The Christmas story China Miéville did for the Socialist Review is finally online. Worth reading just for the absolutely horrible pun about halfway through.
I’ll shown mine if you show yours
From January 1st 2005, we’re back to the German occupation here, as everybody 14 years or older is obliged to carry an ausweis, with the police allowed to ask for them everytime they feel like. (Alright, officially they can only do so if they need to “keep the public order”, but we all know that that can be anything.) This is not something I am planning to adhere to and I’m fortunately not the only one. However, if asked for papers and you cannot or will not show them it’ll cost ya fifty euros (with which we neatly discover the real reason for this new law: bugger security, it’s all about the do-re-mi.)
Fortunately, as Hiram of Ipse Dixit (in Dutch) discovered, us peons are at least allowed to asks police agents for their papers as well. So Hiram thought of a plan: “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours“. Every time we are asked for our papers, we should ask the agent as well. This way, it’ll cost all those jumped up little h–lers twice as much time, they’ll discover how obnoxious this law is first hand and those few who would abuse the new law for their own ends can be registrered…
No, I’m not sure the practise will match the theory, but it is worth a try…
More on Blunkett’s resignation
Recently started blogging again Take it as Red has a good encapsulation of why Blunkett was so horrible and what did him in:
Apparently Tony, the expert on integrity and honesty – where are those WMD, Mr Blair?- thinks Blunkett “…is a force for good”. No, no and again no. He’s a selfish, selfish man whose first loyalty is to himself and no-one else. Everything he has done has been about how he himself feels; he has shown no consideration towards his duty to the country, let alone any human concern for his ex- mistress or putative child or even his existing family, and his main concern all along has been that he escape the consequences of his actions. Why else would he appear on BBC2’s Newsnight last night, looking for the sympathy vote and telling the world “It was all worth it for that little lad”? He does not even know the child is his, except by some magical sixth sense, and even if it were he is merely the biological parent. How ironic if the DNA test proves the child is the husband’s.
The BBC has been enjoying this a lot, and I don’t blame them one bit. As I said in an earlier post, it’s the Establishment that will do for New Labour, and now the Establishment has the smell of blood in its collective nostrils. The letters and emails that have come to light would never have done so without the co-operation of the civil service; the story wouldn’t have had legs if Blunkett, in his hubris, hadn’t continued to bombard the BBC with constant protestations of his honesty; in doing so he gave the BBC and Civil Service just the ammunition they needed.
Indeed.
Ding-dong the witch is dead!
Too bad it wasn’t for his blatant disregard for the rule of law and civil rights, but at least we know now that smary hypocritical Labour weasels can be brought down just as well as their Tory counterparts could in the eighties and nineties.
For those who don’t know why Blunkett resigned, it all started when his affair with a married woman was revealed; soon after it turned out that he may have …helped his lover, Kimberly Quinn (publisher of the rightwing Spectator) in various ways, including fast tracking visa applications for her nanny. It then turned out she was pregnant with her second child, which may or may not be Blunkett’s,which did not stop him from starting a lawsuit against Mrs Quinn to obtain access rights to her two year old son, which he apparantely believes is his and with whom he has been parading as his own son when he went on holidays with Mrs Quinn…
Apart from the legalities of it all, the hypocrisy of it all is quite astounding. The sheer cheek of somebody who sees no bone in sueing his pregnant ex-lover, a married woman over visiting rights to her son which may or not be fathered by him, lecturing others on morals. Incredible.
It certainly makes me Proud of Britain to see him gone.
Now for the rest of the cabinet…
Now the question is who will be the new Home Secretary: Peter “incompetent” Hain perhaps or Alan “who he?” Milburn. The other question is what will happen to Blunkett’s pet projects, like the national ID card he wanted to introduce.
And then the shit hit the tan
With apologies to Paul Merton.
