the system needs reforming because you got found out.

But looking at the responses, the one in the title seems to be the one they’ve all decided to run with, but it still sticks in the throat.

I haven’t seen the news much over the weekend so I don’t know what scandal has petered out or whos’ been caught doing who or what.

Apparently it’s James Purnell that’s been caught with his hand in the till.

The Welfare and Pensions Secretary has been claiming over two grand for his rent on a second home when it actually cost just under £1k.

I feel the same as The Devil about this…

I get tired of saying this, but this is plain, out-and-out fraud.

As the minister in charge of welfare benefits, Mr Purnell has spearheaded the Government’s crackdown on benefits cheats.

Many taxpayers will, therefore, be surprised to learn about the Minister’s own financial arrangements for claiming public money.

“Surprised”? “Outraged” might be a rather better word for it.

Nothing is going to change until some of these cunts are prosecuted for fraud: and, if found guilty, then they should be punished with the full weight of the law. If they are not, then it will be an explicit admission that these greedy fucks consider themselves above the law.

And that’s when the only road open to the taxpayers of Britain is the decoration of lamp-posts…

This is the sort of stuff the police should be investigating, not scaring people with life imprisonment for leaking embarassing government and party documents.

The man with the camera at 1:51, …

Via OblonskysGhost

BBC…

The video of the latest incident to emerge was released by Climate Camp protesters. In it, 24-year-old IT worker Alex Cinnane is shown being forcibly hit in the left temple with a round shield by a policeman wearing a balaclava and a visor.

Well, that’s torn to shit any excuses that may (or have already come up) about Ian Tomlinson death being an isolated incident.

A second post mortem has been performed on Ian Tomlinson…

Now a fresh post-mortem examination has found he died of abdominal bleeding, not a heart attack, as first thought.

Now, I’m not a doctor or anything like that, my medical expertise ranges from a couple of ibuprofen for a headache to ‘hair of the dog’ for, ahem, more serious illness, so I could be a little out here.

A heart attack doesn’t neccersarily result in internal bleeding, but a heart attack can result from loss of blood as the heart works harder to keep blood pressure without enough blood.

So, the first post mortem wasn’t exactly wrong, more incomplete because yes Ian died of a heart attack, but is was brought about from abdominal heamorraging, which in turn was brought about from, say, being knocked about.

Incompetence or a cover up, I wonder…

Justin has more

There’s calls for the Code of Conduct for Special Advisors to be tightened. Here is an excerpt (my emphasis)…

5. Special advisers should conduct themselves with integrity and honesty. They should not deceive or knowingly mislead Parliament or the public. They should not misuse their official position or information acquired in the course of their official duties to further their private interests or the private interests of others. They should not receive benefits of any kind which others might reasonably see as compromising their personal judgement or integrity. They should not without authority disclose official information which has been communicated in confidence in Government or received in confidence from others. The principles of public life set down by the Committee on Standards in Public Life, at Annex B, provide a framework for all public servants.

Seems clear enough to me.

So. We’ve got one bunch of cunts making up shit about another bunch of cunts.

I have had a ticking off for tarring everyone in one group of public servants with the same, but I’m gonna do it again here.

Our politicians are all the same. There is no difference between them*. Is it that you need to be a cunt to rise to the top of the tree or does the system turn once good and honest people into complete wankers?

This latest debacle between McBride and Draper is just the latest in a long line of fuck ups that are unacceptable. And I’ll bet that it could just as easily have been a Conservative plot to fuck the opposite team as the Labour one that’s come to light.

I don’t know the details of the email, or much details about it at all. To be frank, I couldn’t give two shits either. All I know is that there was an email from Labour MPs’ containing lies about Conservative MPs’.

What sort of shitheads must we have running the country, if they think it is ok to do this? Think about it. These guys aren’t your drunk down the local spouting whatever comes into their head. It’s not 7 year old shouting to about someone ‘having the lurgy’ not realising what they’re doing. They are supposedly grown up, responsible people that are supposed to know right from wrong.

These. People. Tell. Lies.

The whole fucking thing is shagged. They’re only sorry when they get caught at something like this and when they do it’s a passed of as a joke or a misunderstanding or not very sensitively worded.
Are we fucking stupid? Do we look like cunts? Have we got ‘TWAT’ written on our collective foreheads?
That’s what it feels like, sometimes.

Dunno about you, but I’m fucking sick of it.

*There are a couple of exceptions, but I’ll let you decide who they are.

Well. That’s it then. No more denying it. The Police are vicious bastards.

I’ve probably knew it all along but been able to block it or excuse it. But now, fuck ’em.

What’s changed? When previous instances have happened there have been circumstances that, well…

A bloke and his mate are looking in a Jewelry shop window and get handcuffed and accused of attempted robbery.
Well, maybe the bloke got lippy, didn’t comply with resonable requests by the officers to, I don’t know, turn out his pockets or something, so the officer has to take charge of the situation and bring things to a head in a way so the officer comes out on top, and not the other way round.

Then there’s the house raid that goes a little wrong and one of the occupants, who is innocent as it happens, ends up getting shot.
Well, the information the coppers had meant that firearms were appropriate for the raid, and when a raid gets started there is lot of noise and confusion, everyone is hyped up and it’s usually dark as they are carried out in the early hours of the morning. It’s quite scary, even for the officers. I know, I’ve seen them on telly.
It’s surprising, really, that more people hurt. All it needs is the suspect to not put there hands up, or make a wrong move and, well…

Or there’s the suicide bomber that wasn’t. Armed officers, in a stressful situation, the tube full of people. OK, so there were errors made. Would you have done any better?

The thing is, with all those examples, we weren’t there. It doesn’t matter what witnesses say, you’re own mind can add little caveats, little excuses, that still leave the rozzers The Good Guys.

What happened at the G20 shattered that completely.

The assault was unprovoked, cowardly and on film.

As you can see, Ian is strolling along with his hands in his pockets, the fuzz come up behind him, a dog sniffing him, and then he gets a whack on the back of the legs and an almighty shove to the ground.

Why? What purpose did it serve? Ian wasn’t giving them abuse, the coppers could see his hands were in his pockets, so he wasn’t gonna be able to do anything before they could get to him, and he wasn’t giving them abuse. It was just malicious.

The police are supposed to protect us. It’s one thing getting the baton out when you have a crowd of angry soap-dodgers pushing against you and spitting in your face…Fuck it! I’m doing it again!

The game has changed. Why the hell else are coppers leaving off a letter or number from their lapels? ‘If you’ve got nothing to hide…’ applies to them too. Why else were the police telling people in the Climate Camp to delete photos of plod or have their cameras seized? Was the Climate Camp full of terrorists, was it?

This isn’t about the big things, like 42 days detention or the UK governments complicity in torture, this is about the little things that the police feel they can get away with.
The institutional bias in favour of the police when things go wrong, even when the investigation has only just begun…

A lie can be delivered by innuendo. The so-called “Independent Police Complaints Commission” – whose investigations in this case are being conducted by the City of London Police – had put out a statement saying that “it appeared that Mr Tomlinson had contact with the Police.” If we had not seen the video, what image does that conjure up in your mind?

The justification for tactics…

John O’Connor, a former Flying Squad commander, defended kettling in extraordinarily totalitarian terms, saying that

…using these tactics in a non-selective way does cause inconvenience to persons who are legally trying to make their point, but it is effective in controlling the troublemakers.

The same could be said of subjecting the entire population to house arrest or amputating the limbs of anyone not in the police. Certainly, what he says is a clear admission that kettling does not ‘facilitate peaceful protest’.

Do I need to spell out what message is that sending to the ordinary plod on the beat? The modern policeman already wears a quasi-military uniform, with their stab vest and utility belt. They do work under some tremendous pressures, and you can excuse them with that and the adrenaline and all sorts of other reasons, but that is what training is for. If a copper goes loses it, makes an error of judgement or gets power crazy and attacks an innocent person, he either needs to be fired or retrained. As well as prosecuted.

The example needs to be set from the top and that is what is missing. Last word goes to Craig Murray…

We have reached the stage in the UK where we need a revolutionary change. We have to sweep out the old order of corrupt politicians whose one guiding principle is to keep their own snouts in the trough: of City bankers who are multi-millionaires from their bubble scams and whose lifestyles and jobs the ordinary people are now supporting by a massive tax and debt burden, while nobody guarantees the jobs of those ordinary people who fund it all.

We have to realise that the end of the centuries old prohibition of torture by agents of the state is of a piece with the freedom of the police to maintain the system of power by fatal force, in both cases without consequence. You cannot separate this brutalisation of power from the illegal war that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and thousands of our own soldiers, on the basis of a lie but really to secure oil.

The whole system stinks from the head like a fish. And people are starting at last to understand where the smell comes from.

More links here.

Word comes from Craig Murray that the British embassies in the EU are to start getting support for Tony Blair to be the made the first permanent president of the EU.

Maybe I should’ve used the proper word there: appointed. ‘Made’ could mean elected by the people he would be president of.

As Craig eloquently puts it…

For anyone to occupy the position of President without a popular election would be very, very wrong. But Tony Blair? It is simply an appalling thought.

Why would anyone want a war criminal as president?

Horrifyingly, it appears that Blair may well be able to get a majority of EU member governments prepared to support him. That is despite his record as Bush’s poodle in launching illegal war, as one of the chief architects of the banking bubble economic disaster, and as the Middle East Peace Envoy who held the ring for Israel’s murderous assaults on Lebanon and Gaza.

I’m in two minds about the EU. It could be good, but at the moment the unaccountability and the bureaucracy, well, it seems like it is being run for the commissioners and the MEPs benefit, not the citizens of the EU.

In typical EU fashion, even the term is a bit ambigous: Permanent President.
Do they mean ‘for life’? Would they do that? What other meaning could the EU mean? The presidency at the moment is on a 6 month rotating basis, with the national leaders taking up the role. The occupant of the new style post of president would be full-time, rather than part-time, but still not permanent. Surely?

Either way, for the EU to have Blair as an unelected permanent El Presidente would lose what little credibility it has. And that isn’t a lot.

D-Notice…

From the Scotsman:

SCRAPPING plans for a national identity card scheme would cost £40 million, Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, said yesterday.

In an attack on the Conservatives, who have pledged to abolish the scheme, Ms Smith said doing so would “not free up a large fund of money to spend on other priorities”.

Is it me or or Labour resorting to blackmail in an attempt to enforce their ID card plans? In any event, it’s still a bit less than the billions they plan to waste of the bloody things.

Too expensive to scrap? Contracts haven’t been awarded yet, so unless the government are paying people to ask for jobs.

Rest assured though, the government always tries to get value for money…

[Jacqui Smith] She told MPs two contracts would be awarded next month,

adding: “As is normal, these contracts have been written to protect the public purse.

As is normal? Er, What about passports, the NHS Database, and Private Finance Initiatives in general?