Cash for honours

Yet Another Learning Experience

BBC Bias, Cash for honours, Gordon Brown, Manufacturing consent, New Labour, Policing, UK politics
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UPDATE:

Hain has case to answer – watchdog

42 minutes ago

Work and Pensions Secretary Peter Hain is to face a full parliamentary “sleaze” inquiry over his failure to declare £103,000 in donations to his Labour deputy leadership campaign.

The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, John Lyon, has ruled that the minister does have a case to answer, the commissioner’s office said.

……….

So – what have we British subjects learned about our political elites this weekend from the Hain saga ?

Well, we’ve learned Gordon Brown is a serial bottler, saying the decision on Peter Hain’s illegal campaign donations is out of his hands. Oh, how very convenient.

We’ve learned that the media is still up the arse of New Labour no matter what they do: although The Independent’s Andreas Whittam Smith calls corrupt Work and Pensions minister, member of Brown’s cabinet and Seceretary of State For Wales Peter Hain what he is, an outright liar: publish and be damned, no ifs, ands or buts – “Frankly, I don’t believe a word Peter Hain says “ – the sentiment of the rest of the Great and the Good is firmly pro-New Labour.

Compare and contrast Smith’s blunt accusation to Jackie Ashley’s apologia in the Guardian – “If Peter Hain resigns, it should be for the crime of political stupidity, not for deceit or fiddling.” and Willam Rees-Mogg’s (no stranger to corruption and nepotism in politics he, given his role in much of Tory party history) in Rupert Murdoch’s Times: “Hain; foolish, but not a scoundrel”

The BBC, meanwhile, is busily talking up a barely-existent Tory funding scandal in order to maintain a spurious balance, while totally missing the point – that this government is corrupt to the core, both morally and in terms of competence, and the smell of it it can’t be overcome.

For all the BBC’s vaunted interactivity, having once caved in to New Labour after the Hutton report the management’s now compelled to ignore the overwhelming public opinion expressed on their own talkboards, in favour of the Panglossian appoach to politics – ever onwards and upwards to the best of all possible New Labour worlds – rather than acknowledge brewing publc discontent with this government.

But something’s got to give at some point – and when it does, whether it’s a government collapse and a shock election, or whether it’s summer rioting on the streets this year or next, the BBC will be the first to express their horror at the sheer unexpectedness of it all.

What else? This weekend we’ve also learned, as if we didn’t already know, that there’s one law for the powerful… and eternal surveillance and an ever increasing thicket of laws and petty tyranny to get fatally entangled in for the rest of us.

Woe betide us if we fall foul, however inadvertently, of the three thousand new laws New Labour has brought in – the government has plans to bag, tag and track all who transgress, whether guilty or not.

While lawbreaking New Labour politicians are busily absolving thermselves of any wrongdoing, the British government, cheered on by power-hungry police chiefs, plans to inject petty offenders and those released on bail and as yet not convicted of a crime with RFID tags. so that their every movement and activity can be tracked by satellite. As the Independent so pithily put it, those who break the law, convicted or not, are to be “Tagged like dogs”.

Dystopia – are we there yet?

No tag for Hain and other dishonest New Labour politicians, though – theirs are just mistakes, guv, nothing like the antisocial behaviour of the permanent criminal underclass their government has created. They are scum – Hain is good. Why, he was in the ANC! He fought apartheid! He’s a friend of Nelson Mandela!

However could an ally of the sainted Nelson Mandela ever commit a crime?

In any case (say, just as an example, that Hain were convicted for bank robbery under the government’s own double jeopardy laws, which reversed English common law to say that you can now be tried again for the same offence despite having been previously acquitted) Hain would need no RFID tag to track him: he can be easily detected by his radioactive glow. That and the stench of corruption.

Now New Labour plan to remove the right of appeal against a conviction based on abuse or invalidity of process. So the cops beat you up? What the hell, you were guilty anyway, it doesn’t matter..

Government disregard for the common law – or even common decency – combined with blatant ministerial corruption and the perpetual creation of new, petty rules for the rest of us is breeding utter contempt for democracy and the law by everybody.Why should the young obey the rules when their elders so obviously have nothing but disdain for the law?

What we’ve learned from this weekend, most of all is that there no illegality or injustice that the new New Labour establishment will not connive at or condone if it keeps them where they want to be.

But then we already knew that..

Spin and Redemption – A Lenten Story

Cash for honours, Manufacturing consent, Media, New Labour, Women
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It appears that that paragon of all virtues, Cherie Blair, (or Cherie Booth QC when it suits her) is to bring Christian enlightenment to us godless proles by giving a Lenten talk on BBC Radio 4.

Cherie Booth
Wednesday 14 March

repeated Saturday 17 and Sunday 18 March

Cherie Booth QC finds the themes of restorative justice in the story of Zacchaeus

Which naturally gives rise to some immediate questions:

1 Why is the BBC spending licence-fee payers’ money giving the partner of a suspected criminal in an active investigation airtime to pontificate about private morality?

2 Why is an active member of the judiciary broadcasting their personal views on the nature of sin and redemption to all and sundry on the public airwaves? and

3 Can anyone tell me why any political spouse, unelected to any office, should be given a platform for their religious views at public expense? And of course the most important question,

4 Is the Beeb being manipulated by a professional spin job?

I’d be very interested to know the answers – and don’t give us that ‘she’s a public figure, it’s in the public interest’ crap either, Auntie Beeb. It doesn’t wash.

The Blairs have always modelled themselves on the Clintons and Cherie has always been politically ambitious. The parallels are obvious, particularly now Hillary is running for president. Has it given Cherie ideas? On a little further googling it seems that this little BBC talk may be but one tactic in a grand strategy aimed at the transformation of the much-loathed Cherie into Our Lady Of The Charity Photo-Ops.

Just in these past few weeks she’s done women’s rights in Uganda, made friends with Pakistan, smiled her letterbox smile at scared children in Rwanda and became a celebrity ambassador for the Howard League for Penal Reform. I smell PR micro-management.

Of course it may be that all this public do-gooding is just designed to rub off on poor disgraced Tony. There seem to be moves afoot to position the Blairs post-resignation as members of that inchoate class, the ‘great and the good’ – the people who turn up on Royal Commissions and quangos or heading acronymic international bodies that no-one knows the purpose of, drawing a fat stipend and expenses all the while. Or is it all actually about Cherie and her own future political career?

Cherie Booth/Blair’s position in British politics is a vexed one. While it’s absolutely her right to pursue her own legal career despite being married to someone in the public eye, rather than choose to be an anonymous sidekick this political spouse has chosen not only to embrace the limelight but to use it to advance her own career. She’s a private individual when it suits her and a public figure when she nees money, which is often. She now commands 30,000 pounds and upwards for a speaking fee. She’s a politician, but no-one elected her. Forbes calls her the 62nd most powerful woman in politics. Not bad for someone who’s never been put to the electoral test.

Carefully crafted as this PR strategy appears, the big question is: will it work? Well, it worked for the Clintons post-impeachment. Bill has taken a step backwards into benign elder-statesmanism and money-making, a fate Blair very much wishes for himself. Hilllary is now front and centre as a senator and presidential candidate, a position Cherie must envy, given that she reportedly set aside her own ambitions in deference to her husband’s.

Clinton at least is putting herself on the electoral line, but Cherie prefers to exercise her influence privately just now, amassing a fortune in the process. That’ll come in handy later should she consider standing for office herself. She wouldn’t dare to put herself before the voters any time soon- she’d be massacred – but ten years down the line, who knows? If she does stand it’s sure as hell it won’t be under the name Blair; there are some things even spin can’t make palatable.

And then there’s the cash for honours affair, which may yet throw Cherie’s plans totally off-course, though that rather depends on whether the the Met have the gumption and the evidence to arrest and charge a sitting Prime Minister.

(I have to wonder what Cherie would do if the plod came knocking at 6am at No.11 with an arrest warrant for her husband. Would she do a Tessa Jowell to save her career or would she stand by her spouse like a good Catholic ? The answer to that question will determine whether all this careful public positioning comes to naught.)

It makes me really angry to see the BBC complicit in a Blair rehabiliation programme. Was it the religion commissioning editor’s idea to ask Cherie to do the talk? If so, why the hell did they think that was appropriate? Or did Cherie Blair or someone who works for her approach the BBC? If so, it shows a remarkablly naive susceptibility to spin. Is she being paid? If so, how much?

You might ask whether dicusssion of Cherie Blair and her media manoeuvrings is very politically productive when Blair’s big war-crime, Iraq, looms over everything.

I’d say of course it is: it’s an object lesson in how politicians use the media as a form of revisionism. The history is being rewritten as it happens, The acid test of all this will come ten or 20 years down the line: will we be saying “Cherie Blair? Who? Oh, you mean Cherie Booth, the PM.” or “Cherie Blair? Oh, you mean the war-criminal’s wife”.

How Compromised Is the Met In The Cash For Honours Affair?

Cash for honours, Corruption, New Labour, UK politics
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Via Ellis Sharp comes former ambassador Craig Murray’s report that the Commissioner of the Metropolitian Police, Ian Blair, has been having dinner with Lord Levy.

I’m sure as sure can be that Mr Ian Blair (no relation) is an absolute model of personal and professional probity, just like the PM and his cabinet. Oh yes.

Murray:

[…]

Meanwhile, I am stunned that last week Sir Ian Blair, head of the Metropolitan police, shared the top table at a Jewish community dinner with Lord Levy. Blair is the head of the police force that has arrested Levy, removed his passport and, from the actions of Lord Goldsmith this week in seeking to suppress information that may be used at the trial, is likely to charge him shortly with an imprisonable offence.

It cannot possibly be right for the head of the Metropolitan Police to be hobnobbing socially with a prominent alleged criminal. And this is the ultra-sensitive Ian Blair, whose concern for social form is so acute that he demanded an offical report when a female Muslim police officer refused to shake hands with him. The report presumably explained that many Muslim females do not shake hands with men.

Ian Blair and Levy are of course both close members of the Prime Minister’s social and political circle. It is by no means the first time that they have dined together. In July 2005 the two of them ran up a £140 ($270) bill at a London restaurant, which Sir Ian Blair charged to the taxpayer. There was no investigation into Levy at the time, but his being dead sleazy was hardly a secret.

Ian Blair’s explanation of that charge to the taxpayer was that Levy was a representative of the Jewish community. Now, there are many eminent and worthwhile people in London to whom that description applies, but I don’t think that Levy holds any community posts. He is no more a representative of the Jewish community than I am of the Scottish community. Besides, how many one to one £140 meals has Ian Blair had with a representative of the Muslim community? Or the Irish, Iranian, Kurdish, Turkish, Polish, Palestinian or Greek communities? Other than ultra-rich New Labour supporters who happen to have that background?

So Ian Blair and Levy have form. In current circumstances it was a gross error of judgement for Ian Blair to sit at a top table with Lord Levy. Levy should have realised that himself and made his excuses, but nobody could mistake Lord Levy for a gentleman. Therefore Blair should have made an excuse and left. As it is, some of the smell has rubbed off. Ian Blair should resign.

Why would someone with such a sterling repuation, Britain’s most senior policeman, be hobnobbing socially with one of the chief suspects in a criminal investigation of government corruption by his own police force? Enquiring minds would like to know.

Lord Levy has been rounding up as many prominent Jewish people as possible, even his own rabbi, to bombard the media with accusations that any criticisms of his behaviour are unjustified and indeed antisemitic.

Anti-Semitism?

In an interview with Channel 4 television Tuesday, his rabbi, Yitzchack Schochet, was asked whether Levy, a high-profile member of London’s Jewish community, was facing anti-Semitic treatment.

“I know that the Jewish community is becoming increasingly more sensitive that there’s the one Jew seemingly being hung out to dry here,” he said.

I don’t doubt that No.10 is trying to stitch him up for the crime, but Levy’s hardly some political innocent led astray.

Bollocks. The man’s a crook and he’d be a crook if he were anabaptist.

As for Ian Blair – resign? he should be sacked and publicly cashiered, then banged up in one of his own stinking cells.

Cash For Honours: Injunction Lifted

Cash for honours, New Labour, UK politics
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The BBC now has permission to reveal the fuill content of their injuncted report after a lunchtime hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice lifted the injunction on the grounds that one outlet should not be injuncted to the exclusion of others.

The Guardian already printed a rival story this morning which the courts declined to injunct last night as the presses were already rolling.

It seems Lord Levy may have asked Ruth Turner to change her evidence. Oops. Methinks the whoever leaked to the Guardian may have been attempting to preempt todays lifting of the BBC injunction and get a different story a more positive spin out first.

More soon.

UPDATE:

Lending a bit of credence to my above theory Guido Fawkes posts this:

Sleazy Levy Complains of “Trial by Media”

Levy’s lawyers have just released a statement complaining, wait for it, of “trial by media”.

Well perhaps he should stop ringing up political editors and briefing them in that case? All those unnamed “friends” quoted in the press are him, briefing…

UPDATE : 13:30 The Metropolitan Police have released a statement effectively accusing the Guardian of underming their case.

Heh.

… Like A Circle In A Spiral, Like A Wheel Within A Wheel…

Cash for honours, New Labour, UK politics
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That bibulous former Young Conservative and pain in the side of Westminster, Guido Fawkes, has a theory about why No 10’s probably behind the leak of crucial evidence to the Beeb last week, prompting Goldsmith’s desperate injunction:

[…]

When news of arrests and interviews has come out, it has more often than not been from the politicians themselves. Given that the Beeb didn’t buy this story, who profits from revealing crucial police evidence? Not the investigators, which is why the police sought to suppress the story, because defence lawyers could make much mischief, and probably will, with the “trial by media” line.

To quote the most famous detective of all, “If you eliminate the impossible, whatever is left, even if improbable, must be true.” Those under investigation, now that they believe it no longer possible to “fix” the CPS because of the evidence known to have been discovered, have the most to benefit from bringing the evidence into the public domain. The desperadoes of Downing Street would not be above leaking against themselves, tactically it would also allow them to portray themselves as victims of media savvy police investigators. They already brief that the police are “theatrical” and whine that they are unable to publicly defend themselves from the “trial by media”.

These are dangerous times for Downing Street’s toughest street fighters. The gloves are definitely off, which is why Guido thinks this leak has Downing Street’s fingerprints on it.

It appears that No 10 appears to be using one of the Scooter Libby perjury trial’s defence strategies – only where Libby’s supporters tried to engineer a mistrial during the hearing by using their media access, New Labour have been trying to stop it before it even comes to indictments, let alone trial. But they were stymied by the Met’s request for an injunction.

This puts what I’d initially assumed about Lord Goldsmith’s motives in a different light – though having to apply for the injunction when he quite probably would really rather have been doing his master’s political bidding and quietly whispering to selected media figures must’ve been irritating in the extreme.

I bet Blair is kicking himself too that he didn’t introduce some kind of Prime Ministerial pardon system when he had the chance.

UPDATE:

BBC 1 O’clock news is reporting that Downing St denies absolutely that it could’ve been the source of the leak, because ‘details of the emails mentioned in the press prove it couldn’t have been them’.

Uh-huh.

Ooooh, look at the airborne piggies!

DOUBLE UPDATE:

BBC Radio 4 is reporting that the emails were between Ruth Turner and Johnathan Powell and concerning Blair crony Lord Levy. ‘Unnamed sources’ in the government are now blaming the police for the leak. Oh, this is fun. More soon.