Unabashed feminist and pornographer Rowan Pelling in The Telegraph:
[Jacqui] Smith’s disingenuousness continued yesterday with her declaration that she decided to make a documentary on pornography because most people, herself included, “don’t know very much about it” – which leaves you mystified, given that she [used to be Home Secretary and thus] was the person who was meant to legislate for its control.
From The Telegraph:
"Economic recession has the power to do one of two things to a society:
It can either drive people apart, with an increase in distrust between individuals, more naked competition for jobs, a fracturing of community spirit - we witnessed this in the Eighties and early Nineties, and at its most extreme, it culminated in cars and building burning on the streets of Brixton, Birmingham and Liverpool..."
So that's a nasty Tory recession in a nutshell. Whereas a Labour recession tends to be a rather cuddly and wholesome affair:
...[or] the recession could bring neighbours closer and lead "citizens to discover new reserves of courage and kindness... Which end of the spectrum we tilt towards will depend on a decisive factor: the role of the government in valuing volunteering in creating space for local action, and in promoting innovation and experimentation."
*Jesus wept*
Which government doesn't "value volunteering"? (Clue here). How does a government "create space for local action"? Either the space is there or it isn't - if it's occupied by a business or a home then how would turning it into "space" help matters? But presumably she's blathering on about some metaphysical space anyway. How can a government "promote innovation and experimentation"? All it can do is "not discourage innovation and experimentation".
*/Jesus wept*
--------------------------------------
PS, this is all in stark contrast to what The Home Office expect:
Ministers are bracing themselves for a rise in violent crime and burglaries and a shift to far-right extremism as the effects of the economic downturn take their toll, a leaked Home Office report to the Prime Minister says.
Which makes this one look a lot like a typical nasty Tory recession, eh?
Following the article on the BBC that I mentioned earlier, comes this from The Metro:
Ministers have backed down over plans for a centralised database of email, telephone and internet data. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said there were "absolutely no plans for a single central store" of communications data...
Warsteiner, in the comments to my Jacqui Smith caricature of three weeks ago:
" I can see why she's got a second home - at least her husband can have a wank in peace".
From today's Sunday Express:
Jacqui Smith has claimed Commons expenses, paid by the taxpayer, for the cost of watching adult films at her family home... A source close to Ms Smith, 46, said last night that she had not been at the family home in Redditch, Worcestershire, on April 1 and April 6 last year when the adult films were viewed. The source said she was “furious” with her husband, adding: “She was not watching these films..."
As I've said before, "I am not a conspiracy theorist as such, but it is indisputably true that our gummint enjoys creating a Climate Of Fear in order to be able to ram through restrictions on our freedoms, increasing taxes and/or enlarging the power of the state."
Here's today's instalment from The Metro, apparently "Britain faces nuclear bomb threat from terrorists." Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, but if they genuinely believed it, why don't they round up those "20 Islamic militants living in Britain after receiving terror training in Pakistan" and charge them or deport them or something?
From The Metro:
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith was left ashen-faced at the launch of the Government's domestic violence campaign when she was accused of using "gimmicks" and "spin". Sandra Horley, chief executive of Refuge, stunned ministers and police at the round-table discussion in central London with a verbal assault on the Government's record...
OK, Refuge, registered charity number 277424, let's have a quick glance through their 2008 accounts ...
Page 4: "Refuge works in parternship with a number of different housing associations and local authorities ..."
Page 9: "After close to three years of developing a relationship with New Philanthropy Capital (NCP)*, Refuge is delighted to announce that it been selected as one of their charities of support... Of particular note is the funding we received from the Home Office... Refuge has also been fortunate enough to continue to receive support from a number of other trust and statutory funders, some of whom include ... London Councils... We are also very grateful to the Home Office and Comic Relief for their continued support...
Page 10: "Specific high level aims for 2008/9 include... Establishing an Eastern European community outreach project in four London Boroughs funded by the Big Lottery."
Page 11: "Grant income was up 32.7% to £784,010 due to additional funding to develop our advocacy services in Kent, Richmond, Lambeth and Lewisham."
Page 19/Note 5 confirms that all grant income was from local councils, Home Office, Ministry of Justice etc.
Page 14: Income from "Supporting People": £2,920,627.
Page 19/Note 4: "The Supporting People (SP) grant is awarded by contact to Refuge as the Service PRovider by the Administering Authority (Local Authority/Borough) with approval of the Commission Body (a partnership of local housing, social care, health and probation statutory services). The SP grant is restricted for Refuge provision of support services as broadly defined by the DCLG [Department for Communities and Local Government]"
* The NCP are a new one on me, and I specialise in this crap. They appear to have 'only' received £63,000 from the Big Lottery Fund (page 22 of their 2007 accounts), as well as "£183,175 from Friends of New Philanthropy Capital, Inc." (page 12), which appears to be a US-based fakecharity.
I've got to stop digging now, this is getting too gruesome.
As I may have mentioned before, as a self-respecting authoritarian government, one of Nulab's main tactics is whipping up a climate of fear. Here's today's episode:
The home secretary is holding a "burglary summit" for England and Wales later amid fears that attacks on homes will rise because of the recession. Jacqui Smith is meeting representatives from the police, insurance firms, DIY stores and charities like Age Concern to examine ways of improving security.
Jacqboots was interviewed on BBC Breakfast, and said in all seriousness, that as burglaries were now at half the rate they were during the 1991 - 1993 recession; and we were heading into a recession, that burglaries were thus likely to rise in the near future.
Bill Turnbull pointed out quite reasonably that remembering to lock your doors and windows was important, of course, but people also complained about the police not taking it seriously and the lenient sentences given to offenders.
Jacqboots regaled him with merry tales about giving people more 'help'. "That means give them government money, doesn't it?", interjected Bill. Jacqboots then prattled brightly about the police doing more to identify potential offenders. Sorry dear, this isn't Minority Report, the public would be happiest if the police targetted actual offenders.
But Jacqboots never got round to addressing the 'lenient sentences' point, that would be too reassuring. She'd already done her job - creating a bit of a climate of fear, and she didn't to spoil it by saying that the government was actually going to do something about the perceived problem.
As we well know, Nulab-sponsored publicity shots have to include at least one older person, one woman and one Black and Minority Ethnic* person. Here's a fine example** (note which two are laughing at the other one):
* The expression "ethnic minorities" is now otiose, BTW. The race relations industry use the abbreviation "BME" and not "BEM", so by reverse logic, they must be referred to as "minority ethnics". The further leap of logic to distinguish "black" from "minority ethnic" is beyond me.
** For background, see here.
Now that Damian Green knows what it's like to be the victim of politically motivated police-state thuggery of questionable legality, should we expect him to ask the Home Secretary to relinquish these powers once the Tories are in government?
According to an article in the Metro, titled "First ID cards for foreign workers":
The first phase of the government's controversial identity card scheme has come into force. Foreigners applying for student and marriage visas will be the first to need the cards to extend their stays in Britain as they are often suspected of trying to abuse the immigration system.
Meanwhile, in other news:
Up to 400 criminals involved in a foreign prisoner scandal, including some of the worst offenders, have been told they can stay in Britain, the Home Office has disclosed. Less than a third of the 1,013 convicts have been deported two and half years after the scandal broke and subsequently cost Charles Clarke his job as Home Secretary. And many more could end up staying because 90 are still missing, 31 are in jail again and 160 are still going through the process.
One thing I missed off the list was The War On Drugs.
I hate Fat Bitch Smith more by the day. Let's just look at this short sentence:
"While cannabis has always been illegal, reclassifying it to a Class B drug reinforces our message to everyone that it is harmful and should not be taken," she said.
1. Cannabis has only been illegal since 1928.
2. If we assume that cannabis use is A Bad Thing, then empirical evidence from e.g. The Netherlands and other European countries shows that decriminalising can help get usage down slightly. So why not go the whole hog and treat it like tobacco or alcohol - legalise it, tax it, regulate it, restrict sales to minors and educate people about the delights and dangers of smoking cannabis?
3. Indeed, from The Guardian: Paul Corry said: "Gordon Brown should put aside his personal views on cannabis and accept the fact that it does not make sense to reclassify. Use of the drug has gone down since it was downgraded in 2004 and research by Rethink shows that only 3% of users would consider stopping on the grounds of illegality."
4. If it is true (which I doubt) that people are smoking stronger types of cannabis, then the reason thfor this is because "you may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb". In other words, if you could buy perfectly ordinary cannabis from the off-licence for a reasonable price, there'd be practically no demand for the stronger stuff, it being a question of quantity vs. strength.
5. Labour politics works by generating a Climate Of Fear. Clearly, they can't tell us that cannabis is deadly, because out of millions of users, it is a direct or indirect cause of an average of about 0.5 deaths a year. So they've come up with this myth that Smoking Cannabis Drives You Mad, for which the evidence is tenuous at best.
6. I am not particularly keen that my kids smoke cannabis, as I don't like the stuff, but if they did, I wouldn't want them to be criminalised for what is IMHO not really a crime at all.
This sort of knee-jerk nonsense is either laughable, pathetic, deeply depressing or terrifying.
Update: Obnoxio has taken the trouble to explain in detail exactly how shit this all is.
I've spent all afternoon reading their report 'Cannabis: Classification & public health' and having considered all the facts and figures, what surprises me is not that they recommended that Cannabis be kept as a Class B substance (possession of which is punishable, in theory, by 2 years in prison); or that our socially authoritarian, meddling gummint upgraded it to Class B (punishable by 5 years in prison), but why on earth it was made illegal in the first place.
The killer fact, the one that the authoritarians will repeat ad nauseum is that frequent use of cannabis doubles the risk of a 'psychotic outcome'. Given that the report also states that "schizophrenia is a serious mental illness affecting about 0.5% of the UK population over the course of their lives" WTF sort of 'message' is that?
"Kids! Don't smoke dope! It increases the risk of you going bonkers sometime in the next half-century by half a per cent!"
Given that today's kids have got an 50% or so chance of being dead in half a century's time, big f***ing deal is all I can say.
