Israel -Gaza War Day 5: Politics.

Following what was a another relatively quiet day in Gaza the official death toll remained stubbornly frozen at 350 although local sources put it closer to 400 as the Israeli air force carried out a reduced number of raids. Hamas have continued to be able to fire rockets into Israel including one which landed in the town of Beersheba 46km inside Israel, the furthest that any Gazan rocket has reached. There have been no reports of any injuries or fatalities in any of the rocket attacks.

The main story of the day has been the Israeli rejection of a French call for a 48 hour ceasefire made during a meeting of EU Foreign ministers. Ostensibly this call was made to allow humanitarian relief to be delivered to Gaza, however in reality it was made because European governments, the UK included are having trouble keeping up with the pace of the conflict. You see far from being surprised by Israel's action European governments had one to two months of prior knowledge of Operation Cast Lead and rather then using that time to diffuse the conflict there were perfectly happy to allow it to continue having been sold on the idea that the could exploit the conflict to gather information on and possibly influence Israels upcoming election. Obviously it was a little naive of them to think that a race between a former spy, a former commando and a former head of the army to see who would lead a country where there are a lot of votes in dead Arabs was going to following the civilised traditions of western democracy. Now that Israel have rejected the ceasefire they have been able to flip the game and exploit the war to find new ways to cement support for Israel within European governments. Britain, always keen to show that they're never bullied by the bigger boys, have rolled straight over and put out this story which can be summarised by the keywords; BRIGHTON, AMBULANCE MEN, CRIMINAL CHARGES.

Diplomatic stupidity aside I think it will be very difficult to get Israel to agree to any ceasefire or non-homicidal resolution to the Gaza conflict for reason best illustrated by the Israel government statement that they will continue until there is no longer the capability for rockets to be launched into Israel. To put this in context you have to understand just what the Qassam rockets they're fighting are. Qassams are a very rudimentary weapon with a 3ft by 9inch tubular metal body often fashioned from street lamps and drainage pipes packed with a home made propellant charge which could be anything from gunpowder to weedkiller and an equally improvised explosive charge. They have no guidance system and are "aimed" by firing them off an angled ramp much like a bottle rocket. The technology behind them is so basic that they can be built and launched by pretty much anyone. This simplicity means that the only way Israel is going to prevent Qassams being launched is by removing the raw materials of which they've made. In short Israels current war is a war against metal and is probably more dumb the President Bushes war against the abstract noun.

Speaking of (still) President Bush the United States has pledged $85million of humanitarian aid to help Palestinian refugees. It is not yet clear if the US intends to exert it's considerable influence of Israel to make sure this aid is delivered to those Palestinians who desperately need it within Gaza or whether they just plan to pile it up on the Egyptian side of the border under a big neon sign reading; "Look you can have food just as soon as you cleanse the holy land of your dirty Arab feet."

Israel - Gaza War Day 4: Zimbabwe.

Despite Robert Mugabe's assurances Zimbabwe is still firmly in the grips of a Cholera outbreak. So far the death toll stands at 1,500 with 400 dying in the last ten days. While the country is preparing for another round of delicate power-sharing talks I'm not about to attempt to use this blunt diplomatic tool to try and solve all the problems but there are clearly failings on both sides. The MDC appear to be using the plight of human rights activists as a way to delay Tsvangarai taking up the post of Prime Minister and Mugabe is still trying to blame all the countries problems on a US/UK Imperialist plot to topple him from power. This is of course ridiculous but this propaganda is ever more difficult to challenge when viewed alongside Israels conduct in the Palestine.

As part of the 2000 Arab-Israeli peace process the Palestinians, at the request of Israel, held democratic elections to decide who would represent them. They chose Hamas over Fatah. Although this election was monitored extensively by international observers and found to be fairer then the average American election Israel decided that they simply didn't like the result and refused to recognise it. They responded first by carrying out military operations against the Palestinians before placing them under an economic blockade which banned all imports and exports and with-held tax revenues generated by earlier exports. Once the Palestinian economy had been brought to the brink of collapse the Israeli's told the Palestinians that they would lift sanctions if Hamas and Fatah formed a power-sharing government. Fatah and Hamas put their differences aside and formed a government of national unity but strangely Israel failed to lift the blockade.

Instead Shin Bet, the Israeli equivalent of MI5 stepped up their infiltration of Fatah offering cash payments and probably cases of Viagra to any party officials who were prepared to disrupt the unity government and ferment political divisions between Fatah and Hamas. This subversion of the democratic process came to fruition in June 2007 when Palestine descended into civil war. After a short conflict Hamas took full control of Gaza and Fatah went off to build palaces in the West Bank. As a reward for doing Israel's dirty work the blockade of the West Bank was relaxed slightly and Fatah were given the responsibility of with-holding tax revenues to Gaza where the blockade was tightened.

Understanding that they needed to be able to control Gaza's criminal elements one of Hamas' first acts on taking control was to bring in the Red Cross to help train a civilian police force capable of stopping disparate groups from firing rockets into Israel. For some reason this caused Israel to throw their toys out of the pram and they immediately started disrupting Red Cross aid convoys until the training of the police was stopped. Shortly afterwards they started demanding that Hamas called a ceasefire and did more to stop rockets being fired into Israel.

Today Gaza appears to have entered the eye of the hurricane with the number of air-strikes falling dramatically and the Israeli air force making a point of bombing the same targets twice. This is a sign that the Israeli offensive is on the wane or more likely a deliberate attempt to draw out Gaza's secondary infrastructure ahead of a second wave of attacks. Obviously the Israeli's have dropped another few tonnes of bombs and killed 10 people but by Gazan standards that's considered a good day because they hardly bother jump when the bombs go off anymore. Meanwhile in Israel somebody dropped a tea tray sending everybody scurrying off to their bomb shelters convinced the world was about to end. When they finally resurfaced a few rockets were fired into Israel but there have been no reports of any injuries or deaths.

Israel - Gaza War Day 3: Funerals.

For a third day Israel has continued it's bombardment of Gaza but it has been a comparatively quiet day providing the Gazan residents the opportunity to bury their 300 or so dead. The grimmest of these ceremony's was the funeral of five sisters who were killed when their home was crushed as the Mosque next door collapsed following an Israeli missile strike.

Diplomatically Israel has finally admitted that rather then being a spontaneous response to clear clear and present threat to their safety the current offensive is intended to be a full scale war and has been planned from as far back as June 2008 when Israel was trying to convince the world that it was taking peace negations with the Palestinians seriously and just after Hamas agreed their six month ceasefire. Israel has yet to explain why in those five months of planning they didn't see fit to notify UN Security Council or seek a resolution justifying the attacks. The UN Secretary General has condemned Israel's excessive use of force and called on both sides to call an immediate ceasefire.

Meanwhile a UN aid agency on the ground in Gaza has called for an investigation to discover why one of their compounds which teaches local people how to distribute humanitarian aid was one of the "Hamas security compounds" that the Israeli air force saw fit to attack on the first day of the conflict killing seven. They are keen to examine the circumstances that led up to the attack because it may well constitute a war crime.

Hamas and other Gazan militant groups have continued to fire home made Qassam and longer range military grade rockets into Israel killing three more today. This means that so far Israel's operation to protect it's citizens from rocket fire has succeeded in quadrupling the number of Israeli's killed by rocket fire in just four days. It was also announced that two Israelis were stabbed and killed in a shopping centre in Northern Israel but this has not been confirmed and as it was reported as I was heading off to a shopping centre I suspect I might be in a copyright dispute with the UK security services.

Israel - Gaza War Day 2: The Ethnic Cleansing Begins.

Israel has continued it's air-strikes against Gaza dropping around 15 tonnes of bombs in an area slightly smaller then Memphis knocking out "security facilities" including a Mosque and TV stations. So far some 300 people have been killed and more are expected to die as the bombing campaign continues and medical services, already overstretched by the Israeli blockade, become overwhelmed and begin to collapse.

Aside from the industrial scale slaughter the most worrying development of the last 24 hours has been the sight of hundreds of Gazan civilians fleeing the country across the border into Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. This mass movement of refugees leaving their own country to escape from large scale military bombardment is classic tactic of Ethnic Cleansing that has been used to devastating effect in places such as Bosnia, Kosovo and Sudan. Although heartbreaking to watch and even more painful to do the only way Egypt can respond to this Israeli tactic is to strengthen their borders and force the refugees to remain in Gaza. Unfortunately a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt prevents Egyptian troops from entering the Sinai peninsula so they will have a tough time preventing this exodus from Gaza.

Inside Israel there has been some rocket and mortar fire prompting air-raid sirens to wail throughout the country but there have been no reports of any injuries or deaths. 6,500 army reservists have been called up and there are reports of tank movements along the Gaza/Israel border increasing the likelihood that this aeriel barrage is just a precursor to a ground invasion. I suspect this second phase of Israeli operations will begin around 03:00 GMT on Thursday January 1st and will probably take the form of a two pronged attack designed to cut the country in half originating from the zones around the Erez crossing and South West of Netivot but that is just a guess. The Israeli welfare minister has issued a statement declaring that Israel will "Continue it's campaign until the border [between Israel and Gaza] is permanently changed." This makes me worry that we can only be a few years away from the day when Israel announces it needs to invade Egypt to prevent rocket fire from the Sinai peninsula.

So who had the Christmas holiday's in the Israel starts another war sweepstake?

Israel has today launched the first wave of a massive military offensive into the Gaza Strip. Israeli air force F-16 jets have carried out bombing raids on 20 targets across the densely populated region killing over 150 around 50 of whom are believed to be civilian bystanders. Although Israel are attempting to justify the attacks as necessary to prevent Qassam rocket fire the targets include civilian infrastructure such as local government offices and a graduation ceremony for Gazan police officers who have been working to prevent rocket fire from Gaza's desperate militant groups. Hamas, Gaza's ruling party, have ordered a military response and launched rockets into Israel killing one. Fatah, Hamas' main political rival, have publicly condemned the attacks but privately are suggesting that Hamas have brought it on themselves by respecting the results of the Palestinian elections which Fatah lost. All three of the leading candidates in Israel's upcoming general election have stated that they think it is time to invade Gaza to topple Hamas and presumably expand Israel's borders.

It has been reported that this military operation was planned as far back as the Jewish new year, Rosh Hashanah, at the start of October and the initial attack was meant to take place of the Christian festival of Christmas day but fog and cloud cover grounded the Israeli aircraft. If this is true then along with the long awaited delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza on St Stephen's day then it would appear that Israel is trying to manufacture international support for its latest nasty little war.

With most of the Western world taking December 25th off to celebrate Christmas by eating too much, arguing with their families and giving each other presents the Israeli air-strikes would have gone largely unnoticed. Then as people began to return to their televisions on the 26th (St Stephens/boxing day) they would have seen the Israeli's celebrating the birth of Christ by getting into the spirit of peace and goodwill by allowing a convoy of humanitarian aid into Gaza. Then with the traditional Muslim Friday prayers completed the world would have witnessed Hamas launching rockets into Israel not realising that it was a response to a particularly brutal Israeli attack so Israel would be able to turn round to western governments and say;

"You must support our war, look how these Islamists animals treat us! We show them nothing but goodwill and all they do is turn around and try to kill us!"

V for Vendetta is finally on British TV!

Sorry that I haven't posted in what seems like ages but this partly because I couldn't really be bothered and partly because there isn't really much to report. After all there is only so far you can stretch an anecdote about going to the council offices to hand in a form and the only contribution I can make on the Greek riots is a pitiful pun about the Greek police having no sense of humous. I will though take this opportunity to recommend that everybody in the UK takes the opportunity to watch a film called V for Vendetta on BBC2 at 10:20 tonight.

Based on a Thatcher era graphic novel this film tells the story of a near future Britain over-run by a totalitarian government that has suspended all democratic rights and press freedoms to protect it's citizens from the ever present threat of terrorism. Against the backdrop of this dystopia a masked anti-hero known only as V summons up the spirit of Guy Fawkes to spark a revolution and free Britain from it's tyranny. Obviously I love it as a vanity piece but I recommend everybody else watches it because although long it manages to deal with a dark and sometimes violent subject matter really well by mixing high tension with the comedy of Stephan Fry and dialogue like "What's the point of a revolution without dancing?!"

One of the key scenes of the film shows a group of protesters trying to march down Whitehall to Parliament square only to be met at the barricades by soldiers who open fire on them. As Whitehall is one of the most strategically important streets in the United Kingdom linking Trafalgar Square to Parliament Square not only providing access to the military barracks at Horseguard's Parade but to the Prime Minister official residence in Downing street the films producers thought filming this scene would cost them a fortune by making them hire hundreds of extras and build a replica set somewhere in the countryside. They were then quite surprised that not only did the Labour government give them the first ever permit to film on Whitehall the police also sent along some of their top officers to help secure the location and supervise the road closures. Even the army couldn't have been more helpful sending along serving members of the Queens Guard to act as extras and some of the top military brass to help give the army barricades a more realistic feel.

A cynic could think that the security services where using the whole thing as an opportunity to hold a massive training exercise.

Robert Mugabe has Arrested Cholera.

In a speech on Thursday Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe announced that he had arrested the countries cholera outbreak so there is no need for the Zimbabwean people or it's neighbours to worry about it anymore and there is certainly no reason for him to be removed from power. Presumably this means that as we speak Cholera is currently being beaten up at a police station just outside Harare.

However back in reality the consensus amongst aid agencies working in the country is that Zimbabwe's cholera outbreak is far from under control with another 200 reported deaths so far this week. The South African government has declared a national health emergency in the Limpopo Province which borders Zimbabwe where at least 8 people have died of the disease and hundreds of Zimbabweans have fled in the hope of receiving medical treatment. The World Health Organisation working with Zimbabwe's Ministry of Health and Child welfare have begun to respond to the crisis by setting up command and control structures throughout the affected regions. One of their first tasks will be to identify the strain(s) of Cholera involved and map how the outbreak spread. They have asked for US$6million to preform this task and get the outbreak under control.

Although this Cholera outbreak is a purely medical issue that must be addressed by properly trained and properly equipped medical professionals it highlights the deadlocked power sharing deal that has, in part, caused the collapse of Zimbabwe's health and sanitation infrastructure. The main sticking point between the two parties is the control of Zimbabwe's security services in the form of the intelligence service, the army and the police. Under the deal that is currently on the table Mugabe's Zanu would retain full control of the Intelligence Service and the army while control of the police is spilt 50:50 between Zanu and the MDC. This is of course completely unacceptable because in even the most civilised of democracies real power still comes down to which side has the most men at arms in the security services and Zimbabwe is far from a civilised democracy. I think that a much better and fairer deal would be for Zanu to retain control of the Intelligence Service while the MDC are given full control of the police. Control of the army would then be spilt between the two with the MDC member having the final say.

The Price of Failure.

To go along with it's economic crisis, political crisis and food shortages Zimbabwe is now in the grip of a health crisis with outbreaks of Cholera across the country. During the past week this has led to political and public figures including Condoleezza Rice, Raila Odinga, John Setamu and Archbishop Desmond Tutu to call for the overthrow of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe. British Prime minister Gordon Brown, on Saturday, added his voice to those calls and sadly couldn't resist taking the opportunity to have a metaphorical little dig. This is particularly unfortunate when you consider that the Mugabe regime stands accused of ignoring the rule of law and using sustained violence against it's own people to cling to power.

The most recent chapter of Zimbabwe's disastrous history began in March 2008 when the country held it's general election. With neither the ruling Zanu-PF or the opposition MDC winning the required 50% majority the election collapsed into chaos amid accusations of ballot rigging and voter intimidation. After all the interested parties had finished stomping their feet, beating thier chests and throwing around empty threats it was decided that Zimbabwe would continue in accordance with it's own Constitution and hold a presidential election run-off between Zanu's Robert Mugabe and the MDC's Morgan Tsvangirai. On the Sunday before that vote Mr Tsvangirai received news that made him lose faith in the process causing him to pull out leaving Mr Mugabe as the only candidate. Even though the result of the vote meant that Mr Mugabe was the properly elected President of Zimbabwe the violence that proceeded it meant that many people, myself included, weren't prepared to accept that result. In response the Southern African Development Committee brokered a power sharing deal that would see Mr Mugabe act as President and Mr Tsvangirai act as Prime Minister with cabinet positions being appointed to the MDC and Zanu-PF alternatively.

Since then the country has been paralysed with both sides failing to participate in the power-sharing process and appoint a new cabinet. This paralysis of the government alongside Zimbabwe's economic problems have meant that the countries water supply, sanitation and medical services have all but collapsed with raw sewage running in the streets and little safe drinking water creating the perfect conditions for the spread of Cholera a water borne disease that causes vomiting diarrhea and death. So far in Zimbabwe there have been around 600 deaths and 100,000 cases across multiple locations. Robert Mugabe has responded by calling a state of national emergency and appealing to the international community for help to treat the victims.

I think now is the time for all the separate nations and individual actors who make up the mythical international community to act. First by providing the medical resources needed to tackle the crisis free from agencies whose presence may delay the distribution of those resources. Then they need to exert real pressure on both Mugabe and Tsvangirai to make the power sharing deal work. If that cannot be achieved then western nation such as the US and the UK need to be prepared to deploy military force to remove the current power sharing government.

Ladies and Gentlemen Stage One has been completed.

Following Britain's multiple and varied acts of fraud, Anti-Social Behaviour and crimes against humanity I put them on a sort of twelve step rehabilitation program after the completion of which they may once again be considered members of a civilised society. I am proud to report that they have just completed the first stage of this program by finally paying out on my incapacity benefit claim. Of course they've failed to send out the correct paperwork or award the full figure I am entitled too under law and the figure they've arrived at falls far, far below the compromise figure but to see even a flicker of progress in what has previously been such a hopeless case can't help but fill me with joy. Besides my war chest has just grown.

All this means that my local Croydon council have now been granted permission to receive another benefit claim to bring my income up to that compromise figure. This claim will be a little unconventional but I suggest they authorise it with the minimum of fuss because I can submit a much more conventional one but that will incur out of pocket expenses that will triple the compromise figure. Personally I think this is a much fairer way to go about things because rather then drawing money out of the central DWP budget which will punish the sick and disabled it will draw money out of Croydon's local budget punishing an establishment that has continued to behave immorally and illegally despite numerous warnings. Of course it is now up to the people of Croydon to decide if they would like to take that punishment collectively through increased taxes and public services or whether it should be targeted against the guilty parties through cuts to individual salaries and pensions.

I'm sorry if this all sounds cold, calculating, vicious and violent but the people I'm dealing with have proved time and time again that they will not hesitate to deny medical treatment to the old and innocent, torture and murder babies for fun and offer plea bargains to paedophiles in return from drugging and kidnapping little girls so sadly they're so thick violence is the only language they understand.

I should really pay more attention to local politics.

In my local borough of Croydon there has been some dispute over plans to set up a so called Academy schools. During a particularly heated public meeting on the matter the councils head of education, Maria Gatland, was forced to resign because of an indiscretion in her past. So far so typical except for the fact that the indiscretion in question was that in the 1970's Ms Gatland was an active member of the Irish Republican Army. During her time with that terrorist organisation one of Ms Gatland's tasks was to travel to Europe in order to facilitate a major arms deal. This deal went very badly wrong with the local police seizing all the weapons and coming close to arresting the entire network. Shortly after this Ms Gatland fell out with the IRA who court martialled her and sentenced her to death. She then fled to the UK mainland where she wrote a book about her experiences before settling in Croydon where she joined the Conservative party and was allowed to rise to one of the most senior positions in the local council. Even by Croydon's standards that's quite bizarre but does reinforce my belief that if you allowed the UK security services to control the world it would look a lot like Croydon.

On the subject of terrorism I've taken a closer look at the Mumbai attacks and decided that it's entirely possible that the attacks were carried out by just ten men if those ten men were very lucky and it appears they have been very lucky. One of the first targets of the attacks was Mumbai's main police station where the head of the cities anti-terrorist command was killed. This decapitation of the police's command and control structure would have been enough to paralyse their response and allow the gunmen to regroup and move onto their secondary targets. I also think that the gunmen were all members of Lashkar-e-Toiba a Pakistani group acting independently of both Al Qeada and Pakistani intelligence services using equipment and training they had stockpiled throughout the groups lifetime. The attacks were probably carried in order to provoke a confrontation between India and Pakistan to relieve pressure on Al Qeada groups operating on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The idea that these Al Qeada groups needed assistance was probably an unintended consequence of intelligence operations within Pakistani civic society designed to get people to switch allegiances to a more pro-western ideology.

The main winners out of the attacks will probably be the USA who have gained leverage over Pakistan, Israel who have gained leverage over India and German arms manufacturer Heckler & Koch who will probably now win a contract to upgrade the armoury of India's security services. The main losers will probably be India which has suffered the attacks and had it's image of a safe country damaged. Pakistan who will be under pressure to make more concessions to the US and being the host country for a proxy war between two opposing ideologies rarely works out well for a country. Al Qeada who will no doubt feel the effects of increased US power in the region. Lashkar-e-Toiba who have depleted their resources and will now come in for increased attention for Pakistan and India's security efforts.

Continuing the theme of making light of human suffering the UK has recently been gripped by the story of two conjoined twins called Hope and Faith, wondering when they will be born, when they will be separated and if they will survive. On Tuesday surgery was preformed and sadly Hope did not survive. This means that the image of itself that the UK's projecting to the world is that Hope's dead and Faith's on life support!

You've got to love a bit of theatre

As part of their desperate efforts to cover the tracks of their epic fuck up certain elements at Channel 4 decided to commission a four part historical drama called The Devil's Whore. This series tells the supposedly true story of Lady Angelica Fanshawe who was the consort of many of the main actors in the English civil war a premise that allows the series to show the drama of many of the key events of that period in history as if somehow the problems of today are all the result of a war that ended 400 hundred years ago.

In the first episode shown on November 19th one of the keys scenes was the moment in 1641 when King Charles sent men at arms to the House of Commons to arrest 5 MP's who were supposedly threatening national security. At almost exactly the same time as this was shown the security services, looking for a way to prevent details of the Baby P report being leaked, decided to send anti-terrorism police to arrest an MP and search his Commons office on a charge of obtaining leaked information that was embarrassing to the governing Labour party. The speaker of the House of Commons, a long time Labour supporter, decided to break with tradition and let them. This turned today's State Opening of Parliament into bit of a tense affair with the Commons Sarjent at arms being heckled and the first business of the new Parliament being the speaker having to explain himself to the house.

I suppose you could try to dress this all up as a way to start a discussion of how the Monarch's popularity would be affected if she was actually seen to be doing things but all in all it seems like an awful lot of fuss just to protect one little lesbian.

Corrections on the Baby P Case.

Following the minister's press conference yesterday people have been appearing across the media claiming that they have read the Baby P case review. Some have even taken to waving a sheaf of papers around as if to illustrate the point. This is of course a lie. The papers they've been waving and the document they've read is the Executive Summary of the report rather then the report itself. Once you've got past the title page, the contents page and the glossary of this document it's only about 5 pages long and as the name suggests provides nothing more then a brief summary of the reports findings without providing any of the evidence that the authors used to reach their findings. It is the investigative equivalent of claiming you've read a newspaper because you've given the headlines a quick scan.

The second mistake I need to correct is my own. Yesterday I quoted the minister of saying that "[Sharon Shoesmith] would have her employment terminated.". This is of course incorrect because the minister actually used the much weaker phrase that "[Sharon Shoesmith] will be removed from her post." At the moment "removed from her post" means that Ms Shoesmith has been suspended on full pay. With the new temporary management team at Haringey only scheduled to be in place for the next twelve months there remains a strong possibility that Ms Shoesmith's punishment will amount to nothing more then a year long paid holiday before she is welcomed back to her post in January 2010.

With those clarifications made it is time for my weekly TV recommendation. This week it's The State Opening of Parliament on BBC 1 this Wednesday at 10:30AM. Although tediously factual this is an event that everybody should watch at least once in their lifetime. Tourists will be fascinated at the pomp and spectacle of the Queen riding along in a gold carriage and the Lords assembling in their ermine robes. British citizens should pay close attention too because in amongst all the quaint traditions there are many clear demonstrations of how British society functions. This years highlight will probably the moment when the impressively named Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod is sent down to the House of Commons to summon the MP's to the House of Lords. In expectation of his arrival it is the tradition for the speaker's staff to slam the door in his face forcing him to bang on the door and ask permission for an agent of the Crown to enter the House of Commons.

This peculiar little ceremony dates back to 1641 when King Charles sent his men to the House of Commons to arrest five Members of Parliament. The then speaker of the house refused them entry, the MP's escaped and the English Civil war began. Since that time it has been part of the British Constitution that no agent of the Crown may enter the House of Commons without the invitation of the Speaker of the House and his Sargent at Arms. Something which has suddenly become highly topical following the Current Speaker, Micheal Martin's (lab) decision last week to allow the police to arrest and search MP Damian Greene's (con) Commons office on accusations that he had been leaking information which was embarrassing to the government.

Resignations and Presevations

As expected the report into the Baby P case has just been released to the dozen or so Members of Parliament who have been deemed fit to read it. In the wake of the Damian Green arrest none of them will dare to discuss any of the details so we've all had to make do with the Children's Minister's press conference where he described the reports findings as "devastating" and "revealing a catalogue of failures" with out giving any details of what these failings are or who carried them out. The press conference was proceeded by the announcement of two symbolic resignations from Haringey council;

• George Meehan, the head of Haringey council. As the elected head of the council Mr Meehan has ultimate responsibility for all of the councils services, child protection included, but he has no hands-on involvement in the day to day activities and decision making of his staff. There is no evidence that he made or had any knowledge of the decisions that led up to Baby P's death. As an elected member of the council his resignation means that he will still be able to draw his salary as a councillor.
• Liz Santry, the council cabinet member for children and young people. Ms Santry is the nominal figurehead of children's services. This means that she had little or no knowledge of the events that led up to Baby P's death. She was however responsible for attempts to cover up the case and withhold evidence from the trial of Baby P's mother and step-father. Like Mr Meehan she is an elected member of Haringey council so in spite of her resignation she will still be allowed to sit on the council and draw a salary for doing so.

In order to appear to be getting tough with Haringey council the minister used his press conference to announce that he will be appointing a new management team to run children's services in Haringey. This team will stil be directly answerable to Haringey council but will also report to the Children's Minister on a monthly basis. The appointment of this new management team will bring about one high profile termination of employment;

• Sharon Shoesmith, Head of Children's Services. After declaring that she saw no reason for Haringey Council to apologise or punish any member of staff over Baby P's death Ms Shoesmith became the lightning rod for much of the public anger generated by the case. As operational head of the department she had full knowledge of the case and made some of the key decision's that resulted in baby P's death. I am not familiar with the exact details of Ms Shoesmith's contract of employment but for the minister to announce that "her employment will be terminated" rather then that she will simply be sacked for misconduct suggests that she will receive a severance payout and still be allowed to claim her generous public-sector pension.

While Sharon Shoesmith will make way for a new head of department there is no indication that her replacement will carry out any investigation into the conduct of other members of the department to see if the they too should lose their jobs.

In short all the minister had done is to make a symbolic sacrifice in order to diffuse public anger and safeguard the jobs of those who, through their actions, caused or allowed Baby P's case. It would appear that the only person who had hands-on care of Baby P who will actually face punishment is Dr Sabah Al Zayyat who has been suspended by the General Medical Council.

Baby P case review due tommorrow.

On August 3rd 2007 a child known only as Baby P was murdered in Haringey, London. Over the 17 months of his short life he was tortured and beaten by his mother mother and stepfather. At the time of his death Baby P had over 50 separate injuries including 8 broken ribs, severe bruising to his body and head. He had cuts to his eyes, lips and scalp. His ears had nearly been torn from his head. His fingernails had been torn from the nail beds, his spine had been broken, paralysing him from the waist down and he had been punched so hard in the face that it caused bruising to his neck so severe that it eventually choked him to death.

When the trial of the parents was completed and reporting restrictions on the case were finally lifted it emerged that Baby P had been on Haringey's child services "At risk register" since September 2006. This meant that for the 11 months in which the worst of the abuse had taken place Baby P's family were being visited on a weekly basis by social workers who noted that the child showed signs of multiple beatings and had been trained to lie, like a dog, on the floor of his filthy home whenever his stepfather clicked his fingers. Over this time social services twice tried to take Baby P in to protective care and the police twice tried to prosecute the mother for the abuse her son suffered. On both occasions these attempts were blocked by "Persons Unknown" within Haringey council. The last of these attempts was blocked just day's before Baby P's death. In response to this horrific failure of social services the children minister ordered an immediate review into the case.

This review is to be published tomorrow, December 1st but don't expect to be able to read it because it has been sealed, not just from members of the public but from the House of Commons itself. The only people who will be able to read it are members of the cabinet, select members of the opposition and civil servants in relevant government departments. Ostensibly this has been done to protect the identities of those involved in the case but this is of course nonsense because the names of many of those involved are already a matter of public record. We can name Baby P's social worker, Maria Ward. We can name the local head of child protection, Gillie Christou. We can name Sharon Shoesmith, the local head of child services and we can name Dr Sabah Al Zayyat, the doctor who failed to diagnose Baby P's broken ribs and back.

Hell if I wanted too I could even name Baby P's mother and step-father but I see no reason to keep them on a segregation wing. In fact the only person whose identify is left to be protected is that of the "Person Unknown" who ignored the advice of both the police and social services and ordered Baby P home to face his agonising death.

Normally this level of secrecy, where MP's are not even allowed to discuss the case using pseudonyms, is resevered for cases that involve members of the UK military on covert operations such as the SAS and the members of Military Intelligence that guide these operations. I can only assume that the Baby P case is being protected from even parliamentary oversight because the "Person Unknown" who overruled all those who were trying to protect Baby P did so while acting as an agent of the British Army. If this is the case then this person has forfeited all rights afforded to them by civilian law and must be punished under the military codes of practice. As no-one has reported seeing soliders marching through the corridors of Haringey town hall we can assume that this individual was not wearing appropriate military uniform at the time the offence was committed. This makes them a non-uniformed combatant and the UK has already made it clear what happens to non-uniformed combatants. They are shipped off to Guantanamo Bay where they are detained and tortured indefinitely.

With such a clear precedent of what is "appropriate punishment" I hope the minister understands that the individual involved cannot be considered as "held to account" until they have been stripped of their position, stripped of their pension and stripped of all assets the acquired with their salaries.

Well that'll teach me for trying to be clever.

Today the Chancellor of the UK Exchequer announced his pre-budget report in which he explained how his government intends to deal with the current recession. I'd prepared a long and comprehensive post complete with diagrams to explain what he done and why he's done with the idea that I would post up my analysis pretty much as soon as he'd finished his speech. Unfortunately I'd forgotten to install the correct image manipulation software on to my new PC and I can't really be bothered to do that tonight.

In the mean time though I will say that he has done pretty much exactly what everyone expected him to do. Use a lot of money the UK doesn't have to provide a stimulus package in the hope of providing the economy with enough of a bump in 2010 so the Labour party have a chance of winning the general election. He's done this in two main ways;

1. Cutting VAT by 2.5%. The hope is that this will boost high street sales enough to protect retail sector jobs and allow voters to buy enough consumer crap to bring back the feelgood factor by 2010.


2. £3bn in public spending to protect jobs in the construction and engineering industries.

In order to ally fears that government borrowing has gone horrifically out of control he's also announced that there will be a increase in National Insurance and a new 45% income tax band for people earning over £150,000. Both of these taxes have been deferred until 2011, after the next general election, which plays the Conservatives opposition into quite a difficult political position because at the next election because with money already spent they can either campaign on the platform of cutting taxes and bankrupting the nation or they can try and find a political advantage by agreeing exactly with Labour's economic policies.

So in summary politically it's been a very clever budget from the government but economically it's incredibly optimistic to say the least.

Watch as the Baby P case gets kicked into the long grass.

With a petition calling for all those involved in the Baby P case to sacked now attracting over half a million signatures Parliament has been forced to change it's tactics and try harder to cover the tracks of those involved.

For those of you still unfamiliar with the case Baby P was and infant who over the course of his short life was constantly beaten and tortured by his mother and step-father under the approving gaze of Haringey council's social services department. Haringey is a north London borough which probably most famous as the location of the infamous Finsbury Park Mosque where radical cleric Abu Hamza preached his extreme version of Islam and the massive MI5 surveillance operation that went along with it.

With Haringey council again becoming involved in yet another high profile scandal National Government appears to be unsure how to deal with the situation. Initially when the Baby P case went to trial they saw an opportunity for a jolly jape where the details of the horrific crime could be used to score points off political opponents and stimulate a wider discussion on social care. Then when it became clear that things weren't going to go according to their plan they changed their minds and the Minister for Children, under some pressure, called for a two week investigation into the case which would allow everybody to get the anger out of their system while Haringey council issues some empty apologises and everybody could carry on much the same as before without anyone being held accountable or anything actually changing.

Today the government has again changed it's mind with the minister announcing that he is going to pre-empt the findings of the investigation not due to report until December 1st and hold an investigation to be chaired by Lord Layman. The last time Lord Layman held an investigation into the death of a child under the care of Social Services it was into the death of Victoria Climbie in the London Borough of Haringey. This process took two years to complete and concluded that no individual should be held responsible for their but it did make 108 separate recommendations for improvement. According to their last inspection Haringey council have already implemented every one of those recommendations.

I think a lengthy public inquiry is very much the wrong approach for the government to take because Baby P's mother and step-father have already been tried and convicted for the criminal offence of causing or allowing his death. I can see no good reason that prevents every member of Haringey council who have played a part in the case, especially those who blocked attempts to have Baby P taken into care, being criminally investigated and tried for that same offence.

On a completely unrelated note the Disasters Emergency Committee have chosen today to launch their appeal to help all the children who have been beaten and tortured in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This nasty war has been going on for around 12 years now and has it's roots in the Rwandan genocide of 1994 which itself has it's roots in the cold war. The severity of the situation there and in other African nations means that I cannot in good conscience tell people not to donate to this appeal but I personally cannot support it because I have serious doubts over the integrity of two of the charities involved. Besides if Britain is serious about ending the suffering of children and preventing crimes against humanity it should perhaps get it's own house in order.

I've had the decoraters in.

Some of the more observant amongst you may have noticed that the background has changed from brilliant white to a sort of pale blue. There's no great political reason for this it's just of got one of those new LCD monitors which makes all the colours brighter and sharper. So bright in fact that it was making my eyes hurt while proof-reading. I tried a range of colours including various shades of yellow, green and pink before I settled on the blue because it seemed to be the least headache inducing. Of course the new background does make the text, the banners and the headers look a bit crap so there may be some more tweaking and fine tuning if I can be bothered.

In other inconsequential news the curse of St Valentine means that over the last couple of days I've seen my birthday, an aunts birthday and my father's birthday. Due to everybodies diary commitments and me being more then a little underwhelmed by the whole business it was planned to have a very small celebration next week. Sadly things didn't quite happen that way so I've been forced to pretend I'm massively enjoying myself and have to look forward to going through it all again next week. To make matter worse my dad's got a massive cold he's decided to treat by taking a cocktail of drugs making him even more detached from reality then usual. This has caused conversations along the lines of;

Q."Are we going to go shopping today?"

A."I've just washed the floor."

The big story of the day is that as all of last week's stories were coming to the public attention the Saudis decided to forgo the protection of the US Navy and sail one of their oil tankers through pirate infested waters off the coast of Somalia. Funnily enough the $100million of oil caught the pirates attention and they seized the ship causing statements like "Pirates hijack worlds largest tanker!" and "British Crew on hijacked ship safe!". All this shouldn't come as much of a surprise after the Saudis are certainly stakeholders in this whole Al-Qeda/ war on terror/Iraq/Afghanistan business but sadly it does mean MI6 are going to have to go and play with the big boys again. The story does warrant a special mention of this guy who way back in the 1990's noticed that there was a correlation between a decrease in the number of pirates and an increase in global temperature. Now with global temperatures falling and incidents of piracy increasing I think it's time he received a massive research grant because he's clearly light years ahead of his time.

Remember how I said the crimes of the Baby P case would all be forgotten after a two week news cycle.

Well the governments spin doctors have been out in force and that news cycle has begun in earnest. Firstly two reports were released about the quality of Social Care within the United Kingdom. One argued that to punish Haringey's child protection team would mean that more children would be put into care rather then be murdered in their homes as if somehow that is a bad thing. The second report argued that social service departments couldn't possibly be expected to do their job properly because what with the lavish salaries it's just far too expensive for them to go to court to get the orders necessary to take abused children away from their abusive parents. Both of these carefully prepared reports have been released in order to re-frame the debate over the Baby P case away from identifying those members of Haringey council who are fault and holding them to account and into a much wider debate over the provision of social care. This allows the government to blame the problem on "the system" while completely ignoring the fact that the faults of "the system" are nothing more then the faults of the people working in that system.

Next have come the sob stories and what heart wrenching sob stories they have been. First up the daughter of Sharon Shoesmith appeared on BBC Radio 4 to tell us how worried she was that the public anger over the case would mean that her mother would be made a scapegoat and sacked to appease the baying mob. I should re-assure her that I don't think anyone wants to see a token sacking come out of this case. Instead they want to see a full root and branch investigation into the case looking at everyone involved in the from the minister down to the lowest social worker who visited Baby P. If any of those people, Ms Shoesmith included, are found to have been at fault either through their action or inaction then they are immediately sacked and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

Then 60 headteachers signed a letter in support of Ms Shoesmith saying that she shouldn't be investigated over the case and calling her and exceptional civil servant and the most effective champion of children and young people in the borough. I haven't read the full letter myself because for a group of people so keen to publicly show their support for Ms Shoesmith the headteachers seem to have made it very difficult to get hold of a copy. This is a shame because if they feel that they can justify Baby P's death I'd be fascinated to hear what that justification is. Until then I can only assume that they are so keen to support Ms Shoesmith because they've got their snouts in the same trough. After all if we start making Haringey's social services accountable for their failures we're going to have to do the same thing to Harigney's education services and that might not go so well for some of those headteachers.

Today the Labour Party showed just how far they are prepared to go to protect their highly paid cronies when the former minister for women Harriet Harman appeared on a daytime TV show aimed at housewives called Loose Women. Although she didn't refer to the Baby P case directly she did go to great pains to point out that we should all be prepared to make exceptions for working mother's who can't their jobs properly because it's really tough being a woman so they shouldn't be expected to be as good as their male counterparts and it's all men's fault anyway.

From what I've seen from the governments response to the case so far I think that the hope is that by the time the case review is finally published on December 1st all the anger over the case will have burnt itself with everyone becoming exhausted by the story and it will all be forgotten so Haringey social services won't have to punish anyone and can carry on in much the same way they did before.

By way of a side note on Saturday the court lifted and injunction allowing Baby P's photograph to be published. To me this was very shocking because Baby P is the absolute spitting image of a child I used to regularly babysit. This makes the story especially harrowing for anyone who knows me or knows that child's family. This is something that would have been made worse if they were working in the media and getting day-by-day accounts of the story as the trial happened but were unable to publish any details of it.

I am going to assume the striking similarities are nothing more then a massive co-incidence because if it's not then it means that Baby P was allowed to be tortured and killed on purpose.

Welcome to Britain Where the Child Abuse Never Stops.

The baby P case is still firmly in the news and I hope that nobody is treating it as some sort of political game because that child was really tortured for 17 months before finally being beaten to death and Haringey council did, at the very least, sit back and allow it to happen. To me that is a serious enough story in it's own right without having to confuse it with other issues. The latest detail to come out of this story is that a Social Worker in Haringey Councils Child Protection team repeatedly warned that the council was not following correct child protection procedures and they were creating a environment where child abuse was being tolerated. After her concerns were ignored by her superiors at the council she contacted four (all Labour) MP's including then Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt six months before the death of Baby P. Haringey Council has since responded by taking out an injunction against this whistleblower to prevent her giving further testimony.

I'm terribly sorry for rocking the boat but this revelation along with the two previous failed attempts to prosecute the mother for assault and Haringey's council's attempts to avoid giving evidence at her trial make the councils actions in the case look more and more like attempting to pervert the course of justice or even possibly conspiracy to commit assault. For that reason they should stop thinking in terms of sackings and suspensions a be prepared to be punished to the full extent of the law. Ms Shoesmith should at the very least be prepared to repay every penny of her £110,000 a year salary because that money has clearly been obtained under false pretences.

Wednesday also saw the latest instalment of Britain's almost bi-weekly horror story when yet another mother with mental health problems killed her two children one of whom was only three months old. I know I probably shouldn't go into too much detail about this incident but I will say that I don't think anyone is particularly to blame in the same way as they are in the Baby P case. The problem with situations like that is they can go from very healthy, where it is good for the mother to be caring for her children and good for the children to be cared for by their mother, to tragedy very, very quickly if the right triggers are in place. In hindsight if the local authorities had known the Baby P case was going to break the day before Channel 4 decided to run their documentary about Witch Children in Africa then an intervention could have been made. Sadly though both of those events were beyond their control so there was nothing more anybody could really have done other then to rely on the police to do the difficult job of picking up the pieces.

Completing the hat-trick of horrific stories about children the Shannon Matthews case has come to court in a timely fashion. You may remember this saga because it ran concurrently with Prince Harry's deployment to Afghanistan. It all started when Dewsberry schoolgirl Shannon Matthews failed to return home from school. This caused a £3.2million police hunt which generated pages and pages of newspaper coverage and hours and hours of news footage as Shannon's friends and neighbours posed in specially printed T-Shirts behind specially printed banners. After 24 days Shannon was found alive and well locked inside the house of her step-uncle Micheal Donovan. It later came to light that not only was Shannon's mother and Shane McGowan lookalike , Karen Matthews fully aware of her daughters whereabouts throughout the course of the search Shannon's step-father, Craig Meehan also happened to be in possession of a massive collection of Child Pornography.

Now the case has finally come to court the Crown Prosecution Service is seriously trying to argue that the whole thing was a massive conspiracy dreamt up by Matthews and Donovan in order to claim a £50,000 reward offered by The Sun group of newspapers who you may remember from the "Max Mosley Nazi Sex Orgy!" libel trial. This is of course absolute fucking nonsense because the newspaper group only offered the £50,000 reward three weeks after the girl had gone missing. As this means the Crown Prosecution appear to attempting to scupper their own case I can only assume they are either going for a mistrial or a not guilty verdict so the accused can either walk free or bring the case back to court on appeal. This should come as no surprise after all when Craig Meehan was found guilty of possessing the most serious category of child pornography he was allowed to walk free from court and go straight back to his council house.

Nobody Does Criminal Incompetence Quite Like Local Government

On Febuary 25th 2000, in the London Borough of Haringey Victoria Climbie was murdered by her great aunt. After enduring months of beatings and starvation Victoria finally died of hypothermia weighing just 3st 10lbs. She was 8 years old.

At the time the case caused understandable outrage not just because of the shock that one human being could behave in such an unspeakable way to another human being let alone a child but because at the time of her death Victoria was under the care of Haringey councils child protection team. The great aunt and her partner were jailed for life for their part in causing the death and a public inquiry was started chaired by Lord Layman. When the inquiry finally published it's findings it identified 12 separate and individual occasions when Haringey council could and should have intervened to save Victoria's life and blamed her death on an "Unexcusable failure of the [child protection] system". In spite of the fact a child had been allowed to die of starvation and the cold in what is supposedly a first world country and the fact that at least on member of Haringey's child protection team, Sylvia Henry, was found to have lied to the inquiry no member of staff was prosecuted or lost their job over the incident. The inquiry did however make 108 separate recommendations to improve child protection services. According to Haringey councils most recent internal review all 108 of these recommendations had been fully implemented.

I was then with something like surprise that it was announced on Tuesday that Haringey council's child protection team had once again featured in the prosecution of a couple who had murdered a child known only as Baby P. The details of this case are not well known because as one reporter put it "The reporting restrictions in this case are so tight we can't even tell you what those restrictions are." What we do know however is that Baby P was a 17 month old infant who was beaten to death after suffering intense physical abuse at the hands of his mother and her National Front supporting boyfriend throughout his tragically short life. At the time of his death Baby P had 50 separate injuries including; A broken spine, 8 broken ribs, Cuts and Bruises all over his head and body, All his fingernails had been torn from their nail beds. He had deep cuts to his lips, eyes and face. His ears had nearly been torn from his head. The injury that caused his death was a punch to the face delivered with such force it caused bruising to the neck that eventually suffocated him

Baby P first came to the attention of Haringey Social Services in September 2006 when his mother complained to a GP that he was "a headbanger" who "bruised easily". Over the next two years the child's home was visited by numerous social workers health visitors including Sylvia Henry. The child was hospitalised for his injuries on several occasions and the mother was twice arrested was assault but on both occasions charges were drop and the child was returned to her. In the course of their visits members of the Child Protection team noted that the house was very unhygienic with stale urine on the floor and several dogs including a Rottweiler allowed to run wild. They also noted that the child had a number of obvious cuts and bruises, was paralysed from a broken back and had been trained, like a dog, to lie on the floor when his step-father clicked his fingers. Despite this Haringey council saw no reason to intervene.

It has since bee revealed that Harigney Council, in an attempt to cover up their own failures, had repeatedly tried to avoid giving evidence in the murder trial. Initially they attempted to obtain a Public Interest Immunity (PII) certificate which are normally only granted in cases of national security such as a terrorism trial. It was only after the Judge in the case issued a court order did they finally release the evidence that was used to convict Baby P's mother and step-father. As the verdict was announced the head of Haringey Council, Sharon Shoesmith a woman who is clearly rarely troubled by reality issued a statement saying that there was no evidence of Council wrong doing in the case, none of her staff would be punished and she saw no reason to apologise over the incident.

Understandably this display of outstanding arrogance caused outrage and led to one of the angriest exchanges I've ever seen in Parliament. Conservative leader David Cameron called for a external investigation into the incident and that any council employee who is found to have failed in their job is sacked and criminally prosecuted. Initially the government tried to side step the issue by accusing the Conservatives of playing party politics but have since relented ordering a review which is due to report in two weeks time. I can only presume that they've done this in the hope that by the time the review reports and find Haringey council to be excellent at their job the news cycle will have moved on and the issue can be quietly be swept under the carpet and the council can continue to be paid £100million a year for a job they clearly cannot do.

Oh Crap someone's gone and emboldend the government again!

In an unparalleled act of political calculation the UK decided to hold a parliamentary by-election last week in the shadow of the US presidential election and yes I forgot all about it too.

With an unsurprisingly low voter turn out the incumbent Labour party saw a 5% swing in favour of the Scottish Nationalist Party but still managed to win and retain the seat. This makes it the first parliamentary seat that the Labour party have won since the General Election in 2005 and breaks a long run of defeats including the humiliating loss of the Glasgow East seat. Party supporters have heralded the result as evidence of the unfortunately named "Brown Bounce" and taken it as a vindication of their highly successful economic policy.

Have won a fight no-one else bothered to turn up too the government appear to have let it all go to their heads and started having policy ideas again. Chief and probably most dangerous amongst them is the announcement that they plan to cut taxes in order to deal with the recession. Being as populist as it is stupid the announcement appears to have forced the Conservatives to drop their much more sensible policy on the issue and join in some sort of tax-cutting beauty contest where all parties compete to see who can come up with the largest and most damaging tax cut.

The other classic they've come out with today is the announcement that they are planning to ban the sale of discounted alcohol from supermarkets and off-licenses and to end drinks promotions such as happy hours and Buy One Get One Free offers in pubs. This long standing policy idea has been rehashed to cut down on drunken violence and the gloriously vague notion of "Anti-Social Behaviour". As this is the policy of a very stupid government it is of course a very stupid idea but not one totally without merit. For example I think we should find out exactly what this governments been drinking over these last few years and ban it immediately because it's clearly having a corrosive and damaging effect on society.

Do you ever get that feeling that something really, really important is happening but you just can't remember what it is?

Barack Obama, President of the United States!!!

Well President designate but let's not quibble over details when we're about to see the first black president of any country outside of Africa and the first US president in nearly twenty years to not be named either Bush or Clinton.

To rain on the parade for just a moment and remind the sisterhood that certain hierarchies exist for a reason I think it's important to look at what the world could have won. Ideally I would have liked to see Mugabe step down as Zimbabwean president back in March. Then as the world moved to repair that broken country one of the themes of the election campaign could have been economic globalisation and international development rather then childish squabbles about Sarah Palin's clothes. When the economic crash hit and the price of gold shot up Zimbabwe would have been able to hit the ground running and with America's economy on the rocks there would have been no other choice then to elect the strong, stable, hard as nails hands of John McCain.

During his first term as president McCain would have continued the progressive, free trade policies of his four predecessors. Love them or hate them these policies have been in place for almost thirty years and are now part of our reality. Countries like Argentina, Vietnam and Kenya have all implemented their Economic Structural Adjustment Plans and opened up their markets to More Economically Developed Countries. For America, the worlds largest consumer economy, to move to a protectionist stance now would be to prove every anti-WTO protester right, make every nightmare a reality and make life incredibly difficult for heavily indebted second world countries like Great Britain. Plus the last time a Democratic president was elected during a global economic downturn with a mandate to put up trade barriers and "share the wealth" through increased public spending it was FDR during the Great Depression. That ended up going so badly that some have said America needed the Second World War to sort out that economic disaster.

McCain would also have used his first term to make sure that US troops stayed in Iraq until the job is done which is going to be 2011 at the earliest. Like free trade this war might not be popular but the sad fact of the matter is that the US did invade Iraq in 2003 so to pull out too soon would at best be an unforgivable insult to the Iraqi people. At worst it could totally destabilise the entire middle east region pitting Iranian back Shia factions against Sunni and Kurdish factions. This could well lead to Turkey and Europe being dragged into the mess, Israel being wiped off the map and America being attacked by Islamic terrorists again and again.

All the while McCain was leaning into the yoke of office and doing what needed to be done Obama would have had to take a loss back to his own party and face down rabid Hillary supporters. Spending the next four years having to fight for the nomination without the wind of invincibility at his back would certainly season Obama up a bit and allow them Democrats to finally bury the dead ideologies of Feminism and Marxism which have been holding the American left back for so long. Then if he was good enough and won the nomination again Obama would face up to a distinctly elderly McCain in 2012 and more then likely win a presidency facing far fewer problems then it is facing now. Plus it would mean that the inevitable 2014 Arab-Israeli peace talks would then happen in the middle of Obama's two terms rather then at the end. This could only make it more likely that those talks would be the success they've never quite managed.

None of that though is meant to spoil the celebrations because hey, America's just elected it's first black president with the largest voter turn out in history and that President looks like he could shape up into something very, very good so how can today be anything else but a great day!

I've decided that I've been posting too much this week

and if the recent pissing of pants and stamping of feet is anything to go by I've also used Internet search engines one to many times. Who would've thought merely reading the Nuremberg Code would have offended so many people?! So I will be leaving the blogging alone for a few days at least but before I do I can't help but thinking back to that random meeting I had on Tuesday.

You see it was back in October last year that Croydon Council had the bright idea of giving a job to someone who had a little or no qualification to actually do that job. In fact the only qualification they seemed to have was that they were a lesbian and that they had lived in Brighton. Neither of these things are particularly relevant to the provision of mental health care but are the sort of things you might think would have me finding common ground with that person. As it happens that didn't quite work out as planned and the whole incident could be considered could actually be described as counter-productive.

Now in October of this year Croydon Council appear to have had the same bright idea of awarding a vaguely defined job to someone with vaguely defined qualifications with whom you would think I shared some common ground. This visceral experience of deja-vu can only lead me to conclude two things;

• Croydon Council clearly has problems learning from it's mistakes through higher functioning processes. This would suggest a need to take a more Pavlovian approach to matters.

• Croydon Council clearly has money to waste.

Before I go I should take the time to reassure the state that I am fully aware of how highly unlikely it will be that the state will convict itself for crimes against humanity. After all with such clear sentencing guidelines nobody has ever pleaded guilty to that offence and every rapist, murderer and paedophile has that little facet of their consciousness that convinces them that they alone are justified in what they are doing and are committing no crime. It is that small delusion that allows them to commit the most unspeakable acts.

Britian's Losing Talent.

Yesterday Russell Brand walked out on the BBC, David Tennent turned his back on Doctor Who and everybody at the National Television Awards looked more then a little bit jumpy. I can't say I really blame them what with the government desperately trying to shift the blame for the governments mistakes on to the media which is more then a little unfair. After all it wasn't the media that decreed a woman should have no other role then that of a wife and mother.

It wasn't the media that spent millions of pounds making sure that diktat would be carried out.

It wasn't the media who put secured phone lines into to peoples homes.

It wasn't the media that intercepted mail and blocked telephone calls.

And it most certainly wasn't the media that placed the media under ceaseless attack over the last two years.

No, those crimes belong to the state alone and can rest nowhere else then at the states feet. Fair play some in the media are rightly feeling a little bit bruised having been suckered into playing along with the scam but there's no real shame in that. All spooks do is lie, manipulate, exploit and destroy. It is, if you like, their art form and it's not as if the media have been able to look back over the last 90-something years and see every generation get suckered in by the same old lines only to be torn apart in the same old way.


Going back to the assisted suicide story from yesterday can I just say that I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. The law is quite clear on the matter and has been quite clear since 1961. No-one can give their consent to be killed by another be that person a doctor, a friend, a lover, a husband or a wife. Now if we can just get certain sections of society to accept that yes the law does apply to them too we might be able to move on as a society.

See choking to death IS official British Policy.

http://news.aol.co.uk/woman-loses-assisted-suicide-fight/article/20081028230325168503376

On a completely unrelated note last night I experienced yet another amazing coincidence as I went out to get something to eat. As I was standing there in the shop who happened to walk in but a guy I used to go to college with. It turns out that although he no longer lives in the area he's just been given a job with the local Croydon Council and wants to be my bestest, bestest friend.

In light of that event I should clarify something I said yesterday. When I said I wish they'd come down and talk I meant they should send somebody who has the power if not the authority to resolve the problems they themselves have created. For the time being this limits them too;

1. The doctor from the medical assessment centre who is going to certify my income support claim. The department of work and pensions may still feel that it is going to take them three to six months to complete that process but quite frankly it's only their own time they're wasting.
2. The firm of solicitors who have been charged with making sure my credit history is given a clean bill of health in spite of any misguided action any previous landlords may have undertaken.
3. The manager of Enterprise House who will be welcoming me back with open arms and be apologising for his previous errors of judgement.

Oh and there's something of a war going on in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I wonder if I'll be able to take an interest in it without the British Government taking it as an endorsement of it or it's policies. On a more local note the series of Spooks they filmed over the summer has finally limped onto our screens and it is already lying to you by claiming that it's really difficult to track someones movements on the London Underground network. I think this means that one of the main themes of the series will be an attempt to convince us all that the De Menezes shooting was not in any way shape or form a failure of the UK security services. On the plus side though Jo didn't die after all which means I've just won a bet.

I got another letter from my community mental health team today.

It appears they want me to fill in a questionnaire to help them re-shape mental health care with then UK. To me that sounds like a very noble undertaking and one I'd be very interested in getting involved in. The problem is before I do I want to see a single, simple condition fulfilled and the government would also like to see one condition fulfilled.

My condition is quite simple in that I, rather then a civil servant, want to be paid for the contribution I make. The governments condition is rather more complicated. They, to use their words, want me to disarm myself. In short they want me to stop this shockingly violent task of blogging.

They want me to stop this because blogging provides the mechanism I use to challenge the decisions the government makes based on the information I provide them with. Without this mechanism they would be free to play little tricks such as using any drugs I may or may not be on to minimise the effects of combat stress allowing them to extend the tours of duty of soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, something which allows the generals and their political leaders to mitigate the effects that their poor strategy and leadership is having on those troops. They can also take my comments that people with mental health problems need structured recovery programs and use it as a justification for a welfare reform bill that mandates the mentally ill must get jobs. This is a policy that spits in the face of the principles of independent living and will have a dramatic and negative effect on the lives of thousands of people with mental health problems.

Why the government is having so much trouble meeting my condition is a total mystery to me but I'm sure the civil service will be able to provide an answer. Why I can't meet the governments condition is quite simple. If you provide the government with information without having any mechanism to control how they use that information you are not furthering society or helping your community escape the ghetto. You are simply allowing the entity that is holding society back to feast on your bones making the government stronger for the next time they want to inflict another war, another tax or another anti-terror bill on to your society.

I haven't decided if I'm going to return that questionnaire but as the people who sent it can't seem to grasp the basic principle of an either/or logic gate there seems little point trying to explain the finer points of the human condition to them.

On a related note I spoke to the Department of Work and Pensions today and they've confirmed that they have received my paper work and it is all in order. However they do seem to think that it will take them another three to six months to process that paper work. If I was a suspiciously minded person I would think that somebody was deliberately delaying the process in the hope that I would keep my nose clean while I'm waiting. Of course that tactic hasn't worked yet and I again did have to give them warning that the situation will not change until such a time as they change the situation. I just wish they'd be more open to discuss the matter because then they'd realise they don't have half the problems they think they do.

Is the BBC News feeling a little unwell?

Normally I quite like the BBC news because they adhere to very high standards of fairness and accuracy. Of course their role as Official State Broadcaster means that they have to give airtime to some hideous propaganda pieces but compared to their normal output these are so clunky and obvious they're easy to spot and ignore.

Recently though, with the economic downturn, I can't help but noticing their standards have slipped slightly. A case in point would be their coverage of Wednesday Prime Minister Questions. Gordon Brown used this weeks regular Q&A session to finally accept that the UK is heading into recession.

The BBC's flagship 10 o'clock News covered this by showing a short video tape of the speech in which Gordon Brown said;

"Having taken action on the banking system, we must now take action on the global financial recession. This is likely to cause recession in America, France, Italy, Germany, Japan and - because no country can insulate itself from it - Britain too."

The video tape was then cut short using a very sharp edit, allowing the program to cut back to the studio. Being in desperate need of a life I actually watched the entire speech live and saw that as Brown uttered the sentence "Because no country can insulate itself from it - Britain too" his fellow MP's responded by simply laughing in his face.

Another interesting aspect of the BBC's economic coverage is that rather then been focusing on the UK economy they seem to be focusing on other countries economic problems. On Wednesday they talked at length about falls on the Russian stock market. Last night they announced with something close to glee that the economic downturn had also hit developing countries such as Argentina, Pakistan and South Korea as if somehow the fact that Argentinians were poorer would somehow make Britain's poverty more bearable. The centrepiece of the report was that the value of South Korea's currency had dropped by a staggering 30% over the last three months. Of course what the report failed to mention was that the UK's currency had also lost about 25% of it's value.

It's almost as if the economic situation has got so bad that the BBC have given up reporting the news and have just started trying to convince the country as a whole that everything going to be OK and there's no need to worry. It's stating to remind me of the day the Iraq war began and my city responded by collectively going on strike, shutting down road and rail links, trashing the town hall and suddenly finding itself able to send the police into retreat by simply coughing in their general direction. Of course the big story on the local news that night was that a local animal rescue shelter had just seen the birth of a litter of fluffy puppies.

Bloody hell I knew the economic downturn was going to hit Britain particularly hard but I didn't think it was bad enough to shake the state to it's very foundations.