If I didn't know better, I would say that someone is a little put-out that their ickle manifesto/pointless-declaration-of-utterly-prosaic-values wasn't greeted with unbridled joy and gasps of admiration by the world in general.

But that couldn't be the case, surely...

Newsflash: Clarke still a total cunt

Charles Clarke, The Safety Elephant: look at that cruel and ugly face; he has no picture in the attic. Many people are asking why this man is still in government. They are asking the wrong question. What they should be asking is why this igorant, lazy, incompetent, fascist fuck is still alive. He should be put down like a particularly over-weight, filthy, sweaty, disease-ridden dog.

Rachel has an excellent deconstruction—an open letter, if you will—of the fat, jug-eared cunt: I applaud every word (and I savoured reading it too).

The most important modern freedom is now apparently ''the freedom not to be blown up on the way to work''. No it isn't. The most important freedom is the freedom to be able to live freely, not fearfully. And anyway, how does clamping down on civil liberties make me safer on the way to work?

The ''rules have changed'' in the ''modern'' world according to Blair. No they haven't, not that much. The bombs on July 7th were simple criminal acts of mass murder, and it demeans us to throw away long-cherished values because of posturing and fear-manipulation by those who want to keep their jobs by playing to the gallery.

Well, quite so. Christ Almighty, what is it going to take? And when, in the name of all that is unholy, are the damned and damnable Conservatives going to get a leader who has got balls? And honesty?

Where the fuck is the opposition? Apparantly taking private jets to go and ponce about on a fucking glacier. Look, Spam you fuckwit, there is a disaster unfolding at home, right here in this country. Who cares what you think about global warming, or any foreign matters: we really don't give a shit at present. What we want is a strong Opposition who will hold the government to account over what it is trying to do to our lives right now.

And what is that? Is it "creeping authoritarianism"? No.

There's nothing "creeping" about it: NuLabour are using blatant hammerblows to our constitutional rights, smashing away our liberties with successive pieces of fascist law. There's no "creep" here: it is undisguised totalitarianism. How soon before Blair dissolves Parliament and declares a police state?

And does anyone think that that idea is as ridiculous now as they might have considered it to be 10 years ago?

Cameron: dead meat

EU Referendum predicts that Spam Cam is "dead meat". It is difficult to disagree.

This cannot compare with the cavortings of Johnny "two-shags" Prescott, the serial incompetence of Charles Clarke, or the stunning ineptitude of Patricia Hewitt, but it nevertheless fatally weakens the credibility of the Boy on the ground of his own choosing. It was an entirely unforced error that will rebound with an electorate which dislikes hypocrisy in its politicians.

Above all, its shows that the Fraud King cannot be trusted. If his "flagship policy" is a charade – all spin and no substance – what price any of his other policies? In opting for cheap gestures, he has further diminished the standing of politicians, and added to the general contempt which the breed attracts.

Whenever the Boy now raises his "green" agenda in public, he will be the object of amused derision – fatal to the reputation of any wannabe serious politician. He is dead meat. And that put the anti-EU agenda further down the line than it has been in living memory.

This is a serious error; we sensible people do not really give a stuff about "environmental issues", sceptical as we are of the scale and causes of "global warming" and trusting that mankind's ingenuity will provide technology to see us through, but we do care about hypocrisy in our elected representatives.

Squander Two identified a gap in the political market, a few days ago: honesty, probity and accountability.

"I will not accept any of the type of abuse of power and trust that became so prevalent towards the end of Major's and Blair's time in power. Any member of my government found to be accepting any sort of bribe will be out immediately. Any member of my government found to have misled Parliament — for instance, by failing to declare an interest — will be out immediately. Any member of my government found to be having an extra-marital affair will be out immediately. Marriage is both a position of trust and a contract; anyone willing to break either for personal pleasure has no place in government.

The Conservatives only really need to peddle one idea: that they will tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. They need to work hard to get the electorate to actually trust them when they say this, but they have four years in which to make that happen.

Cameron has just set that ideal back by about twenty years, the fucking monkey.

DK reforms the NHS

I have been doing a wee bit of thinking about the NHS recently, Fucking Retard Patricia's problems having brought the topic to the foreground amongst my regularly-read bloggers and real-life cronies. The NHS deperately needs reforming; few, I think would dispute that.

But what really needs to happen is that the NHS needs to be completely abolished. Now, I know that this might have caused some gasps, in much the same way as Bill Hicks' suggestion that we use terminally ill people as disposable stuntmen and women, although given my general readership I suspect that there will be a certain amount of agreement.

The ones gasping will, of course, whine about the hundreds of billions of poor people, who are splashed across newspapers daily throughout the world, who die unnecessarily in the US because the poor dears cannot afford the private medical insurance (and who seem to think that Medicaid, which consumes an average of a quarter of each state's budget is just a figment of George Bush's fucking imagination). "What about the poor?" they will shriek.

Now, despite my being a filthy libertarian who believes in a teeny, tiny government (preferably small enough to join those angels dancing on those pinheads) I am not actually interested in stamping on the poor; contrary to popular opinion, I have done some literally shitty jobs, I have been extremely poor (and continue to be so) and I don't wear a top hat, chomp on a large cigar, rest my feet on my slave manservant gainfully employed domestic labourer and eat the children of the downtrodden workers for breakfast. I am not interested in doing down the poor, rather the reverse; I want them to better themselves and their families through hard work, and obtain satisfaction by having control over their lives. For many, it will be a bitter medicine but, like any medicine, in the end they will be happier for having taken it.

Inspired by Right For Scotland, I decided to have a look at private Health Insurance. I was astonished by what I found. Let us bear in mind that I still smoke and drink quite heavily, but the highest that I could get my premiums was £58 a month. Now, I didn't read the policies in hair-fine detail, although I did check that they were fairly comprehensive (there was one which offered as many free consultation as needed and offered 240 procedures that the NHS did not cover, but (obviously) did not cover those that the NHS considered priorities, which was £18 a month). Whatever, it all seemed like a bit of a bargain, frankly.

And it is eminently affordable. I'm seriously considering getting a policy (as soon as my income becomes a little more regular). After all, it's not much more than a month's worth of Sky TV, and which one would you say is more important? (Anyone who answers "Sky" actually deserves to die for lack of medical care.)

Back when I originally assembled the "blogger cabinet", Andrew was assigned to the Department of Health and came up with a good way of privatising all of the hospitals. Essentially, all hospitals would be spun off as Limited Companies; however, I would also be tempted to make them not-for-profit organisations with charitable status. They could then engage in fund-raising and solicit charitable donations (which is how hospitals used to obtain the greater part of their funds).

The point is that central planning simply doesn't work, either in terms of cost efficiency or in delivery of the services. What I think that we would eventually see is more smaller, local hospitals; the re-emergance of the cottage hospital, if you like. This is because a smaller facility would require far less capital expenditure to build, would be easier to manage and would be more responsive to local needs. But this is in the future.

Treatment would be paid for by private medical insurance. Most working people can afford £50 a month (especially if NICs were totally abolished, which it should be, and if my commensurate plan of bringing in a £12,000 Personal Allowance were also implemented).

"But what about the poor?" I hear you scream, "will they die like rats for want of a credit card?" No, for this is where we look at the alternatives. As part of unemployment benefits, the government will pay your health insurance premiums for you (as NI was essentially supposed to do). They will not pay it to themselves, they will pay to a private company, who will be chosen by you (or your existing supplier if you had one) so that you know that your premiums will actually go towards providing healthcare rather than fat, fucking MPs' over-generous pensions.

If someone should be left without medical insurance, then the solution is simple. If they need medical treatment, they will simply pay back the charges over x years, paying a monthly amount until the debt is paid off. If you can get free credit with a new sofa, then I see no reason why the same thing should not be the case with medical care.

There we go, sorted. Any questions?

Tom and John

Via Timmy, from this article on Prescott, Tom Utley would fit in nicely here at The Kitchen.

I have talked to an awful lot of people in my time, from every walk of life - politicians, PR men, estate agents, bus drivers, teachers, hairdressers, solicitors, gardeners, bankers, traffic wardens, farmers… But I have yet to meet a single person who has advanced the argument that Mr Prescott holds one of the highest offices in the land because he is fitted for it.

Nobody in the world thinks that he has the slightest aptitude for administration or any kind of intellectual grasp of anything at all.

Everybody - and I mean absolutely everybody - knows that he is a dim-witted, inarticulate, uneducated, belligerent buffoon, who would have the greatest difficulty in securing work as a night-watchman at a sock factory if he didn't happen to be a privy councillor with a vast government department to run.

The Soviet Union was stuffed full of thick bullies like Prescott, with handsome houses and luxury limousines to whoosh them from the Moscow flat to the dacha. But he must surely hold the record for being the stupidest man ever to have held high office in the United Kingdom since the Norman Conquest.

What a delightful little article it is, although I would say that Tom has missed something: he suggests that the reason that Prescott is around is because

the Labour Party would never tolerate what [Blair and Mandelson] had in mind for the country unless they could find some loveable thicko, some icon of t' Labour Movement, who would be prepared to go along with them, in return for a fancy title and the chance to pull a bird or two.

Now, whilst I would subscribe to that, I personally think that it is because Prescott knows something absolutely damning about Princess Toni; perhaps the stories of him having a rent-boy shacked up somewhere in London are true, and Prescott knows the address?

It seems to me that Toni attempts to ignore and avoid Prescott as much as possible; he doesn't comment on or mention him much. It's like trying to avoid an ex-girlfriend at a party because she knows exactly how pathetic and embarrassing you can be when you're in private...

So, John, come on: where are the bodies buried?

Freedom & Whisky on public business and social justice.

In other words this whole boondoggle is about spending taxpayers' money on politically correct non-businesses that can't exist fair and square in the marketplace. Scotland's problem is that politicians of all parties refuse to speak out in favour of the real businesses that are forced to pay for their "social" competitors.

Hayek was right. When we abandon the market and turn instead to the incoherent ideas of social justice and social enterprise the ultimate outcome will be "the complete abolition of personal liberty".

Scotland is fast becoming the shining socialist turd in NuLabour's compost heap of a country. Over half of the workforce are now employed by the wealth-consuming public sector. How long can it go on?

The ever excellent Chris Dillow makes some good points about power.

1. Power doesn’t merely corrupt. It enslaves. Many rulers are not as free as we think. This, in a different context, is one message of Xenophon’s Hiero.


2. What matters in politics is not the particular individual occupying any office. Office determines character more than character determines office.


3. There’s something deeply dysfunctional about political institutions. The great thing about markets is that they cause bad people, acting for bad motives, to do good things. Our political institutions cause good people, acting for good motives, to do bad things.

Go and read the whole thing: Chris makes some very good points in his usual measured way.

Stupid Smart Software

I couldn't agree more with this post from Daring Fireball.

“Smart” editing features are often more trouble than they’re worth. Many of the common complaints about Microsoft Word, for example, revolve around the on-by-default features where it gets too smart for its own good. (Remember Clippy the “I see you’re trying to write a business letter” animated paperclip from Office 97? Or just try to enter a URL in Word without having it automatically turned into a blue underlined hyperlink.)

Once software starts down this path of guessing what it is the user is trying to do, and then doing something special based on that guess, it must guess correctly nearly every time, because the times when it guesses wrong are so annoying that they far outweigh the extra convenience of the times when it guesses right.

I hate it when software tries to anticipate what you are doing and, unfortunately, even Apple seems to have started going down this route; it is an absolute pain in the arse, and I turn off the "clever" features whereever and whenever I can.

The great thing about Macs is that:

1. you can usually turn these features off,


2. it is usually quite easy to find where to turn these features off, and


3. if you cannot turn the features off, then you can pretty easily write a script, and often a simple Applescript, to turn the bastards off or change the behaviour in some other way.

All of these things are good, and are just another reason why Macs will always whip Windows into submission.

The Labour Party's finances

Just a quickie, because I'm stupidly busy. The Labour Party are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, so we hear. To their horror, some of the donors who loaned The Labour Party cash have actually asked for it back: we believe this to be to the tune of £2 million. This has reputedly necessitated the sale of their headquarters, but other debts mean that this will only raise about £0.5 million. The Labour Party has shed thousands of supporters and are having something of a cash crisis; so much so that they had had to hire formerly respected actors to shill for them.

So, my question is this: if the Labour Party goes bust, can they still head the government? Would they have to call a general election? And if not, why not?—for how can a party that cannot even run their own finances be allowed to run the finances of the entire country?

Still, given that they are bankrupting this country, it is hardly surprising that their party is doing the same if their cavalier attitude to other people's money extends outwith The Gobblin' King's offices...

More CoS art

I'm on a roll: here's some more new Carnival Of Souls artwork.



You can download Tenterhooks, and I recommend it; it is an absolutely beautiful song...

Stool Pigeon Scum

Having met the man, I know that The Curator is mild-mannered but with a deep and burning hatred of unnnecessary authority, a fact which can easily be illustrated by his country of anarchists; therefore it is with delight that I recommend this post.

One of the most unpleasant aspects of the New Britain is the constant encouragement of this behaviour - the government, both at local and national level, is eager that we should all turn the unpaid informer, spy upon our fellow citizens and report to the authorities any suspicion of officially-forbidden behaviour. Not only that, but instead of feeling ashamed of our nosey-parkerish actions, we should instead feel a glow of pride in the accomplishment of our civic duty. After all the ultimate aim of any authoritarian state is to have the population police themselves - to atomize society, creating a non-community of mutually-suspicious individuals: don’t use that hose-pipe, you don’t know who may be watching. It’s nasty, it’s mean, it’s petty and it’s making Britain a more unpleasant place in which to live.

It's time that this rat-fuck scum were destroyed: seriously. I believe that a going rate for a hit is about £10,000. Therefore, about £4m should allow us to top the lot.

Shall we start fund-raising now? These people are evil, they are scum. They are vastly worse than Murdoch's Scum, which denigrates the insult when used in association with that tongue-in-cheek rag. Let's kill them now.

Cameron and the EU

Notwithstanding Spam Cam suddenly finding a spine during PMQs, he has definitely lost my sodding vote now. Via Serf, I find that anyone who advocates withdrawal from the EU will not serve on the Conservative front benches.

David Cameron threw down the gauntlet to Eurosceptic Tory MPs yesterday by declaring that anyone who advocated withdrawal from the European Union would not serve on his front bench.

On the eve of the launch of a pressure group promoting withdrawal, the Tory leader effectively warned backbenchers not to get involved if they valued their careers.

Look, you fucking Tory dunderhead, most of the people in this country are Eurosceptic. Certainly, the vast majority of the people who know anything about the EU are Eurosceptic, and even those who are in favour in principle realise that, in its present form, it is rather less than a good thing.

Whilst we are part of the EU, our politics can never move on in a significant way. The EU is committed to its socialist agenda and we have ceded enough of our powers to ensure that they can enforce this aim. A real conservative simply cannot support the existence of the EU; apart from anything else it is an extravagant, corrupt and pointless organisation. It simply should not exist; hear the cry Mr Cameron: "Unio Europaea delenda est"!

Mr Cameron also unveiled plans to transform the party by ensuring that a tenth of candidates in winnable seats were from ethnic minorities. Addressing parliamentary journalists at Westminster, he made no apologies for setting up a secret group to promote the selection of women by announcing that the new "priority list" of top-quality candidates would have more women than men on it.

The list of up to 150 names had originally been expected to be split evenly between the sexes but Mr Cameron said that "more than 50 per cent will be women".

In the name of fuck, why do you think that discrimination—even positive discrimination—is a good thing? You should pick the best person for the job—irrespective of race, colour, gender or sexual orientation—not the one that best suits you fucking quotas.

In a speech designed to urge party activists to keep faith with his attempt to take the Tories to the centre ground, Mr Cameron said his mission was "as profound" as Tony Blair's "Clause Four" moment in 1995 when Labour abandoned its long-held commitment to state ownership.

Yes, you are right. Now, not one of our three main parties represent those who feel that our membership of the EU is as expensive and pointless as the organisation itself. Well done, Spam; you have just handed a whole load more votes to UKIP.

Because, I think that I have found my party: loonies and closet racists they may be, Spam, (and don't think we don't know that the timing of that was deliberate) they are going to get my vote, if I can give it to them. You have just put the last nail into the coffin of my support for the Tory Party. You are no longer Conservatives, and you are certainly not conservatives.

Perhaps it's time to start a new party: the party of small government, of Euroscepticism. A party which believes that the tax-payer should not have to pick up the bill for hairstylists and make-up artists and party propaganda. A party which believes that giving individuals the freedom to choose how they live their life is the central tenet of liberty; a party that does not believe that the state is the solution to every problem; a party that believes in free markets; a party that believes that the best way to help the working poor is to let them keep their money; a party that is untainted with the word "Tory". In short, a party that is in some way different to NuLabour in something other than name.

Does anyone have any suggestions for names? I think that it might be manifesto time again: time for those of us who are conservatives to lay out what we believe in, and how we would implement our beliefs for the greatest benefit of all. Time to revisit the pledges of last year and hone and refine them in the light of events witnessed and lessons learned. It's time for the 2006 DK Manifesto*...

* Yes, yes, I know that I said that we on the Right don't make manifestos; it's just a word. It's a statement of intended policies, not stated beliefs.

Question Time

Tony Blair said that, apparently, he was unaware that nearly a quarter of the prisoners released without being deported had been after ministers were aware of the problem.

Mr Cameron said the prime minister's response was not good enough because 288 prisoners had been released without being considered for deportation since ministers had learned about the problems.

He told MPs: ''Let us be clear about what the home secretary said on television. When asked whether anyone was released after he was told about it, the home secretary replied: 'I am not prepared to say no-one but certainly very, very few people'.

"Given that the actual number was 288 that was completely misleading. This home secretary has presided over systemic failure. He's failed to deal with it and he has last night misled people about the scale of the problem. Isn't it clear that he cannot give the Home Office the leadership it so badly needs."

It's nice to see Cameron actually doing some opposing for once: where did he find his spine?

Mr Blair responded that many of the 288 cases had been looked at and some of the prisoners deported. He said he disagreed with the call for Mr Clarke's resignation.

The prime minister said he did not know the details of the figures that Mr Clarke had now released about the foreign prisoners until the Home Office had put them out.

Mr Cameron said Mr Blair "backed incompetent ministers even when he doesn't know the facts". He demanded to know when the prime minister would start protecting the public.

So, Blair refused to accept Clarke's resignation even when he was not in full possession of the facts. It seems that Tony is desperate to hang on to the very few friends that he has left.

How long can it be before this slippery little shit is forced out?

Hewitt about to need nursing care

Pat Hewitt, the most patronising, idiotic and useless minister on the face of the planet, gets a chance to celebrate the "best year that the NHS has ever had" with a bunch of nurses.

Nurses are set to quiz Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt about fears of further job losses when she addresses their annual conference on Wednesday.

Ms Hewitt was heckled by health workers at Unison's conference on Monday.

But she will seek to convince the nurses gathered in Bournemouth that the government is on the right track in its management of the NHS.

Really; how is she going to do that, exactly? Ah yes, by denying the evidence that is right in front of her pointy, little nose.

Her speech comes as the King's Fund health think-tank will warn that the NHS deficit could hit £1.2bn.

It is with a weary sense of resignation that I greet this news: is anyone surprised? Altogether now, sing it with me:

The wheels on the bus are falling off, falling off, falling off...

We will listen to what she has to say, but we do need some reassurances about what is happening
Stephen Newby, NHS Direct, which is facing job cuts itself, said

More than 2,000 nurses will be in the audience in Bournemouth to hear how the cash crisis can be resolved - over 7,000 job cuts have been announced in recent weeks.

Ms Hewitt will say that redundancies will be kept to a minimum, but more job losses are inevitable.

Hey, don't worry, guys! Those job cuts won't affect frontline services!

In particular, she will say trusts will have to move away from using agency staff which she says are "not the most efficient way to deliver patients care".

Well, no shit, Sherlock. Unfortunately, the inflexibility of staff budgets in the NHS mean that one has to hire agency nurses: their fees do not come off the staff wages budget, you see, and thus can be discounted. The rigidity of the central management mantra means that hospitals have no choice but to hire agency staff: much of the time, these staff are the same people who work during normal hours, only as agency staff they are not allowed to do certain procedures. It's insane.

[Hewitt's] visit comes after RCN general secretary Beverly Malone warned the government was skating on "thin ice" and the government risked leaving nurses feeling under-valued.

Diddums. Many, many people feel undervalued in their jobs: what do you want—mutual pat-on-the-back sessions? Grow up.
She said the profession would consider some form of industrial action such as stopping working unpaid overtime if the situation continued.
...

Stephen Newby, a nurse at NHS Direct - an organisation facing job cuts - said: "We will listen to what she has to say, but we do need some reassurances about what is happening.

"People are concerned about their jobs. The health service is under-funded, and while some efficiency savings can be made, we cannot continue as we are."
[Emphasis mine—DK] Stephen Newby can shut his fucking piehole, frankly. The health service costs us about £1billion a week at present, and that does not include all of the off-balance-sheet PFI capital expenditure. It is not underfunded, particularly; in 1997, it ran no worse than it does today on half the amount of money. No, it is badly managed and appallingly inefficient: staff productivity has continued to plummet and conditions have become far worse.

And, I'm sorry, but nurses and other staff are going to have to take a good portion of the blame for this.

John gets his johnson out

John Prescott: was the woman mad? Look at that fat, ugly, vicious-looking face; where is the attraction? It would be a little like fucking a sealion, I should imagine: a particularly grumpy, arrogant, inarticulate northern sealion. And I wouldn't have thought that it was his eloquence that got her into bed...

Via Allan, the hilarious and yet mildly bizarre news that John Prescott has admitted to having an affair with—and what a surprise this is—one of his secretaries.

Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott has confessed to having had an affair with one of his secretaries.

The MP for Hull East said he regretted the relationship with Tracey Temple, 43, which had ended "some time ago".

"I have discussed this fully with my wife Pauline who is devastated. I would be grateful if [we] can get on with our lives together," a statement said.

I think that what John meant to say was that he regretted being the relationship with Tracey Temple being found out.

Downing Street said it was a "private matter" and that Mr Prescott, 67, had the full backing of Tony Blair.

I'd start packing your bags now, John, if i were you. I don't think that the PM thinks that you are an indisposable asset: more of a talentless liability.

That was a message repeated by Home Secretary Charles Clarke when he appeared on BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

Yes, well, the fat, jug-eared cunt also has Blair's full backing, apparently: I wouldn't care for his chances either, except that Blair is swiftly runninng out of friends. Do I detect the hand of a certain Cyclopean Chancellor in all of this...?

Mr Prescott and Ms Temple started meeting in secret at his Whitehall flat after a two-year relationship began at an office party in 2002, the Daily Mirror reported.

The pair began working together when Ms Temple was appointed as Mr Prescott's assistant private secretary, responsible for organising his diary, said the paper.

She had reportedly previously worked as a personal diary secretary for former Northern Ireland Secretary Mo Mowlam, who died of cancer last year.

I don't suppose that Ms Temple carries some sort of cancer-giving curse with her, does she...?

Ms Temple's boyfriend, lorry driver Barrie Williams, 46, told the Daily Mirror: "I just can't believe that my darling Tracey has been sleeping with John Prescott behind my back.

Ha! Yes, it must be humiliating enough to find that your fiance is sleeping with another man: to find out that that man is John Prescott must absolutely destroy any self-esteem that you once had.

"How dare he split up my relationship with the woman I'd planned to marry?"

Hmmm, well, Barry, I hate to point this out, but it does take two to tango. Or to fuck each other senseless. Perhaps Prescott promised her one these new houses that he's building all over the place...

Mr Williams, of Bordon, Hants, said Ms Temple asked him to marry her just two days after she began a relationship with Mr Prescott.

"I'm just glad we hadn't got round to tying the knot," he said.

I bet you are. Still, at least you were close enough to be able to make some money talking to the Daily Mirror, eh?

Still, I am very grateful that someone leaked this so that I can highlight the moral bankruptcy—personal and political—of NuLabour once again.

Free Jack Idema Blogburst: 26/4/06

Some of this bears repeating, so…

Here’s Jack’s bruised face, the result of the torture they received when they were first arrested, which the MSM didn’t report a single word about, even though Carlotta Gall had a front row seat.

Once again, here we are. We know that Jack and his men were declared innocent in a second trial, which the MSM did not cover, and are being held for some inexplicable reason -at the behest of the American government. Their ID’s actually say ‘political prisoner’ on them. Now if they were guilty of torture and running a private prison, then why would their ID’s say ‘political prisoner’?

In the convoluted case of Jack Idema, Jack and his men, according to Kim Barker of the Chicago Tribune, the biggest challenge isn’t the Taliban or Al Qaeda who are imprisoned at Pulacharke; instead the biggest challenge the Afghans face is the three Americans.

That’s a pretty ridiculous statement, wouldn’t you say? Al Qaeda isn’t the challenge, no, even the Taliban aren’t a challenge–no, the challenge for the Afghans at Pulacharke is the three Americans!

And then she goes on to quote Mawlawi Sidiq (the title of Mawlawi was stripped from him long ago, but the media continues to call him by that moniker). I find it so interesting that journalists like Barker go over to Afghanistan, can’t get an audience with Idema and his men, and continue to report in this slanted kind of way.

She says Caraballo is due to be released in July, Bennett in July 2007 and Idema in July 2009, citing no sources for this information, and not acknowledging that the Americans were declared innocent in a second trial.

My sources say that Idema is due to be released in the upcoming weeks, but it appears as though the MSM is intent on spinning the conditions under which that will happen. Two other points that seemed to me to be equally ridiculous that Barker made in her article were that they were

were arrested in July 2004 on charges of running a private jail and torturing prisoners in their own war on terrorism.

Oh. I see, Idema and his men were hunting Bin Laden, and captured Ghulumsaki with a night letter from Mullah Omar and a letter from his brother-a terrorist incarcerated at Gitmo, but she says ‘their own war on terrorism’.

So if I’m to understand this correctly, there is no war on terrorism? It’s quite apparent how the war with the Taliban has changed, since Karzai is now asking them to participate in government, Mullah Omar was also ‘forgiven’ and taken off the most wanted terrorist list, and I guess we’re all supposed to cry buckets of tears for Ghulumsaki’s brother at Gitmo. Terrorists at Gitmo get a habeas corpus hearing within 30 days (which they’re not entitled to), Idema and his men waited for over a year just to get their case HEARD, because it was buried, and the response was incomprehensible excuses and mumbo jumbo! It’s inexecusable. It would seem that the American government and the courts are favoring terrorists’ rights over those of people who were legitimately and honestly fighting the war on terror.

They said they were hunting terrorists in a U.S.-sanctioned operation but were convicted in a bizarre trial that seemed to overwhelm Afghanistan’s fledgling legal system.

That’s right, a Taliban court did not follow the rule of law under the new system, so that’s why there was a second trial! But sadly, these facts are ignored by the MSM.

There is no reason that they are being held, there is no reason these men are not free, except that the American government switched sides mid-stream and is now appeasing terrorists instead of fighting them, and the media is playing along with this betrayal of our fighting forces, and I find it abominable.

They were not ‘found guilty’ under Afghan law, they were railroaded by a Taliban court! And the accomplices have lost their jobs and titles and some have fled the country.

We will continue to blog about this until their release, and I have some definite questions to ask the American government and the people involved, how this could have ever have happened to Americans in a foreign country to begin with.

The most important thing we should push for is a CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATION.

So what can we do? Well, anyone reading this with their own blog can sign up for the weekly Free Jack Idema Blogburst by emailing Cao or Rottweiler Puppy for details. I’d urge everyone to do this, as we’re still terribly short on takers. If you want to know more about the story, Cao’s Blog has a large section devoted to Jack Idema. There’s also a timeline here, and, of course, a huge amount of information is available over at SuperPatriots, without whose work none of us would have learned about Jack’s story.

You can also contact the following people and make your feelings known:

Secret US EMBASSY Fax: – 301-560-5729 (Local US Fax: Goes RIGHT TO Ambassador)

c/o US Ambassador Ronald Neuman

6180 Kabul Place

Dulles, VA 20189-6180

US Consul Russell Brown – 011-93-70201908 (Fired)

US Consul Addie Harchik- 011-93-70201908 (denied them water and mail at Thanksgiving)

US Embassy Translator Wahid – new – 011-93-70201902

US Embassy Translator Bashir Momman– 011-93-70201923

US Consul (friend of Jack’s Now fired) Dawn Schrepel– 011-93-70201908

Embassy of Afghanistan (Good guys, Northern Alliance)

2341 Wyoming Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20008

Ph: 202-483-6410, Fax: no. 202-483-6488

Ambassador Massoud Khalili (wounded with Massoud)

Islamic State of Afghanistan

Embassy of Afghanistan

New Delhi, India

H.E. Said Tayeb JAWAD (Afghan Ambassador- powerful in US)

Embassy of Afghanistan in Washington

2341 Wyoming Avenue, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20008

Tel: (+1-202) 483 6414

Fax: (+1-202) 483 9523

Mr. Jahed Hamrah, Consul General (pro-Taliban)

CONSULATE GENERAL OF

AFGHANISTAN IN NEW YORK

360 Lexington Avenue,

11th Floor New York,

New, York, NY 10017

Tel.: (+1-212) 972 2276 or 972 2277

Fax: (+1-212) 972 9046

Honorable Donald H. Rumsfeld

Secretary of Defense

1000 Defense Pentagon – Room # 3E880

Washington, DC 20301-1000

Ph: (703) 692-7100

Fax: (703) 697-9080

Lt General William Boykin

Deputy Undersecretary

of Defense for Intelligence

1800 Defense Pentagon – Room # 3E836

Washington, DC 20301

Ph: (703) 697-0170

Private Fax: (703) 697-9080

Stephen Cambone

Principle Deputy Secretary for Intelligence

1800 Defense Pentagon – Room # 3E

Washington, DC 20310-0100

General Peter J. Shoomaker

Chief of Staff, Department of the Army

200 Army Pentagon – Room # 3E528

Washington, DC 20310-0200

Ph: (703) 695-2077 / Fax: (703) 614-5268

The Honorable John D. Negroponte

Director National Intelligence

New Executive Office Building

725 17th Street, N.W., Room 4203

Washington, DC 20503

The Committee

On Homeland Security

U.S. House of Representatives

Washington, DC 20515

Chairman Peter Hoekstra

Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

H-405, U.S. Capitol

Washington, DC 20515-6415;

Office: (202) 225-4121 / Fax: (202) 225-1991

Toll Free: (877) 858-9040

M. Cherif BASSIOUNI

Independent Expert of the Commission on Human Rights

On the Situation of Human Rights in Afghanistan

Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights

UNOG-OHCHR

CH-1211 Geneva 10

Ph: +41(0)22 917 97 27 Fax: +41(0)22 917 90 18

Email

Senator Steven Saland (Jack’s Rep and Neighbor)

9 Jonathan Lane

Poughkeepsie, NY 12603

Senator Elizabeth Dole (Jack’s Rep)

United States Senate

310 New Bern Avenue, Suite 122

Raleigh, NC 27601

Ph: 919.856.4630

Fax: 919.856.4053

Senator Elizabeth Dole (Jack’s Rep)

United States Senate

555 Dirksen Office Building

Washington, DC 20510

Ph: 202.224.6342

Fax: 202.224.1100

Senator Richard Burr (of Interest)

United States Senate

217 Russell Senate Office Building

Washington, DC 20510

Phone: (202) 224-3154 / Fax: (202) 228-2981

Senator Bill Nelson (in the fight on Jack’s Side)

United States Senate

Hart Senate Office Building

Room 716

Washington, DC 20510

Phone: 202-224-5274 / Fax: 202-228-2183

FL Fax 407-872-7165

Senator Dianne Feinstein (Bennett’s Representative)

United States Senate

Hart Office Building, Room 331

Washington, D.C. 20510

(202) 224-3841

Representative Mike McIntyre (Jack’s Representative)

United States Congress

2437 Rayburn House Office Building

Washington, DC 20515

Phone: (202) 225-2731 / Fax (202) 225-5773

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (reference Captain Bennett- CA citizen)

State Capitol Building

Sacramento, CA 95814

Phone: 916-445-2841 / Fax: 916-445-4633

Finally, PLEASE NOTE: The SuperPatriots and Jack images on this site are used with WRITTEN COPYRIGHT PERMISSION and any use by any third party is subject to legal action by SuperPatriots.US

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Memoirs of a Burger Flipper

WARNING: this post became an awful lot longer than I'd anticipated. I have meant to write about this experience for some time, but didn't think that it would be now: but, once I'd started, I just didn't want to stop. So, apologies.

There are times when your humble Devil can understand why Neil Harding is so bitter: his description of working at Stinky Mac's sounds even worse than my experience of wiping the arses of cripples and septegenarians in a nursing home/medical centre for £4 an hour (which was my first job).

I remember being crew member number 77 on the roster when I started. After just 8 months there, I was crew member number 6, so I was the sixth longest serving member of staff after just 8 months! I think that tells you a lot about the conditions there.

This was before the minimum wage, so I was paid £2.20 an hour. I remember looking despairingly at my payslip one week, I had taken home £78 for TWO weeks full time work (we were paid fortnightly)! Luckily one of the other crew members had warned me in the first week to be meticulous about my pay and keep a diary of hours worked to make sure I was paid properly for them. Apparently the managers were notorious for paying short, even on this pittance of a pay. I remember having to clock on and off for 15 minute breaks, they were even too tight to pay for short breaks.
...

Apart from all that I do have some fond memories of the place. The one thing that made the job bearable was the fantastic comradery amongst the staff, few of whom, like me, were older than their teenage years.

This was what made the job at the nursing home bearable; strangely enjoyable even. Plus, of course, I had the patients who were, in the main, extremely nice and many were fun to talk to—those who had any idea of where (or who) they were or who still had the faculty of speech, anyway—despite being dealt a really shitty hand in life.

Like Neil, I was living at home and, although I offered, my parents would take no rent off me. Being young and sprightly, most of the time I was working a minimum of 60 hours a week, and often considerably more, as we were always short of staff. Although we were supposed to have five Auxiliaries and one Registered General Nurse working in the mornings, I remember numerous times when there were only two of us Auxes and we had to short out the medical floor alone, with minimal help from the Registered Nurse (the RGNs were almost always... ahem... caught up in paperwork).

Imagine, if you will, a gangly 18 year old boy and a small girl of 21 attempting to wash, clothe and feed breakfast to 30 patients—most of whom were utterly unable to assist in any way and some of whom actively hindered—before 11 o'clock in the morning. It was back-breaking work (almost literally: back injuries, even in experienced Auxes, were distressingly common): 12 hour shifts with minimal breaks and almost no let-up from the constant exposure to your own mortality.

It was the emotional stress that was so particularly draining: yes, the physical work was demanding, but you were always having to be on your toes intellectually. One of my "named" patients was a 29 year old newly-wed who had suffered three sub-arachnoid haemorrhages; as well as having to deal with the fact that this was (and remains) my worst nightmare—being entirely compos mentis but being trapped in a body so wrecked that you cannot even read a book—I had to also deal with his understandable anger and frustration. He was a supposed to have the assigned nurse with him on a one-to-one basis when he wasn't in various therapies which was, given the staffing levels, simply impossible. I was supposed to have him three days a week, and the other named nurse* had him for four; except that my three days were always Friday, Saturday and Sunday and there were no therapies at the weekend (and our staffing levels were always at their lowest). Could you talk constantly, even to your best friend, for 12 hours a day, 3 days a week for a year and continually entertain them? I clearly remember one of the worse times in my year there, when the other named nurse got tonsilitis: I had to care for this patient, plus my other six named patients (all of whom were "neuro cases" and very demanding) for over 3 weeks, 7 days a week, 12 hours a day. As an added bonus, during that period the patient's wife told him that she was—and one can hardly blame her—seeing someone else, and his rage and then extreme depression were positively palpable.

The bonus was that my paycheque for that month was fairly hefty.

I dealt with this constant assault on my psyche by drinking like a fucking fish and smoking like the proverbial chimney (although I almost never took drugs, and nothing stronger than hash. Oh, how I wish that I'd discovered Ecstasy or speed by this time!). By 9.30 in the evening, I'd be in the pub—usually with a group of friends—and it was rare to leave having drunk anything less than eight pints. Often, we'd go back to someone's house and continue drinking (and smoking) throughout the night. As a rough estimate, my booze consumption was about 100–130 units a week and I smoked between 80 and 120 of my favourite Marlboro Reds a day (chain-smoking throughout the evenings).

One of the few days that I have ever taken sick off work was near the end of my stint there. With the nature of the job, constant hand-washing was more than a necessity; it became close to becoming a mania. Despite frequent moisturising, your hands swiftly became cracked and dry, and the powder on the rubber gloves made your hands feel as though they were on fire. On the day in question, I simply couldn't handle the idea of putting the gloves on; I worked most of the morning and then had something of a breakdown. I hated to leave my friends in the lurch, but at that time I'd had only one and a half days off in the previous three weeks and was having something of an emotional episode. I went home and drank myself into a stupour, slept for a very long time and was then back in work for 8.30 the next morning.

Throughout this entire period, I was immensely grateful for my total inability to suffer from a hangover. This was, at least partially I suspect, caused by the fact that I almost never completely sobered up. At my peak of fitness in this period, I still weighed rather less than 10 stone, and the amount of alcohol that I was putting away could be described, a la Bill Hicks, as heroic (or fucking stupid: you decide).

Those of us who were stalwarts on the Medical Ward were extremely jealous of the Phychiatric unit upstairs: they always had at least three staff to a mere 6 patients, many of whom were capable of dressing and feeding themselves with minimal supervision: our ratio of staff to patients was never higher than seven staff to thirty patients (a few days of luxury there!). Nevertheless, the staff there were always surly and unhelpful and, though one could occasionally be persuaded to help us out with a couple of patients in a time of real crisis, they usually found an excuse to disappear back upstairs again.

As you can imagine, recruiting new Auxes was a problem. They rarely lasted: I remember two of them going on their lunchbreaks on their first day, never to return. One gallant lass survived three days. Only one person recruited after me stayed for longer than a week, and she was still there when I left (although not when I returned to work for the first two holidays from university).

Yes, that's right: I actually went back a few times! Because, like Neil, although many of the times were very hard and I came very close to mental and physical breakdown (and the massive drinking actually led to a pretty severe dependency and eventual collapse half way through my second term at university), I enjoyed working there. Quite apart from the us-against-the-world cameraderie, the staff were, on the whole, a good bunch of people and I laughed more than I ever had previously in my life.

But it was more than that: one felt that one was actually doing something worthwhile. We did things for our patients that were outside our remit and at our own expense, that made their lives a little more interesting or better, even in some small way. We'd bring in music, or take the more able out on trips to the pub, or even to our houses. We'd make an effort with those who were sidelined through lack of funds; those who had no insurance, and just too well-off for their long-term care to be paid for by the NHS. This happened particularly in the case of the man who owned our local dairy who contracted MS at a relatively young age. His wife was still alive and needed to live; she'd sold their house and bought a smaller one, but still the medical bills were fairly crippling, especially since the main breadwinner could no longer work. Fortunately for her—and, in my opinion, him—his decline was relatively swift; less than ten years from diagnosis to his eventual death about a year after I left.

As you can imagine, my levels of cynicism increased exponentially and my gallows humour, already well-developed was honed further over those months. When you've seen your worst nightmare in the flesh and helped him wipe his arse, you feel that you can comment on these things. And, bloody hell, some of the patients used to laugh—albeit slightly bitterly—at their situation: it would have been rude not to join in...


UPDATE: Right For Scotland recounts his first job at Burger King, and how it really wasn't that bad, actually. He's right: there is that wonderful feeling of receiving your paycheque and knowing that you have worked hard for that cash, and being able to buy things for other people with that cash. The lack of this feeling was one of the reasons that I hated being a student.


* An intelligent (and very pretty) girl, failed by the state school system, she left to train as an Occupational Therapist after my constant urgings that she should try something other than Auxing. She returned to the medical centre as a fully-trained, full-time OT later on in the year, and thanked me for persuading her. I'm still proud of that.

After seeing yet another skin product advert, I have to ask the following question: is there any bloody research that the British Skin Foundation does not endorse?

New, from DK Skin Care, our latest product. Yes, Used Engine Oil can make your skin feel younger and fresher!

And our research is backed up by the British Skin Foundation...

It's all balls, you know...

Charles Clarke: incompetent cunt shock!

Charles Clarke, The Safety Elephant: a fat, ugly, incompetent, stupid, useless, authoritarian, fuckwit bully. The only reason that one cannot accuse him of being the monkey with the keys to the banana plantation is because John Prescott still has them hidden, gold-watch-like, up his anal passage. If I were Charles Clarke, I would have shot myself in the fucking head out of pure shame by now.

Those long-time readers who read my first Charles Clarke demolition might have realised that I was attempting to apply a rather more rational assessment of Clarke's character than is often my wont. I wanted to get to the nub of why this man was such a total cunt, and one of the things that I pointed out, ad nauseam, was that was incompetent: after all, the only Bills on which this government have been voted down were done so on Clarke's watch.

But the real insult is that Clarke is so utterly fucking useless; if I could offer some advice to the Safety Elephant, it would be, "shut your fucking trap"...

Charles Clarke: the world's most eloquent argument against the existance of an intelligent designer...

Politically, the man is useless; now, it seems like he is useless as as an administrator too.

The home secretary has said he will not resign after it emerged 1,023 foreign prisoners had been freed without being considered for deportation.

Charles Clarke said he did not know where most of the people, who include three murderers and nine rapists, were.

Ah, wonderful: so, thanks to the incompetence of those under Clarke's jurisdiction, there are over a thousand extra criminals roaming our streets.

"Now there are sufficient resources, and we are confident no further convicted foreign nationals will be released in this way."

Do you blieve them? I don't.

Mr Clarke had said the failure leading to the 1,023 releases was "deeply regrettable" and conceded that people would be angered by the oversight.

Well, as usual, that is wonderfully insightful of him. Like my colleagues below, I am a little more that "angered"; I am fucking livid.

Among the offenders, five had been convicted of committing sex offences on children, seven had served time for other sex offences, 57 for violent offences and two for manslaughter.

There were also 41 burglars, 20 drug importers, 54 convicted of assault and 27 of indecent assault.

The Home Office said it did not have full details of offences committed by more than 100 of the criminals...

Wait a second: the Home Office doesn't even know what they've been convicted for?! What the fuck is going on?

... but 237 were failed asylum seekers and 54 were still having their asylum applications considered.

No, no, and thrice no! If they have committed a crime in this country, there is no consideration of their asylum applications: they are deported. All asylum considerations should be ceased immediately and the criminals deported. I'm sorry, but we don't have the resources, either financially or spiritually, to deal with hundreds of foreign pieces of shit as well as our own. So, why the fuck are these applications still being "considered"?

More than 870 were serving at least 12 months and 13 were serving more than 10 years.

Need we point out that they are serving these sentences at our expense? Each prisoner costs about £32,500 per annum, so those 870 foreign criminals will cost us at least £28.3m this year alone. Hell!—what's £28m these days, eh? How many hip operations would that pay for? How many frontline nurses (1,000 minimum)?

However, Shadow Home Secretary David Davis accused Mr Clarke of trying to "smuggle out" the news rather than face MPs' questions.

"At the end of the day it's not good enough to blame officials, frankly it is a issue which affects the safety of the British public," he said.

Well, exactly; and we all know how keen Charles Clarke is to protect us all. Has that not been his rationale for ID Cards? For the draconian Anti-Terror Legislation? For the abolition of habeas corpus? Do you not remember the Tony and Charles double-act, ballsing on about how the greatest right of the public was that of being not being killed? Ach, you know: I simply cannot be bothered; there really is little to say but add my voice to the ever-swelling chorus...

Resign. Now. You are a hideous, weaselling cunt, Clarke: fuck off and die.

Foreign Criminals Of The Day: The Lost 1,023

“I've seen many people kept going in difficult circumstances by ethos”

Lin Homer

Firstly, I must proffer my apologies to His Satanic Majesty for invading his space with my ongoing manic crusade for the expulsion of all foreign criminals –so hopefully I will not suffer the hellish fate of forever trying, and failing, to withdraw money from Chechen cash machines.

The news that 1,023 foreign criminals who were are all eligible for deportation have been released back into society over the past seven years, without so much as a second glance from the Immigration & Nationality Directorate, shouldn’t really have come as too much of a surprise – not when foreigners comprise 13% of the prison population.

It would be very satisfying to believe that this has been the result of some sort of mysterious ‘firewall’ at work, preventing the IND and the Prison Service from speaking to each other in the same way that 9/11 was facilitated by the firewall that stood between the CIA and FBI for much of the ‘90’s.

Indeed, it would actually be preferable if it were the result of a sinister political plan, rather than through the appalling, and very British, series of cock-ups that seem to have been behind the affair, and which have led The Safety Elephant to trumpet that,

“We simply didn't make the proper arrangements for identifying and considering removal in line with the growth of numbers that were there,”

So, the bottom line is that for the last seven years the British government’s policy towards the deportation of foreign criminals has been benign neglect. The completion of judicial process, otherwise known as upholding the law and the rule of law, has been reduced to a matter of making ‘the proper arrangements’, with duties incumbent upon ministers of the crown and officers of the law officially considered to be no more burdensome than those upon the shoulders of funeral directors.

Perhaps they thought the criminals would just go away of their own accord.

More likely than not, the neglect was motivated by touchy-feely ‘We Are the World’ political correctness, the absurd idea that nations don’t matter and that all countries are just the same; an idea which would be proven wrong by any figures which might exist for the number of British citizens currently seeking asylum in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

But more sinister is the admission by the above-quoted Lin Homer, the IND’s Chief Executive that, of the missing, 160 had been recommended for deportation at sentencing; of whom nine who were subsequently located had been deemed ‘inappropriate for removal’.

New Labour’s contempt for the law is absolute. Deportation was an essential component of the sentences that had been handed down on these criminals by our courts. These sentences were the law of the land, interference with them an offence against the administration of justice; and no executive agency, no matter how well intentioned, has any business thwarting them.

The person who made that admission was previously the £172,000 a year head of Birmingham City Council, who made something of an, ahem, name for herself as Birmingham’s returning officer before apparently taking a £2,000 a year pay cut to head the IND.

Any crime committed by a foreigner in the United Kingdom constitutes a dilution of British citizenship. Citizens, regardless of their race or creed, pay taxes to fund police forces for no purposes other than to detect and prevent crime in their own communities. If someone who should not be in that community commits a crime, the resources that citizens fund are diverted away from their proper purposes to the citizens’ loss.

If the criminal has been admitted as a result of laxity or ideology on the part of those whom the citizens have entrusted with their governance, then those responsible are indifferent servants, unworthy of the trust that has been placed in them. The officials responsible thumb their noses at the citizens while simultaneously demanding their wages in taxes.

There is also a calculus to foreign crime. The cases reported include murderers, rapists and paedophiles, but to how many unpaid parking tickets does a murder equate? Or to how many unpaid TV licences?

The right to live in the United Kingdom has consistently been vested in citizens of other nations without recourse to the British people. We have no immigration policy, only anarchy. Our leaders, both Labour and Conservative, have consistently paid no heed to our right to determine who lives amongst us.

For the most part, we can live with that with a shrug of our shoulders; but government by human rights lawyers for human rights lawyers has turned us into a hunting ground for the scum of the world.

Charles Clarke could do no better than reflect upon how the department he heads has allowed citizenship to degrade to the extent that foreign criminals need have no fear of deportation. The Home Office need to review its ethos; perhaps they should ask Lin Homer.

She’s a big fan of ethos, for sure; but so were The Seven Brides For Seven Brothers Gang.

Pass the buck time at the Home Office

So the Home Office have been releasing rapists and murderers of foreign nationalities that should have been deported at the end of their prison sentences, and all those concerned are racing to cover their arses:

The home secretary says he "regrets" that 1,023 foreign prisoners have been allowed to walk free when they were meant to be considered for deportation.

Charles Clarke said he could not say "hand on heart" that they would all be tracked down but said he did not think it was a "resigning matter".

Doesn't he? Funny that, isn't it? So, whose fault is it? Well, we know it's not the Safety Elephant's, because he tells us so:

Mr Clarke said he was not going to start pointing the finger at who was to blame for the error.

And then he, er, points his fat, stubby finger in several directions, all of them away from him:

"Both the Prison Service and the IND failed to carry out their responsibilities in the way they ought to have done," he said. "They have both taken steps to lead me to be confident that it is now being done properly."

Perhaps it's his predecessor's fault? Nope:

Former Home Secretary David Blunkett called the problems "astonishing". "My view is that heads should roll," said Mr Blunkett. "There are too many people in the system who simply don't care. I fully support Charles Clarke in getting to the bottom of this."

Oh well, I guess the days of ministers taking responsibility for their departments are well and truly behind us. Still, at least we can have confidence that the mess is being cleared up.

Can't we?

The courts had recommended that 160 of the criminals should be deported from Britain at the end of their sentences, it emerged. Lin Homer, the Immigration and Nationality Directorate's director general, said 14 of the 160 had been found. Five of those had been deported and nine considered inappropriate for removal.

And at the end of that round, Safety, your score is: five out of 160.

And remember; these people want to record, number and tag you.

New artwork

I'm really quite proud of this piece of artwork and it's for one of my favourite bands, Carnival Of Souls: it is also my brother's band, which makes it all the sweeter.



If you are a London resident, I do recommend them very highly: they are more than competent live, and they have a vast catalogue of great songs (with good tunes). There's a brief review and photos here, and another brief review of another night here.

Carnival of Souls is a rather unusual rock band, blending keyboard rhythms with electric guitar, and their sound is psychadelic as well as outgoing, but also melancholic at times. They have a few instrumental numbers.

The singer is particularly articulate and is absolutely amazing on stage... He doesn't just sit there like a good boy... Decadent pupil!

Go now! Next gig is tomorrow...

Via The Very British Dude (to whose missive Cameron's Office has responded), I'd be quite tempted by one of these little electric cars if only so that I could deny Gordon his car tax; as an added bonus, if I lived in London, I could deny Red Ken his Congestion Charge too!

Two doses of spite for the price of one: how cool is that?

Toynbee , Hewitt, Eugenides, RFS: MMFF

At least, Polly will be screaming should Mr Eugenides ever get his hands on her, Pat Hewitt, a nailgun and the set from A Clockwork Orange!

It’s neck and neck between La Polla and the terminally horrific Patricia Hewitt for who’d get the first bullet. After yesterday's fiasco at the UNISON conference, I imagine I might be able to leave Trisha to the staff of the NHS to dismember and rip limb from limb. But I shouldn’t really have to choose, should I?

In my darker moments, I picture Polly and Patsy strapped to chairs in a darkened room, their legs in stirrups, their eyelids peeled back a la Clockwork Orange... Electrodes attached to their temples snake down beneath their dresses and feed in to a pair of Paslode IM250 Impulse 16-gauge nail guns nestling just inside their labia minora... and programmed to fire off a stainless steel 64mm nail every time their PC muscles contract.

Then we run VT from the Labour Party Conference and sit back to enjoy their few last, agony-filled minutes.

Go and read; it is absolutely the most glorious stuff!

And in other news, the superb Right For Scotland discusses the state of the NHS, from personal experience. Go and read the whole piece: did you know that NHS lab technicians can receive a written warning for having a screwdriver in their lab? Or that the only people allowed to tighten screws on a set of drawers are the estates workers? The private reminiscences are bad enough, but it is the mathematics that is damning.

Since 1997 the UK has lost 1m private sector jobs. [Gordon] has countered this by creating 800,000 mainly bureaucratic positions on the public payroll. But now the wheels are coming off and those jobs are beginning to go. Of course it is not the pen-pushers out of a job but the “hard working” doctors and nurses we were told would be fired under the evil Michael Howard. Was it not Unison that asked how spending £50bn less would improve public services? Should we not now ask how spending £50bn more has improved them?

But think about this. At £60bn per year the “free” NHS costs the average household over £5000 in tax every year. £416 per month. Taken from Health-On-Line.co.uk just now a quote for myself, my wife and my child comes to £92.15 per month (assume 30m households like mine and this represents a total health spend of between 3 and 4 billion). If they can run a health system on this premium then why can't the state?

Precisely: now can we please abolish the Welfare State? It has failed for 60 years; and it hasn't failed because it has cost the eeeevil middle-classes billions of pounds: it has failed because it has made things worse for the poor of this country in every way that cannot be counted in simply pounds and pence.

The London Marathon

The London Marathon: what the fuck are these lunatics up to? Fucking their knees, that's what. And I bet that not one of them is running for Pay For Knee Operations On The NHS charity; but then, none of those damn charidee parachutists jump to pay for their injuries on the NHS either...

Your humble Devil is not a sporty person, he has never earned the epithet "Sporty Spice". "Saving Up For Gout In The Future Spice" possibly, as yet another empty port bottle—usually a tawny, but white if I can get it—disappears into the "definitely no recycling going on in this household" bin. But, sport, no.

Don't get me wrong: I quite enjoy playing the odd game of footie, or even cricket. I used to think that I wasn't too bad at tennis either (until my ex disabused me of that notion one sunny afternoon, sweeping the pill into the corner once again) and I definitely play a mean game of croquet (the game that dispproves that old aphorism, "the family that plays together stays together", as yet another furious argument about what the House Rules are exactly erupt in the Hellish household).

No, all I am saying is that long years of smoking and the comsumption of many thousands of pints of Britain's finest foaming has rendered my physique unable to cope with more than a couple of hours of vigorous exercise a year; my filthy temper renders my involvement in anything competitive unwise; and my utter lack of enjoyment of exercise for its own sake means that I simply cannot be bothered to participate in anything that doesn't actually have a point to it.

That point may, in fact, be beating Gabriel's scratch side by ten goals to nil, or humiliating one of my lesser devils with a racquet, but it absolutely does not include jogging a mile around the Meadows first thing in the morning, storing up trouble for the future by buggering the cartilege in my knee whilst doing so.

So you can imagine the enthusiasm with which I welcome the idea of running 26 fucking miles around one of the most polluted cities in the world, dressed as a fucking chicken: I mean, seriously, what is the fucking point? Why on earth would one participate in such a thing? All I can think is that the thousands of participators are, quite simply, a massive illustration of the failure of Care In The Community. Each and every one of them should be banged up in a loony bin, and drugged to the eyeballs, until the dribble collects in their crotch.

The only real entertainment, as Mr Angry amusingly points out, is the hope that one may see some kind of incident; usually this will involve a massive coronary and a paramedic crash team. With any luck, this medical emergency will also involve a C-List celeb. It has to be better than trying to interview the bastards.

“How’re you finding it?”, asks the commentator momentarily jogging alongside the pop-star/presenter/wannabe.

“Hard work, but we’re doing a lot of good for [insert charity of your choice here], and that keeps me going! See you at the end!”, replies the C-lister.

This is such a load of sanctimonious old bullshit that I can barely contain my loathing. Anyone who has ever done a marathon will know full well that the only thing the attention-grabber really wanted to say to that commentator was;

“Fuck off will you, I think I’m having a heart attack and I need a shit. If I didn’t think it’d harm my [record sales/acting career/chances on Big Brother] I’d have fucking dropped out miles back. I’m in fucking agony and if you don’t get that fucking microphone out of my face I’m going to shove it up your fucking hoop!”

The London Marathon, ladies and gentlemen: I think that it tells us all that we need to know about the whole sordid event that it is sponsored by Flora—a repulsive ersatz substitute for real, delicious, creamy butter—which is chock-full of "unsaturated fats" and fucking plant cum...

calling all traitors

Psst.. I think he's talking about us:

A "pernicious and even dangerous poison" is present in the British media, Home Secretary Charles Clarke said today.

The politician accused parts of the Press of making incorrect and over-simplified statements about his Government's record on civil liberties. He said journalists had transferred totalitarian qualities to democracies such as the UK and the US following the collapse of "genuinely dangerous" dictatorships.

That's right - critics of Labour have just gone from being fool-hardy to being dangerous. Students of history and irony will note that this is a strategy of control and intimidation usually found traditional totalitarian states: criticism of the state is not merely misguided, but threatens the personal safety and prosperity of everyone in that state. Presumably, the danger to which Clarke refers is that the claim to recognise petty dictatorships at home will blind us to the threat of larger ones abroad: I think we're probably able to do both.

Still, it's genuinely pleasing to hear someone squeal like this:

"In the absence of many of the genuinely dangerous and evil totalitarian dictatorships to fight - since they've gone - the media has steadily rhetorically transferred to some of the existing democracies, particularly the United States and the United Kingdom, some of the characteristics of those dictatorships. So some commentators routinely use language like 'police state', 'fascist', 'hijacking our democracy', 'creeping authoritarianism', 'destruction of the rule of law' [...]"

Let's take a stroll down memory lane: let's try detention and punishment without trial, advocated by our Dear Leader only yesterday, which would seem to fit the description of most, if not all of the above.

From the position of the lowly blogger, it seems that the way to avoid being accused of totalitarianism is to stop behaving in a way that appears.. well.. totalitarian, such as making the claim to be the only arbiter of truth, the only one to understand 'complex' arguments for the good of the people:

"In the case of often complex debates, for example on the appropriate balance between liberty and security, much media comment reduces itself to simplistic and flowery rhetoric."

Here, only Clarke and chums get to decide what is 'appropriate'; disagreement with those decisions being made on our behalf is 'dangerous'.

Of course, only someone who really enjoys their rhetoric would notice that Clark has just attacked the messenger and not the message or that 'simplistic and flowery rhetoric' is the hallmark of an administration that thought Saddam had nuclear weapons, claim that ID cards will protect us from terrorism, think that the NHS is having the bestest year everrrr etc. etc.

Gallows humour aside, the Home Secretary just accused critics of his government of being dangerous. Will someone give me odds on how long it will take for his advocates to accuse us of treason?

The Dominion of Devils-Kitchen

At the time of writing, my Nation State is a Capitalist Paradise.

• Civil Rights: Very Good


• Economy: Powerhouse


• Political Freedoms: Excellent

I have the highest population, highest GDP per capita and third lowest tax rate in the region of Blogtopia.

Devils-Kitchen

• Category: Capitalist Paradise


• Population: 561,000,000


• Economy: Powerhouse


• GDP per capita: $29,165.59


• Tax Rate: 21%*

So, now that I have proved that I can run a country really fucking well, can I be the UK's Benign Dictator for Life now? You won't regret it, you know...

UPDATE: DK is now a Corporate Bordello, which has Superb Political Freedoms and a wonderfully decadent sound to it...

* It is interesting (although hardly surprising) to note that, in the region of Blogtopia, all of the strongest economies have the lowest tax rates. Conversely, all of the weakest economies have the highest tax rates. I think that there is a lesson for The Gobblin' King in there somewhere, you know. I just can't put my finger on what it could be: can you...?

Onslow and stupid commenters

I agree with everything that Lord Onslow says here.

Have we a guilty secret? Remember Burke saying: 'All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.' Why are we not shouting from the hustings that we will return to the people their ancient liberties?

Why, Mr Cameron, is the Conservative party passing by on the other side while our old liberties fall among thieves?

However, I do not agree with the useless commenter who calls himself Karl123, who wrote the following Harding-style garbage.

So the fox hunting, hooray Henry, tory Toff, free market party has a history of liberty and can be relied upon to fight for the working classes and the poor and disenfranchised? Show me some poor, working class tories! These public school, over priviliged aristocrats and upper middle classes know nothing about the interests and needs of working class people.

Let's just have a wee look at that shall we (and yes, I'm afraid that this is merely an extension of the comment that I left in that place).

So the fox hunting, hooray Henry, tory Toff, free market party has a history of liberty and can be relied upon to fight for the working classes and the poor and disenfranchised?

Reverse snobbery is such an ugly thing, isn't it? It automatically makes one look like a bitter, ignorant fuckwit and I'm afraid that Karl comes across as precisely that.

And "fox hunting"? This government banned it, remember? They are very fond of banning things, this government. That is partly what we are all complaining about: the erosion of our liberties.

Show me some poor, working class tories!

Well, we could start with all those Tory-voting farmers, if you like, Karl. I know a couple actually. Oh, and some Tory-voting teachers too.

Oh, and I'm not working class, but I do work and I am currently extremely poor; yet I am still a conservative. I am willing to work hard in order to ensure that I become less poor and I would far rather that the government left me alone to get on with it. I would certainly rather that they stopped taxing my meagre earnings quite so hard. A real Conservative government, one that believed and actually actioned the concept of a small state would need to spend very little money—considerably less that NuLabour's £500 billion a year—and would therefore need far less tax revenue. I think that you would find that you could then raise the Personal Allowance to, oh, £10,000–£12,000. This would definitely help the working classes, no? It might not help those who do not work quite so much but, in the long run, the abolition of the Welfare State would.

These public school, over priviliged aristocrats and upper middle classes know nothing about the interests and needs of working class people.

And public-school-educated, lawyer-with-two-Bristol-flats-and-a-£4-million-house-in-London Blair does? Really? And people like Michael "nine properties" Meacher is also in touch with his inner working class, is he? Millionaire Geoffrey Robinson is also sensitive to the needs of the working classes, I would imagine? And Gordon Brown—with his derisory rises in Personal Allowances, the Tax Credit balls-up and any number of other attacks on the freedoms of UK citizens—has the best interests of the poor at heart, does he? Well, if he really does, and his policies aren't all about state control of a massive section of the population, then why doesn't he let people just keep the money that they earn, rather than taking it and then feeding it back to them in dribs and drabs (and then fucking up and demanding massive lump sums back). Don't make me laugh.

You, Karl123, are a blinkered, bigoted fool. I would suggest that, if you are going to hold views that make an angry sixteen year old's look nuanced, you do yourself a favour and don't express them: it just diminishes you in the eyes of all who read them.

What a little prick you are.

Zimbabwe: too little, too late

It seems that Mugabe and his bunch of thugs have realised that Zimbabwe has a few problems—though why they took so long to realise one cannot imagine—and are desperately hoping that the expertise of white farmers can stave off the impending famine. One can only say that the phrase "too little, too late" is the one that springs to mind.

Zimbabwe says it is prepared to provide land to white farmers who had their property seized under President Robert Mugabe's land reform programme.

Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga told the BBC any Zimbabwean can apply for land and that farms would be allocated on long leases for free.

Now, Zimbabwe is—and you'll excuse me for using a technical term here—completely fucked. The people who were given land after the eviction of the white farmers, unsurprisingly and by a government minister's own admission, know stuff all about farming and this has led to severe food shortages.

The economy is in a state of near-collapse, with inflation officially running at at least 782%, although some claim it is as high as 1000%. Combined with price hikes on just about everything, but especially food, people can only survive by going hungry even when there is any food to buy. The currency exchange has become such a problem that even the local Coca-Cola factory has closed. All of this has led to Zimbabwe's citizens having the lowest life-expectancy in the world: roughly 34 for women and 37 for men.

I am going to call this: Robert Mugabe is fucking insane, absolutely bat-shit mad; his "land reforms" have destroyed the food output, and consequently contributed to the absolute and total screwing of the economy.

But it is hard facts that has driven this policy U-turn. By confiscating the whit- owned [sic] commercial farms, the government transformed a country that was once the breadbasket of Southern Africa into a net food importer.

And despite good rains there is every prospect of another deficit over the coming season.
...

This policy has left Zimbabwe poorer than it was at independence in 1980, after it had survived 16 years of sanctions and eight years of civil war.

The result is the current crisis, with ordinary Zimbabweans now trapped in grinding poverty, and over 2m having sought sanctuary in neighbouring South Africa.

The scale of the oppression is also fairly huge, with Mugabe arresting and imprisoning opposition politicians and using secret police to enforce nominal obedience.

None of this, of course, has prevented that fat, jug-eared cunt, Clarke, from attempting to send asylum-seekers back there. Remind me again, what was the "ethical foreign policy" that we were promised by this appalling, mendacious, corrupt and evil fascist regime...?

Hewitt still a fucking retard

Patricia Hewitt: living on a different planet from the rest of us; this woman is so far beyond clueless that she qualifies as a fucking mental cripple. She is a walking advert for Disability Allowance.

It seems that the sad case of Patricia Hewitt's "mental fucking retardation" is fated not to have a happy ending. Unfortunately, Pat's terminal stupity has developed still further, our reporter can reveal.

Doctors are still at a loss to isolate the cause of Pat's fucking uselessness, but are able to confirm that the mental fucking retardation has led to Pat becoming totally divorced from reality.

"It's really tragic," one consultant told us, this evening: "Pat seems to be living in a different world. Whilst the rest of us know that the NHS is completely screwed, everything is just dandy in Pat's world. It's very, very sad."

Alarm bells were sounded when Pat today asserted that the NHS was having its best year ever.

Despite huge job losses and mounting financial problems, the NHS is enjoying "its best year ever" according to Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt.

The service faces a financial deficit of up to £800m and some 7,000 job losses have already been confirmed.

And yet still the National Health Service is, in fact, having the best year in its 58 year history. If this is the best year in the history of the NHS then what—in the name of all that is unholy (Tony Blair)—the fucking hell happened in its worst year?

Given that the NHS is patently fucked, what does Hewitt think has made this year so good?

Mrs Hewitt said: "We have just come through one of the coldest winters for decades and we haven't had any of the winter bed crises."

Wow. I'm pretty impressed: aren't you?

She said the job cuts - which latest estimates suggest could rise to 13,000 - were in many cases allowing the service to operate more efficiently.

Oh, yes; these are those ones that mean that hospitals can cut 1,000 staff and then maintain that this will not affect patient care. As I pointed out before, if that is the case, then why the hell were those staff hired in the first place?

She said the government had delivered on its promise that the maximum waiting time would be six months for operations such as hip replacements.

"In the bad old days", she said, the waiting times would have been closer to two years.

Was that to get on the waiting list or the waiting list for the waiting list, Pat, me ole fruit? Eh?

The health secretary insisted she was not "complacent" about the cash problems, saying she was "determined" to sort them out before they began to threaten patient care.

Pat, some people—the doctors mainly—would say that it already is threatening patient care: do you not read Doctor Crippen? Or even glance at the loony Left newspapers?

Critics have claimed that NHS managers have been spending too much on staff wages, paying too high prices for some drugs and wasting cash by mismanaging cost-cutting initiatives.

Well, "critics" would be right; that is precisely what has happened.

Unless, of course, you happen to be a mental cripple like Hewitt; it must be some form of head cancer. Surely no one could see things so utterly differently to everybody else without having something physiologically wrong with their brain. There is only one option.

Operate. Immediately...