GONE FOR DECENT BEER, BACK IN FIVE DAYS
Thursday, April 28, 2005

I'm off Up North, land of my forefathers, for the long weekend and will be out of radio contact for the duration. Just as the election campaign might be warming up as well, Goddammit.

See you Tuesday.
Ricin and open government
Thursday, April 28, 2005

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a piece about the Ricin terrorist plot in Britain that turned out to be cobblers. In the piece I linked to an article in the Guardian by Duncan Campbell that took the case to pieces and showed it for the horseshit it was. That piece has now been pulled from the Guardian website for "legal reasons".

More details are available at The Register which has been following the case closely. The article is available elsewhere on the internet and it remains to be seen if those copies can be swept up as well. The cleaning up process has already begun. It can be found here, here, here, here, here, here and elsewhere.

I urge you to read it if you haven't already and, in the spirit of Fahrenheit 451, make your own copy.

The Ricin ring debacle was a scare story whipped up to frighten the population and lay the way for more assaults on our civil liberties. Campbell's article was one of the very, very few pieces that examined the case and exposed its shortcomings.

The ricin ring that never was

Yesterday's trial collapse has exposed the deception behind attempts to link al-Qaida to a 'poison attack' on London

Duncan Campbell
Thursday April 14, 2005
The Guardian

Colin Powell does not need more humiliation over the manifold errors in his February 2003 presentation to the UN. But yesterday a London jury brought down another section of the case he made for war - that Iraq and Osama bin Laden were supporting and directing terrorist poison cells throughout Europe, including a London ricin ring.

Yesterday's verdicts on five defendants and the dropping of charges against four others make clear there was no ricin ring. Nor did the "ricin ring" make or have ricin. Not that the government shared that news with us. Until today, the public record for the past three fear-inducing years has been that ricin was found in the Wood Green flat occupied by some of yesterday's acquitted defendants. It wasn't.

The third plank of the al-Qaida-Iraq poison theory was the link between what Powell labelled the "UK poison cell" and training camps in Afghanistan. The evidence the government wanted to use to connect the defendants to Afghanistan and al-Qaida was never put to the jury. That was because last autumn a trial within a trial was secretly taking place. This was a private contest between a group of scientists from the Porton Down military research centre and myself. The issue was: where had the information on poisons and chemicals come from?

The information - five pages in Arabic, containing amateur instructions for making ricin, cyanide and botulinum, and a list of chemicals used in explosives - was at the heart of the case. The notes had been made by Kamel Bourgass, the sole convicted defendant. His co-defendants believed that he had copied the information from the internet. The prosecution claimed it had come from Afghanistan.

I was asked to look for the original source on the internet. This meant exploring Islamist websites that publish Bin Laden and his sympathisers, and plumbing the most prolific source of information on how to do harm: the writings of the American survivalist right and the gun lobby.

The experience of being an expert witness on these issues has made me feel a great deal safer on the streets of London. These were the internal documents of the supposed al-Qaida cell planning the "big one" in Britain. But the recipes were untested and unoriginal, borrowed from US sources. Moreover, ricin is not a weapon of mass destruction. It is a poison which has only ever been used for one-on-one killings and attempted killings.

If this was the measure of the destructive wrath that Bin Laden's followers were about to wreak on London, it was impotent. Yet it was the discovery of a copy of Bourgass's notes in Thetford in 2002 that inspired the wave of horror stories and government announcements and preparations for poison gas attacks.

It is true that when the team from Porton Down entered the Wood Green flat in January 2003, their field equipment registered the presence of ricin. But these were high sensitivity field detectors, for use where a false negative result could be fatal. A few days later in the lab, Dr Martin Pearce, head of the Biological Weapons Identification Group, found that there was no ricin. But when this result was passed to London, the message reportedly said the opposite.

The planned government case on links to Afghanistan was based only on papers that a freelance journalist working for the Times had scooped up after the US invasion of Kabul. Some were in Arabic, some in Russian. They were far more detailed than Bourgass's notes. Nevertheless, claimed Porton Down chemistry chief Dr Chris Timperley, they showed a "common origin and progression" in the methods, thus linking the London group of north Africans to Afghanistan and Bin Laden.

The weakness of Timperley's case was that neither he nor the intelligence services had examined any other documents that could have been the source. We were told Porton Down and its intelligence advisers had never previously heard of the "Mujahideen Poisons Handbook, containing recipes for ricin and much more". The document, written by veterans of the 1980s Afghan war, has been on the net since 1998.

All the information roads led west, not to Kabul but to California and the US midwest. The recipes for ricin now seen on the internet were invented 20 years ago by survivalist Kurt Saxon. He advertises videos and books on the internet. Before the ricin ring trial started, I phoned him in Arizona. For $110, he sent me a fistful of CDs and videos on how to make bombs, missiles, booby traps - and ricin. We handed a copy of the ricin video to the police.

When, in October, I showed that the chemical lists found in London were an exact copy of pages on an internet site in Palo Alto, California, the prosecution gave up on the Kabul and al-Qaida link claims. But it seems this information was not shared with the then home secretary, David Blunkett, who was still whipping up fear two weeks later. "Al-Qaida and the international network is seen to be, and will be demonstrated through the courts over months to come, actually on our doorstep and threatening our lives," he said on November 14.

The most ironic twist was an attempt to introduce an "al-Qaida manual" into the case. The manual - called the Manual of the Afghan Jihad - had been found on a raid in Manchester in 2000. It was given to the FBI to produce in the 2001 New York trial for the first attack on the World Trade Centre. But it wasn't an al-Qaida manual. The name was invented by the US department of justice in 2001, and the contents were rushed on to the net to aid a presentation to the Senate by the then attorney general, John Ashcroft, supporting the US Patriot Act.

To show that the Jihad manual was written in the 1980s and the period of the US-supported war against the Soviet occupation was easy. The ricin recipe it contained was a direct translation from a 1988 US book called the Poisoner's Handbook, by Maxwell Hutchkinson.

We have all been victims of this mass deception. I do not doubt that Bourgass would have contemplated causing harm if he was competent to do so. But he was an Islamist yobbo on his own, not an Al Qaida-trained superterrorist. An Asbo might be appropriate.

If you care about such things, spread the word.

(via Honourable Fiend)
The Vicky Pollard Defence
Thursday, April 28, 2005

When the news that another part of the Attorney General's advice had been leaked was announced on the Guardian Election Blog last night, EK posted this comment:

Tomorrow's Guardian editorial: "Yeah but, no but, yeah but, no but, vote Labour."

Well, surprisingly and laudably, the Guardian Leader didn't say that. It being Polly Toynbee's day off (the Guardian to its credit does allow Francis Beckett to rebut her latest insult), Jonathan Freedland got the shitty end of the stick.

Something we'll probably not see analysed too closely in the media - who'll not want to kill the golden goose - is who is leaking this advice. The Government must be looking pretty hard for whoever it is though. Going by the past experience of the David Kelly affair, if the leaker's identity was known to the Government, surely they'd be briefing and smearing with gusto by now. We've had two leaks of parts of the advice since Sunday - somebody somewhere thinks it's more damaging to release the document in easily digestible chunks rather than the whole thing at once.

If there's more to come then now it's a question of managing the news cycle to their advantage for both the leaker's handlers and New Labour. This may very well peter out over the Bank Holiday weekend (as it did when this came up again just before the Easter break) unless somebody somewhere is determined to maintain their momentum and upset Labour's. Or Alastair Campbell comes up with something really gangbusters. Certainly for today at least, the Labour campaign is knackered.

Whether this is going to sway any voters is anybody's guess - if you're registered with a polling organisation like YouGov check your inbox often over the next few days. You can imagine there'll be some pretty angry cabinet ministers and Labour MPs who saw this advice for the first time last night but they're hardly likely to rock the boat with a week to go. Party discipline is going to be pretty tight.

One thing we can be sure of is that this government has an almost pathological fear of caveats. The caveats were removed from the intelligence of Iraq's WMD in order to make the case for war. In a belt and braces move, the caveats have been removed from the Attorney General's legal advice. Lying by omission is still lying.

Regardless of legality or whether the Attorney General was leaned on, this legal advice was finessed by somebody for the consumption of the Cabinet and Parliament. Like the WMD intelligence, Blair and his entourage couldn't trust either (or the public for that matter) to give him unequivocal backing for the war based on the legal advice as it stood.

Unable to argue the case on its merits (such as they were), Blair chose obfuscation (Jack Straw's on the Today programme again as I write), cutting-and-pasting and, at the end of the day, brass neck and crossed fingers.

UPDATE: Charlie Whitaker at perfect.co.uk

UPDATE: The balloon's gone up.
Permission Granted
Wednesday, April 27, 2005

"In my country, if the people disagree with me, they can vote me out and vote someone else in. That is democracy."

Tony Blair, July 22 2003
Despatches from The War Against Terror
Wednesday, April 27, 2005

All is not well on the frontiers of T.W.A.T.

Remember Afghanistan, that dusty poverty-stricken country we bombed a war or two back? All to smoke out some guys called the Taliban who repressed women and conducted public executions? Well the war was a roaring success:

Reuters: Afghan woman stoned to death for adultery
Amina, a 29 year-old married woman, was publicly stoned to death on the basis of a district court's decision on Thursday in Argo district to the west of Faizabad, the provincial capital of Badakhshan, they said.

Well, if you're going to export freedom and justice, why not make to Ol' Time freedom and justice. And I do remember somebody saying something about Afghanistan being bombed back to the Stone Age. I think we managed it. (Link via Honourable Fiend)

And what about Iraq? Well, Iraq wasn't on the frontier of T.W.A.T. until we invaded, after which every son of a bitch in the region flocked to the place to bag themselves an infidel coalition soldier. At least we've got most of them in one place now like One Man And His Dog.

There is a town, Fallujah, that the coalition pounded not once but twice last year in an attempt to pacify the insurgency. You probably haven't heard much since because it's not safe for most Western reporters to get around in Iraq - they have a careless tendency of getting kidnapped and occasionallly their heads snicked off.

But some news is getting out:

The Guardian: This is our Guernica
Daud Salman, an Iraqi journalist with the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, on a visit to Falluja two weeks ago, found that only a quarter of the city's residents had gone back. Thousands remain in tents on the outskirts. The Iraqi Red Crescent finds it hard to go in to help the sick because of the US cordon around the city.

In the 1930s the Spanish city of Guernica became a symbol of wanton murder and destruction. In the 1990s Grozny was cruelly flattened by the Russians; it still lies in ruins. This decade's unforgettable monument to brutality and overkill is Falluja, a text-book case of how not to handle an insurgency, and a reminder that unpopular occupations will always degenerate into desperation and atrocity.

But at least we disarmed Iraq of its terrible weapons. Remember when we were 45 minutes from doom? You'd think that once we got in there we'd make damn sure we rounded up all the scientists involved in WMD programmes, collected all the documentation and anything else (not much, admittedly) that was left to make sure none of it fell into the wrong hands. Think again:

The Guardian: Interrogators 'botched hunt for Iraq's WMD'
US military interrogators botched the questioning of Iraqi scientists in the search for weapons of mass destruction and their detention "serves no further purpose", a new CIA report has found.

First, the US "black list" of scientists wanted for questioning was full of holes. "Some very despicable individuals who should have been listed were not, while many technocrats and even opponents of the Saddam regime made the list and hence found themselves either in jail or on the run." Mr Duelfer wrote, adding that some of the former had been released in the first few months after the war.

Still, with Saddam in prison, his depraved sons dead and democratic elections having taken place - unless you are a ChaldoAssyrian - Iraq should be a calmer, more peaceful place. I'm sorry to have to do it again, but...

BBC News: Iraqi insurgency 'undiminished'
Militants staging attacks in Iraq are as strong now as they were a year ago, America's top soldier has said.

Between 50 and 60 attacks are carried out each day, the same number as in 2004, according to Gen Richard Myers, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.

And that was followed by more grim news:

BBC News: Iraqi woman MP killed in Baghdad
Lamia Abed Khadouri, a member of former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's coalition, is the first MP killed since elections at the end of January.

Police said gunmen knocked at her door and shot her when she answered.

By this point, you'd be forgiven for asking yourself what all the cluster bombing and depleted uranium-ing has been for. Public stonings, razed towns and anarchy? Is that the best that we could have hoped for when the first bomb doors opened in the clear blue sky over Kabul all those years ago?

Gordon Brown, defending the Iraq war in an interview today, said that the world was a safer place. It clearly is for him (and me for that matter) as nobody is throwing rocks at his wife or shelling his home town. It's all relative, I suppose.

One way to gauge whether the world is getting safer would be to read the US State Department's annual Patterns of Global Terrorism report which gives an "overview of terrorist activity on each continent". Except, erm, they're not publishing it this year. Apparently the news wasn't good.

At any moment there might be a special bulletin from the Ministry of Peace.
Sedgemore: Twenty-two Years of Solicitude
Wednesday, April 27, 2005

The knifes and brickbats were out pretty sharpish for Brian Sedgemore yesterday once he'd announced his defection to the Liberal Democrats.

Now, I don't have a lot of time for the optimally-timed political defection. If you're defecting on so-called honourable points of principle, why add insult to injury? It just cheapens what you're trying to do. Sedgemore took the opportunity to additionally shaft the party that had been his home for decades.

But it was the nature of the attacks from New Labour, its apologists and some journalists that interested me most.

Michael White in the Guardian described Sedgemore as "one of politics' loners" and said "neither mateyness nor ingratiation were his style and he lacked the reliable brilliance which might have compensated."

Oliver Kamm, rabbit punching him on the way out, said "Sedgemore is, in short, a man of neither ability nor attainment who held a safe Labour seat for 22 years".

Blair dismissed him to the voters as "someone they have never heard of". John Prescott apparently said, "Whoever heard of Brian before?"

Sedgemore's constituents in "his safe Labour seat" had certainly heard of him. Maybe it was safe for a reason. I got an email from William who said:

Actually he was my MP for six years... and a very good constituency MP, if a bit eccentric sometimes.

But to Tony and John backbenchers are a bunch of people no-one's heard of.

As many of the 97 intake are unlikely to become as well known as Brian Sedgemore was, do you think they might be a little pissed off at their role being so completely dismissed?

He was a responsive constituency MP who did that part of the job well.

So there you go - 22 years of looking after constituents. Granted, he didn't reach the glamorous, heady heights of bombing women and children or privatising public services, but somebody remembers this man of "of neither ability nor attainment" with a degree of fondness and hasn't dismissed 22 years of service with a "who?".
Food, Glorious Food (in 25 years)
Wednesday, April 27, 2005

A little while back when writing about the golden age of school dinners New Labour had promised to usher in, completely independently of any campaign led by Jamie Oliver, I said this:

So, when the government promises to "help empower parents to work with schools to raise standards", does that mean guidance on how to renogotiate or even terminate contracts with outside contractors and corporate behemoths like Scholarest?

Apparently not:

The Guardian: Private deals block Jamie's school dinners
The Guardian has learned that new schools locked into 25-year contracts through private finance initiatives are finding that they cannot rid their menus of junk food despite the government's pledge.

You know, one day we'll look back on all this and have a good laugh.
Election blogging roundup #16: Tuesday 26th April
Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Courtesy of yours truly.

If you've anything you'd like included in today's roundup, email us at generalelection@gmail.com.
On Message
Tuesday, April 26, 2005

The poverty of imagination in trying to galvanise a less-than-enthusiastic Labour vote continues. It's more lazy blogging about lazy campaigning but the Invasion of the Body Snatchers synchronicity is creepy/amusing.

Gordon Brown: "The Liberals are therefore a risk twice over: their own policies would undermine economic stability and if they let in the Tories by the back door, the country could be returned to Tory economic instability."

Ruth Kelly on the Today Programme (RealPlayer required: "...what people have to realise is that if they do move from Labour to the Liberal Democrats then what they really doing is they're giving the Tories a chance to get back in through the back door... There is a clear choice to be made here and if people decide that they don't want to support a Labour Government and that they would prefer to support the Liberal Democrats then what they're really doing in allowing people to walk in - The Conservative Party to walk in through the back door and people could easily wake up on May the 6th and find themselves with a Conservative government... What they do by supporting the Liberal Democrats is they risk a Conservative victory and that is something that everybody who votes Liberal Democrat should be aware of."

Tony Blair: "The Conservative campaign isn't based on a get-in-by-the- front door strategy, it's based on get-in-by-the-back door, with people thinking that they're sending a message but ending up with the opposite result to what they want."

Blair again: "The danger is that they can let Conservatives in by the back door."

Alan Milburn: "The Tories' strategy is to firm up their vote in the hope that Labour voters do not turnout out, so allowing them to win by the back door."

Bonus points to Ruth Kelly there.

I got some more campaign spam from New Labour today, this time sent by Matt Carter, the party's General Secretary. In it he implores:

If you want to stop Michael Howard's campaign of fear, help us to make our campaign as strong as possible in the last few days.

That's Michael Howard's campaign of fear, everybody. If you vote Lib Dem you'll let Michael Howard and his campaign of fear into Number 10 (by the back door).

The Back Door Count stands at: 10.
Halabja? That rings a bell.
Tuesday, April 26, 2005

In this post yesterday, I showed how the like of Tony Blair, Jack Straw and Geoff Hoon had no interest in the plight of the people of Iraq until it suited their agenda. They failed to sign four Early Day Motions condemning Saddam's gassing of the Kurds at Halabja or contibute to adjournment debates on the matter.

But they soon got up to speed. In the now notorious dossier on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction - the one that made great play of the "45 minutes from doom" claim - much was made of the attack on Halabja.

On Friday, 17th March 1988, the village of Halabja was bombarded by Iraqi warplanes. The raid was over in minutes. Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against his own people. A Kurd described the effects of a chemical attack on another village:

"My brothers and my wife had blood and vomit running from their noses and their mouths. Their heads were tilted to one side. They were groaning. I couldn't do much, just clean up the blood and vomit from their mouths and try in every way to make them breathe again. I did artificial respiration on them and then I gave them two injections each. I also rubbed creams on my wife and two brothers."

(From "Crimes Against Humanity," Iraqi National Congress.)

But like I said, at the time there was nary a squeak from the one-day liberators of Iraq. Only when they needed to persuade a sceptical nation did they truly embrace the horror of what Saddam had done.

In February 2003, Jack Straw said of the atrocity:

Memories of this incident in the west may have been dulled by the passage of time. But the Iraqi Kurds will forever bear the scars. Only this morning, I heard Baram Salhi, a leading political figure in northern Iraq, urging those who counsel indefinite containment of Saddam to reconsider.

I ask you to imagine the lasting psychological impact on the British public of a chemical weapons attack - carried out by the armed forces - against one of our minority ethnic groups. Fourteen years afterwards, would anyone suggest that such an attack would not leave the public in constant fear of a repeat?

Tony Blair evoked the horror in his speech to the TUC in September 2002:

Scores of towns and villages were attacked. Iraqi military officials dressed in full protection gear were used to witness the attacks and visited later to assess the damage. Wounded civilians were normally shot on the scene. In one attack alone, on the city of Halabja, it is estimated that 5,000 were murdered and 9,000 wounded in this way. All in all in the North around 100,000 kurds died, according to Amnesty International.

Colin Powell, standing on the very spot where the gas attack took place, addressed the people:

I can't tell you that Saddam Hussein was a murderous tyrant - you know that. What I can tell you is that what happened here in 1988 is never going to happen again.

As recently as April 20, Condoleeza Rice was citing Halabja as a major reason for toppling Saddam during an interview in Russia:

QUESTION: (in Russian) One more question on Iraq. Our listener, Sergei: every year more people die in Iraq than under Saddam and the concealed conflicts have surfaced. Wasn't it a mistake to remove Saddam?

SECRETARY RICE: Of course not; it was not a mistake to remove Saddam. Saddam Hussein was one of the most brutal dictators of modern times. This is a man who had rape rooms, who tortured people. He used weapons of mass destruction against his own people and against his neighbors, chemical weapons.

You know, if you go to Halabja in Iraq, you will see the effects of the chemical weapons that he used on these people, where the incidence of cancer is very high, where people still have burns on their skin from the chemical weapons that he used.

Saddam Hussein invaded his neighbors twice. He refused to live up to the obligations that he undertook to the international community. You know, I would remind that Russia was a party to the resolution in 1991 that told Saddam Hussein to get out of Kuwait and then party to a series of resolutions that had demands on Saddam Hussein. So, it was a very important positive step for Saddam Hussein to be removed.

"So they were late in a condemning the atrocities of Saddam Hussein," you say. "They got there eventually and showing what Saddam did to the Kurds gave them leverage to oust the dictator and give the Kurds a better life," you tell me. "Now, Saddam is gone we can get on with giving the Kurds their lives back," you reassure me.

You're wrong, I say:

The New York Times - Security vs. Rebuilding: Kurdish Town Loses Out
HALABJA, Iraq, April 11 - For years Nuradeen Ghreeb has dreamed of bringing clean drinking water to his hometown. That town happens to be Halabja, where 17 years ago he and his parents cowered in a basement as Saddam Hussein's airplanes attacked with chemical weapons, killing at least 5,000 people.

But on Sunday, Mr. Nuradeen learned that his dream was over, because the United States had canceled the water project it had planned here as part of a vast effort to rebuild Iraq after the 2003 invasion. Ordinarily a quiet and reserved civil engineer, he sat on one of his beloved water pipes on hearing the news and wept, his tears glistening in the afternoon sun.

Read that again. Take a deep breath and try to remain calm.

That's Halabja. First ignored, then brought to the fore, and now ignored again. Well, what possible purpose do these people serve to Blair and Bush and Straw and Rice any more?

The Halabja project, worth around $10 million, accounted for a small fraction of the $18.4 billion that Congress approved in 2003 for the reconstruction of Iraq, including $4 billion for water and sewage projects. But with the outbreak of insurgency in central and southern Iraq last year, the United States shifted $3.4 billion from water, electricity and oil projects to pay for training and equipping the Iraqi Army and police forces.

Because of the mess we created, we have to divert funds away from projects that were clearing up the mess that Saddam created. Because we didn't plan adequately for the aftermath of the war, and we let Iraq subsequently become a basket case - a honey pot for every yahoo with an AK-47 and a boner for his virgins - we can't now look after the people we said we were invading the country to save.

Blair said yesterday: "I can't say I am sorry about it. I am not sorry about it. I think I did the right thing." That's did the right thing. Not doing the right thing. The line's been drawn. It's all in the past. Tony's moved on.

Who speaks for Halabja now?

(Story via the Guardian Diary and the mighty, mighty, Get Your War On.)
Election blogging roundup #15: Monday 25th April
Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Yesterday's Election Blogging Roundup is here.

I'm doing today's so if you have anything you'd like included please email it to generalelection@gmail.com.
Me on Lawson on me
Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Now, it might be considered churlish and ungrateful - not to mention self-indulgent - to dissect what Mark Lawson had to say about political blogs in Saturday's Guardian considering I got a big fat link and a nice buzz out of it. But I figured I'm allowed a right of reply and, that said, a link in the Guardian doesn't confer an explosion in traffic that one might expect. Plus it's unlikely Lawson's going to be back this way again now he's met his deadline.

Despite what others have said, with a number very sweetly rallying to my defence (you know who you are, thank you), I don't think I came out of the piece too badly. And at least I avoided the epithet "pooterish" which I thought might be heading my way when I read the headline. The culture of blogging on the other hand took a (half-hearted) kicking.

The sad thing is, I'm otherwise a huge fan of Lawson and his writing. I hope this isn't how he produces his other stuff. Knowing the facts behind this story, you have to wonder.

It's obvious that Lawson found the Election Roundup Blog I contribute to (hence the "spittle-flecked hellholes" reference), burrowed down just one level of links (to the contributors' own sites), and I was fortunate to have the crack about Paxman near the top of my site which made good copy.

Pretty much all else that needs to be said about the article has already been said, here, here, here, here and here.

Nosemonkey, on the article, said:

Perhaps it's time for those of us bloggers who are actually professional writers in the real world to start up some kind of club to try and avoid being patronised by "proper" journalists... (Note to the traditional media - blogs are often first drafts, written in a rush and have not had the benefit of a sub-editor, proofreader or editor. They also may not always be representative of the blogger's usual standard of writing.)

I'd go further and say that there are also a bunch of bloggers out there - both left and right - that aren't professional writers - or at least journalists in the sense Lawson understands it - who put many a mainstream media figure to shame with their insight and skill with words.

This will sound like arse-kissing but there isn't a single person on my favourites list (down on the right of this page) who I don't think is a great writer and, in an ideal world, would be doing the likes of Lawson's job.

He gets paid to do what us bloggers do for little more than a delight in the use of language and ideas, an exchange of those ideas with kindred and not-so-kindred spirits, and another few hits on the visitor counter.

He's done us a disservice with his article. By "us" I (genuinely) mean the right-wing bloggers he blind-sided and the blogs of my favour who I regard superior to mine and whose owners missed out on a rosey glow last Saturday when Lawson plumped for Chicken Yoghurt after only two clicks.

UPDATE: "Everyone knows that opinions are like arseholes – they get red and inflamed when subjected to stimulation." More at Blood & Treasure.
Bunker Buster?
Monday, April 25, 2005

To borrow a joke from Spike Milligan: As the zoo keeper said when the trussed-up gorilla arrived - it was bound to come.

It's been said during the election campaign that the war in Iraq and the legality thereof has been the dog that wouldn't bark. Or, if you'll permit me, the cluster bomb that didn't explode.

But yesterday the Attorney General's advice on the legality, or otherwise, of the war was finally, inevitably leaked. Or at least I think it was leaked to the Mail on Sunday. The Government said of the story in the Mail: "There's nothing new to this story".

According to the leaked documents, the Attorney General had six caveats in his original advice:

· It was the UN's job, not that of individual states, to decide if Iraq was in breach of UN resolutions;

· The use of UN resolution 1441 to justify war might be deficient because it did not include the phrase "all necessary" to enforce it;

· A second UN resolution was needed in 2003 to make the looming war legal;

· Earlier UN resolutions against Saddam could not easily be revived to justify the invasion;

· The UN weapons inspectors were still doing their work and had found no banned weapons;

· The US position on legality did not apply to Britain because Congress had voted President George Bush special war-making powers.

Which, if true, gives lie to the statements from Jack Straw that the Attorney General's advice was "unequivocal".

In an attempt to further muddy the waters, Straw turned up on Radio 4's Today programme this morning. It was a performance of cynical, mendacious obfuscation even for him. To the credit of John Humphrys, the interviewer, Straw didn't get away with it this time.

Humphrys: It was the view of the Attorney General in that document on the 7th of March that it was the United Nations, - not Mr Blair, not the United Kingdom Government that should rule on resolution breaches - that was the view that he expressed.

Straw: I am not confirming the contents of what is alleged to have been...

H: Well, it makes this a very difficult conversation because you can put up any number of smokescreens, can't you?

S: With great respect, I am not confirming what is alleged to have been in a leaked document. Everybody knows...

H: Are you denying it? Are you denying what's in this document? I'm sorry, I'm not going to let you get away with that because if you are not denying it I and the listeners to this programme are entitled to assume it's accurate, aren't they?

S: No, they're not entitled to assume it's accurate either.

Straw can't deny the veracity of the document leaked to the Mail for risk of being caught in a lie. But, according to him, in the absence of a denial, neither are we entitled to think that the document is accurate. It's a familiar New Labour trick - just because Tony Blair won't confirm that his youngest son has had the MMR vaccine, don't think you're entitled to believe he hasn't had it. I think we can be pretty sure that the leak to the Mail is accurate.

It was a pretty inept performance from Straw or a very good one from Humphrys, I'm not quite sure. At one point Straw even told Humphrys to "keep his hair on", to which Humphrys replied, "It's a serious issue and I'm trying to be serious about it". A chastised Straw agreed: "It's very, very serious issue, alright?".

In his last question to Straw, Humphrys raised something that came out of Tony Blair's interview with Jeremy Paxman last week which Guido Fawkes picked up on:

Humphrys: Tony Blair said last week, "I don't believe we had any option but to disclose the name of Dr David Kelly". That is what he said last week to Jeremy Paxman. On the 22nd of July 2003 he said, "I did not authorise the leaking of the name of David Kelly". Can you reconcile those two statements?

Straw: Yes I can, because in one case he uses the first person singular and in the other case he uses first person...

H: Ah. Oh, right. So when he says "I" he doesn't speak for the Government then, there is no collective Government responsibility is there?

There you have it: Jack Straw thinks you're a jerk. It's got to be one of the most weaselly, cowardly answers to a question since Bill Clinton said, "it depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is". If the Government are going to face more of these questions this week, they'd do well to send Straw back to his constituency. (Listen to the Straw interview here. RealPlayer required.)

But this is how they get away with it. By hair-splitting and weasel words are the deaths of thousands wiped from the slate. It seems to be the Labour line to take that by obfuscating, over-complicating and playing fast and loose with the facts of the matter - in order that the public, craving its football and its tits, will find all this boring - it will all go away.

Blair, still misrepresenting the French position over a second UN resolution, said this morning:

At the time, unable to get the second resolution, unable to get any resolution with an ultimatum that was going to force Saddam to comply, I took the view it was better to remove him.

But wasn't Saddam already complying? Weren't weapons inspectors inside Iraq at the time, destroying those few missiles left? Blair gave further clues to explain his actions in an interview in the Independent last week:

What I object to is people trying to frame the decision in terms of my integrity rather than in terms of the fact that I was faced with the situation where there were 250,000 troops down there. Saddam wasn't fully co-operating with the UN inspectors, he remained in breach of the UN resolutions and yet I couldn't get a second UN resolution with an ultimatum.

That's 250,000 troops on a timetable with a scorching desert summer on the way. Notice the "fully" in "Saddam wasn't fully co-operating" - that's called nuancing. Weapons inspectors were in the country but Saddam wasn't fully co-operating. Blair couldn't get a second UN resolution with an ultimatum (again, read: Bloody Chirac).

And yet again, we have it rammed down out throats that the world is a better place without Saddam. YES WE KNOW. We're told in that smug manner that if it was down to us Saddam would still be in power.

"I took the view it was better to remove him," says Blair. What did he mean then, when he said this on March 2 2003?

If military action proves necessary, it will be to uphold the authority of the UN and to ensure Saddam is disarmed of his weapons of mass destruction, not to overthrow him. It is why, detestable as I find his regime, he could stay in power if he disarms peacefully.

It all boils down to this. Before he had his arm twisted by successive US administrations, Blair couldn't give a toss about Iraq or its people. Or Straw, or Hoon and the rest of the happy wanderers. This is from a column by Mark Thomas in the New Statesman, December 2002:

The first early day motion (these are political statements which MPs can sign up to and support) condemning Iraq's use of chemical weapons was issued on 24 March 1988. Did Straw support it? No. Neither did he support the first early day motion to mention Halabja by name, issued four days later on 28 March 1988. Nor did he put his name to the condemnations on the first, sixth and tenth anniversaries of the attack in March 1989, 1994 or 1998. Strangely, neither did Blair, Prescott, Blunkett, Cook or Hoon add their names to any of these condemnations of Iraq's most notorious attack. Maybe they just all forgot their pens on those days.

"Perhaps they all decided to speak out against Iraq in the adjournment debate of 1988?" I hear you ask. No, not one of them.

Even when Straw was hardman Home Secretary, he certainly wasn't much exercised by human rights abuses in Iraq, as Thomas explains:

The comedian and writer Jeremy Hardy was sent a copy of a Home Office letter refusing asylum to an Iraqi refugee in January 2001.

Although the individual seeking asylum had been detained and tortured, the Home Office letter read as follows: "The Secretary of State [then jack Straw] has at his disposal a wide range of information on Iraq which he has used to consider your claims. He is aware that Iraq, and in particular the Iraqi security forces, would only convict and sentence a person in the courts with the provision of proper jurisdiction. He is satisfied, however, that if there are any charges outstanding against you and if they were to be proceeded with on your return, you could expect to receive a fair trial under an independent and properly constituted judiciary"

None of them gave what was going on inside Iraq a second thought until it was politically expedient to do so. You'll forgive me if I forego lessons in morality from such people. Blair wanted disarmament, yes, who didn't? But he said Saddam could stay if he disarmed. So much for the moral case for war.

It's not just the death and the suffering I can't get past. It's the (lesser) reason of the utter, bare-teethed contempt in which the public - not just those of us who were against the war - are held by these people. The ever-shifting reasons for war. The square-jawed "I believe it was right" homilies but the moral cowardice in being unwilling to stand up for those convictions by giving a straight answer or being open with the facts.

By now you're maybe thinking, let it go, there's more important things to worry about. But even if you've got what it takes to put the piles of bodies to the back of your mind, Iraq as an issue lies at the stinking heart of what remains of the British body politic. I've had more than one person laugh at me in the last few weeks because I was disappointed that a candidate canvassing for my vote on my doorstep had not been - shall we say - clear on the facts on a number of issues. "All politicians lie," they said, "why are you surprised?" That all politicians lie is the perceived wisdom, but to fail to, to cease to , rail against that? Where does that leave us? We've seen politics with impunity at its rawest in the last couple of years - what does it say about us if we just switch the channel to check the lottery results?

Hold your nose and vote Labour, I'm told. But if I can't make my feelings felt at the ballot box - a thin retribution, I'll grant you - then where? Think of the good done - the minimum wages, the new deals and other sops to middle class consciences, they plead. But who answers for the dead and the maimed? No political party mentioned the human cost of the war today. Dead wogs butter no parsnips it would seem. But think of the new Iraq, I'm implored.

If New Labour is so proud of toppling Saddam's regime, why isn't it on their top 50 achievements? If we're the good guys and the war was conducted for honourable reasons, why can't we pay the Iraqi people the respect of counting their dead? Aren't our leaders supposed to hold to higher moral standards than Saddam Hussein? Isn't that why they said they had the right to do this - that Saddam's regime was the dragon that needed to be slayed?

Why do such brave men hide behind "precedent", and nuancing, and "I believe it was the right thing to do". Release the legal advice. Honour the dead.

But they're caught in the trap. Saddam Hussein may have killed less people than Stalin but that doesn't make him the better man.


Vote Labour.
The Roundup Gang
Monday, April 25, 2005

If, like me, you spent the weekend in the park with a big bottle of cider, then the Election Blog Roundups for Friday, Saturday and Sunday will be just what you need. Also, they're just the ticket if you need to knock out a quick piece about blogging for a newspaper with half an hour to go before deadline. More about that later.

The mighty Tim Worstall's latest weekly blog roundup is also out.
GET CHAVEZ: Quixotic
Friday, April 22, 2005

I haven't written much about Venezuela and Chavez of late. If anything, things have been a bit quiet - a period of detente, you might say - between Chavez and the US administration. Republican attack dog Senator Norm Coleman - a man who's been calling for Kofi Annan's head of late - even paid Chavez a cordial visit in the last month.

But I wanted to mention this:

The Guardian: Let them read Quixote
The Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has printed one million copies of Don Quixote to mark the 400th anniversary of the publication of Cervantes' novel. This week they are being handed out free in public squares for the improvement of his citizens, while at the same time our politicians are also on the streets distributing material of infinitely less literary merit. So, for making this wonderful novel freely available to Venezuelans, hats off to Hugo, whose devotees incidentally are known as chavistas, but not for the reasons that link them to Wayne or Colleen.

It's a classic Chavez gambit - like most of them - that will make is his supporter say, "that's ace," and his detractors say "what a prick".
Spread The Word
Friday, April 22, 2005


The Independent: Aid worker uncovered America's secret tally of Iraqi civilian deaths
The Guardian: 11 killed as civilian helicopter is shot down in Iraq
BBC News: Iraqi PM escapes convoy bombing
BBC News: Fifty bodies found in Iraqi river
BBC News: Massacre at Iraq football stadium

Spread the Word.
General Election Blog Roundup 11
Thursday, April 21, 2005

The today's super-concentrated burst of election nourishment is up at the 2005 UK General Election Blog.
Putting two and two together
Thursday, April 21, 2005

It seems a number of people are getting hot under the collar about the fact that, as they are fielding the requisite number of candidates, the BNP qualify for their own election broadcast.

Now it seems to me the BBC and the other networks could circumvent this anxiety with some clever scheduling:

"...that was an election broadcast on behalf of the British National Party. And now on BBC1, Schindler's List."

Problem solved.

PS. If you're a member of the BNP and I've offended you, have a present by way of recompense.
Paxman vs Blair: Bore Draw
Thursday, April 21, 2005

I once wanted to know what the average rainfall in Mogadishu is. So I screamed at my four year-old daughter 18 times to tell me, until we were both crying. And you know something, after all that she still couldn't tell me what the answer was. The slippery little get.

Let's face it, "The Paxman Interviews" are pretty redundant exercises. The only thing that seems to have come out of them so far is that our leaders don't have total recall or every scrap of information on the tip of the tongue.

It was always going to be unlikely that Paxman would get any real gravy out of any of them. As if Blair was going to suddenly put his face in his hands and wail: "You're right! All those women and children and for what? A lie!" Instead, particularly from Blair, we got all the well-rehearsed lines on Iraq, Brown, etc, that he now can probably murmur backwards in his sleep.

Don't believe me? Here's the Independent's Steve Richards getting the same slick platitudes as he wearily rakes over the same old coals once more. Iraq? "The only thing I would ask people to do is understand that it was a very difficult decision." Brown? "It is important that the two of us work together and closely." Everything present and correct.

At least with Blair, Paxman spared us the histrionics and tried softly, softly instead. Didn't get him anywhere though and he (and we) wasted everybody's time thinking he might.
If ten soldiers kill one civilian, how many are dead?
Thursday, April 21, 2005

Something has gone very badly wrong over at Shot By Both Sides. Read the comments as well.
Love letters straight from Charles Clarke
Thursday, April 21, 2005

My partner got a letter in the post from Charles Clarke yesterday. I felt a bit left out. Do you think he might be making a play for her?



Personally? The bastard. Charlie, please don’t take her just because you can. With the silver-tongued stuff dispensed with he puts on the frighteners:



Does he thinks she'll leap into his manly arms so he can protect her? But wait, it gets worse, Charles and my other half clearly have a history. In the next two paragraphs, he's begging her to come back to him:



The romance isn't dead, there's so much more to be done. He wants to get down while raising his standard.

Charles is clearly desperate and distraught because in the next paragraph he repeats himself: Tories, bastards. Lib dems, can't win. I'll spare his blushes. But next he's warning the Mrs off the Lib Dems again - I think he suspects she's had a dalliance with them as well.



This Lib Dems are a bad bunch by the sounds of them. If she shacks up with them, my better half is going to end up running with a dangerous crew. She better watch out, "Ian Huntley and other killers" might stab her with their votes.

He signs off with his endearingly clumsy signature. Maybe he was hot and nervous like you are when you craft a letter to someone you really like.

Bless him. It's obvious the crayon he used was too thin for his sausage fingers.

The enclosed leaflet is a no less desperate affair. It outlines "five important facts you should bear in mind" before voting Lib Dem.

1. The Lib Dems would allow 16 year olds to buy alcohol.
I don't know about you, but I doubt there's 16 year old alive right now who hasn't bought alcohol. If not, they clearly aren't the street-savvy metrosexual bunch I've read about in the colour supplements. Certainly, Euan Blair had no trouble getting hold of grog to celebrate the end of his GCSEs under a Labour government.

2. The Lib Dems would give the vote to jailed killers, rapists and paedophiles.
Can you kill someone with a vote? Or rape them with one? Do paedophiles hang around in parks waiting to subject children to the horror of the vote? This is clearly a pitch to the prison-as-punishment-not-rehabilitation dollar. That's a big dollar.

3. The Lib Dems would end all jail sentences for drug possession.
Notice that's users not dealers. Some drug users need help. Labour clearly believe prison is the best place for them. Oh sorry, am I misrepresenting a tad? It's a shoddy tactic isn't it?

4. The Lib Dems would hike up income tax for hard working families.
God forbid that someone should try to reform a regressive tax system. And this from a so-called social democratic party. Whose best mate, Rupert Murdoch, by the way, doesn't pay a penny in tax in the UK.

5. A vote for the Lib Dems helps the Tories win.
Fuck off. Aren't you as sick of saying that as I am of hearing it?

That's a whole leaflet giving five reasons why we should not vote Lib Dem, but not one as to why we should vote New Labour.

On the back of the leaflet is a tick box saying "I will be voting Labour in the election on Thursday 5 May" and a freepost address to return the tick to. If I wrap the thing around a brick and send it back do they have to pay the extra postage?

UPDATE: Tone's been making sexy chit chat with a priddy lady as well. (Cheers John)
Words fail John Prescott yet again
Thursday, April 21, 2005

Don't forget kids, this exemplar is one Starbucks too many from being Prime Minister.

Mark Choueke: How did you and your cabinet colleagues react to Peter Law's decision to quit the party after 35 years service to Blaenau Gwent as a Labour politician?

John Prescott: It didn't even register with us. The voters just have one choice, vote Labour otherwise they'll end up with a Tory government. It's unfortunate that some of our decisions upset some people.

MC: But this isn't about upsetting Peter Law, it's about upsetting the many thousands of Labour voters in Blaenau Gwent who helped you form a strong government ­ they feel alienated.

JP: Why are you asking me about this, I don't care, it's a Welsh situation, I'm a national politician.

MC: Are you too big to care about the Labour voters in Blaenau Gwent? Do you think there may be something in your party's methods of working that require a rethink when a politician chooses to stand against you after 35 years service to Labour?

JP (walking away): Where do they get these amateurs from? You're an amateur mate, go get on your bus, go home.

MC: Are you too big for the regional press now John?

JP: Bugger off - get on your bus you amateur.

MC (Following Deputy Prime Minister): Is my interview over John? Because if that's all you've got to say, that's what will go in the paper.

JP (turns aggressively back to reporter): Ooohh, I'm scared, go ahead, put it in your paper.

Labour candidate for Monmouth Huw Edwards: I could answer this question for you Mark...

MC: I hoped to hear what the deputy prime minister had to say about it.

JP (now ignoring reporter): I've never seen a school in such a lovely setting.

MC: Is that my interview over?





General Election Blog Roundup: Wednesday
Thursday, April 21, 2005

The election blogging roundup for Wednesday is up. Get over there for your news in pill form.

As ever, if you have any juice you'd like included - from the left, right, up or down - email generalelection@gmail.com.
Election Roundup
Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Forgot to mention this yesterday: The Election Blogging Roundup for Tuesday by yours truly is up.

If you've got anything you'd like included in today's roundup email us at generalelection@gmail.com. Ta.
...and a pint of warm mild to go with it
Wednesday, April 20, 2005

The Guardian: War pitches Straw into survival battle
'Jack Straw!" chorus children in sing-song voices on the steep streets of Bank Top. One boy bounces a football. Another waves a frighteningly realistic toy handgun. Special Branch twitch. People pop out of their terraced homes. Flat cap in hand, the foreign secretary strides from doorstep to corner shop, greeting many voters by name and asking after their fathers.

Flat cap? Did he bring his whippet as well? I get back to Lancashire quite a bit - my family's still there - and I don't think I've seen anybody in a flat cap up there since about 1975. Maybe he's doing a celebrity endorsement or something in an attempt to bring them back.

He's great though Jack Straw, isn't he? A comedy stalwart. Of course he's a desperately cynical politician and complicit in the deaths of thousands, but he cuts such a prattish figure it's not difficult to feel a twinge of sympathy for him.

His willingness to do anything to get the vote out is quite endearing, whether it be to ditch the spectacles and get a new haircut, describe himself as a "football enthusiast" or be photographed in his barefeet and turban on a visit to Gujarat (the Gujariti Muslims are a vital element of his core support back home, apparently). You just want to go, "aw, bless!"

Imagine what he might do should the fear really kick in.
An honest debate
Wednesday, April 20, 2005



"I have thought this through very carefully. I know that some people disagree with my view. They are perfectly entitled to their view. I am entitled to talk about it. All I want is an honest debate."

I've mentioned it before but the photo above is of the Tory poster that was placed opposite the Hindu temple in Portslade in Hove. The poster's just recently been pasted over with something else.

"I would like to say to Mr Howard that I am like his grandfather, a Jew who is a refugee in his country. But unlike Mr Howard who actually has got white skin, I have got dark skin and dark hair. And every time that Mr Howard talks about foreigners who are invading this country ... life for me and people like me ... - by the way I am naturalised British therefore I had to swear allegiance to this country and to the Queen - he is making life impossible for us because he is pandering to the xenophobic views of the readers of the Daily Mail or the hunting lobby or the shire county places where hardly any foreigners actually live."

What you can't see in the photo is that on the same side of the road where the photographer is standing, there's also a convenience store owned by an Asian family. Every time they looked up from behind the cashdesk the poster was clearly visible.

Now, I've had it put to me by two or three people (not least by Nicholas Boles, the Tory candidate himself) that concerns over the immigration issue are shared by immigrants already settled here who feel their acceptance by the community is being threatened. To paraphrase the response I sent to an email I received off-site from someone who'd passed through here:

I don't doubt they're right - I've seen interviews with immigrants extolling limits on immigration. My reaction to the poster though was that particularly first generation immigrants are going to look at that poster and maybe think of the dark days of the 70s and an ascendant National Front. I'm a white male in my 30s and have never been shouted at in the street and told to go back to where I came from but there might be a few people attending the temple (or running the convenience store) who have.

There are clearly problems with the asylum system - witness the Bourgass debacle. But I refuse to believe that ugly juxtapositions like we've seen in Portslade go anywhere towards promoting "an honest debate".

(Thanks to Rob for the photo)
God help us
Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Anybody here think the accession of Joseph Ratzinger to the papacy is a good thing? In rejecting the unity candidate in favour of the continuity candidate the papal conclave have condemned yet more people to misery and death.

Having said that, it's not as if Ratzinger didn't warn us. Here's what he had to say in God and the World: A Conversation with Peter Seewald:

Today what people have in view is eliminating suffering from the world. For the individual, that means avoiding pain and suffering in whatever way. Yet we must also see that it is in this very way that the world becomes very hard and very cold. Pain is part of being human. Anyone who really wanted to get rid of suffering would have to get rid of love before anything else, because there can be no love without suffering, because it always demands an element of self-sacrifice, because, given temperamental differences and the drama of situations, it will always bring with it renunciation and pain.

Anyone who really wanted to get rid of suffering would have to get rid of love before anything else. The proponent of this dangerous, disgusting horseshit is now leader of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics. Good luck guys, sounds like you're going to need it.

He's been called "the Panzer Cardinal" - what a delightful image. His stint in the Hitler Youth clearly gave him the taste for the genocide his ultra-Conservative diktats have caused and will continue to cause. Still, to get rid of suffering is to get rid of love. The new Benedict XVI must love his flock so very, very much.

In fact Benedict XVI loves all kinds of people - particularly homosexuals ("an intrinsic moral evil"), children abused by paedophile priests ("Ratzinger wrote that pedophile cases were subject to pontifical secrecy and that only priests should handle such cases"), AIDS-ravaged Africa ("no condoms, keep it zipped up" - or words to that effect) and women ("You can't have women priests because Christ had a johnson" - I paraphrase somewhat).

As someone who shook the disease of my Catholicism (along with theism in general) a long time ago now, I can really only shake my head, keep fingers crossed and keep reminding myself that at least I still believe all men are brothers, worthy of life, dignity and respect. It's not as if I can join the Party and try to bring change from within.

It's been said already that, at 78, Ratzinger is an interim figure. But as a bridgehead to what? He caused enough damage from the shadows under the previous pope. It's to be wondered what he'll feel himself capable of now the shackles are off and he has the papacy to himself. And what legacy will he leave? Plenty more souls gathered unto God and precious else.

He's railed against the rise in secularisation particularly in Europe but how he's supposed to be a figure to rally disaffected Catholics is anybody's guess.

(Jim Bliss has more. At least Jim made the best use of papal infallibility, while he was its custodian, we're likely to see this side of Judgement Day.)
ELECTIONWATCH 2005: Hove
Tuesday, April 19, 2005

There's been something of a drop-off in campaigning in Hove. No more knocks on the door or leaflets through the letterbox. Both the Tories and Labour have seen a collapse in their poster numbers with only the Lib Dems boosting their tally with three posters. The Tories posters featuring candidate Nicholas Boles seem to have vanished like the early spring daffs. And the "rivers of blood" one has gone from opposite the Hindu temple.

Boles himself has made something of a berk of himself over a proposed housing development in Hove which his team have attempted to rubbish with the most hilarious pieces of photo doctoring I've seen in a while. It seems Nicholas is giving people different opinions about the development. Naughty, naughty. (Thanks to Hove Labour for the heads up - nothing if not balanced, me.)

BB at Hove Labour also pointed me in the direction of Political Betting's odds on the Hove election - not a lot in it, as I think you'll agree:
Stale bruschetta
Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Despite some people's attempts to keep the fires stoked, I wonder if the emotional blackmail/threats/insults/carrots argument about protest voting against New Labour has just about run out of steam on both sides.

Polly Toynbee tried it again last week on the Guardian's election blog (thanks John for the link). The guys behind Backing Blair, in an accomodation not shown by the other side, have even gone as far as to adjust their core message.

I fear though, even with two weeks of campaigning still to run, that it's game over. The polls are now starting to show us what the maths has been showing for weeks. Barring an outbreak of bird flu among its voters New Labour is going to be returned with a handsome majority if not another landslide. A desperate Howard might also yet take the nuclear option and give us a "rivers of blood" speech (he came very close last night) which will almost certainly lock down many floating and would-be protest voters for New Labour ensuring an even larger majority. He might yet succeed where the likes of Hain, Aaronovitch, Toynbee, et al, have so far failed - in galvanising pissed off Labour voters.

At this rate the only fun to be had on election night will be to see if any freak polls take down Howard, Davis or Letwin and if any of the semi-interesting independent candidates have any joy.
And he was doing so well...
Tuesday, April 19, 2005

In his thoughtful treatise on tactical voting in the Guardian today. George Monbiot had me right up until the point where he said vote Respect.

George Galloway's calls this week for Tariq Aziz to be released was just the latest reason not to vote for him and his party.
What is it with Paxman?
Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Did anybody manage to get to the end of Jeremy Paxman's interview of Charles Kennedy last night? I confess I turned it off after about 15 minutes tempted, as I was, to stick my boot through the whole worthless spectacle.

There's just one thing I can't work out: was Paxman's demeanour towards Kennedy a display of genuine unbridled, teeth-gritted, venomous contempt or a disingenuous camp pantomime? The sighing, the knitted brow and the pointing made me think he was about to rise from his chair and land one on his interviewee.

Either way, the interview was practically useless as a means of extracting information useful to the electorate and more an exercise in trying to make Kennedy look like a dickhead. It'll be interesting to see if Paxman looks at Blair through the same narrowed eyes, as if he's just seen someone vomiting in the street, when he interviews the PM tomorrow evening. I think we can expect Michael Howard to get the same treatment on Friday evening but Paxman's has notorious form for pulling his punches when interviewing Blair.

Until recently there was no-one to beat the Newsnight hardman. His asking Michael Howard the same question 14 times a few years back is still a pearl in British television history. But he's starting to veer worryingly close to caricature.

Ben Summerskill in the Guardian ponders this as well.

UPDATE: Eddie at Left Out Liberal has a detailed dissection of Kennedy's evisceration.
General Election blog roundup #9: Monday 18th April
Tuesday, April 19, 2005

The Nick Barlow provides the latest election blogging roundup.

I'm doing today's, so if you have anything you'd like included email it to generalelection@gmail.com before 6pm.
Our survey said...
Monday, April 18, 2005

Most people will already have seen this but the god-like Chris Lightfoot has put together the Political Survey 2005. The survey takes your political views and plots them on an axis which allows you to see where you sit politically in comparison with the rest of the population.

My results are here.
Roundup roundup
Monday, April 18, 2005

For those of us having had a weekend of debauchery and missed the weekend's election shenanigans, the Election Roundup blog's roundups five, seven and eight are just the concentrated burst of goodness we need. Number Six mysteriously disappeared is being held against his will in the Village.

The ever-selfless Tim Worstall's weekly blog roundup is also up.

Anybody wishing to contribute to today's (or any other day's) Election Roundup blog ahould email generalelection@gmail.com.
Questions on the Doorstep
Friday, April 15, 2005

There's a new election campaign poster up on my home turf of Portslade. This one is different from the rest as it's one for the Liberal Democrats.

This set a bell ringing. Some of you may have read this post describing a canvassing visit my partner and I had last Sunday from New Labour candidate, Celia Barlow.

During her visit, Celia told us that Paul Elgood, the Liberal Democrat candidate, was not campaigning in Hove and Portslade but instead helping in the Lewes constituency.

The appearance of the poster seems to contradict this so I emailed the Liberal Democrat campaign team for confirmation. Paul Elgood emailed me himself unequivocally denying what Celia had said:

We are working hard in this constituency and fighting for every Lib Dem vote. Lewes is a held seat for the Lib Dems and they don't need outside help, as we have to aim to increase the vote and win in other constituencies. I am working flat out here and aim to double the vote.

Celia's comments are very dishonest.

Paul also left a comment to that effect on this blog here.

Celia's assertion was also contradicted in this article about the Hove constituency on the politics.co.uk website last Monday, which said:

In 2001, the 3,800 people who voted Liberal Democrat were the difference between Labour on 19,000 and the Conservatives on 16,000. This time round, Elgood aims to double the Liberal Democrat vote; if he can do so, he will wipe out Labour's majority, and the Lib Dem vote will determine the outcome of the election.

He says the Liberal Democrats are putting in "triple, quadruple" the resources they put into previous elections and will be fighting for every vote in a way they never have before. That will allow them to pick up on what he calls a "groundswell" of feeling among groups - pensioners, the intelligentsia, students, people opposed to the war in Iraq - who are dissatisfied with Labour but not willing to turn to the Conservatives.

"In Hove, they can afford to have a protest, a by-election style protest and I think that'll come to us in big numbers," he says.

So which is it? The New Labour candidate says the Liberal Democrats aren't campaigning in Hove. The Liberal Democrat candidate says emphatically that they are.

I spoke to someone in the Electoral Services department at Brighton & Hove City council about it. I didn't name any names, simply saying, "A candidate said this about another candidate who subsequently denied it." Their response was interesting.

Nominations for candidates wishing to stand in the constituency do not close until April 19. Until that date nobody is officially standing at the election in Hove. You can campaign even if you are not yet officially standing. If something similar were to happen after April 19 Electoral Services would take the matter in hand but only to refer it to their senior contact at the party against who the accusation has been made. But where does this leave Celia's assertion that Paul Elgood is not campaigning?

I emailed Celia twice this week, once on Wednesday and yesterday, where I put my cards on the table, explained who I was and what I intended to do:

I shall be looking to write about this matter on my site later today. I realise you must be extremely busy with your camapign but I want to give you the right of reply and would be grateful for a comment from you or your agent to add the proper balance.

I received a reply today in which she said:

Sorry about the delay in replying. As you say I am very busy. However, following your email I contacted Paul Elgood. I realised I was misinformed and I have apologised to him.

I'd be very interested to know who misinformed Celia and why. This erroneous impression has come from somewhere either through a misunderstanding or, possibly, something more malicious. I also wonder if campaigns can afford for their candidates to be misinformed in this way. Rival camps are looking to score big points - witness the furore over Ed Matts and his doctored photos.

Now, I realise that the anti-New Labour sentiment expressed on this weblog, and my association with the tactical-voting campaign Backing Blair might tarnish me in the eyes of some in this matter. A casual scroll through the site though will tell you that I enjoy giving the Tories stick with as much, if not more, relish than I do New Labour. When Blair goes, I'll be a Labour voter again.

Despite my "affiliation", another casual scroll will show you that my coverage of the election in Hove so far has been even-handed: here, here, here, here and here.

So that said, I'm not grinding an axe here. But this is a marginal constituency where the incumbent party has a shaky majority. Telling voters, without checking the veracity of what we now know to be just a rumour, that a rival party isn't bothering to campaign is misleading, wrong and potentially damaging to that rival campaign.

Can we be expected to believe that Celia was unaware of the impact her words might have on both the views of floating voters and, by extension, both her and the Liberal Democrat's election campaigns?

How many other people told the same might think: "If they can't be bothered to campaign, why should I bother to vote for them?" And how is this impression to be corrected? Don't New Labour have big enough issues on trust without this happening on the doorstep?

I'd be chasing this just as much if such a comment had come from another party's candidate. I dropped my psuedonym on this blog to prove I stand by what I've written here - so there can be no accusations of me hiding anything and my dealings with the parties involved cannot be construed as anything else other than above board.

This isn't about is trying to land a blow on an election candidate with who I don't agree. This is about fair play and, without trying to sound grand, the democratic process.
Carrots & Sticks
Friday, April 15, 2005

Carrots

The Times: Labour set up a secret inquiry into ending first past the post
THE Government admitted last night that it had secretly begun a review into an alternative to the current first-past-the-post system, the “unfairness” of which threatens to be laid bare in the election.

An unattributed story in a Murdoch newspaper. Hmmmm. This kind of stuff is what long grass was invented for.

***

The Guardian: Robin Cook - Blair has delivered on some of the left's historic demands
I keep reading that the voters complain that the political parties are all the same. I am haunted by the fear that some electors will only be convinced that they are radically different if they end up with a Conservative government that will, with gusto, set about proving just what a big difference there is. Labour's manifesto has set out a progressive agenda of social justice and job opportunity radically different from a Tory party that simultaneously dangles the hope of tax cuts and whips up the fear of immigration. Nobody now can reasonably complain that they have not been given a choice. And old Labour sympathisers can back this government not through gritted teeth but with enthusiasm.

From a Labour MP in a Labour supporting newspaper. Back in April 2001, the then Guardian columnist and comedian, Jeremy Hardy, in his last column for the paper said:

In any event, I was given the option of staying on until the election but also told that I shouldn't use the column as a platform for the Socialist Alliance. Since the fact of the Socialist Alliance and the Scottish Socialist party putting up candidates is the only interesting thing about the election, that struck me as a bit of a limitation; and since I'm away for Easter, I may as well sign off now.

Hardy, Socialist Alliance. Cook, New Labour. Hardy, Socialist Alliance. Cook, New Labour.

I'd recommend reading Hardy's piece in it's entirety because even though it's five years old, it could have been written this week:

Those who are enjoying power accuse us malcontents of being compulsively oppositional. "Why are you people always so angry?" they ask. We should reply: "Because there is so much to be angry about and the Body Snatchers haven't got us yet", but I'm afraid that they would counter with: "Our time has arrived, it is pointless to resist." I don't know what is more distressing, the triumphalism of those who crow that they've won, or the fact that so many of them would never have settled for such a victory a few short years ago. At least half of the government's media supplicants would have railed in fury if the last government had done the things they tolerate from Labour.

The Tories are not going to get back in. The people who say they might are mostly Labour loyalists, who are perhaps waiting to surprise us with some newly emerging piece of venality. Perhaps Robert Maxwell is alive. But the Tories won't win. Labour will not even be forced into a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, which in any case wouldn't drag the government further to the right. Liberals and even Greens undergo some strange conversions when in power, it's true; and Lib Dem councils have a pretty bad track record. But a Lib-Lab coalition government is unlikely, and I very much doubt whether it would be more corporate-friendly, racist and authoritarian than this one.

Anyway, Hardy is just some uppity Left-wing comedian who supported a fringe party. Robin Cook is a former cabinet minister who might be on the way back in if he plays his cards right (bless him, he didn't mention Iraq once this week in his column). You can see the Guardian's dilemma.

***

BBC News: Apology over police officer death
Labour election chief Alan Milburn has apologised for the death of a policeman killed by ricin plotter Kamel Bourgass.

I might have missed some of the details in this case but I'm pretty sure Alan Milburn didn't stab DC Stephen Oake. Neither was he a member of the asylum system that lost track of Bourgass. I'm at a loss as to why a notorious New Labour hardman would be issuing such a apology, I really am.

***

Sticks

The story about British troops abroad being denied their vote is gaining some traction:

The Independent: MoD error denies thousands of troops the vote
BBC News: Delay 'risks Armed Forces votes'

***

The Guardian: Blair at centre of new row over postal votes
Tony Blair is promoting his party's "farming" of postal vote applications in a national mailshot which defies advice from returning officers that there should be no third party involvement in the process.

Always one to lead by example, that one. MMR, anybody? To be fair though, he's not the only one:

Mr Blair is not alone in acting contrary to their advice. Michael Howard, in a personal letter to voters, asks them to return their application forms to a national party centre in Dartford, Kent, while Charles Kennedy requests electors to return the forms to the party's local offices.

So far, so politics. But this from the Times might make you sit up:

The Times has learnt that the Government has, for the first time in a general election, invited international observers to monitor the last week of the campaign. The Warsaw-based Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights will decide in the next two days whether to accept the invitation. "We don’t investigate and we would not micromanage the police, but postal voting will be looked at if we accept," a spokeswoman said.

International observers. There you have it. A government famous for its gusto in exporting democracy to the rest of the world has invited international observers to monitor its own election. I just hope at the end of it, they don't say, as if we were some Middle Eastern or Africam basket-case, "Well, there were problems but on the whole we feel the election was largely free and fair."
Shake for me, girl. I wanna be your back door man.
Thursday, April 14, 2005

The Labour Party: Hain and Morgan launch manifesto for a world-beating Wales
Mr Hain said: "Wales has a clear choice on May 5th. We can go forward with the strong Labour team or we can go back to being ruled by the Tories. Labour promises even better public services, a stronger economy and safer streets.

"But this can only be delivered if people turn out to vote Labour. I'm sounding an alarm for Wales today: you will only get a Labour Government if you vote for a Labour Government. This isn’t a time to gamble. Don’t have a flutter on your future. A vote for Plaid or the Liberals could let the Tories in by the back door.

Poor Peter. Can you see him standing there, dying inside a little bit more each time he has to say, "...let the Tories in by the back door"? Do you think, as the weasel words drip from his mouth, he pictures his younger self digging up cricket pitches, marching against tyranny and risking his life for a better world? Does his grin then fade slightly and his eyes shine for a moment?

The Back Door Count currently stands at: 5.
General Election Blogs Roundup #4
Thursday, April 14, 2005

Today's election blogging roundup is up.

Please send any links you'd like included in tomorrow's roundup to generalelection@gmail.com. But save all your best stuff for next Tuesday when I'll be in the chair again.
Something to do tomorrow
Thursday, April 14, 2005

If your day tomorrow is spent not reading this breakdown of the runners and riders in the election by Jim Bliss, it will be a day wasted.

A contender for the best blog post of the election campaign so far?
John O'Farrell and the Inappropriate Analogy
Thursday, April 14, 2005

Another day, another "comedy" spam email from John O'Farrell on behalf of New Labour. This time he's exhorting the faithful to "Let's Keep It Labour Weekend", a mass mobilisation of activists:

Sometimes being a Labour Party activist can be a lonely occupation. The same few party members discussing item three on the agenda; "How can we get more people to come to meetings?" It's no different in the Cabinet; Tony Blair sits there with a handful of ministers and lots of empty chairs and says "Um, let's just give it a few more minutes and see if anyone else turns up."

But this weekend you could be one of thousands of Labour supporters across the country descending on Labour's key seats. This looks set to be an even greater mass mobilisation of political activists than the rush to join Robert Kilroy-Silk's Veritas Party. Think of Mao's long march; think of the unemployed walking from Jarrow.

Think of Mao's long march? OK, I will:

The Long March was a massive military retreat undertaken by the Chinese Communist Army to evade the pursuit of the Kuomintang army. The Communist Army of the Chinese Soviet Republic, led by Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, was on the brink of complete annihilation by Chiang Kai-Shek's troops in Jiangxi Province in October 1934. The communists escaped in circling retreat to the north which ultimately covered some 8000km (4960 miles) over 370 days. The route branched through some of the most difficult terrain of western China and arrived 9600km (5952 miles) west, then north, to Shaanxi. (In 2003, Ed Jocelyn and Andy McEwan retraced the route in 384 days and estimated it was about 6000 km (3700 miles) long.

All along the way, the Communist Army confiscated property and weapons from local warlords and landlords, while recruiting peasants and the poor. Nevertheless, only some 20,000 out of about 90,000 soldiers who had started the march ultimately made it to the final destination of Yan'an in 1935. A variety of setbacks contributed to the loss including fatigue, hunger, coldness, sickness, desertion, and military losses.

Of course, Mao Zedong, or Mao Tse-Tung as he's sometimes better known, was hailed as a great leader who brought sweeping reforms to his country. He was famous for his Little Red Book. And he caused the deaths of a great many people.

Is that what O'Farrell means when he says, "think of Mao's long march"?
Say it isn't true!
Thursday, April 14, 2005



Are the Bloggers4Labour chaps getting cold feet? (Look in the top right corner, under the clock.)

Only joking, lads!

(spotted by the estimable John Wards.)
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood
Thursday, April 14, 2005

Tim Ireland gives a rallying cry.
April Surprise?
Thursday, April 14, 2005

In his Media Diary for the Independent on Monday, Matthew Norman mused the folowing:

With three-and-a-bit weeks to go, now seems the time to pose this vital question: when Mr Tony Blair, Alastair Campbell and the gang decide to unleash the flammed-up terrorism scare, where will they place it? Those who saw last week's Newsnight item featuring the American focus groupie Frank Luntz will have been struck by one finding. Mr Luntz went to marginal Milton Keynes to ask floaters for their thoughts, and the issue on which they gave the PM his best score was decisiveness in the face of a security crisis. Doubtless Labour's internal polling shows the same thing, which strongly suggests that a little judicious scaremongering is on the cards. A message from Bin Laden along the lines of his US intervention would certainly help, but Ossie can hardly be relied upon to ride to the rescue. And while sending the tanks to Heathrow for no apparent reason would have visual impact, it lacks a certain freshness. What's needed, then, is a front-page splash calculated to allow an ashen Mr Blair to remind us that, while the intelligence is "non-specific", we live in the face of "a unique threat to our way of life", and that he alone can be trusted to preserve it. But where to plant this potentially fruitful tree? The Times and The Observer are close allies, but at times of electoral emergency No 10 would look for maximum impact, which means a tabloid. The Mirror, recent home to a moving hand-written note from the PM, seems an obvious choice, but that paper already nestles snugly in his pocket. So the smart money is on The Sun, which is suffering an unaccustomed bout of indecision as to whom to support. A world exclusive carrying the byline of Trevor Kavanagh, and the headline: "PM: Don't Panic, Don't Panic ... But Without Me You're Dooooomed!", packed with dark if nebulous hints at an imminent atrocity would shepherd credulous voters back into the fold. We look forward to reading it.

Is this what Norman was looking for...?

The Sun: HE WANTED YOU DEAD
COP killer Kamel Bourgass was yesterday unmasked as Osama Bin Laden’s master poisoner — with a mission to murder as many Britons as possible.

An Al-Qaeda poisoner? In London?* Who can save us? How about the Safety Elephant...

Manchester Evening News: Storm over the killer left at large
Mr Clarke said the case highlighted the need for identity cards, along with stronger borders to deal with migration issues.

How close did we come to armageddon? The newspapers speculate. Keep an eye on the Al-Qaeda connection...

The Mirror: THE TOXIC TERRORIST
Algerian Kamel Bourgass, 31 - a suspected al-Qaeda member - was "prime mover" of a cell which plotted to produce ricin, cyanide and botulinum for holy war. The poisons were to be smeared on car door handles, used in spray form or to contaminate supermarket products.

The Mail: Asylum 'chaos' allowed ricin plotter to kill
The Government's "chaotic" asylum policy allowed an Al Qaeda terrorist to plot a deadly ricin campaign and murder Detective Constable Stephen Oake, the Conservatives have claimed.

ITV.com: Al-Qaeda terrorist jailed over deadly poison plot
An al-Qaeda terrorist, jailed for life for killing a Special Branch officer, has been found guilty of planning to unleash a deadly poison in the UK.

Blimey, we've quite clearly had a close shave. Can you picture the streets littered with bodies? The death and destruction? But wait, what's this?

The Guardian: Duncan Campbell - The ricin ring that never was
Yesterday's verdicts on five defendants and the dropping of charges against four others make clear there was no ricin ring. Nor did the "ricin ring" make or have ricin. Not that the government shared that news with us. Until today, the public record for the past three fear-inducing years has been that ricin was found in the Wood Green flat occupied by some of yesterday's acquitted defendants. It wasn't.

...

The third plank of the al-Qaida-Iraq poison theory was the link between what Powell labelled the "UK poison cell" and training camps in Afghanistan. The evidence the government wanted to use to connect the defendants to Afghanistan and al-Qaida was never put to the jury. That was because last autumn a trial within a trial was secretly taking place. This was a private contest between a group of scientists from the Porton Down military research centre and myself. The issue was: where had the information on poisons and chemicals come from?

...

I was asked to look for the original source on the internet. This meant exploring Islamist websites that publish Bin Laden and his sympathisers, and plumbing the most prolific source of information on how to do harm: the writings of the American survivalist right and the gun lobby.

...

When, in October, I showed that the chemical lists found in London were an exact copy of pages on an internet site in Palo Alto, California, the prosecution gave up on the Kabul and al-Qaida link claims. But it seems this information was not shared with the then home secretary, David Blunkett, who was still whipping up fear two weeks later. "Al-Qaida and the international network is seen to be, and will be demonstrated through the courts over months to come, actually on our doorstep and threatening our lives," he said on November 14.

...

We have all been victims of this mass deception. I do not doubt that Bourgass would have contemplated causing harm if he was competent to do so. But he was an Islamist yobbo on his own, not an Al Qaida-trained superterrorist. An Asbo might be appropriate.

Bourgass was clearly a dangerous man capable, as his conviction shows, of murder. He was also described by the lawyer of three men, who had charges against them in the same case dropped, as "conceded by all to be a difficult, anti-social loner". Charles Clarke described this one man as "an illustration of the fact that terrorist organisations exist and are seeking to damage our lives".

Like the "45 Minutes From Doom" claim, the Government and now a bandwagon-jumping Michael Howard don't see the need to correct an erroneous impression, one that an Al-Qaeda cell were foiled in the nick of time in their attempt to "poison thousands". But it seems clear to me that this dangerous nonsense needs debunking far and wide.

It appears that if only the present asylum system were better staffed and more dilligent, Bourgass would have been scooped up and not gone on to kill. New Labour decry the Tories for using individual cases of failure to beat the NHS. The Tories are doing the same here. But with more talk of "plans for identity cards, stronger border controls and the new anti-terror laws", so are New Labour.

* I mean Manchester. No, London. Er, Bournemouth?

UPDATE: More at Blood & Treasure.

John Lettice gives us another debunking at The Register.
Toynbee: Not voting New Labour is like bombing civilians
Thursday, April 14, 2005

So we've had emotional blackmail, insults, scare tactics and foreign policy promises. Now we've got gimmicks.

Posting on the Guardian election blog yesterday, Polly Toynbee offered nose pegs to encourage reluctant New Labour voters to get out there and vote for the team. She started quite an outpouring in the comments section.

She rounded off her post with:

Don't turn the poor in the UK into yet more innocent collateral damage of the Iraq war.

Now, she might have a point, and I don't know about you, but I don't plan on casting my vote with a cluster bomb from 35,000 feet.

Comparing my not wanting to vote New Labour with the bombing of civilians? You know, I think she's convinced me.

(Thanks to John Ward for the link.)
Genies out of bottles, cats out of bags
Thursday, April 14, 2005

The Guardian: Unlicensed GM rice may be in UK food chain
Unlicensed GM rice sold illegally on the internet to Chinese farmers has been sold for human consumption and may have been imported undetected into the UK, even though it could cause allergic reactions.

Still, look on the bright side for the GM companies: a huge field test of the product on human specimens conducted at no expense. It's a market researcher's dream. If no-one slips into a coma or dies, the rice could be a big seller.
Because everybody else is doing it...
Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Who Should You Vote For?

Who should I vote for?

Your expected outcome:

Liberal Democrat


Your actual outcome:



Labour -19
Conservative -61
Liberal Democrat 94
UK Independence Party -17
Green 35


You should vote: Liberal Democrat

The LibDems take a strong stand against tax cuts and a strong one in favour of public services: they would make long-term residential care for the elderly free across the UK, and scrap university tuition fees. They are in favour of a ban on smoking in public places, but would relax laws on cannabis. They propose to change vehicle taxation to be based on usage rather than ownership.

Take the test at Who Should You Vote For

Is that good news?

(Link via just about everywhere.)
General Election Blogs Roundup #3
Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Today's election blogging roundup is up. Go there for all your meaty election goodness.

Please send any links you'd like included in tomorrow's roundup to generalelection@gmail.com.
Me, Myself and I
Wednesday, April 13, 2005

In the next day or so, I want to write about something I feel to be very important.

With that in mind, as of today, I will be writing under my real name to show that I stand by what I say.

I'm Justin McKeating and I used to have a blog a few years ago called Bar Room Philosophy which some people might remember. BRP is no longer around but you can find proof of its existence if you google for it.
Bullets, ballots and bollocks
Wednesday, April 13, 2005

As if being a UK soldier isn't difficult enough in Iraq. The likes of body armour and ammunition have been in short supply either due to incompetence or political wrangling - a situation that has directly lead to deaths. Now, to add insult to injury, thusands of troops are going to be denied their vote:

The Herald: Thousands deprived of election vote
TENS of thousands of British servicemen who risked their lives to bring democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan will be unable to vote in the general election after the Ministry of Defence failed to deliver postal ballot leaflets in time for them to register.

You can probably expect a minister to be wheeled out to plea that this debacle is "more cockup than conspiracy". But it's worth noting that after the aforementioned supply problems and the perceived treatments of the Scottish regiments, a lot of the troops aren't exactly going to be keen to put their cross in the New Labour box.

Tony Blair would have you cheer our lads for their hard work in bringing democracy to Iraq. You know, so Iraqis could have the vote?

UPDATE: It seems there's been something of a rise in the number of soldiers voting with their feet:

The Guardian: Big rise in deserters 'fuelled by Iraq war'
The number of soldiers to desert the army or go absent without leave has more than doubled over the past year, the Ministry of Defence has revealed. There are now more than 500 soldiers whose whereabouts are unknown.
Going the distance
Tuesday, April 12, 2005

I urge you to read this fantastic post from Robin Grant at perfect.co.uk and follow all the links - all much worth a read.

Well, we've had the avalanche of emotional blackmail from New Labour and its supporters to bring us back into the fold. When that didn't work, David Aaronovitch - so Labour he's about to take the Murdoch shilling - and Peter Hain decided insults and smears might be a better tactic. Again, no joy.

So now, as Robin points out, us anti-war, would-be dissenters, deserters and betrayers are to be offered a wide-ranging smorgasbord of humanitarian pledges to get us back on the New Labour bus. Some might be swayed and fair enough but, with this coming from the government that enthusiastically embraced the nomination and appointment of Paul Wolfowitz as president of the World Bank, I'll wait to see the fine print if you don't mind.

Also, do you really think we'd be seeing this if the New Labour high commmand weren't, in the words of John Harris, "bricking it" after Peter Hain reported bad news from the marginals? You'll have to forgive me for my cynicism but this is a crew that's set its sail in any direction in contempt of the deeply held beliefs of the people who gave them their jobs. Now they're donning their superhero costumes and offering (to heal) the world. Can they raise the dead as well?

"Labour officials admit that Iraq 'comes up regularly' on the doorstep," says the above Guardian piece. Really? That's not what John Reid's been saying when he's wheeled out to smear humanitarians. Or Jack Straw. So which is it? It can't be both. Ah, silly me. This is New Labour we're taking about. Of course it can be both. A fish rots from the head down and the stench of Tony Blair's bifurcated mind hangs over all.

It's too little too late and with trust in Blair resembling downtown Fallujah, how do we know we'd even see any of these goodies? And then, at the next election, we're still pissed off and the whole perverse circus starts again - the blackmail, the insults and the promises.

Something's got to give. Tactical voters, here are your orders.
Putting words in their mouths
Tuesday, April 12, 2005


Magic. A Tory poster generator. Someone with the ability to print largish posters could cause mayhem with this baby. I'm salivating at the thought.

(Link via Nick Barlow.)
Election blogging roundup #2: Tuesday 12th April
Tuesday, April 12, 2005

Today's election blogging roundup - put together by yours truly - is now up.

It's Ken Owen's turn tomorrow so send him any links you'd like included to generalelection@gmail.com.
Hain: At it again
Tuesday, April 12, 2005

I know it's lazy blogging, but you have to admit this is pretty lazy campaigning as well:

EDP24 - Hain: Norwich seats crucial for Labour
Welsh Secretary Peter Hain said Norwich North and Norwich South were crucial and conceded that his party's big fear was complacency.

"If Labour supporters flirt with the Liberal Democrats, they will get a Tory government by the back door.

"They will give Michael Howard the tradesman's key to Number 10 and that will be back to the bad old days under the Tories of high mortgages, more unemployment and under-development of public services."

The Back Door Count currently stands at: 4.
It's quite difficult, you probably wouldn't understand
Tuesday, April 12, 2005

Yesterday was a big day for empty rhetoric. Before New Labour's mutton-headed election broadcast we had the oily launch of the Tory Manifesto.

Michael Howard described the manifesto as reflecting "the simple longings of the British people".

Simple longings? My simple longings are wishing I could get a decent pork pie in a supermarket and that if only 2000AD was still as good as when I read it when I was a kid.

The so-called simple longings of "more police", "cleaner hospitals", "lower taxes", "school discipline", "controlled immigration" and "accoutability" aren't simple at all. All of these are actually complex issues that Howard has boiled down to an almost meaningless sludge that he can throw at the wall in the hope some of it sticks.

Take the "how hard can it be to keep a hospital clean" schtick for instance. Howard probably watches his cleaner doing the bathroom now and again and thinks: "There you go, a bit of Domestos wipes up my pee-pee drips a treat. Why can't they do that in hospitals?" But it is actually slightly more complicated than that.

And that's how meaningful debate and respect for politics goes tits up. I don't believe for a second he thinks people other than journalists are actually going to read his manifesto - they're going to rely on the edited highlights from him. The easily-swayed and unimaginitive, Sun and Mail reading, sections of society, will go:

"Too right! It's a piece of piss cleaning a hospital/recruiting policemen/increasing public spending while simultaneously lowering taxes/letting fewer scroungers into Britain/holding our leaders to account. Bloody politicians."

And then they turn over to whichever witless soap is on, their simplistic prejudices entrenched even further.

Howard, like Blair, hasn't got the first clue about living in the real world. For him, humanity is an abstract concept - a warm, fuzzy, non-specific entity. As we've seen during the Iraq war, depersonalising humanity and marketing complex issues to the public at a macro level can have rather unpleasant consequences.

UPDATE: How hard can it be to keep a hospital clean? Very.
Strange correspondence
Tuesday, April 12, 2005

So anyway, I got an email from Alastair Campbell. Unlike that spoof blog that's got knickers in a twist, I think this is the real deal. As chilling as a knock on the door in the middle of the night.

It's written with the wit and vigour we've come to expect from Alastair. He talks of "the ludicrous Letwin" and "the vile (interestingly an anagram of evil) Daily Mail".

When not indulging in this clever wordplay, the email tells us to watch the election broadcast on television or online. I've had a look at it and if even a scintilla of the stories about the Blair and Brown feud over the years are true then the cosy conversation between the two men in this broadcast is insincere, stage-managed, intelligence-insulting horseshit. The British public should feel incensed yet again.

I need to watch it again because the first time I saw it, what they actually said didn't go in because I was so gobsmacked at the sheer breathtaking brass-neck of the whole enterprise. I notice also that the broadcast implores us to "vote Labour" despite Blair declaring the next term would be "unremittingly New Labour". Since the difference between the two is like the difference between Ben Affleck and Marlon Brando, we should think about doing Blair for false advertising.

Campbell meanwhile, has done more to pollute the British body politic than any other single person in the last ten years. The blame for the destruction of trust in politics, not to mention too many lives to count, can be very firmly laid at his door.

I realise that these emails I and other bloggers take the piss out of are actully meant for New Labour supporters but I do wonder how much of a rallying figure Campbell is to the rank and file who would describe themselves as real "Labour" not the strawberry Angel Delight version Campbell is straining every sinew to shill. He's like the bloke you pal up with in your first week at university and then spend the rest of the term avoiding when you find out what he's really like. In this case, a foul-mouthed, inarticulate gobshite with delusions of adequacy.

UPDATE: More from Tim. Someone's been letting Milburn at the computers again.
Election blogging roundup #1: Monday 11th April
Tuesday, April 12, 2005

The esteemed Nick Barlow's roundup of yesterday's election campaigning is up at the 2005 UK Election roundup blog.

It's my turn to put the roundup together today, so if anybody out there fancies having a piece included - written by you or not - please email me at generalelection@gmail.com. Ta.
That'll show 'em
Monday, April 11, 2005

NZZ Online: US authorities fine Syngenta over Bt10
Agrochemicals firm Syngenta is to pay a fine of $375,000 (SFr449,475) for contaminating seeds with an unapproved variety of genetically-modified corn.

The European Food Safety Authority has said the Bt10 corn contains an antibiotic-resistant gene that it believes should not be present in crops grown commercially.

Syngenta made $3.7 billion in profits before tax last year.
BritBlog Roundup # 8
Monday, April 11, 2005

Tim Worstall's latest weekly roundup of the best of the bully pulpits is now up.
A Canvasser Calls
Monday, April 11, 2005

I had planned to describe the first week of the election campaign in Hove as lacklustre. There has been little else to report other than a leaflet each from both New Labour and Tories and a rash of new posters - 1 for New Labour (another one of those WARNING: THE ELECTORATE ARE GULLIBLE ones) and 4 Tory ones, including the last in the set of the 11 Nicholas Boles ones. The Tories are docked one because one of the Nicholas Boles ones in Portslade has ben plastered over with one for T-Mobile. The count currently stands at:

Conservatives: 14 (up 1, down 1)
New Labour: 5 (up 1)

And there I would have left it had there not been a ring at the door yesterday. When I opened I found a local activist accompanied by none other than Celia Barlow, the New labour candidate for Hove.

Now, this just after my posting the piece labasting Peter Hain (see below), picture the scene: Me swelling to my full height and blowing poor Celia across the road with the force of my righteous fury and razor-sharp invective. Are picturing it? Good, now forget it.

My mind went completely blank and I folded like a house of cards. Celia is very charming and I found myself unable to be blunt with her. I guess I should go easier on Prince Charles - not that I'm comparing Celia Barlow to Robert Mugabe.

So, it turns out that I'm a passive-aggressive confrontation-shy milquetoast with a classic working class deference to power. Who'd a thunk it?

She did give me the usual, "Hove is a straight fight between Labour and Tories" and the "don't let the Tories back in" bit. A couple of interesting nuggets did come out: The Liberal Democrat candidate, Paul Elgood, isn't bothering to campaign in Hove, so little chance does he have of being elected. The second piece of information was of a darker hue. The Tory "It's not racist to impose limits on immigration" poster in Portslade is directly opposite the entrance to the Hindu Temple we have here. I hadn't made the connection. Intentional or not, it's a pretty ugly conflation. I nearly gave my vote to New Labour on the spot.

I managed to salvage a little dignity. She did seem honest on the matters my partner and I raised (my partner proving a much more sophisticated and less biddable interrogator than me). The leadership contest to replace Tony will begin in around two year's time apparently. PFI isn't going to go away under a new New Labour government. Celia was against the war and would vote against any future conflict, having informed Peter Hain but not the Prime Minister of her intentions.

And this was where she made her only slip.

(If she remembers the door where she had this conversation, then Hove Labour now know the whereabouts of Chicken Yoghurt headquarters. Please don't push dogshit through my letterbox - the baby's just learned crawl.)

I asked after the support she'd had from visits to Hove by Ruth Kelly, Peter Hain and Tony Blair, would she feel able to defy a three line whip on a future vote for war.

At this she said:

"The vote for the war wasn't on a three line whip, it was a free vote."

I was too busy tugging my forelock to pull her up on it, I really hate being rude to nice people. But she was wrong:

Guardian, Feb 27 2003: Yesterday in parliament
Tony Blair suffered the biggest backbench revolt of his premiership as 121 Labour MPs voted against his hardline stance on Iraq. In what many MPs believed would be their last chance to voice concerns before the start of military action, a record number defied a three-line whip.

(My emphasis). At the parliamentary debate on March 18 2003 on whether to give the Government authority for war, John McDonnell, MP for Hayes and Harlington, said:

The Prime Minister said that he wants people to vote not out of loyalty but on the basis of understanding and supporting the argument. I respect him for that. I would respect him even more if he gave us a free vote instead of a three-line Whip, and if the Whips were called off from trying to persuade people in their normal manner.

(My emphasis). Now, it might seem a small argument over a minor, obscure piece of parliamentary procedure. But there is a world of difference between a free vote, where MPs vote according to conscience, and a three-line whip where MPs are compelled to vote along party lines.

I'm not suggesting that Celia Barlow deliberately tried to mislead me, it's just that her version of events softens, for the Government, the action of going to war: that MPs voted willingly for war with their consciences rather than being compelled by a three-line whip and the implications for defying it as John McDonnell darkly hints.

Celia and her companion stayed a talked to us for quite a while which you have to admire that considering we, particularly my partner, came across as not going to vote for New Labour. She promised to send another leaflet, "50 good things New Labour have done" or somesuch. I'll be interested to see if it comes.

I just hope it now doesn't arrive through the living room window tied around a brick. Only joking.
Hain: Fool
Sunday, April 10, 2005

Peter Hain is a fool. Not being the sharpest tool in the Cabinet - and against some blunt competition as well - his brief for the election campaign seems to be to shed what little dignity and integrity he has left by trying to get liberals onside to vote for his grubby, civilian-exploding, privatising, bullying, big business-promoting "political party".

His one tactic seemed to be endlessly parroting on about the Tories getting into Number 10 via "the back door". When that didn't seem to work, and short of his own ideas, he nicks a line from David Aaronovitch, and decides that being insulting is the better way to go about things:

'There's now a kind of dinner party critics who quaff shiraz or chardonnay and just sneeringly say, "You are no different from the Tories",' he said. 'Most of the people in this category are pretty comfortably off: it's not going to be the end of the world if they get a Tory government. In a working-class constituency like mine, this is a lifeline. It's not a luxury.'

Now, I'm from Blackpool and ended up in a shitty part of Brighton by way of Huddersfield Polytechnic. I don't drink shiraz or chardonnay. I'm not a Hampstead or Islington liberal or wherever-they're-supposed-to-skulk liberal. I arrived at my personal humanitarian morality not through the bottom of a wine bottle or by consorting with intellectuals in uptown salons.

I'm not going to vote New Labour. Not because, I'm a sneerer. Not because I think New Labour are the same as the Tories. And certainly not because I'm rich enough to ride out a Tory Government. I'll spell it out again:

I'M NOT VOTING NEW LABOUR BECAUSE THE PARTY ALLOWED ITSELF TO BE LED BY THE NOSE BY A MESSIANIC CHARLATAN INTO A WAR IN WHICH - AT LEAST - 16,000 PEOPLE WERE KILLED IN A VARIETY OF UNSPEAKABLY AWFUL WAYS.

The leader of the party responsible for this carnage is still in his job despite the fact that his reasons for going to war were completely discredited and Iraq in the - unplanned for - aftermath has resembled an abbatoir.

And as for Hain, well they say the empty vessel makes most noise. Insulting me isn't going to win my vote - who's bright idea was that? It's so inept I actually think it was his. What's worse, it's insults from a once honourable man who campaigned against Apartheid but now, suckling at the teat of power without purpose, advocates house arrest without trial and the bombing of civilians. I've got more morality in my little finger than a turncoat like Hain has in his entire orange body.

You want my vote, Hain? Here are my terms.

This week, I will be starting a Hove chapter of the Backing Blair campaign.
Back (door) to Basics
Saturday, April 09, 2005

ePolitix.com, April 5: It's Blair or Howard, says Darling
"Only Tony Blair or Michael Howard can walk in the door of Number 10 the day after the election. A vote for other parties could let the Tories in by the back door."

Glasgow Evening Times: Salmond urges Scots to claim back oil cash
Labour continued its attack on the Tories with Scotland Office Minister Stirling MP Anne McGuire claiming the choice was between a Labour Government investing in social housing and community regeneration or a Conservative party committed to cuts.

"All of Labour's work could be put in jeopardy if people were to vote for fringe parties - this could allow the Tories into Downing Street by the back door," she said.

Back Door Count currently stands at: 3.
Shaky Ground
Friday, April 08, 2005

BBC News: Prince's Mugabe handshake gaffe
Prince Charles has made a diplomatic gaffe on the eve of his wedding, by shaking hands with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe at the Pope's funeral.

In fairness to Chas, it was an easy mistake to make. Like Jack "it was quite dark" Straw, he probably thought he was shaking hands with Thabo Mbeki or Kofi Annan. Or Linford Christie.

Sammy Davis Jnr?
The last (of) Straw?
Friday, April 08, 2005

Craig Murray, erstwhile ambassador to people-boiling T.W.A.T. allies, Uzbekistan, and (hopefully) future nemesis of Jack Straw, has a shiny new website.

Craig hates the concept of hurting people to extract information. Jack thinks there's a time and a place for it.

Compare and contrast.
Some things never change
Friday, April 08, 2005

...compassion is forbidden nowadays by science itself, and... that’s what is done now in England, where there is political economy.

Marmeladov in Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky.

(Written in 1866!)
Backing Blair: Going Live
Thursday, April 07, 2005

Tim Ireland was interviewed about the Backing Blair campaign on Radio 4's World at One this lunchtime.

For those of you who missed it, the programme can be heard again here for 24 hours.
Peter Hain's Back Door
Thursday, April 07, 2005

Well, he's at it again:

The Scotsman, April 6: Hain Warns of 'Back Door' Tory Threat
Voting Liberal Democrat in a key Labour/Tory marginal would let the Conservatives into power "by the back door", Welsh Secretary Peter Hain warned today.

Peter wanna cracker! Peter wanna cracker! Peter wanna cracker! Peter wanna cracker!

It's the now familiar New Labour trick whereby if they repeat something, erm, contentious enough times, a strange alchemy occurs and it becomes true.

Go and read this fantastic post by Nick Barlow to find out why Peter is talking bollocks.

I hereby inaugarate the Official Chicken Yoghurt Peter Hain Back Door Count. The cunning use of a Google News Alert will inform us of how many times he uses the dread phrase during the election campaign.

The scores on the (back) doors: 1.
Blunkett to liberals: Gotcha!
Thursday, April 07, 2005

BBC News: Blunkett urges vote fraud action
The former home secretary described the case in which six Labour councillors were found guilty of postal vote fraud as "totally outrageous".

He called for individual rather than household voter registration - backed up by a national ID card scheme.

See what he's done there? If you oppose ID cards you now also oppose measures to prevent electoral fraud.

By opposing attacks on our democratic freedoms, we actually support attacks on our democratic freedoms.

As Keanu Reeves once said: "Whoa!"
Hooray for Lava the Dog
Wednesday, April 06, 2005

ABC News: Marine Rescues 'Lava' the Dog From Hot Zone
For much of the Iraq war, Fallujah has been one of the most dangerous hot spots for U.S. troops, an unlikely place for an American Marine to find a new best friend.

But it was there that a group of Marines known as "the lava dogs" came across an irresistible three-week-old refugee — a puppy.

Not only has Fallujah "been one of the most dangerous hot spots for U.S. troops", it's also been a bit warm for the residents of late. But hooray for Lava the dog. It's heart-warming to know that after all the horror, the Marines got their priorities straight:

The Marines named him Lava and immediately hid the pup, since pets are strictly forbidden under military law. But the men figured this was worth the risk of a court-martial.

While most of the unit bonded with Lava, Kopelman took it upon himself to bring the dog home with him to San Diego.

"People have asked if I was going to change his name, and I said if I did it would only be to Lucky," he said. "Because if you go from Fallujah to Rancho Santa Fe, you're pretty damned lucky."

Aw!

I bet little Ahlam Sa'ad would like to stroke Lava. In Rancho Santa Fe.
An idea too good not to nick...
Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Inspired by Bloggerheads, I embarked on my own fruitless quest...


The ones for "humanity" and "compassion" were equally in vain.
Exporting Democracy
Wednesday, April 06, 2005

More from Hansard*. This time a written answer from Defence Minister, Adam Ingram:

Adam Price: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many persons arrested by British service personnel in Iraq have been in custody for over a year without charges having been brought against them. [215479]

Mr. Ingram: Two internees originally taken into custody by the United Kingdom have been held for more than a year. Both are held at the Divisional Temporary Detention Facility in Basrah Province. They were interned on the basis that they represented an imperative threat to security and not on the basis that they were suspected of any specific criminal offence.

Was it a reasonable suspicion of "an imperative threat", a balance of probabilities, or beyond reasonable doubt? Notice the answer says the two have been held for over a year but not how much more.

*It takes about ten minutes to sift through a day's worth of Hansard to see if there's any gold. I'm surprised more bloggers don't do it - there's sometimes some good stuff in there that the news outlets don't pick up.
Charles Clarke: Man of the People
Wednesday, April 06, 2005

"I don't have a beer belly. It's a burgundy belly, and it cost me a lot of money."
Backing Blair hits the road
Wednesday, April 06, 2005



The first blow is struck!
Election Poster Count Update
Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Well, New Labour have gained a little bit of ground on the Tories in the Hove Election Poster Count as I found while taking the kids to the dentist today:

Conservatives: 11 (up 1)
New Labour: 4 (up 3)

All the four posters were along Portland Road which is one of the main arteries through Hove.

The Tory one was another of those handwritten "what if a bloke on early release attacked you daughter" ones which we all know is code for "we're going to abolish the early release system and good behaviour in prisons along with it".

Interestingly, and opposite to my prediction that we'd never see the poster again, two of the New Labour posters were that "WARNING: TORIES WILL CUT £35BN FROM PUBLIC SERVICES" one, which I though had been comprehensively exposed as a semantic trick, sorry, lie. The posters must have already been at the printers when Tony was exposed as a liar.

The other one was once warning the Tories will introduce charges for NHS services which is also stretching the truth to breaking point, I'd say. The Tory policy is to offer half the cost of an operation if a person decides to go private. I'm not defending the policy, I think it's a bloody rubbish idea, but the poster doesn't reflect the truth as far as I'm concerned.

Does the Advertising Standards Authority have jurisdiction over political campaigning? After all, ASA's code states:

Before distributing or submitting a marketing communication for publication, marketers must hold documentary evidence to prove all claims, whether direct or implied, that are capable of objective substantiation.

I'm not sure either of the New Labour posters would stand up to that kind of scrutiny.

I don't want to look like I'm siding with the Tories - I'm not - but you'd think New Labour would have enough real ammunition to bury them without resorting to shabby, and easily debunked, untruths.
Rotten eggs in one basket
Wednesday, April 06, 2005

This exchange during a debate in the Commons yesterday about lifting the EU arms ebargo with China is worth noting:

Mr. Mark Simmonds (Boston and Skegness) (Con): There is a strong and growing alliance against lifting the EU embargo. All the informed regional players—the United States, Japan, Australia, Russia and South Korea—are, for regional security reasons, all against lifting the ban.

In the context of China's anti-secession legislation, which talks about using non-peaceful means against Taiwan, is it not time that the UK Government stopped vacillating and that the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary took a principled stance on this issue?

Mr. Rammell: I seem to recall that the arms embargo was put in place in response to the events in Tiananmen square and that the first Government to visit Beijing after that event was the previous Conservative Government.

Let me deal with the hon. Gentleman's specific concerns. As the Foreign Secretary has made clear, he recognises that the political environment has become more difficult in the light of the passing of the anti-secession law in China on 14 March. Nevertheless, China is a major strategic partner in the international community and the hon. Gentleman needs to reflect on whether it is right to put China in the same basket as Burma and Zimbabwe. We do not believe that it is, and we are protected by the EU code of conduct. There are questions and concerns across the EU and we must deal with them effectively. As I said, that process will take as long as it takes.

That's Bill Rammell, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs.

...the hon. Gentleman needs to reflect on whether it is right to put China in the same basket as Burma and Zimbabwe. We do not believe that it is...

I beg to differ. As do Amnesty International. In their report, The death penalty worldwide: developments in 2004, Amnesty say:

Based on public reports available, Amnesty International estimated that at least 3,400 people were executed in China in 2004, but the true figures were believed to be much higher.

Those executed included a minor. One case involved a pregnant woman charged with heroin smuggling who had her pregnancy forcefully terminated - Chinese law prohibits the execution of pregnant women - so she could be executed if found guilty.

Neither Burma nor Zimbabwe feature in the report.

It's a useful mental exercise this - you could spend all day and learn a lot. Visit Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International and decide for yourself "whether it is right to put China in the same basket as Burma and Zimbabwe" or not.

Again, it's the evil of banality and other such cliches. To be honest, I've almost stopped raising my eyebrows at the innate ability of these managerial types to paper over the crimes and abuses of those they want to do business with. I imagine most people never did, which is a shitty state of affairs in itself.
Tony Blair: Imagine the size of his balls
Tuesday, April 05, 2005

The Guardian: BBC scoops party leaders for live TV first
This is the nearest British voters will get to a US-style debate with each leader appearing consecutively in the 90-minute special to be hosted by Question Time regular David Dimbleby.

"We did talk about a live debate but it became perfectly clear that particularly Labour had no interest," said Helen Boaden, the head of BBC news.

Hilarious.

You really do have to wonder about a man with the moral certitude enough that he can order other people to bomb women and children to raw and bloody shreds but doesn't have the strength of conviction to front up and stand by his party's policies against his opponents on live television.

And the way the BBC have bigged this up is almost as funny. You could film these goons taking questions a week apart from each other, edit the footage together and still achieve the same effect.

Treating the public like dickheads has quite clearly started early this election.

(Link via Honourable Fiend.)
Start your engines...
Tuesday, April 05, 2005

...and other such hackneyed analogies.

Well, there we go. Blair announces May 5 as the date for the General Election.

The Election Roundup Blog put together by Nick Barlow and counting me among its contributors has been launched.

Anybody wishing to contribute by sending us stories, recommendations or offers of spending a day putting an election roundup together, should contact us at generalelection@gmail.com.
ELECTIONWATCH 2005: Hove
Tuesday, April 05, 2005

My own constituency, Hove, is a key marginal in the upcoming election so things could get pretty interesting here in the next few weeks. I'm going to try and blog proceedings if only in a half-arsed way.

I've already been keeping an, admittedly unscientific, watch on election spending in the constituency by keeping a count of election posters I see aound and about. The count now stands at:

Conservatives: 10
New Labour: 1

According to a piece in the FT yesterday on the constituency, the Conservatives have 11 posters up in Hove. One more for the full set then.

The Tories have to turn over a majority of 3,171 which they seem to regard as doable and have wheeled out the financial big guns. In the FT piece, Tory candidate Nicholas Boles reckons they will have spent "£80,000 on his campaign come polling day" - not ignoring the £10,000 spending limit imposed when the election is called. New Labour seem unwilling or unable to match those sums. Their candidate, Celia Barlow, says she "can't pretend that the money's comparable". The Lib Dem candidate Paul Elgood, in surely an admission that the seat in unwinnable, says "I have no money," and "it's hand-to-mouth stuff."

There's an unofficial New Labour blog over at www.hovelabour.org which I want to plug, not least because I've been a bit antagonistic over there (and over here) in recent weeks. The site's main man, BB, seems a decent chap still to be sullied and embittered by politics. I'd plug the Tory equivalent but there doesn't seem to be one, at least not yet.

More to follow once the campaigns kick off in anger.
Risking the Wrath of Rumsfeld
Monday, April 04, 2005

There's been some concern expressed by the Bush Administration of late about some of Venezuala's overseas purchases. To wit: they're a bit on the naughty side:

Indianapolis Star: Venezuela's AK-47 deal concerns Rumsfeld
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Wednesday criticized Venezuela's reported efforts to purchase 100,000 AK-47 assault rifles from Russia, suggesting that Venezuela's possession of so many weapons would threaten the hemisphere.

"I can't understand why Venezuela needs 100,000 AK-47s. I personally hope it doesn't happen. I can't imagine if it did happen it would be good for the hemisphere," the defense secretary said.

Scoop: Having it both Ways – US On Arms Sale to Venezuela
On March 29, Spanish President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez announced that a $1.7 billion (€1.3 billion) sale of vessels and airplanes is currently being negotiated. This deal, which will involve coast guard boats, frigates and aircraft, had officials in Washington muttering under their breath.

Chaves has also signed a deal to buy ten Russian military helicopters for $120m.

Which is why page 210-211 of the Foreign Office's fourth quarterly Strategic Export Controls Report for 2004, released yesterday, should make for interesting reading at the Pentagon.

Among the items the FCO granted companies permission to export to Venezuela under Open individual Export Licences last year were:

components for naval electronic warfare equipment, components for naval mines, components for torpedoes, components for submarines, components for aircraft carriers, components for combat aircraft, components for combat helicopters, components for heavy machine guns, components for surface to air missile launching equipment, components for guided missile decoying equipment, components for weapon control systems, components for naval light guns, components for anti-ship missiles, components for surface to air missiles, components for anti-submarine rocket launching equipment, components for depth charges, components for heavy machine guns

What are Donald and Condie going to say when they see that little lot? Here's another taste of what Rice has had to say about Hugo Chavez, this time speaking to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review in October 2004:

We haven't yet gotten to the discussions of political liberalization in Libya, but in international politics it's always important to say, "Is the trend positive or is the trend negative." Here I think the trend is probably positive.

In Venezuela, I can't make that argument. I think President Hugo Chavez is a real problem. I think he will continue to find ways to subvert democracy in his own country. He will continue to find ways to make his neighbors miserable. He will continue his contacts with Fidel Castro, maybe giving Castro one last fling to try to affect the politics of Latin America, which is not a good thing. He's involved in ways in Colombia with the FARC (Marxist rebels) that are unhelpful.

The key there is to mobilize the region to both watch him and be vigilant about him and to pressure him when he makes moves in one direction or another. We can't do it alone. This is a region where if we try to do it alone, we actually probably strengthen him. But the OAS (Organization of American States) can do a lot. We're hopeful that the recognition that he's not following a democratic course will help mobilize the OAS to do that. They have done it before -- with Peru they did it. Watching his activities and making it costly at least politically for Chavez to carry out anti-democratic activities either at home or in the region is really about where we are.

This Chavez guy sounds pretty dangerous. And he's sitting on a sea of oil. He's clearly planning for acts of external agression. The argument that he might by shoring up his defences in the face of US sabre-rattling is ludicrous*. Why are we selling him weapons components?

The Foreign Office's Strategic Export Controls Report for 2004(PDF, 685KB) as a whole makes for gripping reading - some of you won't be surprised to hear that we sell all kinds of unpleasant items to all kinds of unpleasant people.

Consider this the first in an occasional series.

*I'm being sarcastic.
Guardian Election Blog is Go
Monday, April 04, 2005

The Guardian's Election 2005 blog is up and running.

If you're lucky, you might spot somebody familiar on their Blogwatch.
The Book Lovers
Monday, April 04, 2005

Nosemonkey over at Europhobia has nominated me to pass on the book meme that's doing the rounds. He seems to be worried about my blood pressure. Here goes:

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
I've never read the book, I'm afraid to say and didn't understand this question at first. A quick google tells me that the dissidents preserve the books under threat by memorising them - excellent plot device.

Anyway, I'd want to be 1984 by George Orwell. I only read it for the first time last year and it's no understatement to say it was a life-changing read. It's probably a cliche to say this but I really feel the book is more apposite as time goes on. And to think that it's not considered by many to be Orwell's best work and he wrote it while seriously ill, makes it doubly wondrous for me.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Well, I did have a thing for Bathsheba Everdene in Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd when I did it for my English Lit o-level. Why? Because we were shown the film before starting the book so ever after I saw Bathsheba as Julie Christie. Blimey.

I remember reading The Spear by James Herbert when I was about 12 and there being a naughty minx in it whose name I can't now remember. Disturbingly for my then fragile psyche, about two thirds through the story she's revealed as an hermaphrodite who's hung like a horse.

The last book you bought is:
Two together: Jon Snow's Shooting History and Andrew Marr's My Trade.

I'm a big admirer of Snow and probably would have bought the book anyway but I was lucky enough to interview him briefly over the phone last year. I was shitting a brick but he couldn't have been nicer or more patient.

Marr I admire less, particular after his facile statement about Blair after the fall of Baghdad:

...it would be entirely ungracious, even for his critics, not to acknowledge that tonight he stands as a larger man and a stronger prime minister as a result.

...but I'm a fan of insider accounts of jounalism and this one got good reviews.

The last book you read:
So Now Who Do We Vote For? by John Harris. A cracking read and one I recommend everybody try and squeeze in before May 5. As anybody who's visited Chicken Yoghurt more than once will know, I pretty much share Harris' sense of disappointed betrayal at the New Labour project but not his conclusions at how to deal with it.

What are you currently reading?
I've read non-fiction almost exclusively for the past five years. Firstly because I was writing some fiction and didn't want to absorb other people's ideas by accident, and then because I was blogging for the first time and wanted to do proper research. So, I thought I'd have a break and read some quick and easy cheap thrill: Stephen King's It which I picked up second hand. I read it when I was much much younger and it left an impression. The plot's not up to much but I think he does characters you can connect with very well.

Five books you would take to a desert island.
Shite. I hate list questions. Here goes then.

1. I'm a massive comics fan so it'd have to be Garth Ennis' Preacher series (i'm cheating slightly as the whole run is reprinted in nine volumes). Watchmen is the holy grail of comics but I just think Preacher has characters it's easier to empathise with and the anti-God plot appeals, naturally. It works on so many levels that I never get tired of dipping in.

2. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. Read it twice: first for the comedy, second for the horror. And then read it again to appreciate it's still vital, terrible beauty.

3. London Fields by Martin Amis. Of course, it's a black comedy populated by monsters but its emotional pay off has stayed with me. It's a book that I have fond memories of reading.

4. The Pope's Rhinoceros by Lawrence Norfolk. It's a thick, dense tome that I raced through in a fortnight. To try and sum it up would do it an injustice, but roughly: it's set in Renaissance Italy where a troupe of monks - along the two other central characters - set out for decadent Rome to plead for funds for their crumbling monastery, and get caught up in the Pope's quest to fill his menagerie. Told you I couldn't do it justice.

It's hard going at first - the descriptions are dense, poetic word-paintings - but once you're engaged with the characters you'll be hooked. And by the end, heartbroken.

PS. I'm the only person I know who liked this book. Somebody else please read it so I can rave about it with you.

5. Revolution in the Head by Ian MacDonald. I very much regard my love of the Beatles as a fantastic gift from my father. This book served to deepen that love, to give me a fuller understanding of every single magical tune - another gift. Of course, without the music to hand it's less of an experience but I'll just have to hum the songs to myself as I thumb the book on my island.

Ian MacDonald killed himself a couple of years ago. I can't remember ever being so saddened by the death of a stranger.

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?
Bloody hell, I don't half go on, don't I? If you've been indulgent enough to get this far I hope you're one of these three guys to who I'd like to pass the torch:

Rochenko at Smokewriting. I think he's one of the smartest and wittiest - when he's not being the laziest - bloggers out there. He has a vocabulary the size of a planet and yet his site gets about six visitors a decade - get over there and kneel before him.

Jim Bliss at Where There Were No Doors. Not only is he a thoughtful and passionate blogger, he also has impeccable taste in just about everything. He read and understood Grant Morrison's The Invisibles. I'd like to take him for a pint.

Alex, The Yorkshire Ranter. I remember trying to champion TYR under my previous incarnation as a blogger when he first started out. And then like an obscure, but much loved, indie band he got popular and now everybody likes him. I was into him ages ago.
I'm a juvenile product of the working class
Monday, April 04, 2005

Sorry to sound like a wimpy little girl, but I didn't think John Prescott hitting that bloke with the mullet during the last election campaign was very funny at all. I've never had a fight in my life - I came close once and it scared the shit out of me.

But on Saturday night, while courting the lowest common denominator again, the Prime Minister added to the canon of violence-related funnies by saying Prescott had "a mean right hook".

(Actually, unless Blair has witnessed Prescott hitting somebody else since then, the Deputy Prime Minister has a mean left hook. After all, who can forget the Prime Minister having us rolling in the aisles the day after the brawl with the bon mot: "He has got very great strengths - not least in his left arm.")

Oh, my aching sides. Mind you, in fairness, Tony takes a fairly dim view of petty violence in general - hence his fervour for ASBOs, the rocketing prison population and all that. But if it's the Deputy Prime Minister lamping someone in broad daylight it's all treated like it was a cartoon.

If it had been a policeman, a social worker, a teacher, or anybody else for that matter, chinning somebody on television, would we have heard praise for the assailant's boxing style from the leader of the goverment?

No we fucking wouldn't.

But what do you expect from somebody as fundamentally inarticulate as Prescott. Or, as Jeremy Hardy once memorably described him, the Minister for shafting the workers in their own accent?

There's a story about the great American writers, Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer. They had a something of a rivalry over the years and Mailer once attacked Vidal at a party, knocking him to the floor.

"Words fail Norman Mailer yet again," came Vidal's reply.

UPDATE: Sports Minister, Richard Caborn castigates Kieron Dyer and Lee Bowyer after their on-pitch fight on Saturday:

In any other walk of life fighting at work would be a sackable offence.

No punchline required.
And the more you saw you hated
Sunday, April 03, 2005

I went on a pilgramage to see the Pope when he visited the UK in 1982. I was 11. Heaton Park near Manchester was the venue. It meant spending a freezing night camped in the open and then baking hours in the sun before the Pontiff's arrival. It certainly was a day for wonders and visions. My mother collapsed with heat exhaustion just as the Pope arrived. I was dehydrated to the point that I hallucinated that the giant stage in the distance was the fireplace at home and I was in fact lying on my back on the living room carpet being lulled off to sleep by the sonorous tones of God's man on Earth. Given that the best view of him we got was of a white dot on the horizon, I'm pretty sure my addled brain was telling me I'd have been better off at home watching the whole shebang on the telly.

It's probably too soon after John Paul II's death to expect much more than anodyne tributes and platitudes from the mainstream news coverage. More level-headed analysis will be conducted after the immediate mourning it seems.

It was also foolish to expect much from the great and the good. Bono, never one to miss an opportunity to make a fool of himself with a honking banality, described the Pope as "best front man" the Roman Catholic Church ever had. This after his description of Blair and Brown as the "Lennon and McCartney of global development", pretty much makes Bono the Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards of analogy and metaphor.

The Prime Minister postponing the announcement of the election for 24 hours was a good one as well. Think of it less of a mark of respect and more of a recognition that the news cycle is out of New Labour's control for the next 48 hours. Still, no harm done, and it should go down well with those Catholic voters still willing to forgive a Christian premier's flexible interpretation of the sixth commandment.

My disenchantment with my Catholicism was in direct correlation with the awakening of my political principles. I remember an RE lesson when I was 15 and being told that babies that aren't baptised before they die aren't permitted into heaven. I remember being infuriated by the injustice and lack of logic. And it was downhill from there.

JPII was certainly a Pope to offend a then fledgling bleeding heart liberal and nascent athiest like me. He didn't do much more to assauge me later on either. For the Catholic Church to condemn the use of condoms, and even to spread misinformation about their use, in an era of HIV/AIDS is desperately immoral. The debacle over the handling of paedophile priests destroyed any moral monopoly on homosexuality and a woman's right to choose the Church could lay claim to. Pretty much any of the bete noires of the Church are fiercely guarded totems to us on the liberal left. Its cavalier handling of damaged children - coupled with a wider autocratic failure or unwillingness to grasp the realities of a late 20th century world - made damn sure the likes of me were never going to take lecture on morality from the Church ever again.

"Nothing more defines a man as his passing" has been a cliche overused in the last 24 hours. And yet, for all my liberal principles and militant athiestic thunder, I couldn't but help but feel desperately sad for the Pope as he faded away - a vestige of my Catholicism or just a reaction of the morality many in the Church would deny we athiests possess? I know that's not the way I want me or my family to go - spread out for the world to see, your most intimate ailments examined as if you were a dissected frog. Even I would have spared him that final indignity. For all the pain and suffering I believe his papacy brought to the world, I hoped his passing was eased with some soporific.

And he still had the final cosmic joke to come, a joke whose punchline none of us will ever see. A cruel joke perpetrated on believers to make them feel better about life being a struggle, sometimes brutal and painful. The Pope closed his eyes for the final time on this Earth, solid in his belief that, when he opened them again, he would be in the Kingdom of Heaven.

But he didn't open them again, did he?
BritBlog Roundup # 7
Sunday, April 03, 2005

The selfless Tim Worstall presents his weekly BritBlog Roundup. No nominations by or for me this week but get over there to see the best of the best.
GM: Here whether you like it or not.
Saturday, April 02, 2005

The Guardian: Joint US-UK cover-up alleged over GM maize
The whereabouts of 170,000 tonnes of contaminated GM maize and its possible import into the UK has caused an international investigation and claims of a cover-up on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) first put out a statement saying the contamination was "on a small scale" but later retracted it, instead saying the maize was unlikely to have got into food but might have been fed to cattle.

The lessons of the BSE crisis well-learned then.

What's puzzling is when you compare the lack of fuss over this rather disturbing debacle with the hysteria over Sudan 1 - a chemical so dangerous you'd have to eat a block the size of Alan Milburn's ego to suffer any lasting harm.

The GM maize in question is Syngenta's BT10 which contains a gene that is resistant to certain antibiotics and is unlicensed in Europe. Thanks to Syngenta it was mixed with a similar corn, BT11, and it's been in the food chain as cattle feed for four years. You'd think in age of MRSA the phrase "resistant to antibiotics" would be pushing more buttons.

But the fix is in, and the spin has been spun:

A Syngenta spokesman said 150,000 tonnes would have been marketed but it believed only a tiny amount reached Europe. Only 18% of US maize was exported and less than 1% came to Europe. He conceded that, before 2004, GM maize destined for Europe was not labelled, so it would be impossible to know where it had gone. The company and the US authorities were investigating and would notify all concerned as soon as possible.

"Less than 1%" to Europe. That's still quite a few tons. And "only 18%" was exported. To where? Was it fed to the Argentinian cattle who went on to become the steaks I saw in a supermarket the other day? Just because the maize itself didn't reach these shores doesn't mean a health risk didn't.

You can see why, with Tony heading for the Palace on Monday, DEFRA might have wanted to keep this quiet. And it's in a lot of people's interests to keep the public ignorant on the wider issues surrounding GM.

I am myself speaking from a position ignorance when it comes to the health risks posed by GM crops and food. But then, so is everybody else.
General Election Roundup Blog
Friday, April 01, 2005

Nick Barlow is putting together a crack team to blog the General Election.

The site is already coming together at an undisclosed location. The plan is to do a daily roundup of the best of the election coverage much like Tim Worstall's weekly Britblog roundup.

Anybody wishing to help should head over to Nick's place and enlist.