Operation Featherweight: Month 20, Week 4, Day 6.

As I find myself saying all too often there is one fundamental problem with the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and associated groups.

It is simply that US President Barack Obama does not view ISIL as either a threat or an enemy. Instead Obama views them as vital ally in assisting the US its objective in ridding the entire Middle-East region of Shia Muslims. Quite why ridding the Middle-East of Shia Muslim's is a US objective remains something of a mystery.

Therefore when in August 2014 overwhelming public pressure forced Obama to take action against ISIL his objective was never to defeat them. Instead it was to stall for time in order to build up some of ISIL's associates as the acceptable public face of genocide.

A key part of this stalling has been to send US ground troops to Iraq to train the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF). It is only when this seemingly endless training is fully complete will Obama allow the ISF to contemplate fighting ISIL. To give you an idea of the problem basic training in the British Army last for 6 months. The US has been training the ISF for 20 months.

When the US Train & Equip for insurgent fighters in Syria was forced to be shut down in October 2015 amid widespread defections to Al Qaeda Obama simply ordered the training of the ISF to increase in order by more time. The strategy behind this increased deployment of US ground troops to Iraq is what are known as; "Lilly-pads." This involves establishing a network of small bases close to the front-lines which US troops can hop between rather like a frog on lilly-pads.

This is the strategy that the US deployed at the start of the Vietnam War. There is actually a rather good portrayal of it in the 1968 John Wayne movie "The Green Berets."

Obviously if your strategy is to place US ground troops within range of ISIL positions but not allow them to fight ISIL and force them from those positions it is only a matter of time before ISIL will be able to kill some of those US ground troops. We were all warned of this by the (19/2/16) crash of a Bell Ranger - as in Army Ranger - helicopter in Pearl Harbour of all places.

Last Friday (18/3/16) that prophecy came true. Here ISIL were able to launch a sustained rocket attack against one the lilly-pads near Mahkmour in Iraq's Kurdish north. During this attack several US Marines were wounded and one was killed. On Sunday ISIL were able to mount another attack against the same US base. This time it was a ground attack that managed to reach the perimeter wire of the base. Fortunately no US troops were killed or wounded.

The weekend's attacks forced the US to not only confirm that it has been secretly building up the number of ground troops in Iraq but also expanded their mission. Rather than being a training base the base which came under attack is fire base. Its purpose is to fire artillery against enemy positions within range.

The location of the base is particularly alarming because it is on the Mahkmour front-line which is just outside of Mosul - ISIL's de facto capital in Iraq. The reason why the base has been built is to provide force protection for ISF and Kurdish Peshmerga forces that have begun to assemble in the region ahead of a possible operation to liberate Mosul.

The problem is that the operation to liberate the city of Ramadi and "All of Anbar Province" is still far from over. Just yesterday ISIL were able to use a British suicide bomber to attack the ISF near the town of Ain al-Assad in western Anbar province. ISIL claim that 30 soldiers were killed in the attack while the ISF claim that the suicide bomber succeeded in killing only himself.

Then of course there is the unresolved issue of this triangle of territory between Tikrit, Baiji and Kirkuk. This is of course a job from the Tikrit operation that was left undone before the Anbar operation began.

As such it is hard to explain why Iraqi forces are amassing close to Mosul when so much of the rest of the country is still under ISIL control. Particularly as the Kirkuk triangle operation seems to be a natural precursor to any Mosul operation. It is even harder to explain why the US is encouraging this behaviour by middle a fire base on the Mahkmour front-line.

I understand that this needs to be an Iraqi led operation. However I can't help but wonder if the World's largest and most experienced military should perhaps be strongly suggesting plans at this point rather than seeming to lead the ISF on a wild goose chase.

Iraq's Shia militias who are known collectively as the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) have responded to the public announcement of the increased US troop presence as an American attempt to re-occupy Iraq. That strikes me as a very theatrical way of saying that they're starting to get sick of the US' constant delaying tactics.

There was actually an extremely odd incident on the front-lines between ISIL and the Peshmerga close to Mosul last Tuesday (15/3/16). 

Here an ISIL fighter who has since been identified as Mohamad Jamal Khweis - a US/Iraqi/Palestinian dual national - just simply walked up to the Peshmerga positions. The Peshmerga obviously pointed their rifles at him and demanded to know if he was surrendering. This appears to have really confused Khweis who having got lost assumed that he was crossing Iraq's border into Turkey and the Peshmerga were Turkish borders who would welcome him with open arms just like they've done with thousands of ISIL fighters before.

After Khweis had been interrogated for a couple of days though the story suddenly changed. He was now giving press conferences about how he'd realised how he'd made a terrible mistake joining ISIL and had been trying to flee the group rather than heading for a few days rest and relaxation in Turkey. I like to think this change of narrative was the Peshmerga posing questions about another element of the US' curious ISIL strategy.

In recent weeks and months particularly in Syria there has been a significant increase in the number of ISIL fighters have been defecting to go and fight for groups that the US terms the "moderate opposition." The US have been hailing these defections as sign of the success of its strategy. However I'm of the opinion that no matter how many times an extremist switches between differently named groups he's still an extremist. This exchange of personnel also of course highlights just how similar in ideology ISIL and these supposedly moderate groups actually are.

Mind you with Obama's strategy simply to re-brand ISIL I can see why he would consider this sort of thing to be a success.

On the subject of Turkey as I mentioned on the day there was another suicide bombing in Istanbul on Saturday (19/3/16) that killed five. 

With three of the dead and many of the wounded being Israeli citizens the Israeli foreign intelligence service The Mossad very rapidly got involved in the investigation. Within a couple of hours they'd been able to identify the bomber as a Turkish national - Mehmet Ozturk. They then discreetly made this information public fuelling speculation that Ozturk had been an agent of the Turkish services.

This obviously made it impossible for Turkey to blame the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) as they'd originally intended. So on Sunday (20/3/16) Turkey confirmed Ozturk as the bomber and claimed that he'd been working for ISIL. Fortunately in the increasingly elaborate conspiracy that is Turkish President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan's mind the PKK and ISIL are the same organisation working as part of a global plot to otherthrow him.

On Sunday afternoon Turkey cancelled the always fiery Istanbul football derby between Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe due to an unspecified security threat. I suspect that 'threat' was a concern that if the Turkey's Ultras united in opposition to the regime as they did in Egypt during the 2011 revolution it would only be a matter of hours before Erdogan was handing himself in at the International Criminal Court (ICC) seeking the safety of a cell.

Obviously the secondary objective is to get someone like me to point that out. This would fuel domestic speculation that a global conspiracy is plotting another coup so the Turkish population had better rally around to defend Erdogan. Sadly the fact that there is a complete absence of a global conspiracy to criticise let alone oust Erdogan is a major source of disappointment for me at the moment.

On Monday (21/3/16) Turkey gave the official explanation of why the football match had be cancelled. Apparently they were aware of three suicide bombers who were plotting an imminent attack. Their concern was that they would target this football match like the Stade d'France had been targeted during the Paris Massacres.

In light of Friday's (18/3/16) agreement with the EU this obviously sent the message that Turkey is just like the EU facing the same threats as the EU. Therefore the EU should join with Turkey in its war against the infidels. However with a still much stressed France preparing to host the Euro2016 football tournament in June I felt this carried with it an air of menace.

Literally as the EU-Turkey Summit was ending on Friday (18/3/16) Belgian and French police moved into arrest Saleh Abdeslam - the alleged mastermind of the Paris massacres.

To the surprise of absolutely no-one Abdeslam was arrested in the Molenbeek district of Brussels where he had been sheltered by local residents ever since the Paris massacres. What was particularly alarming about this situation is that as news spread that the raid was targeting Abdeslam local youths tried to stop it by attacking the police with bricks and petrol bombs. Police had to be re-deployed from the EU-Turkey Summit to help contain this mini-riot.

I know I'm in danger of over doing the references to the Northern Irish Troubles but this really was like scenes out of Belfast in the 1970/80's. As such I'm really struggling to see what option the Belgian authorities have other than using the state of emergency legislation that has been in place for five months now to treat Molenbeek and elsewhere as areas under enemy occupation. Provided they stop short of using artillery fire and air-strikes Turkey certainly wouldn't be able to claim any sort of moral high ground.

The reason why I haven't prioritised the arrest of Abdeslam above other more recent events is that unlike the March 2013 Boston Marathon bombers or even the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris is that we already know that he is part of a much larger organisation. The 20 months of air-strikes against ISIL should be a clue to that. So although his arrest is most certainly not a bad thing and over time should uncover significant valuable intelligence in the immediate term Abdeslam's capture makes little difference to the terrorist threat facing the EU.

Also I've been quite concerned about giving a running commentary on events Abdeslam and his associates certainly watch the news. As an example of this in the months since the Paris Massacres certain news outlets have taking great pride in claiming that Abdeslam was supposed to carry out a suicide bombing that night but was too scared to go through with it. This cowardice has led to him being shunned by ISIL preventing him from returning to Syria/Iraq.

Almost immediately after capture Abdeslam confirmed this exact story to investigators. That surely is what they wanted to hear because if Abdeslam was on the run from ISIL too and only being sheltered by a few close friends and family the investigators could rule out the fact he'd stayed in Belgium to co-ordinate more ISIL attacks. I gather though as questioning has continued Abdeslam's story has begun to change as investigators drill down to the truth.

The excitement of the EU-Turkey summit, the capture of Abdeslam, the death of the Marine and the Istanbul bombing - two of the victims were US/Israeli dual nationals seems to send the US into a bit of noisy frenzy over the weekend.

The first curious incident occurred on Saturday (19/3/16) when a bus carrying the Griffen High School basketball team to game in Lafayette overturned on the I-65 Highway in Indiana. Despite being aware of events that occurred later on any reference in this incident was so obscure that I almost dismissed it as just an accident.

However after staring at various reports for about an hour I concluded that the main points were the reference to the Marquis de Lafayette. This member of the French aristocracy was of course George Washington's right-hand man during the US War of Independence as such the various districts and public buildings named after him are testament to fact that France has been the US' military ally for slightly longer than the US has been a country.

Most of the injured in the crash were transported to a hospital in Illinois which of course is US President Obama's adoptive home state. Obama once famously compared ISIL to a Junior Varsity (JV) or High School basketball team.

Demonstrating that there are many places in the US named after the Marquis de Lafayette in the US and living in one can be a bit dangerous at the moment Saturday (19/3/16) also saw 22 people - mainly children - being taken to hospital after being exposed to Chlorine gas at a local swimming pool in Lafayette, Colorado.

This seemed intended to mock Obama's outrage at poorly founded accusations that the Syrian government has used Chlorine as a chemical weapon compared with his ambivalence to ISIL and associated groups routine of Sulphur Mustard Gas. After all while - particularly when children are involved - you would prefer for people to be monitored by a medical professional Chlorine gas is actually pretty harmless.

However back at the end of February the US captured Daoud al-Afari- ISIL's chemical weapons chief. In this context a mention of chemical weapons alongside a show of US solidarity with France in the face of terrorism could trigger a lot of concern in the EU about exactly what Afari had revealed about ISIL's capabilities.

On Saturday (19/3/16) afternoon Los Angeles police announced that they had discovered a human skull close to the famous Hollywood sign in Griffith Park. This is similar to the Griffen High School involved in the bus accident. The skull is believed to belong to Hervey Medillin who was as Hispanic as his name would suggest.

As such Spain seemed to get the impression that all this US noise was directed at them. After all sitting extremely close to North Africa southern Spain actually used to be part of this medieval Islamic Caliphate that ISIL are trying to recreate. 

Plus the history of Irish Republicanism seems to have emerged as a theme for discussions about the war on ISIL. Both France & Spain are linked to this history through Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) who fought for an autonomous Basque nation straddling the border between Spain & France. I should point out though that due to the religious, sectarian element Irish lesson is probably of most use.

So on Sunday (20/3/16) 13 people were killed when a bus carrying Erasmus students crashed in similar fashion to the Griffen High School bus some 150km (90 miles) south of the Catalan capital Barcelona near the town of Freginals. That of course is not to be confused with Finglas in the Republic of Ireland.

Although the Basque region and the Catalan region are separate they both want independence for Spain. I've actually heard stories about the sort of firework display these Eramus students were returning from. Apparently when then fireworks finish and the bonfires are burning low the old rebel songs start coming out in force.  

At around 22:35 on 22/3/16 (UK date) this is sadly as far as I can get tonight. I will finish up tomorrow. Possibly in a separate post.

However in light of today's triple bombings in Brussels, Belgium I'm looking back at what I've covered and thinking of what I've still got to write. I can't help but wonder if maybe an important detail got missed amid all that noise.

Here Come the Cat Pics.

On Friday (18/3/16) a US Marine was killed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Iraq's Kurdish north.

Unlike the US Special Forces operator who was killed in a raid on May 16th 2015 (16/5/15) this Marine was killed in an attack on the base where he was stationed. The attack confirmed the existence of the base which had been constructed as part of an expansion of the US' ground operations in Iraq.

Also on Friday Saleh Abdeslam, the alleged mastermind of the November 13th 2015 (13/11/15) Paris Massacres was finally captured by police in Brussels, Belgium. He remains in custody in Belgium awaiting extradition to France.

Taken individually either one of these developments will take time to explain fully. For example the US Marine's death seems to have been initially reported as an accident aboard a US aircraft carrier stationed in the Atlantic. However occurring at almost the same time they seem to have triggered quite a lot of frantic discussion. Particularly about the Marquis de Lafayette - the US' oldest French ally.

Annoyingly in order to put any of these events in their proper context I need to cover them all at the same time. Simply trying to focus on any one in isolation just isn't going to work. Due to the inflexibility of my life I'm not going to be able to make time to do that today.

However there is a reason why I have not prioritised the capture of Saleh Abdeslam above more recent events this weekend. Unlike with the March 2013 Boston Marathon bombings or even the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris we know that Abdeslam is part of a much wider organisation. 

Therefore his captured doesn't really alter the current terror threat in any way. If anything it slightly increases it in the immediate term by creating the risk his co-conspirators may seek revenge.

Also I don't really want to be getting into giving a running commentary of the case. As an example of why since the Paris Massacres certain news outlets have taken pleasure in speculating that Abdeslam chickened out of conducting a suicide bombing himself and had been shunned by ISIL as a result. 

Almost immediately after his capture Abdeslam confirmed this story to investigators. This is exactly the sort of lie he would make up to protect a wider ISIL network in Europe. However I gather that now he's been questioned for a few days his story has begun to change.

Today several terrorist bombings have struck the Belgian capital Brussels. Two occurred in the terminals of the Zaventem Airport while a third struck the Maelbeek underground rail (Metro) station. This is main Metro station serving the institutional buildings of the European Union (EU) in Brussels.

As this still early stage details are scarce. However the nicest thing I can say about the situation is that much of the talk over the previous couple of days has been about chemical weapons - particularly pre-cursor agents for VX Gas which is a very nasty nerve agent.

In terms of the next step; You remember all those things I said need to be done following the Paris Massacres that weren't done? Well they need to be done.

The main one of these of course is for the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) to convene an emergency meeting to invoke it's Article 5 mutual defence clause.

If US President Barack Obama can't be bothered to return from his Caribbean mini-break or again tries to block the invocation of Article 5 then I'm inclined to think that he's already overstayed his welcome.

13:25 on 22/3/16 (UK date).

The UK Budget 2016.

Last Wednesday (16/3/16) the UK government announced the 2016/17 national budget.

In May voters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will go to the polls in their national assembly elections. On the same day voters in London, England will elect a new Mayor and members of the London Assembly. There will also be elections in roughly half of England's local councils.

In June all of the UK will go to the polls in a referendum to decide whether to leave or remain in the European Union (EU).

As such it was clear that the Chief Finance Minister (Chancellor of the Exchequer) George Osborne had been instructed to make this budget as bland as possible.

This is exactly what he did with the majority of the budget being taken up with the implementation of changes to tax policy that had been agreed at a meeting of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) back in November 2015. 

In order to get excited about these 86 changes you probably already need to be working as a tax accountant. For example I could tell you about the new way that future interest payments can be offset against current profits for the purposes of corporation tax. However I fell asleep halfway through writing that sentence.

In terms of the EU referendum it seems clear the government's calculation is that the poor working classes are too stupid to understand the issue so will simply vote to leave due to immigration. Therefore the outcome of the vote will be decided by middle-class voters who tend to lean towards the governing Conservative (Tory) Party. 

As such both Osborne and the Prime Minister David Cameron who both support the remain campaign were clearly using this budget as a desperate attempt to get those voters to like and therefore agree with them.

The most obvious part of this effort was the increase personal income tax free allowance to £11,000 by 2017. This will obviously benefit taxpayers across all three tax brackets. However it will be particularly beneficial to people who are just at the boundary between the 20% basic rate paid up to £31,780 (£41,780 incl the allowance) and the 40% higher rate paid beyond that up to £150,000.

The other headline grabbing announcement was a new tax of soft-drinks (soda) levied in three bands depending on their sugar content. This has been dubbed; "The Sugar Tax."

Rather like the MMR vaccine in the early-2000's sugar in food has become a bit of an obsession amongst emotionally unstable middle-class parents in the posher parts of London. 

These are the sort of people who their baby supplies from Jessica Alba's "Honest Company" and religiously follow every update of Gwyneth Paltrow's "Goop" lifestyle website. As far as they're concerned there is no greater sin a parent can commit than giving child sweets. On the sugar issue they have an (organic) homegrown campaign hero in the form of Jamie Oliver who is certainly a better TV personality than he is a cook.

So by imposing the sugar tax Osborne gets to give all those neurotic middle-class parents a warm fuzzy feeling inside and showing that he shares their priorities.

The problem is that this sugar tax is not levied at the point of sale like say the tax on tobacco products. As such there is absolutely no guarantee that manufacturers and retailers will pass the tax onto the end consumer causing prices to rise. 

This rise in price in order to reduce consumption is the core reasoning behind this type of "Sin Tax." However with the sugar tax estimated to bring in £520m per year you suspect a drop in consumption is the last thing the Chancellor wants.

In a similar vein the budget also included wildly off-topic plans to remove all British schools from government control by 2020. 

The next day this was followed up by plans to scrap the qualification that sees student teachers having to train on the job for a minimum of one year and then pass a test to prove they're competent. Instead the head teacher - or as is becoming more common general manager - of a school can arbitrarily declare anyone they want to employ to be a qualified teacher.

The same middle-class parents who consider Haribo to be the new way of spelling Hitler view this as a way to create boutique, artisanal learning environments for their delightful progeny. Tristam's father who does something very clever in the city can come in and teach maths while Jocasta's nanny can help out teaching the children Mandarin which will be vital when the Chinese run the World.

As such along with the sugar tax this plan was introduced to produce a warm, fuzzy feeling all the way from Battersea to Clapham South.

The problem arises when you leave the cosseted world of South London for poorer areas where schools see much less engagement from parents who are earning significantly less than £40,000 per year. There are particular problems in northern cities such as Bradford where Islamic extremists and some Ultra-Orthodox Jews see this absence of government oversight in education as license to teach children their own brand of medieval babbling that has no place in the real world. 

In fact it was this national inconsistency in education standards that caused the then Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher to introduce a standardised national school curriculum - "The National Curriculum" - in 1988. In order to allow for schools to be taken out of local government control it was announced in the budget that this national curriculum is to be scrapped.

The real reason behind these educational reforms of course is that schools under local government control have to negotiate pay and conditions deals with Trade Unions for teachers under collective bargaining agreements. Schools outside of local government control don't.

 
In protest at the Chancellor's slashing of education budgets these teaching unions - the National Union of Teachers (NUT) being the largest - went out on strike in 2015. They're going to go out on strike later this month. It appears that in order to extract his revenge George Osborne has decided to adopt a scorched earth policy with not even the achievements of his cherished Margaret Thatcher being spared.

What's turned out to be the real headline grabber though is cuts to disability benefit. Specifically Personal Independence Payments (PIP's). Unlike Employment Support Allowance (ESA) PIP's are intended primarily as an in work benefit. The idea being that they help meet the additional costs of living with a disability.

All the recent news coverage produced a rather good example in the form of a woman with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). 

Although her condition is not yet so bad it stops her from working part time in an office job - I think telesales - it does significantly restrict her mobility preventing her from doing household chores. As such she has no choice other than to pay someone to come into her home to do those chores for her. Without PIP's to pay for that she would have to ask her employer for a pay-rise. Her employer would then likely chose to employ someone else landing her back on ESA.

Putting aside for a moment the fact that George Osborne is a spiteful excuse for a human being the attention the proposed cuts to PIP's generated seemed intended to serve two political purposes.

The first of these is Britain's relationship with the EU. Particularly at the emergency EU Council (EUCO) summit that began the following day.

Up until around 2013 disability benefits were my sole source on income. However through the changes that brought ESA and PIP's into being I was suddenly declared healthy and ineligible. Other groups of people who magically been declared healthy under the new system include the recently deceased. 

So although none of this current argument actually applies to me and hasn't applied to me for so long I've forgotten how long its been it's a convenient way to bring up the more general topic of Britain's behaviour towards me.

This has been a long term source of tension between the UK and the EU. It light of the war against ISIL it's become a particularly contentious issue. After all one element of EU meddling the leave campaign want free the UK from is this notion that you can't just force people to work for you for free. I believe it's known as "Slavery."

In a similar vein the budget also announced that Value Added Tax (VAT) - a type of sales tax - on women's sanitary products - the so-called "Tampon Tax" would be scrapped. This was done in defiance of EU rules that class those products as a luxury. However I believe it was the UK that insisted on that rule in the first place. 

At the EUCO meeting it was announced that the EU regulation would be scrapped making the UK budget change lawful. This was intended to support the remain campaign by demonstrating the UK's ability to win concessions from the EU.

The other purpose was to fire the opening shots in the run-up to the 2016 Summer Olympics to be held in Rio de-Janerio, Brazil.

Despite all this guff about ancient Greece the modern Olympics were invented by the UK at the end of the 19th Century. However since then it appears that Britain has not being receiving as much attention as it thinks it deserves. So in the 1960's Britain invented the Parallel or Para-Olympics for disabled athletes. 

For the 2012 Para-Olympics that were of course held in London, UK the British broadcaster Channel 4 developed a special show called "The Last Leg." 

Shown at the end of each day of competition this took a light-hearted look at the day's events helping to explain disabled sport in between stupid jokes about competitors whose names sounded a bit dirty and that guy who tripped over in the crowd while carrying a tray of drinks. The show was a huge success particularly amongst the competitors and if anything almost made the Para-Olympics cooler than the Olympics.

Unfortunately Channel 4 then decided to cash in by trying to turn The Last Leg into a regular satirical news show similar to the globally famous "The Daily Show" without much success. Things got really bizarre when they ran a series of The Last Leg in January and February of 2014. However the series ended pretty much the week before the 2014 Winter Olympics started.

This year The Last Leg will be getting back to its roots and broadcasting live from Brazil throughout the Para-Olympics.

Although it's terrible as a satirical news show "The Last Leg" is very good when it comes to disability and disability rights issues. For example the main presenter Adam Hills is a single below the knee amputee while one of his co-presenter Alex Brooker would probably be classed for Para-Olympic competition as a single below the knee and double below the elbow amputee.

As such they've been extremely vocal and probably the only mainstream critics of the government's cuts to disability benefit payments. This current argument over PIP's is far from new. Every budget and mini-budget since the spring of 2010 have included savage cuts to some form of disability benefits amid cuts to pretty much everything else.

Just the week before the 2016 budget the cuts to ESA announced in the 2015 budget finally passed into law. The delay was caused by the fact the upper house of Parliament - the House of Lords - had rejected them several times. This forced the government to invoke a little used procedure whereby a proposal that has been passed by the lower house - the House of Commons - four times can bypass the House of Lords to become law.

In response to the government forcing through an unpopular measure in the face of stiff opposition most of that week's episode of The Last Leg was dedicated to a rant against Ian Duncan Smith - the senior Work and Pensions minister who devised all these cuts. The general gist was that Duncan Smith should give up the country mansion that his wife's rich daddy pays for and try and live on £3,500 a year. However I've cleaned that up a lot.

So when the news broke that Duncan Smith had been forced to resign over the latest round of disability benefit cuts a lot of people were interested to see how The Last Leg would respond when they went live around two hours later. Thus boosting The Last Leg's profile ahead of the summer Olympics.

True to form The Last Leg claimed all the credit for the resignation. This is partly true. After all there's no point giving the show such a big global stage as the Olympics only for the main topic of conversation to be what a venal and hypocritical embarrassment to the human race Ian Duncan Smith along with most of the rest of the British government really is.

At around 18:35 on 21/3/16 (UK date) I've got a tiny little bit more to add. After dinner.

Edited at around 19:55 on 21/3/16 (UK date) to add;

Obviously by announcing that he'd chosen to resign in protest against a policy that he had devised and pushed for throughout most of his political career Duncan Smith was to some extent claim the moral high ground. Given what a meaningless pantomime British politics has become I wouldn't be too surprised if this was simply laying the groundwork for Duncan Smith to return around the time of the autumn budget statement as a gesture to show how the Conservative Party had regained it's compassion.

However Duncan Smith's resignation statement seems to have been calibrated to trigger discussion about the big elephant in the room of British politics.

The big headline for the budget should have been that Osborne had missed his macro-economic targets such as cutting the deficit and reducing government borrowing. However the response to this was muted by the fact that in his six years as Chancellor Osborne has not managed to hit a single macro-economic target despite all the cuts.

The reason for this is simply that his austerity plan is a scam. It's merely a lie he tells the proles to allow him to carry out a rabidly right-wing restructuring of not only the British economy but also British society. At this point I'm seriously thinking that by attacking everyone Osborne is simply trying to kill off his own insecurities and failures.

There was a general consensus that the British public would get wise to this scam and give Osborne and the Conservatives the boot at the May 2015 General Election. However as if in an effort to prove we can't cope democracy the British public ended up giving the Conservatives a majority while the Labour Party simply impolded leaving the bizarre witterings of Jeremy Corbyn as the voice of opposition.

Osborne and Cameron have clearly taken this as a sign that they're free to do whatever they like. For example despite being told to deliver a bland budget Osborne has still managed to produce one containing such vicious attacks on the disabled and the trade unions it makes Thatcher seem like a bit of a lefty.

If the electorate won't vote Osborne out of office and he won't do the decent thing and resign we might be getting to the point where we have just let Prince Phillip shoot him.      

20:15 on 21/3/16 (UK date).