Sim-O

You may be aware that I’ve been asking Nadine Dorries a question via Twitter about whether she has dontated her MP’s salary for the period she was in the I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here! jungle, as she promised she would.

I’ve been asking this question for sometime now, a couple of months. If you click the link, you’ll see that I’ve been perfectly reasonable and polite, no abuse, no swearing, just a reasonably worded question.

when I was getting the tweets together for this I realised Nadine had blocked me. I don’t know when as I don’t use Twitters web interface very often, but I do know that I wasn’t blocked when I started asking.

Dorries has seen the question and instead of engaging in anyway whatsoever, not even a ‘sod off’, she’s chosen to block me and ignore a valid question about her taxpayer funded salary, her integrity and whether she is as good as her word.

So, another approach is needed. I iwould write a letter or email to her, but as I’m not one of her constiuents, she is under no obligation to reply. Dorries will immediately bin and correspondence I have with her. Good or bad.

What I need is a little help.

I need someone who Dorries represents in Parliament to ask her directly whether she has kept her word and donated 12 days worth of her parliamentary salary to charity. Hopefully finding out how much and to which charities, but that bit is even more unlikely as the charities (i think) will be under no obligation to verify.

Anyone fancy writing a polite letter to their MP for me?

Why the buggery can’t the Independent Police Complaints Commission force officers who witness a fatal shooting by a colleague to be interviewed?

The in this country the state doesn’t officially kill people, not even after a trial. If the police, who are part of the state apparatus, kill someone there needs to be a proper investigation, to ensure that the death resulting from their actions was unavoidable to prevent even greater loss of life.

The police will, unfortunately inevitably, now and again kill people. It comes with the territory of dealing will the nasty, desperate and sometimes unhinged elements of our society.

Letting officers that witness a death caused by a colleague only having to submission a written statement is not good enough for a proper investigation.

An interview of a police witness is needed to clear up ambiguities, contradictions or even just to clarify a statement that is written particularly clearly.

This is needed to ensure the state, via the people it authorizes to use firearms on its behalf, uses its monopoly on force responsibility properly and at a minimum.

There is no excuse not to.

The Home Office has declined to comment on this issue because of the investigation into the death of Mark Duggan during the rioting last year.

This is a weak excuse as this issue isn’t just about the case of Mark Duggan. This investigation may have highlighted the problem and brought it some welcome publicity, but the problem is about officers not having to account for themselves in general, not in specific cases.

This needs to change to show the state takes its responsibility of arming people seriously and for accountability of the armed officers themselves.

Two more people have resigned from the drugs advisory council in solidarity for Professor Nutt…

Two members of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs resigned todayin protest at Alan Johnson’s treatment of Professor David Nutt. Another member told the Guardian that the experts were “planning collective action” against Johnson, adding: “Everybody is devastated. We’re all considering our positions.”

Nutt said today that there was “no future” for the council in its present form and it is thought the group’s members may use a meeting next Monday to announce a mass resignation.

I would suggest that it needs to be swung on it’s head and it is not the councils’ present form that is at fault, but the governments attitude to it’s advice.

When the evidence is there for all to see that Nutt knew what he was talking about and some jumped up twat that wouldn’t know his arse from his elbow says ‘No, you’re wrong’ because the evidence conflicts with policy, then we’re all a little bit fucked, really.

What you make of it if Alan Johnson had made these decisions?

– Alan Johnson bans antibiotics saying ‘we must instead trust to the graces of Saint Dymphna and not confuse scientific advice with policy.’

– Alan Johnson says prospective female MPs are to be vetted with trial by drowning. ‘We must not confuse scientific advice with policy,’ he says.

– Alan Johnson announces the introduction of daily human sacrifices to ensure sun comes up. ‘We must not anger the Fire Gods or confuse scientific advice with policy,’ he says.

– Alan Johnson says he is to have Galileo exhumed so he can sack him because his scientific advice does not reflect policy.

Because that is what he has done. It is all well and good having a policy on something, but when the evidence shows something is not as bad, or as good, as was previously thought, then surely the only thing to do is modify that particular policy.

Lord Winston makes an obvious point…

I think that if governments appoint expert advice they shouldn’t dismiss it so lightly

Exactly. MPs’ deal with a huge range of subjects and can’t, and shouldn’t, be expected to know about everything. Alan Johnson is not an expert on the effects of drugs, just like David Cameron is not an expert on the problems of the working class. That is where the role of expert advisers come in, to tell politicians what is happening, so they can then figure out how to deal with it. It is one thing if the advice is a bit ambiguous, then fair enough, but in a case like this drugs one, where the expert says that alcohol is more dangerous than cannabis, where is the justification for not lowering classification of cannabis? There is none. Johnson was either a) indulging in his own prejudices or b) unable to deviate from policy that it makes a mockery of the whole fucking system.

It could be Alan indulging himself, but then the policy is the American led pointless ‘War on Drugs’, which for twenty years or so has achieved fuck all except divert funds and effort away from areas that would help.

Kevolution says that this episode…

…highlights a bigger issue, that of the state of our democracy. In all the big decisions, the government either tell us we don’t know enough and that if we knew what they did we would understand (but they can’t show us the evidence as it is too sensitive), or they ignore the evidence and just do what they want. They are no longer representing us, they are just setting forth their own agenda’s

And there’s the nub of it. They no longer represent us.

How do we fix this? I dunno except that it won’t be sorted out by a general election*.

*That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t bother to vote. If I lived in the right place I would vote for D-Notice

The Taxpayers Alliance…

The Gazette: Doctor is earning more than £380,000 a year

FACT!!1!!one!l!
Doctor fucking-is-earning a fucking fat wodge of dosh! That’s what ot says isn’t it?

It was revealed yesterday that a GP in the NHS North East Essex area, which covers Colchester and Tendring, earns £380,394 a year.

The Gazette has tried to contact every surgery in the area, but none that responded admitted the megabucks medic is based there.

It is understood the figure may be the total amount earned by a practice, which would be used to pay the GP’s salary and the costs of running the practice.

Who the fuck is this ‘Gazette’? There’s no external link to anything. Is it TPAs’ ‘in-house’ bullshit spewer?

Who revealed this mystrious Dr is on over a third of a millon bucks? Someone at the Primary Care Trust? A ‘source close to a Doctor’? A dustbin?

If the figure “may be the total amount earned by a practice”, then logic also dictates that the Doctor ‘may not have’ earned a squillion quid, hmm? Eh? Maybe that’s the reason no one owned up to knowing Dr Loadsamoney?

Oh and btw, how much does the TPA bring in? And where from? Why the shyness?

Guardian G20 live blog…

1.43pm:
More windows reported smashed at RBS, branch and masked people trying to get in. Chants of “Whose bank?” answered by “Our bank” and “We paid for this, rob the bank”.

I understand feelings run high and the adrenaline gets going, but what does fucking places over achieve? Not a lot. Apart from it can feel quite good, smashing stuff up.

And that chant? You’re going to rob yourselves then? Or you’re going to rob every other taxpayer, unless you take something equal to your share of RBS. Like a pen, or a pad of Post-It notes.

And take those fucking masks off. If your there for a noble reason and not for looting, general vandalism or because you just love fighting then show your face, your fucking cowards. Criminals, thugs and crooks wear masks.

Rhetorically Speaking…

There’s something about the lede of this story that makes me deeply proud to be British:

Members will this week be shown copies of thousands of receipts and other documents due to be published under the Freedom of Information Act. They will be invited to redact the documents, blacking out information they do not want to disclose.

Other countries have corruption. Other countries have censorship. But we, the British, have a free media which reports that – in the coming weeks – our elected officials will finally be forced to release details of their expenses after a lengthy legal battle, but not before those politicians have been invited to censor their own records.

Participation in politics is well, disappointing. People do not give a toss because they think there is no point. No ones going to listen to what they have to say or what they think.

There is a lot of truth in that. and here is just one example of that…

Emails sent by members of the public to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights were deleted by the committee without even being read. Two people who happened to have enabled tracking sent me the following two automated repllies they received:

Your message

To: Joint Committee On Human Rights
Subject: Craig Murray:
Sent: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 20:51:41 -0000

was deleted without being read on Fri, 13 Mar 2009 10:46:42 -0000

and

Your message

To: Joint Committee On Human Rights
Cc: craig murray
Subject: Torture evidence on 10 March
Sent: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 14:47:36 -0000

was deleted without being read on Fri, 13 Mar 2009 10:46:42 -0000

Note the identical time of deletion. Evidently people’s emails were not even deleted individually but selected as a group and deleted en masse.

This is a shame because there was no template and people made some very telling individual points. Plainly people put time and thought into attempting to participate actively in a key part of a supposedly democratic process. It is a disgrace that these emails were deleted unread. Is the UK really a democracy now?

Follow the link for some of the letters sent.

Just as I’m posting about MPs’ plans to exempt their expenses from the Freedom of Information Act, this comes through…

The Guardian:

Gordon Brown made a dramatic retreat from plans to exempt MPs’ expenses from the Freedom of Information Act.

The surprise announcement made during prime ministers questions follows the collapse overnight of a bipartisan agreement between Brown and David Cameron, the Tory leader, to back a parliamentary order exempting MPs’ expenses from the act. The move came after he was challenged by Tory backbencher Douglas Carswell over why he was in favour of keeping them secret.

Fucking good. It’s good that it’s been, how can I put it…? Ah, postponed. But it’s not a victory for Teh Good, because look at that. The two leaders had an agreement.

Brown told MPs: “We thought we had agreement on the Freedom of Information Act as part of this wider package,” he said. “Recently that support that we believed we had from the main opposition party was withdrawn. So on this particular matter, I believe all-party support is important and…

Translation: ‘We had a pact, but something upset them conservative buggers and I’m not gonna do anything silly unless it makes us all look shit.’

we will continue to consult on that matter.”

See? Postponed.

The PM said proposals for reforms of MPs’ expenses would provide “more transparency” than in most other parliaments around the world.

This is the bit that really flumoxes me. I’m not sure what the rest of the reforms are but surely, making expenses exempt from FoI enquiries does exactly the opposite. Shit, I was forgettin’. Enclosing something in quotes makes it the make the words mean the opposite.
Jesus, these politicians are “really clever”, aren’t they?

Cameron made a late decision to order his MPs to oppose the move after learning from Alan Duncan, the shadow leader of the Commons, that Labour MPs were being whipped to back it. But Cameron’s action in turn became the catalyst for Brown’s U-turn. It left Labour, despite the chance of winning a three line whip vote, in danger of being isolated and blamed for imposing secrecy on MPs’ expenses, which is very unpopular with the electorate.

That means that Cameron was fine with the obfuscation of their expenses as long as no-one is coersed into approving the law (or whatever the fuck it is). If people do something of their own free will, they’re less likely to break away, and in this situation that means leaks. Really. Fucking. Embaressing. Leaks.
And that fucker Brown? Yes, the move is unpopular. Wonder fucking why? It’s ok to impose secrecy and be unpopular as long as it’s not just Labour that are hated. Even more. As long as politicians as whole are reviled and hated, it doesn’t matter does it.

That’s enough it’s winding me up too much, I’m just starting to swear uncontrollably.
Cunts, the fucking lot of them.

Bring on the Revolution.

A heads-up from Justin on something MPs’ want to keep to themselves:

Unlock Democracy:

On Thursday, the Government sneaked out the draft of the innocuous sounding “Freedom of Information (Parliament) Order.” This “statutory instrument” (not an act), if passed, will

“…change the scope of the application of the [Freedom of Information] Act in relation to information held by the House of Commons and House of Lords regarding expenditure in respect of Members of both Houses. This includes information held by either House about expenses claimed by and allowances paid to Members. Such information is no longer within the scope of the Act.”

In short, they intend to exempt the expenses of MPs and Lords from the Freedom of Information Act and thereby close them to public scrutiny. This is to be passed almost a year to the day after the Derek Conway scandal erupted, when it emerged that the MP had been paying his sons as research staff while they were at university, despite not being able to demonstrate that they had actually done any work for him. If the Government gets away with this, scandals such as this will be allowed to continue and we will not be permitted to find out about them.

It is completely outrageous that the Government should seek to do this at all, let alone in such an underhand manner. The Government is planning to put us all on a national identity database, force us to carry identity cards, keep the DNA of millions of innocent people on a database and to read all our emails, phone and internet records regardless of whether we are supposed to have done anything wrong. Their argument is always “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” Why, then, is it one rule for us and another rule for politicians?

What’s more, when Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, one of his first acts was to publish the Governance of Britain Green Paper which asserted that “It is right that Parliament should be covered by the [Freedom of Information] Act.”

This proposal is going to be debated in the House of Commons this Thursday – we don’t have much time. For this reason I am strongly urging you to do the following as a matter of urgency:

• Write to your MP (use www.writetothem.com) and urge them “to sign the Early Day Motion “Freedom of Information (Parliament) Order 2009 (Jo Swinson MP)” – the text of this motion is below for your reference.
• Phone your MP’s office (the main switchboard is 020 7219 3000) and ask to talk to him or her to ask them to oppose this proposal.
• If you are on Facebook, join our group and invite all your friends to join – ESPECIALLY the ones not normally interested in politics.
• Forward this article to everyone you know either by email or any social bookmarking websites you use.

Please, please do this as soon as you can. We can defeat this proposal if we put pressure on MPs this week. In 2007, a group of backbench MPs attempted to get a similar proposal passed. We beat them then and we can beat them again.

With best wishes,

Peter Facey
Director, Unlock Democracy

TEXT OF EARLY DAY MOTION [EDM 492]

Freedom of Information (Parliament) Order 2009
Primary Sponsor: Jo Swinson (LD, East Dunbartonshire)

That this House notes with concern the provisions in the Freedom of Information (Parliament) Order 2009 to exempt remove the expenses of Members of Parliament and Peers from the scope of the Freedom of Information Act’; notes that this order will single out MPs and Peers in a special category as the only paid public officials who will note have to disclose full details of their expenses; notes with concern the regressive effect of this Order on Parliamentary transparency and the detrimental impact it will have on Parliament in the eyes of the public; calls on Ministers to block or repeal the Order in the interest of MPs’ and Peers’ accountability to members of the public.

Craig Murray has a new book out, The Catholic Orange-Men of Togo and other conflicts I have known.

This time though, he is self publishing, due to Schillings sending letters scaring publishers on behalf of people like Tim Spicer, a mercenery of the British in Iraq, who don’t like to have their questionable actions questioned, and don’t want to go to the courts when they are.

Anyway, the book is available for free (who says you never get anything for nothing , eh?), or in hard back, direct from Craig or from Amazon.

Ten Percent has a review and it’s fair to say, it’s good one, too.

Via