Articles with the Tag UK politics

Repost: The Man Who Would Be King PM Labour Leader

Parenting, UK elections, UK politics
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This could be our next PM (or not, as it turned out not long after I posted this – P):

The Prime Minister Of Primrose Hill

Who is David Miliband? Why all this hoohah?

do not want

Once you get over the resemblance of The Right Honourable David Wright Miliband MP to Star Trek’s Commander Data he would on the face of it appear to have all the necessary qualities to be a model New Labour leader, not least because of the blood he has on his hands; he voted very strongly for the Iraq war and he voted strongly against investigating the Iraq war, despite his later protestations of ambivalence.

He comes from a legacy Labour family. He (and his brother, also in the Labour government) has never had a real job – Daddy the connected historian’s friends saw to that, despite his own avowed Marxism. Some are more equal than others, as was demonstrated by young Dave’s place at Corpus Christi (despite his mediocre A levels) and his fortuitous Kennedy scholarship.

Miliband went straight from Oxford into a thinktank, to becoming a well paid special adviser, to being parachuted into Parliament via a rotten borough safe seat. You see? Perfect. He’s our very own real life Pitt The Very Very Younger.

But this Minister of The Crown, responsible for foreign policy, didn’t even know until corrected by a civil servant that the government whose interests he represents abroad had given a knighthood to Sir Robert Mugabe. See for yourself on BBC’s Question Time:

(Mind you, former Tory minister Douglas Hurd hardly comes off much better, but he is ancient).

Want more? To show how unqualified Miliband is, when he got the job he had to ask the public for advice he’s so bereft of knowledge and ideas.

Today we learn that despite Miliband’s myriad public assurances, the UK has been proved complicit in the dissapearance and torture of people to Diego Garcia. He was duped, he says:

Miliband ‘duped by US’ on rendition

24 minutes ago

David Miliband is facing fresh claims that the US imprisoned terror suspects on British territory.

Campaigners said the Foreign Secretary allowed himself to be “duped by the US on a colossal scale” following new claims of interrogation on Diego Garcia, a UK-controlled island in the Indian Ocean.

A former senior American official told Time magazine that in 2002 and possibly 2003, the US imprisoned and interrogated at least one terrorist suspect on the island.

Mr Miliband has repeatedly denied claims the US has detained terror suspects on British territory.

But the anonymous source, described as a frequent participant in White House Situation Room meetings, told Time a CIA counter-terrorism official twice said “high-value prisoners” had been held and questioned on the island.

The official also claimed the US may have kept prisoners on ships within Diego Garcia’s territorial waters.

Duped my ass. He’s the foreign secretary – how could he not know?

There are other, lesser but still telling details – his use of an inheritance loophole to reduce the tax on his father’s estate is one, he and his wife’s controversial adoption of babies from the US is another:

And yet, somewhere here lie a few questions that may deserve to be raised. As Foreign Secretary, for instance, was it right for Mr Miliband to place his private life ahead of his public role in such a high-profile visitation? Would he have delayed the transatlantic trip by just a couple of days had the guest been the head of a less translucently repugnant regime than Saudi Arabia’s? Was he, in other words, using Jacob’s arrival as an excuse to avoid greasing the wheels of arms trading of a kind he might once, in the mythic New Labour era of “ethical foreign policy”, have openly described as stomach-turningly hypocritical?

If so, Mr Miliband sets himself a challenging precedent. Every time one of the world’s unlovelier tyrants pops along, he will have to arrange another adoption. Admittedly this is easier in the US, where babies can be picked up by citizens almost as easily as an automatic rifle from WalMart. Even so, should Assad of Syria reprise his 2002 jaunt, Mr Miliband will need to return to the States to add Abraham (I just love his commitment to the tripartite Jewish patriarchy; those shared values with the Saudis yet again!) to Isaac and Jacob.

He’s “very flattered” to be a gay icon. His blog, mainly devoted to the glories of you guessed it, David Miliband, costs the taxpayers 40K a year. That’s about 50p per visitor. (For contrast this blog’s costs are pretty much nil.)

This is not a man with an overdeveloped sense of modesty. Miliband is New Labour made flesh – well-off, overentitled, underqualified, utterly blind to his own hypocrisy. He’s another who’s convinced himself that his personal ambition is actually zeal for the public good and not just a lust for power for it’s own sake.

But now this glorified work-experience boy, not content with having been promoted way, way above his level of competence, has got the gall to think he can walk into No.10 as PM, as if the imposition of the unelected and useless Gordon Brown wasn’t bad enough already.

The reading public’s uniformly derisive reaction to this notion can be seen in the comments to his flag-planting article in the Guardian this week; the nation, or at least the Guardian reading bits, are as one on Miliband. A representative sample:

alisdaircameron

Jul 29 08, 9:53pm

Davey-wavey, you’re wrong (again).

New Labour doesn’t need to make its case afresh, or present its policies in a new light, with new packaging and sales pitch.

The public actually know your case and your policies perfectly and only too well, and utterly dislike them and your whole apparatus and outlook which fatally combine arrogance, incompetence, authoritarianism and a failure to grasp what goes on in ordinary, real people’s lives.

We’ve listened to your case ad nauseam and understand it, better than you do, and can see it for the tommy-rot it is. Have you listened? No, and no number of rigged ‘consultations’ will change this, as you are all too convinced of your rightness to realise what a catastrophic course you have plotted.

None of your party apparatchiks have done real work, but simply continued your student politics into a career, inflicting your shallow glibs idea experiments on the populace to disastrous effect, and all you can say is 2We are right, the experiment will work this time. It must, because we’re so clver”.

I’m sorry, “the project” has failed, and as it’s run its course it destroyed a once-noble party and completely betrayed all the masses who wanted something other than rehashed Thatcherism. You’ve screwed centre and centre-left politics in the UK for decades.

Go NOW, and thank your lucky stars that there aren’t (yet) baying mobs to string you up from lamp posts.

Quite.

There’s only one thing the nation has to say to Miliband – DO NOT WANT.

Clegg’s Quandary

Pointlesss centrism, UK elections, UK politics
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What a pretty little pickle Nick Clegg’s found himself in. If he goes with the Tories he gets;

  • Vague promises of voting ‘reform’ from Cameron that’ll evaporate once waxy-melty face Dave’s bespoke brogues are over the threshold of No.10;

whereupon Clegg’ll be;

  • used as a scapegoat by the Conservatives, the media and the public alike and blamed for allowing the Tories’ savage public service/spending cuts and the resulting social unrest,

after which, he’ll be

  • Discarded like a Cameroonian wank-stained tissue,

all whilst having earned;

  • The eternal hatred of a substantial portion of his party

and

  • the lasting contempt of anyone who voted for him

If he goes with Labour (but only if he can somehow get the numbers to work out) Clegg gets:

  • all of the above, with knobs on and extra added vitriol, because he enabled the continuance of this busted flush of a government and allowed a psychotic PM to stay in power, despite Gordon Brown’s having been soundly rejected by the voters when put to the electoral test;

plus

  • The danger of being lobotomized by a flying Nokia

and

  • the prospect of Peter Mandelson ruling his life

So far as I can see Clegg’s best (for certain values of ‘best’) option would be to refuse an alliance with either, let the Tories try and form a minority government, and start campaigning like hell for the next election when it all falls apart.

Which it undoubtedly will.

Link Of The Day: This Post Brought To You By Opiates

IT is not magic pixie dust, Meta, UK elections
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UPDATE Sunday noon

This morning’s X- ray shows it’s pleurisy, probably fungal and migrated from the yeast infection in my kidney. That’s the trouble with being immunosuppressed, any stray infective organism sees me and goes “come on guys -FREE FOOD!

Damn it, I haven’t been through all this just to fall to a fungus at the last hurdle. And I suppose better a pleural infection than a heart infection. I do try to be resilient, but still, the bright side is a little hard to find sometimes.

UPDATE Sunday a.m: Just call me Job. The shoulder pain got much worse during the night – it seems I may well have dry pleurisy and/or pericarditis.

Happy, happy, joy, joy.

But never mind, there’s always an upside to everything, and if I hadn’t had to look up pericarditis I’d’ve never come across the amusingly named coxsackie virus..
——————————————————-
Light posting from me today: the reason is that, when I was intensive care post kidney transplant, the medics tried numerous times to put in an arterial line (Considering the damage, they must’ve used a hammer and chisel.)

Doing this caused several massive haematomae – and subsequently scar tissue – to form up my right arm and damaged both my radial and median nerves. The damage appears to be permanent. (More than you ever wanted to know about needles and nerve damage here)

The practical upshot is that my right hand and arm are numb yet paradoxically incredibly painful at the same time and my shoulder hurts like a very, very hurty thing, and as I have a high tolerance for painkillers, it takes morphine to shut it up.

Yes, I know I should be grateful to still be here and I know too that yet again, they were trying to stop me from dying, but bloody hell, don’t they know I have blogposts to write?

Not that anyone reads them, but I have rage to offload. Especially about the election.

Anyhow, if you don’t read anything else today, read Ben Goldacre’s latest Bad Science piece, “The real political nerds”, on just how crappy the data management of election information by UK gov has been and how intelligent bystanders have taken up the slack. It’s packed with interesting links if you, like me, are a political nerd too.

“Want to look back at how people voted in your local council elections over the past 10 years?” asks Chris: “Tough. Want to compare turnout between different areas, and different periods? No can do. Want an easy way to see how close the election was last time, and how much your vote might make a difference? Forget it.”

Like so many data problems, all that’s needed is a tiny tweak: all this information is known to someone, somewhere, and it’s all been typed in, several times over, in several places, local websites, newspapers, and so on.

So what the hell have we been paying for all this time?

Oh yeah.

First Muslim women elected to British parliament

Anti-war, Bloody Lawyers, Feminism, Socialism, UK elections, UK politics, Women
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Via TwoCircles.net:

London : Shabana Mahmood and Yasmin Qureshi have become the first Muslim women to be elected to the British parliament after successfully defending Labour seats.

Mahmood successfully increased the majority of former International Development Secretary Clare Short, who has retired from parliament, from under 7,000 votes to more than 10,000 in Birmingham Ladywood in central England.

The Oxford University-educated barrister saw off challenges from two other Muslim candidate, Ayoub Khan representing the Liberal Democrats and Nusrat Ghani, who was standing for the Tories.

I see some things never change.

The announcement of her success came as Qureshi, who is also a lawyer, won by a reduced majority of more than 8,600 in the Bolton South East constituency in north-west England.

Not another bloody lawyer – like they didn’t cause enough damage already.

Respect Party leader Salma Yaqoob is seen as having an outside chance of capturing Birmingham Hall Green, which has boundary changes with the adjacent Sparkbrook and Small Heath, where she came second at the last elections with 27.5% of the vote.

Salma Yaqoob didn’t win but came second:

Despite being written off by the media I came second, polling over 12,000 votes. It is a fantastic achievement and testimony to a desire for a political alternative to the parties of bombing and big business. It is clear that many people’s fear of a Tory government boosted the Labour vote, puncturing the Lib Dem bubble but also squeezing my vote as well.

Not a win, but a good result nonetheless. And if any proposed LibDem/A.N.Other coalition falls apart, she can stand again.

If At First You Don’t Succeed, Freep Like F*ckery

Election Skullduggery, Gordon Brown, Manufacturing consent, UK elections, UK politics
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Has a desperate Gordon Brown activated his last-chance strategy of freeping the election?

votessack.jpg

I hate to say I told you so (not that it ever stopped me) but… from this evenings Guardian front page:

The result of the general election may not be confirmed until late on Friday because the electoral system is struggling to process verification checks on a record number of postal votes, officers have warned.

Councils have reported applications for postal votes up by 60% in some areas, and with a new system of checking signatures and dates of birth against applications – and only 11 days between the deadline for applications and polling day – administrators say there could be delays.

[…]

The surge in postal votes has also raised concerns about electoral fraud, although the 50 allegations currently being investigated are mainly confined to the local elections are also being held in some areas tomorrow.

John Turner, the chief executive of the Association of Electoral Administrators, said: “If returning officers receive sackfuls of postal votes tomorrow, it’s going to put serious delays in the system because they will have to focus on verification before they start counting votes.

Me last week:

Poll Fraud 2010 – Let The Vote Rigging Begin!

Never mind, Gordon, even when the election looks well and truly lost, there’s always voting fraud…

[…]

The 2005 election, and specifically Birmingham 2005, was described by election observers as the dirtiest UK election ever, and that was down to Labour:

Vote-riggers exploited weaknesses in the postal voting system to steal thousands of ballot papers and mark them for Labour, helping the party to take first place in elections to Birmingham City Council.

They believed that their cheating would be hidden for ever in the secrecy of the strong boxes where counted votes are stored, never suspecting that a judge would take the rare step of smashing the seals and tracing the ballots back to the voters.

[…]

They coldly exploited communities where many cannot speak English or write their names. They forced what the judge called “dishonest or frightened” postmen into handing over sacks of postal ballots. They seem to have infiltrated the mail service: several voters gave evidence that their ballot papers were altered to support Labour after they put them in the post.

That’s not to say the Tories haven’t also been up to electoral shenanigans:

5 June 2006 The Times reported that the police in Coventry were investigating allegations that there had been personation offences in the ward of Foleshill at the local elections in May 2006 and that there had also been postal voting fraud. An election petition was lodged at the High Court by the defeated Labour councillor in the ward giving the names and addresses of ten voters whose identities were apparently stolen:

The Times has seen passports of three voters, a veteran Labour Party member and a young couple, which indicate that they were out of the country on election day, May 4. Documents also seen by the newspaper show that staff in polling stations in Coventry that day clearly marked the three down as having turned up and voted. The Conservatives won the ward, Foleshill, by six votes after a recount, one of two gainsthat turned a deadlocked council into one with a slender Tory lead.

Labour has conveniently left most of the loopholes that have allowed it to manipulate the vote firmly in place, despite numerous reports from such august bodies as the Joseph Rowntree Trust, fromACPO & the Electoral Commission, and most recently from Parliament itself, all pointing out the ease and prevalence of vote rigging. From the parliamentry report:

• Experienced election observers have raised serious concerns about how well UK election procedures measure up to international standards.

• There have been at least 42 convictions for electoral fraud in the UK in the period 2000–2007.

• Greater use of postal voting has made UK elections far more vulnerable to fraud and resulted in several instances of large-scale fraud.

• There is widespread, and justifiable, concern about both the comprehensiveness and the accuracy of the UK’s electoral registers – the poor state of the registers potentially compromises the integrity of the ballot.

• There is a genuine risk of electoral integrity being threatened by previously robust systems of electoral administration having reached ‘breaking point’ as a result of pressures imposed in recent years.

• Public confidence in the electoral process in the UK was the lowest in Western Europe in 1997, and has almost certainly declined further as a result of the extension of postal voting.

• The benefits of postal and electronic voting have been exaggerated, particularly in relation to claims about increased turnout and social inclusion.

• There is substantial evidence to suggest that money can have a powerful impact on the outcome of general elections, particularly where targeted at marginal constituencies over sustained periods of time.

• Outside of ministerial circles, there is a widespread view that a fundamental overhaul of UK electoral law, administration and policy is urgently required.

The Labour government may have made a show of reform with these postal vote verification procedures, but that’s all it is, a show, a bit of window dressing. Why change a voting system whose lack of integrity they’re exploiting to the full? And do we really think they’re not exploiting that lack of integrity today in 2010? A reported 60% surge in postal votes says to me they are.