UK politics – Page 56

Comment of The Day, Belated

Published on November 5, 2007

Martin Kettle’s hateful Guardian opinion piece on Saturday has drawn over 192 comments so far, a preponderance of them hearteningly negative. Kettle’s thesis seems to be, in short, that it’s fine for innocent people to be executed on the streets without arrest or trial if it keeps him, Martikn Kettle, personally safe: Reaction was swift:

Outradgie November 3, 2007 5:05 AM

Kettle has here contributed one of the most poorly reasoned and ill-informed articles seen on CiF, and that is quite an achievement. To pick a few of the more egregious errors:

1. “… the conviction of the Met this week was bad news not good news. The tyranny of the insurance-driven risk assessment culture – which ironically the commissioner would now be negligent to ignore – means you and I will be less well-protected in future by the police than we were in July 2005.” The Health & Safety at Work Act gives no right of civil action, such as pursuing compensation, see in particular s.47 of the Act. Compensation is independent of any prosecution under the Act. The penalties imposed upon conviction under the Act are fines. Under UK law it is illegal to provide insurance against criminal penalties. (Simon Jenkins’ attempts to pontificate on H&S law here have also been greatly undermined by his complete ignorance of this distinction. People injured or made ill at work would still be pursuing civil actions if no H&S statute had ever been enacted and no H&S regulating agency existed.)

2. “The police genuinely thought De Menezes was a suicide bomber.” No, they did not. They did not know who he was, or what he was doing. There was total confusion and incompetence, but they killed him anyway.

3. “Ken Livingstone is wholly correct to say that health and safety legislation was never drawn up for such extreme situations as this. And the law is not just an ass but an outright threat to liberty if this week’s judgment means a future armed officer is afraid to fire at a real suicide bomber in similar circumstances.” It is rubbish to say the legislation does not apply in “extreme circumstances”. Was London under martial law that day? It is very common for those who break H&S law to say there were special circumstances. It’s easy to do a job right when there is no pressure. The law is intended to restrain reckless behaviour especially when it’s tempting to cut corners. There is nothing in this court case that need inhibit any police officer from firing at a suicide bomber. What should be inhibited is firing at innocent people, as an outcome of bungled, incompetent, mismanaged, disorganised and reckless policing.

4. “Londoners are at much greater risk after this ruling.” Pure tosh. There are many more armed police than terrorists in London, and it is vital that they are well trained and responsible. Today we read “Mohammed Abdul Kahar, 23, who was shot in the shoulder during a raid by police on his home in Forest Gate in 2006, says he and his brother Abul Koyair, 20, were stopped by armed police with one officer shouting “shoot him, shoot him”.” Not so very long ago there was the miserable story of how Harry Stanley was shot dead by police for walking home with a repaired chair leg. This was made many times worse by over 120 Metropolitan Police armed officers walking off the job when an attempt was made to hold responsible the two who killed Stanley. How can people feel safe when armed police refuse to be accountable and put themselves above the law? What makes Kettle think safety means armed police should be free to kill anyone with impunity? Benjamin Franklin might have been thinking of fools like Kettle when he remarked “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

5. There is a threat to liberty from terrorists, and there is a threat from lethally stupid police work. These are linked in a way Kettle has missed. The killing of De Menezes was a failure at every level: tactically, operationally and strategically. Tactically, because even if he had been a genuine threat, he was only intercepted when he was on a train. Operationally, because he was nothing to do with the people being pursued, and while killing him and trying to mop up the mess, there was less attention and resource to deal with the real targets. Strategically, because this killing spread fear and discredited the police, doing the terrorists’ job for them, and helping to alienate ordinary people whose support is vital. Fighting terrorism depends above all on keeping community support. This prosecution is the only real demonstration so far that the UK really acknowledges the gravity of the failure that day; it is a small step to recovering the moral standing and respect that is vital if the UK is to prevail.

That’s just one of many in similarly devastating vein. It’s well worth reading the whole thread, but don’t expect any response from Kettle himself, who’s conspicuous by his absence. Moral cowardice seems to be his bag.

I find iit hard to believe that any thinking person could have written such a fatuous and hollow article and worse, that an editor commissioned it and presumably approved it and paid for it.

Leaving aside his errors of fact, was Kettle trying to provoke, lighting the blue touchpaper and retiring to watch the fireworks? That’s cynical enough with feelings running so high and being deliberately whipped up by politicians.

But if as seems likely he really does think it’s OK for innocent people to be executed ad hoc on the streets by armed squads, on mere suspicion, without arrest or trial, just to keep him personally safe, then he is a disgusting human being.

How’s This for A Comedy Double?

Published on November 2, 2007

The picture the police photoshopped to make an innocent dead man look like a terrorist.

I should be getting on with the comedy double right now- I’m nothing if not a creature of habit – but I just can’t. I’m just too bloody angry.

I missed the de Menezes police health and safety verdict yesterday for the prosaic reason of having gone to IKEA to buy a bed and the first thing I got up to this morning was Ken Livingstone on the Today programme defending overpromoted, self-righteous New Labour blowhard Sir Ian Blair, head of the Metropolitan police, who refuses to resign despite having been found guilty (as the personification of the police corporate body) of endangering the citizens he is duty-bound to protect, by a jury at the Old Bailey. (Listen to interview with Livingstone]

This is what Blair said immediatetly after the shooting:

Sir Ian told Sky News: “This is a tragedy. The Metropolitan Police accepts full responsibility. To the family I can only express my deep regrets.”

What Blair says today:

“It’s important to remember that no police officer set out on that day to shoot an innocent man. As the judge noted, the failures alleged were not sustained nor repeated. This case thus provides no evidence at all of systematic failure by the Metropolitan Police, and I therefore intend to continue to lead the Met in its increasingly successful efforts to reduce crime and to deter and disrupt terrorist activities in London and elsewhere in the United Kingdom”

But that’s just it: the verdict does provide evidence of systematic failure. ‘Mistakes happen’, Blair says. Was this a mistake?

Police accused of manipulating composite picture of De Menezes

“Scotland Yard was yesterday accused of trying to mislead the jury deciding whether it made catastrophic errors leading up to the shooting dead of Jean Charles de Menezes. The Old Bailey trial heard claims that the force had manipulated a picture presented to the jury which had been intended to illustrate the difficulties officers faced in telling apart the Brazilian victim and the suspected terrorist they were actually looking for.

Last week police produced a composite of one half of Mr De Menezes’s face placed next to one half of the face of suspect Hussain Osman. But Clare Montgomery QC, prosecuting, told the court that it had been altered “by either stretching or resizing, so the face ceases to have its correct proportions”. The judge, Mr Justice Henriques, told the jury: “A serious allegation has been made that a picture has been manipulated so as to mislead.””

That was no mistake, that was deliberate lying. Even at the trial the Metropolitan Police barrister, Ronald Thwaites QC, continued to smear Jean Charles de Menezes:

… last week, when the Met were in the dock at the Old Bailey, the tone was markedly different. In his closing speech, Ronald Thwaites, QC, the Met’s defence barrister said of De Menezes: “He was shot because, when he was challenged by police, he did not comply with them but reacted precisely as they had been briefed a suicide bomber might react at the point of detonating his bomb.”

Mr Thwaites went on to paint a damning portrait of the dead man: “Not only did he not comply, he moved in an aggressive and threatening manner.” He suggested that De Menezes might have been worried about traces of drugs or a phoney visa. “Did he fear he might have some drugs in his jacket and might want to get them out and throw them away when he was challenged by the police?”

Towards the very end of the trial, Mr Thwaites also tried to make the judge, Mr Justice Henriques, disqualify himself on the grounds that he was “entirely pro-prosecution, unbalanced and totally lacking in objectivity”.

Thwaites also alleged that the victim was a cocaine addict, as though in some way justified his murder.

So much for taking full responsibility.

The murder of Menezes and Blair’s refusal to resign are only the worst in a long list of debacles. The public and the press are calling for Blair’s head, the general consensus being that it’s about time someone took responsibilty for something in public life, and if you can’t take responsibility for sending armed men hyped up on adrenaline to run around on public transport in the rush hour and fire seven bullets into the head, execution-style, of an unarmed, innocent man, on video and in front of witnesses,then lying about it afterwards and smearing the dead man, even going so far as to wphotoshop his picture to make him look more like a terrorist – if you can’t take responsibility for that, then what the hell can you take responsibility for?

But if there has been a defining leitmotif of the Labour years it’s been this, this constant, mulish refusal to take responsibility for incompetence and error , this wilful blindness to one’s own fault and this utter certainty, despite all the evidence to the contrary, of one’s own rectitude. Anything to justify hanging on to power for power’s sake.

To much of the public it’s simple. Blair is responsible for the safety of the public. He didn’t do that, he did the opposite. He should go. Like his namesake the forner prime minister, Blair argues he’s not guilty of any personal wringdoing therefore he’s squeaky-clean and should stay in the job.

Anyone who gets up in the morning in a crowded city and gets on a metro or a tram or a tube system will have seen that CCTV footage of Jean Charles de Menezes’ extra-judicial murder and will have seen themselves in that blurry video, on the floor, scared out of their wits, about to have their brains very deliberately blown out on the carriage floor.

But Londoners have real cause to fear; their police chief thinks that the deliberate murder of an innocent man by his subordinates is not a serious matter enough to resign over. ‘Mistakes happen’.

When a man in charge of an organisation which has the power to shoot to kill and a paramilitary armoury bigger then some army units at it’s disposal has an attitude like that Londoners are right to be worried.

But if Ian Blair does not resign it has implications for all of us – because to other police forces it says do ‘what you like, there will be no comeback’. It pushes the boundaries of impunity yet further. The less that is taken responsibility for the more wrongdoing can be committed. Eventually the piublic becomes inured and cynical and that lack of truist extends to the lowliest pc. There is no policing without at least some form of consent and without it the police cannot do their job.

So someone’s got to pay for this. We need metaphorical blood to expiate the actual blood spilt on the floor of that dusty rush-hour tube carriage. If Blair stays the public will be justified in having no confidence in the Metropilitan police. If the Met can’t protect the public from the Met itself, what use is it against terrorists? Why should the public co-operate with a police force that can kill anyone at will on the flimsiest of evidence and then just walk away?

But to get back to Ken Livingstone, the self-described champion of the poor and oppressed and the alleged voice of the the average newt-fanncying Londoner, who spent over 10 minutes defending this man. Jesuitical doesn’t even begin to describe it. I’m still fuming and cursing, even though it was over an hour ago.

But then he can defend Blair. Livingstone’s sitting pretty: he may be up for election but his opponent’s that amiable buffoon, Tory Boris Johnson. He thinks he’s secure for life and above accountability in just the same way all of the other New Labour responsibility refuseniks do.

Horribly cynical as I am I do wonder why Livingstone’s sticking his neck out in the face of popular opinion. It’s not like Ken not to go for the populist option whenever available, and the populist option at the moment is that Sir Ian be hung drawn and quartered, or at the very least handed his cards.

So why is he taking the contrarian position and sticking up for this disgrace of a police officer? I have a theory…

Met chief in phone recording row
Sir Ian also recorded calls with senior officials from the IPCC

Britain’s top policeman is being urged to explain why he secretly taped a phone call with the attorney general.

[…]

Sir Ian has also admitted taping calls with senior officials from the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

An IPCC spokesman said the taped conversations came to light as part of its inquiry into the aftermath of the shooting.

I wonder – who else has Ian Blair got on record and which other incidents might the Met may be able to shed light on? It’d certainly be interesting to find out. :

It’s obvious Blair can’t be trusted to keep private conversations private and that may well worry some politicians enough to want to stay on his good side. Who knows; hat Blair knows may just have some bearing on whether he stays in his job in the teeth of a gale of public opposition.

That’s the trouble with unstrustworthy senior cops who refuse to take reponsibility for their own mistakes and malfeasance – once you’ve lost trust in them for one thing, you’ve lost trust in them for everything, and no dishonesty seems impossible.

[Edited slightly to add links]

Well, That’ll Knock Diana Out of The Headlines

Published on October 28, 2007

Move over Al-Fayed and the Daily Express, there’s a new scandal in town:

Royal ‘target of sex blackmail’
GARETH ROSE

A MEMBER of the Royal Family has been targeted in a “sex and drugs” blackmail plot, it was reported last night.

Scotland Yard was contacted after the alleged blackmailers threatened to go public with a video that they claimed showed the Royal – who cannot be named for legal reasons – engaged in a sex act.

A demand of £50,000 was put forward but a police sting led to the video being seized and the men arrested, it was claimed. According to the Sunday Times, the Royal household was first contacted on August 2 when the caller only identified himself by his first name.

He said he was aware that another man who worked on the Royal staff was in possession of an envelope containing cocaine. He claimed it had been passed to him by the Royal and that the envelope was embossed with the Royal’s personal signature.

It was also alleged during the conversation that a videotape showing the aide giving someone oral sex existed. The recipient of the sex act was indicated to be the Royal.

According to reports, the video also contained unsubstantiated allegations about other members of the Royal Family, including the Queen.

The caller then left his mobile phone number and asked for the Royal to phone them back. During subsequent calls the blackmailers claimed the video showed the aide snorting cocaine. The blackmailers guaranteed that no one else would ever see the video, which was stored safe in their flat.

According to the newspaper, a senior legal adviser to the Royal called back and agreed with the blackmailers that he would see the tape before handing over the cash.

A Whitehall security official was reported as saying: “He said he wanted £50,000 from the Royal for the tape.”

More…

Who ever can it be?

My first pick would be Prince Edward, for reasons that have been plain to see for years, But that’s too obvious, It could be Harry – I get the impression he’s a bit of a lad and up for anything. But that being so, it wouldn’t be much of a scandal would it? Certainly not worth ~~half a million~~ fifty grand… [I need my eyes testing, the zeroes are blurring together.]

Hmmm. My money’s still on Edward….but I don’t think he’s worth ~~half a mil~~ fifty grand either.

Squeaky-clean heir to the throne William’s girlfriend Kate Middleton might well be camouflage for other interests (I won’t call her a beard, that would be defamatory and unkind), in the mould of Edward’s Sophie Rhys-Jones: a nice middle-class gel with ambitious parents who’re socially unsure enough to make no fuss about a very rich royal husband who’s that way. They know the deal, unlike Diana. Money and position buys hypocrisy and discretion.

Whoever it is, I don’t really bloody care except as I care whether Britney Spears gets custody of her kids or not. It’s just gossip and sleaze. Come out already and draw the poison. Jeez.

Blackmail and scandal, while amusing for those of who like to take the piss and also vastly profitable for the newspapers, is really a bit pathetic in these openly hedonistic times, when the Sultan of Brunei’s daughter goes to her wedding in a solid gold Rolls Royce covered in diamonds. When Britney’s minge makes the front page while thousands dying in Iraq barely make page 2, what’s a bit of blow and a blowjob in the broom cupboard?

If we must live in a monarchy, let’s at least have one that’s openly libertine, instead of all this squalid huddling in palace corners with the servants (or rather agency temps).

Dammit. we want a royalty we can properly condemn, one that practices its vices out in the open like any other hedonistic, overprivileged sleb, instead of this buttoned-up, ass-clenched, Marks & Spencers version of royalty with its Hyacinth Bucket sense of public propriety.

Perhaps this’ll cut through the fuzzy pink, soft focus glow that surrounds the Queen and we’ll finally get just how bloody stupid the whole idea of royalty is. Perhaps. In the meantime I’m revelling in the thoiught of the right royal piss-take the whole thing is bound to provoke from Graham Norton.

[Edited slightly to correct my misreading]

Onward Christian Soldiers

Published on October 21, 2007

USAnians, you think you’ve got problems with the God Squad. General Sir Richard Dannatt, the evangelical Anglican in charge of Britain’s army:

I think there is very much an obligation on a Christian leader to include a spiritual dimension into his people’s preparations for operations and the general conduct of their lives.’

Well, OK, nice of him to care about his troops’ psychic wellbeing, I suppose. But then Dannatt went on:

“In my business, asking people to risk their lives is part of the job, but doing so without giving them the chance to understand that there is a life after death is something of a betrayal,” he said.

So…. he’s persuading young men to go gladly to their deaths by telling them an unprovable fairy tale of post-mortem bliss ?

That sounds familiar.

Pope Urban II recruiting for the Crusades promised that all who died in the reclamation of the Holy Land from the infidels would be forgiven all venal sins and ascend immediately to Heaven (paradise).

Last June the general gave a seminar to his senior commanders, telling them to prepare for ‘generational conflict’ with an Islamic jihad.

What’s the odds his next speech will have the word ‘martyr’ in it’?

Life During Wartime

Published on October 15, 2007

Sir John and Lady Bourn
The Great and The Good

While Britain’s overstretched servicewomen and men swelter in the desert heat for meagre pay and their families are forced to live in officially-sanctioned squalor, everywhere you look politicians and civil servants are enriching themselves at the British public’s expense.

Here’s what Sir John Bourn, the virtually unsackable – appointed for life, much like a Supreme Court judge in the US, he or she can be removed only by a joint vote of the House of Commons and House of Lords – Auditor General of the Uk’s National Audit Office, the man who is supposed to stop government waste and fraud, helped himself to in expenses from tne taxpayers’ hard-earned cash:

175 lunches and dinners since 2004 with permanent secretaries, directors of big accounting companies and defence contractors at the Ritz, Savoy, Dorchester, Brown’s Hotel, the Goring Hotel, Cipriani, Bibendum, Wiltons, Mirabelle and The Square. The bills, nearly all for two people, vary from £80 to £301. Many of the bills came to between £150 and £220. One bill for four people – two from the NAO – at Wiltons was £500. In the past six months, he has spent £1,651.56 on meals.

Entertaining by large defence contractors and accounting firms included a visit to the British Grand Prix at Silverstone on July 8, paid for BAE Systems, the company caught in a corruption investigation over a Tanzanian defence order. Sir John has refused to release an NAO document on BAE’s biggest and most controversial defence order, the Al Yamamah defence deal with Saudi Arabia.

Sir John went for a dinner at the Savoy hosted by the Society of British Aerospace Companies on September 6; attended a polo match on July 29 funded by IT contractor EDS, which has multimillion-pound government contracts; visited the opera at Garsington on July 4 paid for by GSL, a company promoting public finance initiatives, scrutinised by the NAO; attended a reception and opera recital at Middle Temple Hall with Lady Bourn on June 6, paid for by Reliance Security Group, which has PFI contracts with local government and the police.

Sir John and Lady Bourn took foreign trips with first class air travel to San Francisco, Venice, Lisbon, Brazil, South Africa, the Bahamas and Budapest. Their air fares and taxi fares ranged from £15,997 to Brazil and £14,518 to South Africa, to £2,238 to Budapest and £1,718 to Venice.

Lady Bourn did not accompany him on his latest trips, to Moldova on September 28 and to Khazakstan. The air fares were £1,117.50 and £2,107.20 respectively. Over the past six months, Sir John has spent £16,998 of taxpayers’ money on mainly first class travel for himself and his wife.

But.. but Sir John and Lady Bourn had had a social position to maintain!

So why has Sir John had such a blind spot? The reason, according to those who know him well, is pride and a determination not to be beholden to anyone, however grand.

“If he was taken to lunch at the Ritz by someone from a big company, he would insist on reciprocating at the same level. If he met a permanent secretary for lunch, he would take them in turn to suitable restaurant, say the Goring or Wiltons.”

Whether Sir John was entertaining a business director, fellow Whitehall mandarin or journalist – including from the Guardian – he would always insist that the NAO made a reciprocal arrangement.

When Sir John is abroad and representing Britain at conferences or signing agreements, earning the NAO £4m a year to advise foreign governments, he insists on a similar style.

Oh, heaven forbid a mandarin should ever lose face.

Since London’s become the world capital of dirty money, corrupt oligarchs. dodgy arms dealers and blinged-up billionaires, who’ve now joined the exiled dictators and corrupt corporate CEOs as perfectly acceptable additions to the most rarefied circles of top civil servants and government ministers, it’s been getting harder and harder for the socially ambitious public servant to keep up. The bar keeps getting raised ever higher – you have a car and driver, he has a Maibach and a driver and a bodyguard . You have a chichi London pied a terre in Chelsea – but he has a mansion in Bishops’s Avenue. It never ends.

Just ask Tony Blair,

Blair's new country house?

Blair is said to be buying himself and Cherie a Christopher Wren-designed country pile in Wiltshire (see above) that’s finally big enough and posh enough as to befit their massively inflated egos.

Buying it with what, one asks? A relatively modest new-build Barratt home in Dulwich was good enough for Thatcher on her retirement and she was no slouch in the personal enrichment stakes. Where’s the money for this new Blair landed estate coming from? For someone who’s never had a job that wasn’t in some way taxpayer-subsidised, the newly-retired Blair, so recently worried about he’d pay his mortgage, suddenly seems to be doing quite well.

No doubt the taxpayers, as they do with the Blair’s house in Connaught Square, will be picking up the bill for police security on his new country estate. I suspect that bill will make Sir John and Lady Bourn’s expenses look a mere bagatelle in comparison. The fact that he is in potential physical danger only as a result of his own actions is not a factor. We must pay to protect his and Cheries’ sense of entitlement and grandeur.

Our elected and appointed public servants see themselves not as public servants, but as an elite social group set apart from the rest of us poor schmucks. This arms race in greed and corruption will only accelerate while we allow them to think that and act as trhough that’s so.