Wednesday 30 April 2008

Yay it's time to do your democratic duty again!

That's right it's local election time so today (Thursday) people up and down the UK will be going to the polls to select their local councillors. Due to falling house prices, rising gas and petrol prices, rising food prices and the debacle of the 10p tax rate the ruling Labour party are expected to get an absolute spanking.

Now much as I love the current government I can only see defeating them at the local elections as something of a futile protest because local councillors are without doubt the lowest rung of the political food chain with little or no influence on national policy. In fact because of the way the party political system works they probably have even less influence on Gordon Brown they you do.

What they do have though is a great deal of power over all the niggly little things that you hardly notice but actually make quite a difference to your everyday lives. For example they will decide how much you pay for your parking permit, they will decide how often your rubbish will be collected, they can decide how long your local library can stay open and they get to decide whether or not there's a zebra crossing outside your kids school. The other thing you have to remember about local councillors is that they are actually really accessible and easy to get hold of. For just one or two evenings a month you can actually get to know these people and influence the decisions they make.

For these reasons I think that when choosing who to vote for you need to forget all that tory this, labour that party political nonsense and just look at the candidates themselves and pick the individual who most reflects your point of view and is most likely to be able to get the job done.


Here in London we don't have to bother with local elections because we have the much vaunted "Race for London Mayor" which is apparently the most powerful, directly elected political position in the UK. I know that sounds elitist but that is the system we have to deal with. i will however be using the same principles to decide who to vote for as i would do if it was and ordinary council election.

For the post of London Mayor there are actually ten candidates but as I can only remember the names of four of them off the top of my head I think it's fair to say at this point that the other six are not going to win. The four main candidates are;

Boris Johnson(conservative) - Perhaps the best know of all the candidates Boris has enjoyed a very high profile by playing the fool on TV chat shows. This persona however did lead hims to describe all black voters as "flag waving picanies with watermelon smiles" and he was once forced to apologise to the entire population of Papua New Guinea after calling them all cannibals. However my brother, being another Welcome trust development program, has come up a bit soft in the head and subscribes to The Spectator magazine. This means I often got to read Boris's editorials when he ran the magazine and I can testify that behind that bumbling exterior there is a razor sharp and often vicious conservative mind.

Winston McKenzie (independent) - A former boxer who lives in my area and odes quite a bit of work with local charities. Although I don't know that much about his policies his former profession and his proximity to me means that I really, really want him to do well.

Ken Livingstone (labour) - Of the three main candidate Livingstone is probably the one I know the least about which is odd because he's actually been doing the job for the last eight years. aside form a rather unpleasant and obvious hate campaign the Evening Standard have been running against him he hasn't done much wrong with his plans to develop east London, his work on the cross rail network and his attempts to bring tube maintainers back under London Underground control from metronet. He also introduced the Congestion Charge which although not broadly popular has been so successful that other major world cities are int he process of copying it. Also I that despite being the Labour candidate Gordon Brown fucking hates him.

Brian Paddick (liberal democrat) - This is the candidate I probably have the most respect for because I've actually worked under his command when I was doing security for the 2001 Ashes 5th test. In the run up to the match everyone thought they were going to be in for an easy ride because although it was an international event cricket fans are rarely that rowdy and it also fell in that blissfully peaceful period right after the IRA declared a ceasefire and just before Sept 11th happened. Four days before the start of the match thought the Real IRA started a mainland bombing campaign and everyone suddenly realised that at least 5 of the VIP guest were on the IRA's assination list and no-one was prepared for the type of security operation that would now be required. This led to rather a panicked and chaotic start to the event and while it was a very large operation involving MI5, Special Branch, the Anti-terrorist Branch, regular police, the army and several private security agencies Paddick was the man in charge meaning that if the shit fell it was on his head that it would land. Needless to say nothing went wrong and Paddick handled that challenges well and I have alot of respect for him for that.
He has been attacked by certain quarters for lacking the ideological vision of other candidates but to be perfectly honest that is exactly what I want from a Mayor, someone who will listen to the people telling him what they want done and then goes out and does it with the minimum of fuss.

For those reason i will probably be voting for Paddick for mayor and the greens for the London assembly but that said Boris Johnson has promised to hold a referendum on the smoking ban if elected and quite frankly we can overcome many failures of government but we must be allowed to smoke in pubs.

Sunday 27 April 2008

So apparently I'm dead.

I know it's news to me too but it's been on the telly so it must be true. While I have to say I'm a little disconcerted by the announcement of my premature passing it does of course provide a wonderful opportunity for a wake. Personally I would go for a long procession of mourners all clad in black while the police, in sombre dress stop the traffic, doves are released and the chimes of Ben Ben cease as the flags above Buckingham Palace and government buildings across our fair capital fly at half mast before everyone breaks into song and celebration with music, drinking and dancing girls, there will definitely have to be dancing girls!

Of course that might just be my ego talking and nothing at all will happen but I don't want to hear a thing about it because quite frankly it's my wake so I should be surprised really. In the mean time though let's talk about another example of death, destruction and horror. Zimbabwe.

As I'm sure you all know by now Zimbabwe is the southern African country that is facing economic collapse and held it's disputed election over five weeks ago. In the time we've been awaiting the results there have been much shenanigans on all sides with the western nations pushing rumours of a presidential resignation and the opposition claiming an early victory. The incumbent president, Robert Mugabe, has responded to all this by ordering a recount of the parliamentary vote. On Saturday April 26th the result of this recount was announced and it confirmed the initial result by giving the opposition MDC's a two seat parliamentary majority. This small concession can only be considered as an attempt by Mugabe to give the faintest hint of legitimacy to an election process which so far has been in danger of descending into total farce by the way Mugabe's been behaving. For example on Friday April 25th Zimbabwe's police raided the headquarters of the MDC arresting and beating 200 of the parties senior activists. Mugabe's suspiciously young "war veterans" militia have seized farmland belonging to MDC supporters. The country is awash with stories of the torture of thousands of MDC voters and the number of killings is up around twenty to thirty. This is made even more impressive by the fact that the election results themselves have yet to be released and the killing proper has not yet started.

Britain's Prime Minister has responded with much finger waving a calls for an international arms embargo on Zimbabwe which is something of a mute point because after the mess Britain made in trying to stop the legal arms shipment from China demonstrates that they've got bugger all chance of stopping illegal, smuggled imports. This rather unfortunate comparison does serve to highlight the differences between lawyers and warriors because lawyers will sit around neurousing over every detail and over analyzing every word will warriors will step up to the plate and do what is required of them. So you may disagree with what Mugabe is doing you sadly have to respect the way he's getting it done.

The fact that Mugabe appears to be in full control of the situation in Zimbabwe is disappointing because while it would be untimely and time consuming to examine why the current situation is so bad let's just say that the worst case scenario for the country and region is very bad indeed. Of course if things get much worse we'll send in the Royal Navy to sort it all out because as we all know Britannia Rules the ........
er shit no........
hang on a minute.........
I can definitely see a little bit of a problem with that plan.

Saturday 26 April 2008

God I'm posting alot these days

If I keep this up I'm going to have to start taking this whole blogging thing seriously.

Anyway a bit of an update, yesterday there was a lovely story doing the rounds stating that apparently Britain's jails are so soft that prisoners don't want to escape. This is evidenced by the story from the Prisoner Officers Association that in a category C prison somewhere in the north of England a drug dealer broke into the prison by putting a ladder up against the perimeter wall and simply climbing over. Apparently he left the ladder there giving a number of the prisoners the chance to escape thus proving that no prisoner anywhere in Britain's prison system would ever want to escape.

Initially this story made me think of two things firstly that it's very worrying that after years of underfunding and piss poor government the level of malaise amongst prisoner officers is so great that rather then attempting to punish or attempting to rehabilitate prisoners the warders would much prefer it if they just lay down quietly in thier cells smacked off their tits.

Secondly, call me an optimist but doesn't the fact that convicts would rather see out their sentences rather then breaking another law by escaping suggest that possibly the prison systems not that bad.

Apparently though neither of these points are relevant because the whole story was just a metaphor for little old me. This of course can't possibly be true because I was brought up to believe that in order to be sent to prison in the UK you first you had to commit a crime. Then you had to be arrested for that crime before being charged and convicted in a court in front of a jury with adequate legal representation.

Personally I don't remember doing any of that and you would think it would be the sort of thing I remember so I couldn't possibly be in prison. Of course I have been involved in some rather interesting things such as the 2005 Lebanon war where I blogged and reported on events as they happened and then acted to stop people running riot in the street instead encouraging them to take their complaints to the ballot box and influence their government through democratic means.

You could of course consider encouraging people to vote against the government to be a criminal offence but then that means it's a funny fucking democracy we're living in.

Also yesterday I received a letter from the DWP, the government department that likes to say "fuck off and die!"and it appears once again they have sent me the wrong letter. Rather then sending me the letter that said;

"We're very sorry that we didn't use a mail carrier that ensured your renewal form arrived in time this is completely our fault. We will of course be restarting your claim immediately backdated to the point where we stopped payment. Also as way of an apology we would like to offer you a speed boat and three week holiday in the Bahamas. Once again we apologise for the mistake and promise to never darken your door with our particular brand of incompetence ever again."

They, completely by mistake I can only assume they've sent me the standard letter saying;

"We have received your new claim blah, blah, we are currently processing it blah blah during this eight week period we might contact certain people like your doctor to establish your entitlement blah blah"

Obviously this is all some sort of clerical fuck up because as part of my existing claim I am covered by the mother of all sick notes which declares me permanently unfit for work so if they want to stop payments the onus is actually on them to prove I am fit to work rather then for me to prove I am unfit. I suspect the issue will not be resolved anytime soon because I think we've already established that little things like the law go straight out of the window when a civil servant has got an axe to grind.

Also yesterday I went to see the community mental health team and since my last visit they introduced a contract of behaviour with their patients as part of this fabulous restructuring plan. This contract is a piece of paper which all patients must sign if they want treatment. The main points of this contract include;

  • Promising to take prescribed medication.
  • Promising not to take illegal drugs
  • Not to disagree with staff
  • Not to smoke
  • To refrain form drinking coffee
  • To be in bed by 10pm.

I for have to see that I am very reassured to know that Britain's mental health service is now so badly in the shit they've actually given up on any hope of actually making patients better and have just settled for keeping them quiet and under control. The consoltation itself was next to useless because it's already been established that they need be far more then I need them so there's not actually anything they can do for me and we've already established I'm not that stupid. On the plus side they did give me a booklet on anger management which I haven't read but I do feel it should have been entitled;

Sorry the countries so shit. Please don't angry or we might have to change it!

Today has been pretty empty aside from a small discussion with my father because it would appear he's been taking gardening tips from the 2nd Panzer division again and cut the grass twice in ten days leading to questions such as "so what colour is grass meant to be then?" while staring out over a lawn of savaged and churned up roots.

Wednesday 23 April 2008

Jesus christ it is like dealing with a special needs class.

For a small moment last night the porn was turned back on and this morning that missing claim renewal pack turned up and I thought that for a short moment finally the brits have finally figured out that a slashing contest is going to do them far more harm then it is going to do me because as they've already made perfectly clear I'm already dead.

However now it turns out that no I must be punished further because apparently by posting about Anna and Proxara yesterday I have somehow violated a state secret which is surprising because everything I said has been sitting in my easy to hack hotmail account for the last year meaning that far from being in the dark about what was planned for Anna all the foreign intelligences have known exactly what's been going on and have torn her and the network to shreds.

In fact it's quite fucking humiliating that anybody thought she was in any way shape or form a future asset because if they tried running her against anyone else in the business they would have torn her to shreds and raped her before giving her a biscuit to take back to her handlers so they can celebrate their wonderful victory. In fact you could say the really violent thing to do would be to let her handlers run on thinking they could win.

Also you have to understand this is totally my fault because obviously it was my idea to bring such a "strong assest" into this game and incidentally having seen it play I have to take umbrage with the "talented" label.

Tuesday 22 April 2008

Seeing as the porns been swtiched off I've decided to focus more on football.

As we are coming to the end of the current seasons, both domestic and European lots of teams are beginning to state that results cannot be judged until the end of the season.

The way that there has been flurry of these statements after yesterdays pile of wank would suggest that these have some reference to the alleged contest between myself and Anna. I can't understand how this would be true though because from a purely espionage and soft science perspective Anna's season ended almost two years ago when she blew her cover.

It was also over when she again blew her cover ahead of the German fishing trip which resulted in quite high costs to her team both in terms of lost intelligence and the expense of shutting down Bristol airport.

Her season also ended when she behaved in such a manner that she caused me to behave in such a manner that I didn't want to become her bestest, bestest friend and tell her all my secrets.

Her season also ended when she caused me to pull out of the Enterprise House project.

Her season also ended when such got into such a paranoid panic that somebody was out to get her she again caused the government to act in order to protect her.

In fact you could say that Anna is very lucky that this is a football metaphor rather then a cricket metaphor because having been caught out so blatantly on so many occasions she would have long ago have been expected to head for the pavilion without the need for an umpires decision.

Luckily for Anna though none of that is apparently relevant because the "season" we are discussing is the Proxara Biotechnology research project she is currently involved on.
This £2.8million research project is involved in research into lung cancer and is headed by two professors, neither of whom are called Anna or indeed even female. As it is a five year research project it is not scheduled to report until 2012, two years after the next general election and eight months before London hosts the Olympics although I'm sure if required this date can be extended.

Although I'm angry I can't actually say I'm that bothered because we already know that this research will not result in either a marketable anti-cancer drug nor will it result in any cancer treatment protocols. The absolute best this project will produce is a set of data which will require another couple of million pounds in grant money and another five to ten years in development.

I how ever know that my soft science hypothesis is good and will still be good in five years, ten years or twenty years so I have no real problem sitting around waiting for Anna to get her act together. I am however at little pissed off because if I'd been allowed to start two years ago my work would actually be finished by now.

The only two problems I have really with the contest is that I am aware that neither I, Anna or her partner are getting any younger and it is a well established fact the ability to learn decreases with age.

Also I apparently not be getting paid at any point during this elongated waiting period because it has already been made quite clear that I'm not going to be permitted to work. This however is not much of a problem because the benefit claim I've just submitted is a four year claim so if approved it will be coming to an end at the same time as Anna's research.

Obviously though this cannot be allowed to happen because if it does I'll still be around when Anna has to publish some indication of her success or failure. When that happens we'll be forced to sit down and consider the results of Anna's "season" alongside the £2.8million spent on it, the £32,000 spent on me, the £72,000 spent on her partner, the £80,000 spent on Sadie and all the pop stars we had to fly over for exclusive gigs. Also we will have to consider it alongside all the other work that we have been unable to do while we've been waiting and the work that our global competitors have been doing in that time.

Once we've considered all that we will have to ask the fundamental question of; "Was it worth it" and we all know the answer to that question will not reflect well on the project manager especially as I have no objection to Anna being allowed to continue her research at Bristol university and in fact I think her partner will actually benefit from be placed into an environment that is more dynamic then a city which needs to pay marshals to help Britstolians complete the complex task of catching a taxi.

It would appear though ladies an gentleman that I am facing the old Alex Ferguson stopwatch, a phenomenon first noticed in the late 1990's when teams visiting Old Trafford would discover that stoppage time at the end of the match would last exactly as long as it took Manchester United to score the winning goal.

Interestingly at the time this was happening the Man U brand was being expanded across the globe with cheap merchandise to act as a soft power beacon for Britain but we wouldn't want a long and tedious discussion about Brown's views on multilaterialism and China to spoil a neat soundbite.

Monday 21 April 2008

My Computer appears to have become allergic to pornography.

It's strange everytime I attempt to log onto a pornographic website, download a pornographic image or video the whole system freezes and shuts down. Obviously I can still download non-pornographic images or videos so it's clearly not a memory problem because lets be honest I don't think a picture of a woman wearing no clothes is going to take up more memory then a picture of a woman wearing clothes . In fact it's almost as if there is some sort of nannying shield blocking out the bits of the Internet the government doesn't want me to see.

Normally you would expect me to avoid a conversation about pornography but you have to understand in a post-feminist society it is actually quite an important talking point which also has a bearing on the legislation and investigative efforts against child pornography and paedophilia and quite frankly this porn block is almost provoking me to go into a long discussion on the issue so you could assume that's why this Internet block exists. That couldn't possibly be true though because we've already established I'm not that stupid.

Of course the other reason for the block could be the belief that if I am cut off from pornography I will build up into such a rage of sexual desire I will instantly fall head over heels in love with the first woman who flashes tits and teeth at me have sex with her, have babies and forget about all this pointing out that the government's a bit shit business.

This impending orgasm of course will be so powerful that it will in an instant destroy all knowledge that foreign intelligence agencies have of Anna, freeing her up for future spying missions. Also it will be so powerful it makes Anna's relationship suddenly sustainable meaning that we no longer need to pump literally thousands of pounds of taxpayers cash into her and her partners respective bank accounts every month in the hope of keeping the dream alive. It will also mean that despite her total lack of qualification in either mental health care, retail or employment brokerage Sadie will suddenly become capable of doing her job at enterprise house and it will be so powerful it will force Mugabe from his presidential palace in a big gooey mess of revenge.

To be honest if the this is the mythical jam of tommorrow you're hoping to save the day then I think you're being a little optomistic but then again I am myself being rather optimistic to believe that it could be the British State who are controlling my computer.

Obviously being that my computer is a British computer connected to a British internet connection sitting in the house of a former agent of the British state you would think those highly trained and well paid bods at GCHQ would be right on top of things. Sadly however in the hacking wars which are becoming ever more important in global espionage efforts the British Security services have found themselves to be rather lacking with their efforts only really being secondary to the efforts of the family (obviously), the USA, China, Canada, Iran, Israel, Russia and quite a few other countries I can't really be bothered to name. So in order to conclude it's British hackers doing this I had to ask myself one simple question;

"Who is so stupid as to believe that masturbation is dependent on Internet pornography?"

And for that question there is only one answer; Britain, where hope springs eternal yet the stream of success runs a little dry.

In slightly more important issues British Labour MPs today had a crisis meeting with Prime minister Gordon Brown to discuss the cutting of the 10% income tax rate. You'll be glad to know that after many hours wrestling with the concisences the MP won and will now not revolt against the plan because obviously your lives are important to them, just not at the expense of their own careers.

Also there has been lots of talk about someone who has be convicted with benefit fraud, a story which obviously scared the shit out of me but does make me want to point out that if any pinstripe thinks I have committed any criminal offence I suggest they jolly well get on with prosecuting me for it because they are rather getting the reputation for being all talk and no action.

Coming back to our delightful anna though some people seem to have been given the impression that we can't be mean to her because they she will refuse to work for the government in whatever reduced role she has left. This of course is an utter falsehood because since signing the official secrets act anna's future career path has been distilled into one simple choice; either she works for the British government or she goes to prison. A bit of a harsh position for her to be put into I'll agree but as she seemed happy enough for me and all the G8 activist groups she was prepared to infiltrate to go to prison I think it's fair.

Sunday 20 April 2008

Seeing as Zimbabwe appears to be over save for the killing

We may as well avert our gaze because we don't want all that suffering to spoil the buzz of how successful we are and turn our attention to domestic politics. Where there has been some quite interesting debate.

Firstly we have had the announcement that former Deputy Prime Minister and well known lard arse, John Prescott has in fact been suffering from a long time from Bulimia, a disease which causes sufferers to binge on vast amounts of food and then purge by making themselves sick. Given that the people who normally suffer from this condition tend to be stick thin and suffer the health problems associated with malnourishment I have to say that John Prescott is without doubt the fattest Bulimic I have ever seen. So fact in fact I think he's actually confusing the chronic, serious and often life threatening mental illness with the more gluttonous problem of simply eating and eating until you make yourself sick.

This apparent confusion does however shed some light on why the Labour government appears only to come up with the most idiotic and suicidal plans to reform mental health care and sickness benefits system.

The second major issue that is making headlines at the moment is the scrapping of the 10% rate of income tax. As you may remember this was announced in Gordon Browns last budget as prime minister where he attempted to dress it up as a 2% tax cut.

For those of you who are not familiar with the UK income tax system there are three tiers for the top earners this rate is set at around 40%, for the middle tier it is set at 20% and for the lowest tier, the poorest in society, it was set at 10%. However as of this month the lower band has been scrapped meaning that everyone will now pay either 20% or 40% and the lowest earners in society have seen their income tax increase by a staggering 100%.

Brown has attempted to justify this change by saying that it will simplify the tax system and generate an extra £7bn for the treasury. What he failed to mention though is that it will also squeeze people who are already suffering from food poverty and fuel poverty even harder while making people who earn around £50,000 (twice the national average) much better off.

He has also apparently failed to consider the idea that people like me who are currently receiving benefits and considering moving back into work will look at that and go; "Fucking hell, returning to work will in no way ever be of benefit to me so I just won't bother". Also the several million people who are currently working in low paid jobs doing things like working in the restaurant trade, cleaning hospitals and working in job centers will look at that and go "If I carry on working I'm going to have to choose between eating and heating my house, fuck that I'm going on benefits."

Of course Mr Brown in his wisdom has decided that will all be avoided by getting even tougher on benefit claimants making the people who work for the benefits agency even less popular and their job even more difficult so we will have to pay more to encourage people to do it. If you doubt this just bear in mind that Benefit Agency staff are already scheduled to go on strike on April 25th over pay and conditions.

The other main defence for this tax plan Browns government has offered is that the money saved will be used to fund an elaborate scheme of child tax credits so the only people who will be punished by this change are the feckless people who choose not to have children they cannot afford to raise.

The fact that the government seem to think that this is a good thing can only lead me to conclude that the real justification for this plan is that it will address Britians falling birth rate and help us solve the pensions crisis and breed soldiers for the ongoing war against Islam.

The idea that encouraging the poorest sections of society to have more children will solve the pension crisis is laughable because as experience shows these children will require more government spending on education, more government spending on health care with very little guarantee that when these children grow into adults they will be able to do the jobs available for them in the next 20 - 30 years raising the possibility of even more government spending on welfare programs.

I know that the idea of a war against Islam might sound deranged but I used to live someone who worked for Cabinet Office Briefing Room A, the infamous COBRA and they do sit around all day asking themselves questions like "What would we do if there was a major terrorist attack on London on the same day we were invaded by Martians and the USSR reformed and started nuclear war?" so while that dystopia might seem unlikely it would be remiss for the government not to plan for such and eventuality and quite frankly the way geopolitics are going at the moment it is looking more and more likely by the day.

The problem with that plan though is that warfare has changed. Gone are the days where long lines of conscripts would fix bayonets and charge on the enemy lines. Now we have guided bombs, nuclear weapons and asymmetric warfare there is little need for vast armies. Also the wars of the future will be fought against the backdrop of resource shortages. Under these circumstances you would want a small, intelligent and dynamic population rather then a huge bloated one which needs the government to tell them how to wipe their own arses. So even the most extreme justification for this tax cut I can come up still fails to make it look like a good idea.

Obviously having come out with such a shockingly bad idea many of Mr Browns MP'S are threatening a commons revolt over the issue. One of the Milibands has responded by warning them that squabbling in the ranks could endanger Labours chances at the upcoming local elections. Which aside from being a threat to obey or else is a statement of the blindingly obvious as it is something we've been aware of for a long time and explains why the pinstripes have been standing in ministers offices, "No there's nothing we can do about it" and "Don't worry they'll come round too to the idea soon sir." God anyone would think that the silly little graduate had never seen an episode of Yes Minister and quite frankly if this lot can't manage to run their own departments I'm beginning to wonder whehter it's such a good idea to let them try to run the country.


On a personal note I apparently have "won" which means I now have to rely on this same shower of shite to go off and preform a series of delicate and complex task which they have already demonstrated they do not understand and unwilling to follow my advice on so excuse while I sit back and feel that this "win" is in fact more of a loss.

Friday 18 April 2008

Clearly more powerful people then me feel it is time for the Zimbabwe autopsy

So here it is must I say this is going against my better judgement. (apologies if you've read this already but lord knows alot of people have so I might as well publish it)

I have to start by explaining that Zimbabwe has always been something of a bogey nation for me because believe it or not I was very nearly born there. Back in the early 1980's when both my sister and the country were in their infancy my dad, being a railwaymen, was offered a job in Zimbabwe to help upgrade their railway signalling system, an interesting offer when you consider that my dad was coming fresh of the back of helping to break the British railway unions.
As my sister was only about a year old this offer caused a big debate between my parents because on one hand they could accept and move to this hot, glamorous country where they would enjoy a well paid job and a high standard of living but on the other it would involve raising a young a hemisphere away from friends and family in a country which had just come out of a bloody civil war.

As these were events before my birth I can't really account for what happened but I get the impression that they'd pretty much decided to go for it when my mother discovered she was pregnant with yours truly (howdy!). This changed things and my mother put her foot down and decided that raising too toddlers in a foriegn country was a bit too much so my Dad took a job in Derby instead. When you think about it that was quite an odd decision because we didn't have any friends or family there either and at the time Derby was a die hard railway union town so you can imagine how popular my dad was there.

So if I was conceived a few months later I would probably have been born in Zimbabwe making me a fully fledged Zimbabwean citizen although Mugabe would have already revoked my citizenship but to talk to me about Zimbabwe is like asking what my life would be like if my life was totally different.

If that wasn't enough to make conversations about the country complicated enough in my household one of the aliases that the British Establishment uses to describe me is "Robert Mugabe" - not particularly charming but that's all part of the steady stream of abuse I've come to expect from them and let's be honest it's not as bad as some of the other things they call me such a rapist, paedophile and probably worst of all Heather McCartney.

Aside from giving me yet another reason to pretend Zimbabwe doesn't exist this label also served to give the real Robert Mugabe the slogan for his recent election campaign which was;

OUR LAND; OUR SOVEREIGN!

This meant that in the five months before the election the British Establishment's position to help unseat Mugabe was to actively campaign for him as part of their rather ferocious attack on me. This is an issue that has been of much discussion which for reasons of editorial coherence I will address later.

It was these five months of headlines along the lines of "British state attacks sovereign" which allowed Mugabe to produce such as strong showing at the recent election despite his countries apparent economic collapse.

This strong showing at the polls without any large scale fraud or voter intimidation produced a result that was so tight in the early days it was impossible to call one way or another with just 16,000 votes deciding the result.

This caused all the western intelligence agencies who were trying to rig the vote in Tsvangari's favour to panic and America, being America, decided to throw the kitchen sink at the problem and announce that Mugabe had conceded defeat and would be meeting the Tsvangari to discuss the transition of power. This is an old diplomatic trick which works because once the rumour has been started the subject, in this case Mugabe, is forced to confirm the rumour to be true and stand down or to deny the rumour which in this case would have put him in breach of electoral rules.

Mugabe being something of a shrewd operator took neither of these options and instead just ignored the rumour meaning that the MDC were left looking very silly the next day. At this point I can only assume panic had set in and they declared Tsvangari to have won the election.
This moved put them in clear breach of election rules and broke the back of the move to depose Mugabe.

It was at this point I became aware of what was going on and with Mugabe off the hook it became essential for the western diplomatic efforts to change tactics. Basically they then had two options.

1."Soft diplomacy" which was practiced by Mbeki the South African president. This involes being nice to Mugabe and gently talking him round to standing down.

2. "Hard diplomacy" which was practiced to a fault by Brown, the British Prime Minister. This involves threat, name calling, ultimatums and generally letting Mugabe know that if he didn't stand down he's be getting a slap.

In order to choose which strategy to go for first you need to consider the target and we know that Mugabe is an old warrior having being jailed by the British before going on to lead a guerrilla war against the Ian Smith regime. As a general rule you do not threaten old warriors because they do not scare.

We also know because of the Matabeland land massacre in 1982 and his response to the 2000 constitution defeat when Mugabe feels threatened he lashes out and Zimbabweans are beaten and killed, often in large numbers.

For these two reasons along with the fact you can always replace soft diplomacy with hard diplomacy but never the other way round if I was making the decision I would have gone with the soft option.

Britain however, whose position at the time could only be described as running with knives in the dark decided to go for hard diplomacy and go for it in big way issuing provocative statements against Mugabe, summoning the SADC in the hope of getting them to order Mugabe out of power and raising the issue in strong terms in front of the UN security council. All this bluster and thuggery crushed anyone else attempts at a more softly, softly approach and as they cranked up the rhetoric Mugabe started beating people - to date some 500 have been hospitalised and at least two have been murdered.

Now we are sitting in a situation where there can only be more bloodshed unless of course Mugabe does as he is perfectly legally entitled to do declares the MDC's pre-emption of the election result an act of treason, jails Tsvangari and holds an election run-off with only one name on the ballot.

To be honest the only people coming out of the whole state of affairs looking clever is Mbeki because he was right on the money from the start. It's just a shame that all the western pressure got the SA dockers union so wound up that they refused to unload that Chinese arms shipment because as everybody knows if the crates are on the ship they belong to the vendor, if they're on the docks they belong to the union. Now of course though all those lovely guns and some 800,000 rounds of ammunition are on their way to Angola which in case you didn't know used to have an AK-47 on their national flag.

Going back to the issue of Mr Mugabe's election slogan initially on April 2nd British Intelligence had no opinion on the issue but once they'd been given a few minutes to sit down and think about it they realised that a few pensions might be at risk and went straight into lie mode. Intially claiming that rather then being something Mugabe had picked up on himself it was in fact part of an elaborate plan to build Mugabe's confidence and ensure a smooth transition of power.

I then pointed out that in fact that was a stupid plan because;

1. My stated position as far back as September 2007 was that I would in no way shape or form assist them any further.

2. A plan that is dependent on my credibility is impossible to reconcile with a sustain, five month attack on my credibility.

3. When they rather helpfully stole my mail on Friday March 28th in order to prevent me receiving that benefit renewal form they also stole a magazine that would not only have let me know there was an election in Zimbabwe the next day it would also given me an detailed, accurate and impartial account of what exactly what was going on in that election.

Obviously because the first rule of British intelligence is to never own up when you've made a mistake their position then changed to that the were actually trying to slow down Mugabe's exit because they wanted more time to discuss the IMF Economic Structural Adjustment Plan. This is just nonsense because unless they are magically going to get the IMF to do business with Mugabe this is an issue that is best addressed after he has stood down.

So there you have it, British Intelligence, the gold standard! Excuse me while I don't ruch off to put my life in their hands.

Sunday 13 April 2008

And there was me thinking I was going to have a quiet, relaxing Saturday

And who could blame me because with my dad promising to be out of the house all day if I woke up late enough I could have for once woken up without first having to fight the urge to kill.

Sadly though I woke up too early and was soon thrust into the latest edition of the Keith suicide saga. While I may not have mentioned Keith by name before you will all known him because Keith is that acquaintance of mine who looked a bit like David Abraham of the Labour party funding scandal and dared to offer a friend of mine a job in his company. Obviously this grave challenge of authority could not go unpunished and shortly afterwards local government filed a bankruptcy petition against Keith for the princely sum of £17,000.

Normally under these circumstances there is a period of negotiation before a bankruptcy petition is filed. As Keith could quite easily have settled such a small debt by selling of his Rolls Royce or one of the other parts of his car collection the government obviously couldn't take the risk of this happening and instead decided to go for the jugular.

As is standard practice in these matters as soon as one petition for bankruptcy is filed all other creditors also make petitions so in the space of four months Keith has gone from having a property portfolio worth about £3 -4 million, a collection of cars and a spice girl for a neighbour to being penniless, homeless and jobless.

Needless to say that on Thursday Keith decided to kill himself by slitting his wrists and doing a bit of a David Kelly - named after the now infamous weapons inspector who died at the hands of the British security services favourite weapon of choice. The hands off assassination whereby rather then directly killing the target they merely create the conditions in which the target kills themselves. It was something I experienced for myself over the weekend of the Beslen massacre and is worth noting if you're in the business and it suddenly feels as though everything is crashing down around you.

So since Friday me and my mate have been playing a fun game of "Is he going to die?" followed by a swift round of "Is he going to get sectioned?". Yesterday we found out that no he's not going to die and yes he most certainly is going to get sectioned. This meant I spent most of the day trying to bring my mate up to speed on the entire mental health system while providing a sympathetic ear and trying to makes jokes out of the pure comedy that is the pain and misery of someone trying to take their own life. These tasks were obviously made much easier by a phone service which kept fading and cutting out.

Now I know it sounds callous but I'm more then a little bit pissed off at having to pick up the pieces on this one not least because politically and ideologically Keith and I are polar opposites but pick up the pieces we must because lord knows the health services are able too. Not that should be considered in anyway a criticism of the ground level staff because I actually know many of those who will be involved and Keith couldn't be in better hands but they now as well as I do that they are woefully underfunded and led by civil servants who seem to think the best way to solve the problem of different departments not communicating is to slash everyone's budget by 5% and use the money to set up a "bridging agency". Presumably so those working for what now must be known as a "Bridgend agency" can run around pretending they work in the media.

Then I had to deal with the new claim pack I'd been sent by the DWP which appears to have been sent in error because I contacted them on March 25th about renewing my claim. However they failed to dispatch the renewal pack so time was wasted ans my claim ended on April 10th which is one hell of a coincidence because that is exactly the date on which I phoned them to complain. If I was a suspicious person I would think that someone had hacked into their computer system and changed the date but that couldn't possibly happen because that would be a criminal offence and as we all know the British Government couldn't possibly act unlawfully.

Filling out the massive form itself wasn't much of a problem because I just copied out exactly what I wrote the last time because apparently if you don't treat medical conditions they don't just magically get better on their own. In looking over my records though I did discover a letter which clearly stated that my existing claim which allegedly ended on April 10th in fact doesn't end until May 31st 2008 which is all very odd when you consider that payments on the claim ended in early March.

After that tedium I caught up in my reading before the thunder storm came down and my brain went in to neutral. It was at this point my dad returned from his tough afternoon watching football and asked me one simple question;

"Have you been to see your grandmother yet?"

To which I replied "No, I've been a bit busy".

He then went over to see my grandmother and came back announcing that she had an errand that needed doing so I better go and do it. Obviously he couldn't possibly do it himself because he had to go out drinking with his friends and why should he delay that after all his mother losing her door keys and getting locked out wasn't a good enough reason for him to delay his jollies.

So I went over to see her and the first thing she said to me was;

"Why did you tell dad you'd been to see me?"

So I said;

"I didn't"

So she said;

"But he says you did"

So I replied;

"Well then he's lying" while the internal monologue continued "Of course he lied, he's pissed off at the discovery that in fact no I'm not here to act as a skivvy to help him shirk his responsibilities to his mother."

After a bit more less hostile conversation I discovered that the reason she was so wound up was because some girl had gone missing in South Wales and was believed to be in Croydon. So some random had phoned her up to ask her what she knew about as if the people of Croydon were somehow meant to mobilise to look for her when as with Shannon Matthews the state could find her any second they wanted too.

After running the errand, having a bit of dinner and another couple of phone calls about the finer points of the mental health act I caught a bit of the news about what is going on in Zimbabwe. That news is not good because it appears that rather then being men and accepting that their attempt at regime change not only failed but failed miserably the British and American "intelligence" agencies appear to be pulling every lever, shaking down every witness and intimidating every player in what can only be considered and attempt to provoke a violent confrontation between MDC and Zanu PF supporters. This is obviously a very good idea because confrontations between disorganised, malnourished civilians and government backed militias worked so well for the civilians in Darfur and as Iraq has proved to us nothing helps nation building like the warm glue of sectarian hatred.

The only highlight of it all was Gordon Brown in grave and threatening tones that the eyes of the world were watching Zimbabwe and patience was wearing thin while demanding that the violence and intimidation stopped immediately.

Personally I thought the only response to this was to take Brown to one side and explain to him that it was his own staff that seem so keen on violence and intimidation and if he wants it to end all he needs to do is call them into his office and read them the riot, or perhaps the treason, act.

Mr Mugabe however, on being told of Mr Brown's "orders" simply responded;

"Brown is the world? Sure the world is losing patience but I now Brown is just a little tiny dot on this world."

So I have to admit I am warming to the man by the minute.

Sunday 6 April 2008

Well it's been a funny old day.

First I woke up at around ten which if you know me is practically unheard of for a Sunday morning. I think the main reason for this was something to do with the fact that Radio 1 was all of a sudden playing the forbidden songs and much as I love Rage Against The Machine "Killing In the Name of" isn't exactly my ideal way to welcome in the day.

Having finally got out of bed with a little bit of earache I discovered that in fact it had been snowing, in London, in April which meant my first cigarette of the day was smoked in the freezing cold while watching the cat trying to figure how to deal with this strange cold, white stuff.

Then I switched on the TV to watch the Olympic torch relay through London and was shocked to discover that the Metropolitan police suddenly had no idea how to police a slow moving, carnival type procession through the Notting Hill area of London. I was also shocked to see Konnie Huq, the Daily Mail's favourite centrefold being accosted by a ruffian as she ran with the flame. An image that will no doubt play well next time there's a public debate about how to police non-state sanctioned demonstrations. Then somebody tried and failed to put out the flame with a fire extinguisher and there was lot's of Tibetan freedom protesters heroically throwing themselves in the path of torch in much the same way they did when the Chinese President visited in 2005 and in much the same way when his predecessor did in the 1990s.

Then the torch arrived in Downing Street where the Olympics minister admitted that she didn't expect to see the Tibet situation to be resolved this year or the next or for some generations to come. Then the wind blew the flame out and the procession was moved onto a bus.

All in all it was quite an entertaining watch especially the thrilling moment when the BBC helicopter almost flew into the police helicopter and a lot better then the grand prix.

I know there's much more of the day to go but with all the excitement of today I think I'm going to have to have to have a bit of a lie down. That and some beer.

Wednesday 2 April 2008

Ah go on admit it, you missed me.

I've not been posting for a while because my darling brother is back so it's all been a bit oops too many people in the house all of a sudden and an even longer queue to the computer.

All this disruption hasn't been helped by the fact he's been back for his birthday meaning that there was the usual triple header of "celebration" lunches and dinners and I have to report that my dad once again did not fail in his social hand grenade duty. This years contribution was marching into a restaurant and sitting himself down without booking or indeed a bye nor leave to the waiting staff which for some reason didn't go down well.

Throughout all this chaos though I was rewarded with a fully fledged rock&roll moment when while I was in the bathroom shaving my brother burst in and announced;

"David Lynch is on the phone for you!"

So obviously I responded;

"David Lynch? Tell him I'm busy, I'll call him back later."

Obviously when I called him back it wasn't that David Lynch. It was David Lynch of the local community mental health team phoning me up because he received a referral from my GP asking for me to be seen by a psychiatrist. Although for reasons best known to himself Mr Lynch decided he was going to step outside the usual chain of command and rather give me an appointment with a psychiatrist he was going to do everything in his power to stop me seeing a psychiatrist.

This rather heroic move may have been something to do with the fact that his team has just been merged with others in to one single location as I suggested when I freely gave the government advice on how to improve mental health provision in the UK and this had pissed him off. Obviously this was before the government decided that no information on the subject was clearly better then little bit of information and decided to start a war on the issue.

Looking beyond that though I could clearly see why Mr Lynch would be pissed off because the plan doesn't appear to be working and I don't know what to say to him except of course it's going to be shit that's what happens when civil servants take my ideas and try to"improve" on them and I very sorry but I would have liked to given you more it's just that when I wrote that single side of A5 there was a little bit of an issue going on in the middle east and besides when dealing with the British Government I've always found it's a idea to keep an insurance policy in reserve just in case the highly unlikely event occurs that the British Government is just not as good at things as it may think.

Personally though I seem to think that Mr Lynch's resistance was down to three simple problems in his understanding namely;

1. There is something that has happened to him in his previous life experience that makes him think that somehow his training qualifies him to have an opinion on issues such as this.

2. I am magically going to give up by telling him all my secrets and in doing so condemn my friends to an unpleasant death

3. Croydon's mental health team has anything it can offer me to help improve my life.

Of course in response to the third allegation Mr Lynch will point to all the improvement Croydon mental health has brought about in my sister. This is of course bollocks because in the decade or so that my sister was under the care of Croydon CMHT she was very sick. Obviously there was a marked improvement when she came under the care of Guilford CMHT but I could always argue that was due to me doing research in some very unpleasant places before coming up with a solution leaving large clues to that solution, stepping in wherever I could to help and then dragging the professionals over hot coals whenever they stepped away from the correct path.

Anyway rant and ramble over for today and look at that I've managed to write almost two pages without using the Z word once, ain't that clever.