Manufacturing consent – Page 14

I Has A Brainwave

Published on March 7, 2008

Gordon Brown and his walking incompetence of a Home Secretary Jacqui Smith (I just bet she puts a little heart over the ‘i’) are desperate to roll out biometric ID (already proven insecure) in the teeth of all opposition.

But because of that opposition, they plan to do it by stealth, by imposing it on resident foreigners, airport workers (whatever happened to ‘no-one will lose their job through not having the card’?) and students, whilst all the while spinning this creeping compulsion as a series of pilot schemes.

The project will begin in November with compulsory ID cards for foreign nationals. Within three years all new foreign applicants arriving in the UK will have to have a card. British workers in sensitive jobs, such as airport staff, will have to enrol from 2009.

It’s not going to go well.

But I’ve had a brilliant idea: since New Labour think the whole ID card idea is so fine and dandy then why not – in the light of recent invasions of parliament by protestors – start by issuing cards to their parliamentary colleagues, lobby journalists, political apparatchiks and various spouses and assorted hangers-on and compelling them to be carry the card at all times when in Parliament? What better way to show their faith in ID cards?

I’m sure all these entirely trustworthy people will be perfectly happy and’ll have no problem with providing fingerprints, iris scans, DNA samples and all the other 50-odd separate bits of information required for the card while cheerily forking out the necessary hundred pounds for the privilege of doing so.

I’m sure they’ll be fully in support of the massive national database and petty bureaucracy that’ll be required to support the scheme too.

Won’t they?

Stalin’s Spinner, Unspun

Published on January 17, 2008

Gordon Brown may come to regret appointing former adman, quango chair PR supremo and failed telecoms CEO Stephen Carter as No 10 propaganda commissar.

“‘What I tell them is nine-tenths bullshit and one-tenth selected facts.” Stephen Carter, special adviser to Gordon Brown

Gordon Brown never lets us down, does he, where duplicity, spin and cowardice are concerned. As usual when faced with trouble, our unelected PM, our Beloved Leader, has turned tail and run away.

In other words (to borrow a Thatcherism) Brown’s frit.

The prime minister may think that by disappearing off to furthest China ( has he never heard of the internet?) that he’s distancing himself from his (*cough* Peter Hain) troubles. He should be so lucky.

While Gordo’s away with the begging bucket, other quietly simmering governmental troubles are coming bubbling to the top. The appointment of Carter was meant to deal with negative publicity while Brown makes himself scarce. But it’s going to prove a little tricky now the spindoctor has now become the story.

Isn’t the whole point about propaganda to never let the pretence slip, to never tell the truth, to be economical with the actualité?

But it seems Carter, who you’d think’d know about spin, once forgot himself and told the truth:

Stephen Carter, Brown’s new chief of strategy, who has given up a lucrative job chairing a City PR firm to take up his new £137,000-a-year government post, was chief operating officer at British cable TV company NTL between September 2000 and 2001. When Carter arrived, NTL had $17bn of debt on its books and the company was struggling to retain customers. He continued to reassure investors and the media that the company was performing well and was expanding its customer base, according to a class-action lawsuit filed in the Southern District Court of New York in 2002. One document alleges that following a teleconference call with investors and analysts in 2001, Carter was asked by his customer marketing director, Charles Darley: ‘How can you … persuade investors to believe that NTL is going to be OK when you know it isn’t?’

According to Darley’s recollection, quoted in the lawsuit, Carter allegedly replied: ‘What I tell them is nine-tenths bullshit and one-tenth selected facts.’

In 2006, the insurance company acting on behalf of Carter and some other NTL directors named in the lawsuit agreed a $9m settlement with disgruntled NTL investors who brought the action through New York-based law firm Milberg Weiss. As part of the agreement, the directors did not admit liability when the lawsuit was wound up.

Not exactly credibility-enhancing, is it?

It seems Brown’s new chief spin doctor’s attitude towards the public that pays his salary chimes with that of his new boss – he thinks we’re so stupid we’ll accept any old bollocks.

Admittedly it wasn’t the British voters he was referring to, rather the hapless investors and customers of cable company NTL, but it’s a pretty good insight into the quality of advice Gordon Brown’s getting at present.

But it’s not just advice he’s giving – this unelected flimflam man is being given the power to make crucial political and governmental decisions, despite never having been elected by anybody:

Stephen Carter has been hired, I’m told by one well placed adviser, to be Gordon Brown’s ‘back of the car man’ – i.e. someone who can grab a few minutes with the boss on the way to an event and take him through a list of 10 pressing political decisions. In addition, the hope is that Brown and his aides will trust Carter to take those decisions when the PM is simply too busy to take them himself.

So now we have a spindoctor and alleged fabricator as our de facto unelected deputy PM. But then Brown was never really elected either, was he? Democracy, schemocracy.

But let’s get back to spinner in chief Carter.

Because the evidence against him was never tested, after the NTL settlement there were no obstacles to Carter’s next appointment as Head of Ofcom, the regulatory body for UK telcoms. Many were surprised, to say the least:

When Stephen Carter was appointed to run Ofcom, the media industry’s first super-regulator, there was little sound coming from the chattering classes – their jaws had universally dropped.

At the time of his appointment, Carter was an unemployed 38-year-old whose last job was presiding over the bankruptcy protection proceedings of NTL, the cable company crushed by £12bn of debt.

What a fantastic idea – to put an alleged market-rigger and failed CEO in charge of regulation of the very same market he failed in! Genius.

From there Carter then became CEO of massive PR company and Friends of Labour The Brunswick Group:

Brunswick Group is an international PR firm, with almost a third of the FTSE 100 top firms as clients, they are the biggest financial communications consultancy in the UK. They paid more than £5,000 to the Labour Party for ‘tickets for dinners’ in 1999-2000 and gave £9,000 in August 2001. The company also donated the services of an employee to the Government to help work on the Financial Services and Markets Bill – legislation which will regulate business in the City and which would provide invaluable information to Brunswick’s clients.

Oh – you mean that same legislation that’s enabled the subprime meltdown and debacle that is Northern Rock? Well done, thou good and faithful servant.

Now Carter’s in No 10, right at the elbow of the PM. He’s the man whose job, to quote the Times, it is to “sell Gordon Brown to the public”. I hope he’s on a probationary period, because he’s not doing a well so far, is he?

A few of today’s headlines:

Gordon Brown dithers over Peter Hain

This slow death, watched with open glee

Brown denies dithering over Northern Rock rescue plan

Come along, Mr Brown … if Hain is incompetent, just sack him

However, it appears that advising the most incompetent and floundering PM in recent memory and taking decisions no-one ever elected you to take isn’t actually the full-time job – and more – that you’d think it is. No, Carter kept a couple of other sinecures, despite being paid 137,000 pounds a year by the taxpayers:

He resigned from the post of chief executive of Brunswick, and stepped down as non-executive director of Royal Mail and Travis Perkins and as a commissioner of the UK Commission for Employment and Skills. He will remain chairman of the Ashridge Business School and a governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company

Carter’s reported to have got the No 10 job through connections of Sarah Brown:

Gordon is married to Sarah, who used to work for Alan, who owns Brunswick, the City’s biggest PR firm. Stephen also used to work for Alan, but now he works for Gordon, who also happens to be godfather to one of Alan’s children.

The appointment of Stephen Carter, former head of media regulator Ofcom, as Gordon Brown’s new ‘fixer’ at Number 10 is testament to the growing power of Brunswick founder Alan Parker, whose sphere of influence now extends far beyond the Square Mile and deep into Whitehall and Westminster.

Parker is close to Brown and his wife Sarah , who ran her own PR company before moving to Brunswick, and the PM is said to have been impressed with Carter, who was chief executive of Brunswick, after meeting him socially. When the 51-year-old multi-millionaire Parker remarried last year, Brown and David Cameron were among the guests and Parker has hired other politicos in the past, including Andrew Hood, a former adviser to former Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon, who joined the company as his ‘chief of staff ‘ in a similar role to that carried out, briefly, by Carter.

Nice how they keep it all in the family isn’t it?

In addition to spinning the truth Gordon Brown and New Labour, in their ten years of power have spun a web of unelected, unaccountable connections amongst and between the corporatocracy and the government, of which Peter Hain’s mucky funding scandal is only one loose thread. Whether it can ever be untangled is doubtful. and to extend the metaphor, it may be that the whole dirty tangle will have to be cut down if public confidence in government is ever to be restored. Cutting the Gordian knot, if you will.

Next stop the heart of Gordo’s web: The Smith Institute.

The Man Who Copied His War Protest Got 40 Grand – What Did Brian Haw Get?

Published on January 16, 2008

A beating from the Met, that’s what:

Government and Police under fire for beating up Brian Haw

Tue, 01/15/2008 – 13:00 – Wire Services

The British government and London’s Metropolitan Police came under heavy criticism today for mercilessly beating up Britain’s iconic peace protester Brian Haw over the weekend.In an unprovoked attack by a police officer, Mr. Haw was assaulted in the face with his own camera and arrested while observing a demonstration against the ban on unauthorised protest under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (SOCPA) which was taking place outside Downing Street.

Mr. Haw, who was bleeding from the assault, was then dragged into the police van where he was further assaulted by policeman, according to witnesses.

“I utterly condemn the aggressive mishandling of Brian Haw during Saturday’s demonstration, and his subsequent treatment while in the custody of police,” Green MEP Caroline Lucas said. “He is a passionate and peaceful campaigner, and a popular hero following his outstanding efforts to publicly oppose the Iraq war.”

According to other protesters arrested along with Mr. Haw, the peace protester was once again badly assaulted before being strip searched and charged under the SOCPA.

“This incident provides yet more proof that police actions taken under the terms of SOCPA are putting a stranglehold on civil liberties and threatening the right to gather in peaceful protest,” Lucas added. “It is a sad day for this country when the face of modern democracy is frightened and bloodied and peering out of a police van on a Saturday afternoon.”

More…

Yet Another Learning Experience

Published on January 14, 2008

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..

“Oh, No It Isn’t!” “Oh, Yes It Is!”

Published on December 17, 2007

scans and x-rays and tests and readjusting to medication changes, on top of the expensive, time-intensive household disasters that tend to break out at this, the most inconvenient time of the year.

Typically I’ve got a dead washing machine, both sons coming home this week and no guarantee of a new machine being delivered in time for Christmas. Bah.

Presents have yet to be bought and wrapped, the house decorated and lights repaired, cats avoided, cake iced, bedding organised, cards sent and general bonhomie maintained and as I tire very easily these days, it’s a matter of priorities.

The blog has to lose for a little while, a decision made much easier for me by the sheer unutterable dismalness of the general political, economic and ecological outlook: it really is difficult to wiite amusingly about the pecadilloes of politicians when the future survival of humanity is quite probably in doubt.

Easiier to retreat into Hohoho-ism and deck myself in tinsel and turkey and jiollity, put my head in the sand and make my own reality for a while – and why the hell not? I don’t think i’m alone in feeling at the back of my mind (“It’s beh-i-i-ind you…”) that this may be the last decent Christnas we’ll all have for a while, so what the hell, why not make it a good one?

But at least if I’m being deliberately oblivious to what’s happening in the world outside my immediate environs it hurts no-one. When the people in charge start denying the truth staring them and us in the face, we all suffer.

That’s exactly what’s happening with the Brown government, who are sharing a joint denial of reality in the face of all the evidence by trumpeting New Labour policy and achievements in friendly national papers, in the hope that if they shout lies loudly and for long enough that failure will transmogrify into glorious success by sheer willpower alone.

This was amply evidenced last week by UK Justice Minister Jack Straw’s delusional Guardian article championing Labour’s contrbutiion to liberty. Straw was quickly and comprehensively taken apart, his lies exposed in detail and at length by Guardian commenters – he realy did take a metaphorical kicking, with over 400 negative comments.

You’d think after that humiliation that a politically astute PM would think twice abouit putting up another guy to be knocked down, wouldn’t you?

But no. Now here’s former Blair/Brown advisor David Clark, donning his red-rose tinted spectacles to come to the aid of the party, again in the Guardian:

Labour can win if it has the desire to make a fight of it
Ignore the hysteria and hyperbole – the government’s main problem is a collapse of morale .

What? It’s a morale problem? Oh, my, lord. he can’t seriously believe that, not after everything. that’s happened, – can he?

It’s real bang your head on a table stuff. Clark demonstrates beyond a doubt that New Labour really do not see that they have done anything wrong in their entire ten years of power. As they did with Straw’s lies, commenters take Clark’s article apart line by line, but it’s obvious from the lack of response that Labour ministers either don’t read the comments to what they’ve allegedly written – which rather negates the point of posting an article in a semi-open forum – or they do read them, but they just don’t care.

There’s a phrase, pioneered by Hazel Blears and beloved of New Labour ministers, when confronted with inconvenient facts by a Paxman or a Humphries – “I don’t accept that.”

Peter Hain used it at least three times this morning while denying he had any responsibility for failed pension funds, despite being confronted with many court decisons against the government, and it totally derailed ( as it was meant to do) any chance of getting any sense at all out of the process,

Interviewers, however skilled and tenacious, bang their heads in vain against the brick wall of “I don’t accept that” – it immediately cuts off debate by denying that there is even a debate to be had.

“I don’t accept that” isn’t “That’s untrue” or “I think you may be mistaken” or “That’s open to interpretation”. “I don’t accept that” doesn’t question the veracity of an argument, assertion or fact: it simply denies that it exists.

Faced with a complete, flat denial that any other position than the one they have taken can exist, that any other facts than the ones they promote can exist, that any other reality than theirs can exist, what is anyone to do make a dent in the facade of this incompetent and corrupt government, short of wreaking physical violence?

But tis the season to be jolly tralalala, and I have a cake to decorate and mice pies to bake. I shall be posting at least once a day between now and the new year, but don’t expect much in the way of astute analysis from me. I am making my own reality too, at least for a while, and there will be snow and robins and chestnuts roasting an open fire on the blog between now and the New Year, and if you’re lucky maybe a few festive comedy sex toys or cute pictures of kittens in santa hats.