New Labour – Page 11

They Must Be So Proud

Published on March 18, 2009

Unemployment has risen through the 2 million mark on the widest measure of joblessness while the claimant count has suffered its biggest jump on record.

The Office for National Statistics today confirmed that unemployment rose to 2.029 million in the three months to January – the highest in 12 years – a rise of 165,000 from the previous quarter.

The January figure was revised up sharply to show a rise of 93,500, up from the 73,800 reported a month ago. That means the claimant count has surged by around 600,000 in the past year.

More…

Update: Here’s Labour’s Brian Iddon (Bolton SE) as James Purnell’s callous Welfare Reform Bill passed the Commons unopposed by the Tories or Libdems,on its third reading:

… told how he was handing over cash to a close family member to top up his jobseeker’s allowance (JSA) because it was “impossible to live on”. He said that were he not “almost doubling it” the person would not have a decent standard of living.

LabourHome is currently running a poll:

Should Labourhome run an annual awards ceremony for Labour politicians, activists and constituencies?

Yes
No

Oh, yes, yes, yes.

In addition to a couple of obvious awards, (twin Dinky toys to Prezza for Most Unlikely Blog Success, and a therapy gift certificate to Derek Draper for the Most Enjoyable Blog Meltdown) may I suggest The Mandy, an annual award of a magnum of Bolly for Grinding The Faces Of The Poor? I don’t think Iddon would win any such poll, being as he is so definitely off-message, but I bet Parnell’d be in with a very good chance.

Update II

The jobless map of Britain.

New Labour sleaze watch: John bloody Reid

Published on March 16, 2009

By an amazing coincidence the security firm that employs former defence secretary John Reid has just landed a big Defence contract:

Former Defence Secretary John Reid faced fierce criticism yesterday as it emerged the world’s largest security firm had won a huge contract from the Ministry of Defence weeks after taking him on as a consultant.

Mr Reid – who ran the MoD until May 2006 before resigning from the Cabinet while Home Secretary in June 2007 – was hired by G4S three months ago for Â£50,000 a year to offer ‘strategic advice’.

This week, it was awarded a four-year contract to supply private security guards for around 200 MoD and military sites across Britain in a deal thought to be worth tens of millions of pounds.

There was a time serving in government was seen as a duty to the country; now it’s something unpleasant you have to go through to make big bucks in the private sector by exploiting your old contacts.

The ruling classes are a-feared

Published on February 23, 2009

British police is warning about a Summer of Discontent:

Police are preparing for a “summer of rage” as victims of the economic downturn take to the streets to demonstrate against financial institutions, the Guardian has learned.

Britain’s most senior police officer with responsibility for public order raised the spectre of a return of the riots of the 1980s, with people who have lost their jobs, homes or savings becoming “footsoldiers” in a wave of potentially violent mass protests.

Superintendent David Hartshorn, who heads the Metropolitan police’s public order branch, told the Guardian that middle-class individuals who would never have considered joining demonstrations may now seek to vent their anger through protests this year.

He said that banks, particularly those that still pay large bonuses despite receiving billions in taxpayer money, had become “viable targets”. So too had the headquarters of multinational companies and other financial institutions in the City which are being blamed for the financial crisis.

Hartshorn, who receives regular intelligence briefings on potential causes of civil unrest, said the mood at some demonstrations had changed recently, with activists increasingly “intent on coming on to the streets to create public disorder”.

If you look back through the archives you’ll see Palau has warned time and again that New Labour and its cronies in the police forces have been preparing for the economic downturn for a long time, exactly by giving the police far ranging powers to nip any social unrest in the bud. Deliberately or not, they’ve created a body of legislation that can make any form of protest, no matter how peaceful, illegal.

Hartshorn is indeed issuing a warning, but it’s aimed at us. Best not be thinking about protesting and accept your lot like good boys and girls…

Which other British politician was Berlusconi friends with again?

Published on February 17, 2009

Even lend him his villa in Tuscany, wasn’t it? Anyway, David Mills, Tessa Jowell’s estranged husband (ha!) is convicted for taking bribes:

David Mills, the estranged husband of Tessa Jowell, the Olympics Minister, was given a jail sentence today for accepting a bribe of $600,000 (at the time £350,000) from Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister, to give false evidence on his behalf in corruption trials.

[…]

Mills was accused of accepting the bribe from Mr Berlusconi for testimony that he gave as a tax lawyer in two corruption trials in 1997 and 1998. In a letter in 2004, Mills told his accountant, Bob Drennan: “I turned some very tricky corners, to put it mildly, and so kept Mr B out of a great deal of trouble he would have been in had I said all I knew.”

Mills, in a statement to the court last month, insisted that he had “never been corrupted by anyone” and apologised to Mr Berlusconi for causing him “trouble”. However, Gabriella Vanadia, a lawyer for the Prime Minister’s office, but not Mr Berlusconi personally, sided with the prosecution and told the court that the State accepted the allegation that Mr Mills had accepted the bribe.

Don’t worry, he’s unlikely to go to jail until the appeals process is exhausted, by which time the statue of limitations will have been reached. Can’t have the great and powerful go to jail like a common shoplifter, no can we?

Dead Party Walking

Published on February 12, 2009

:
After so many crushing blows, so much self-immolation and such blatant, unbridled corruption you’d think that surely by now it has to be all over for New Labour.

But the battered and bloodied corpses of the cabinet just keep twitching. Nothing seems to kill them off. What’ll it take? Do we have to get out the flamethrowers?

The latest news from Guido Fawkes, who did the digging, is that the party’s spin doctor, epitome of arrogance and ‘psychotherapist’ , and now blogger Derek Draper (he’s author of New Labour’s pisspoor attempt at copying Kos or Obama’s netroots campaign, LabourList) is an unprincipled quack who may well have lied by omisssion about his credentials, pretending to have received a U.Berkeley MA when he actually got it part-time from a weekend school in Berkeley…

How does that song* go?

Aneurin Bevan,
Your Party is dead
And the time for a new one is nye.
Would the last person left
Please turn out the light
New Labour, just fuck-off and die.

*Chorus of ‘Guy Fawkes’ Table’, by Atilla The Stockbroker

from his LPBarnstormer on Eastside Records

UPDATE

Draper replies on his personal blog to Guido’s allegations :

To clarify this I attended the Doctoral programme at the Wright Institute that lasts, on average, five to six years. Within that programme students qualifying receive an M.A. at the end of the third year. At that point I had completed a training that was very intense compared to UK psychotherapy trainings, and had undertaken many hundreds of supervised clinical hours, so returned to the UK to set up my practice. I always describe myself as a psychotherapist, have never claimed to be a clinical psychologist, although my degree is, in fact, an M.A. in Clinical Psychology.

[…]

However, it now seems clear that this episode was a clumsy attempt to smear me, concocted by Guido Fawkes and fed by him to David Hencke at the Guardian. A journalist I have hitherto always admired and respected. I think he was led astray by Guido Fawkes and made a genuine mistake. I did, however, as the Independent reports today, give him a bit of a rollocking when I saw him yesterday.

To recap: I have never said to anyone or written anywhere that I attended U.C. (University of California) Berkeley. The fact that Hencke himself wrote a “fact box” stating I had, which I never saw, was his mistake not mine. I attended the Wright Institute, a well respected graduate school for clinical psychology where after 3 years of full time study, I received an M.A. in Clinical Psychology. I have always said I studied in Berkeley not at Berkele

Guido in his turn claims more evidence of Draper’s mendacity is forthcoming.

This one will run and run: too many people loathe Draper to let it go. He is New Labour in a nutshell and his current trials are giving anyone who loathes them and him a great deal of justified satisfaction.