Prescott: A real Pig in his Sty

Nice to see that ever lovely character John Prescott has managed to cause such a mess in his grace and favour sty that it has cost us £3320 to clean up his filth.

If You or I the regular tax payer had done this to a rented property we would have been labeled as filthy chav scum, but in his world this would seem to be the norm.

As a regular mover from house to house in my younger days, I know the lengths that my family and that of my wife's would have taken when we moved house in the services to ensure that everything was left behind spick and span.

Eric Pickles, the Shadow Communities Secretary, said:

"John Prescott left behind a shambles in Whitehall. Now, we discover his grace and favour flat could have done with a liberal dose of Shake And Vac' and, as usual, he is expecting the long- suffering taxpayer to clean up after him.

"Serious questions must be asked about the growing cost of these luxury government flats left empty for long periods of time.

"And an answer is needed to one of the greatest political mysteries of all time: why does Gordon Brown's crony, Lord Malloch-Brown, need one?"

Prescott a true example of NuLab snouts in the trough.

3320 To Clean Prescotts Flat (from The Herald )

A Fairy Tale Degree in Selkies and Kelpies

The popular superstitions and festive amusements of the Highlanders of Scotland [by W.G. Stewart.]. By William Grant Stewart

According to the Scotsman you can now do a post-graduate degree in Scottish Folklore at Glasgow University.

Anyway I'm putting my wife up for this as back in 1822 her 4th Great-Granduncle, William Grant Stewart, wrote the above book.

At least there should be more truth in the book than there was in the Labour and Lib Dem Manifesto's from 2005 which are now proven to be true Fairy Stories.

Selkies and kelpies: The fairytale degree - The Scotsman

A question for my MP Robert Smith

I have a question for my MP Robert Smith. It is a simple question.

Why do you not honour your promises. Specifically your pledge to give me a Referendum on the European Constitution or as it is now known the "Lisbon" Treaty.

Back in 2003 and when writing about the then EU constitution in the Guardian, Nick Clegg, the present LibDem leader had the following to say about the need for a Referendum.

To consult the people, or not. That is the question. A question which is now setting pro-Europeans against each other. A question which is straining what is left of the cross-party pro-European alliance in British politics.

Cemented by a collective drive to urge both Tony Blair and the country towards the euro, politicians from all three major parties have worked more closely together in recent years than is often appreciated. Gordon Brown's grumpy refusal to budge on the single currency reinforced the common cause: to overcome the Treasury's myopia and allow the country to have its own say.

It is ironic, then, that the new source of internal dissent within the Europhile camp should be precisely the catalyst which brought the camp together in the first place: whether or not to hold a referendum. Yet the unity mobilised in favour of a referendum on the euro has evaporated when faced with the question of a referendum on the EU's new constitution.

Opinion on both sides is turning sour. The other day, a Labour colleague in the European parliament let slip the depth of feeling. "You're just playing straight into the hands of the Eurosceptics!" he wailed. We have worked together closely for years in an effort to drum up a bit of enthusiasm for the European project in our Midlands constituencies and rarely disagree on matters European. I admire him enormously and would almost count him a friend. This made his reprimand all the sharper.

Tony Blair, I'm told, has reacted with derision to the Liberal Democrat decision to call for a referendum on the new EU constitution. With that partly in mind, perhaps, he loftily declared in a newspaper interview this week that New Labour is "the only serious game in town". With his habitual amnesia he went on to assert that holding a referendum was out of the question since it was not consistent with British political "traditions". This from the man who gave us referenda on a Hartlepool mayor and Scottish autonomy. Never let the facts get in the way of a good political putdown.

The real reason, of course, why the government does not want to hold a referendum is the fear that it may lose. It is the same fear that has paralysed Blair on the euro for six long years. It is the same fear that led Peter Hain to camouflage the constitution with comic inaccuracy as nothing more than a "tidying up exercise". It is the same fear which has long restrained New Labour from expressing the courage of its meagre convictions on Europe. And it won't do.

The alternative, now unfolding before us, is infinitely worse: a false assumption that anti-Europeans are democrats, and pro-Europeans are not. By shilly shallying with semantic half-truths about the content of the constitution, and now haughtily dismissing all calls for a referendum, it is New Labour which is, to cite my friend, "playing straight into the hands of the Eurosceptics". By providing the hapless Iain Duncan Smith with a pretext to champion people's democracy, Blair is unwittingly doing more to reinvigorate Euroscepticism than John Redwood could manage in his wildest fantasies. Nothing will do more damage to the pro-European movement than giving room to the suspicion that we have something to hide, that we do not have the "cojones" to carry our argument to the people.

And our argument is strong. The constitution, assuming it emerges roughly in its present draft form, provides ideal ammunition to call the Europhobes' bluff. While it is no mere "tidying up exercise", it is galaxies away from the "blueprint for tyranny" laughably paraded by the Daily Mail. Even a cursory glance at the text - and I remain struck how few Europhobes seem to have bothered to read the offending document - would reveal that it is a significant reorganisation of how the EU will take decisions in the future, with some well reasoned pooling of sovereignty in areas such as a common asylum and immigration policy. It takes only hesitant steps towards greater EU coherence in foreign policy, and arguably weakens the position of key federal institutions such as the European commission. Far from being a Napoleonic plot to overturn centuries of plucky British autonomy, it represents a logical evolution in EU governance.

Compared to many of the previous steps in European integration, not least the Single European Act negotiated by Margaret Thatcher, it is fairly modest in scope. The bulk of the innovations in the constitution relate to the archane mechanics of the EU institutions themselves - the size of the commission, voting weights in the council of ministers, etc - rather than any revolutionary creation of new EU powers. The measured modesty of the constitution is precisely what is being obscured by the government's refusal to hold a referendum. In doing so, it has allowed the phobes to shift the argument away from the constitution itself and onto shriller claims about the democratic legitimacy of the whole EU. By forcing the phobes to argue on the substance of the text, a referendum would expose the hollow hysteria of their polemic.

Naive? Perhaps, a little. Inevitably, any referendum campaign is unlikely to be a scholarly examination of the legal content of a complex constitutional tome. It is possible that it will soon escalate into an unconstrained debate about the very place of Britain in the EU - in or out. So be it. A combination of outright isolationism, which remains the overriding instinct of the Conservative party and significant parts of the press, combined with mendacious claims about the constitution itself, will soon repel the vast majority of British voters. The electorate is not enthusiastic about the EU, that much is obvious from a volley of opinion polls. But, when push comes to shove, it is not prepared to countenance withdrawal, and more susceptible to reasoned support for European integration than is commonly assumed.

Blair has already jeopardised his place in history by failing to put the case for the euro to the British people. He now risks blowing it altogether.

Now in this new age when we look at the Lisbon Treaty Mr Clegg has changed his mind. Apparently the Lisbon Treaty is different, it must be, as according to him it is "smaller" despite being 8000 words longer, how did they manage this, oh yes they changed the line spacing. It is different despite being according to Parliament 96% the same (only 10 out of the 250 proposals have changed).

The following statements have been made about the "Treaty"

1. The author of the Constitution Valery Giscard d’Estaing has said that “All the earlier proposals will be in the new text, but will be hidden and disguised in some way.”
2. Former Italian Prime Minister Giuliano Amato has said that: “They decided that the document should be unreadable. If it is unreadable, it is not constitutional, that was the sort of perception... Should you succeed in understanding it at first sight there might be some reason for a referendum, because itwould mean that there is something new.”
3. Belgian Foreign Minister Karel de Gucht has said that, "The aim of the Constitutional treaty was to be more readable; the aim of this treaty is to be unreadable… The Constitution aimed to be clear, whereas this treaty had to be unclear. It is a success.”
   

So all three of the above has wanted to dupe the European public into believing this Treaty was not the constitution.

I can understand why Mr Brown does not have the courage to go for a Referendum. He knows that despite his pledge in June 2007 that

“The manifesto is what we put to the public. We've got to honour that manifesto.
That is an issue of trust for me with the electorate.”
(Gordon Brown, interview, 24 June 2007)

He cannot honour Labour's Manifesto Pledge (Page 84 of the 2005 Labour Manifesto) as he will lose.

So I ask you Mr Smith why you cannot have the strength of your convictions as laid down in the Lib Dem 2005 Manifesto that

Membership of the EU has been hugely important for British jobs, environmental protection, equality rights, and Britain’s place in the world. But with enlargement to twenty-five member states, the EU needs reform to become more efficient and more accountable. The new constitution helps to achieve this by improving EU coherence, strengthening the powers of the elected European Parliament compared to the Council of Ministers, allowing proper oversight of the unelected Commission, and enhancing the role of national parliaments. It also more clearly defines and limits the powers of the EU, reflecting diversity and preventing over-centralisation. We are therefore clear in our support for the constitution, which we believe is in Britain’s interest – but ratification must be subject to a referendum of the British people.

Do you no longer believe this or are you just a stooge for the party rather than the public who elected you. Have you as Mr Hague said yesterday about the Lib Dems become

"so shrill - they have become separated from their cojones".

This despite a promise from Mr Clegg that his Lib Dems would 'prove their cojones' on the issue of Europe.

Now, Mr Smith, I didn't vote for you, I voted for a party that has held strong on it's promise to vote for a referendum, but you are my representative in Parliament and I could at least support you on your promise to give me a referendum, so why have you reneged on this.

You could have done what you promised your constituents and voted for a referendum but instead you toed the party line, despite many of your fellow Lib Dem MP's having the cojones to vote for what they had been elected on.

At the next election I will try to ensure you are not voted in again. I may just even, for the first time in my life, vote tactically to ensure you are no longer my MP.

My MP is supposed to put his constituents first, he is their representative in parliament, You have failed on this basic task, so why do you deserve to be in Parliament?


We need an EU referendum | Politics | guardian.co.uk

The Greatest Single Failure of Cabinet Government

Well worth listening to this bit on Radio 4's PM programmme tonight about the Iraq War Cabinet minutes. It is about 6 minutes into the article.

Asked about the decision by the cabinet to go to war in Iraq, Professor Peter Hennessy Attlee Professor of Contemporary British History at Queen Mary, University of London, first describes the Cabinet as

"Supine"

and then he goes onto say the decision to go to war was

"The Greatest Single Failure of Cabinet Government at least since the Suez Crisis"

He goes onto say he can't imagine what they were Cabinet Ministers for because if on something as profound as peace and war you don't speak up, insist on Proper discussion, Proper briefing, Proper sharing of the data including the legal opinion

"What is the point of getting out of bed in the morning and pretending you are a Cabinet Minister"

I just couldn't have put it any better.

BBC - Radio 4 - Listen Again page

Large Snouts, Large troughs

Over at the EU I see there is a secret report of how deep some MEP's have managed to get their snouts into the ever-increasing trough of OUR money.

Apparently the MEP Mr Davies was allowed confidential access to the secret internal audit report and immediately reported it to the EU's anti-fraud squad for immediate action.
According to Mr Davies

"This report is dynamite - and makes the Derek Conway affair at Westminster look like small change,"

"When I looked at this report my first reaction was to laugh at the outrageous extent of the abuses.

"Then that feeling turned to anger and the realisation that the police or the anti-fraud people should be looking at this."

Every MEP is eligible for about £130,000 a year to pay for staff. One case has the whole allowance being used but no staff being employed. One MEP who has seen the report said that direct payments had been made to political parties by MEPs. There are apparently many cases of MEPs failing to make social security payments for alleged employees.

Franz Bruner, director general of Olaf, the EU's internal anti-fraud squad, said he was launching an inquiry and had demanded to see the audit report by the end of this week.

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Call for MEPs' cash fraud probe

Flabby and Bogus Strategic Thinking

Flabby and Bogus Strategic Thinking Just about says it all when it comes to this government's thinking on just about anything. Of course this could just be a few old buffers speaking again and they may be out of touch with the country today!

Rusi also says

"This is a problem worsened by the lack of leadership from the majority which in misplaced deference to 'multiculturalism' failed to lay down the line to immigrant communities, thus undercutting those within them trying to fight extremism.

"The country's lack of self-confidence is in stark contrast to the implacability of its Islamist terrorist enemy."

It added: "We look like a soft touch. We are indeed a soft touch, from within and without."

RUSI Defence and security put ‘at risk’ by ignoring parliamentary government

Antarctic Volcanoes a Possible Culprit for Glacier Melting

Listening to Radio 4's the Material World last night on the way home to see my beloved, I ended up listening to a programme about antarctic volcanoes and the affect they may be having on the thinning of Glaciers in the Antarctic. In this day and age I find it amazing that we keep discovering so much that is new about our planet and how it works. As the blurb on the Radio 4 web site says

You don’t really expect to find volcanoes under the polar ice caps, but this is exactly what scientists at the British Antarctic Survey say they have found.

Could evidence discovered using new radar techniques be proof of the biggest volcanic eruption in the Antarctic in the last 10,000 years?

I then poked around with Google to see more about this as it intrigued me somewhat.

Amongst the comments and articles was the following

Antarctic volcanoes identified as a possible culprit in glacier melting

Another factor might be contributing to the thinning of some of the Antarctica's glaciers: volcanoes.

In an article published Sunday on the Web site of the journal Nature Geoscience, Hugh Corr and David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey report the identification of a layer of volcanic ash and glass shards frozen within an ice sheet in western Antarctica.

"This is the first time we have seen a volcano beneath the ice sheet punch a hole through the ice sheet" in Antarctica, Vaughan said.

Volcanic heat could still be melting ice to water and contributing to thinning and speeding up of the Pine Island glacier, which passes nearby, but Vaughan said he doubted that it could be affecting other glaciers in western Antarctica, which have also thinned in recent years. Most glaciologists, including Vaughan, say that warmer ocean water is the primary cause of thinning.

Whilst agreeing that the Volcano may be causing some of the thinning he then says he doesn't think it is causing all the problems. Now if I had just discovered this Volcano, I know my thoughts might be where there is one might there not be more. Worth visiting the following site on Mt Erebus which is not far away and one of the few volcanoes on earth with a long lived lava lake.


This may be another piece of the puzzle in the Global Warming debate.

A press release on the matter is here and you can pay for the full paper here.



Press Release - First evidence of under-ice volcanic eruption in Antarctica - British Antarctic Survey

Our Boys in Pink?

Apparently the flying of the Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) flag above the Police HQ in Fettes Avenue has caused some concerns down in Lothian and Borders.

A former employee at Fettes said he had spoken to current workers about the flag. He said: "There are members of staff who feel this was insensitive for religious reasons. Some have deep personal convictions and this flies against that.

"One person has already walked out in protest at this."

Hopefully it was not one of the Police's cell customers
Boys in blue are in the pink as gay flag flies over police HQ - Scotsman.com News

Field of Dissension?

Four Labour MP's who are trying to keep their Election promises are in trouble with the Parliamentary Labour party and according to one of them, Frank Field,

had been "shouted at" by Mr Hoon and he accused the party leadership of "ineptness" for "trying to expel people from the Parliamentary Labour Party for keeping their election promises".

Oh how fun it is to watch Labour having problems with its MP's on the EU.

BBC NEWS | Politics | MPs face action for EU poll plans

MMR 'does not trigger reaction'

Now there's a big surprise, imagine that, the MMR jab does not cause Autism, according to this study. All that has been achieved by the scaremongering of Dr Andrew Wakefield has been stress for parents and an increase in measles with the attendant problems this poses.

This is just another waste of money that could have been better spent on researching a proper cure or at least better understanding of the causes of Autism. It could even have been spent on education on Autism. We already know that the MMR jab does not cause autism.

If you really want to find out about autism please have a look here.

Also have a read of read of this story in our local paper from a few years ago about the sort of research we should be looking at.

From Ruaridh P and J

BBC NEWS | Health | MMR 'does not trigger reaction'

Police 'can challenge pay deal'

The government doing something unlawful again? Surely not!

According to the BBC

A judge said he had "no hesitation" in ruling there was an arguable case to
apply for judicial review.

BBC NEWS UK Police 'can challenge pay deal'

Rugby Fans Urged To Drink Sensibly At Scotland Six Nations Clash (from The Herald )

I can only hope my son Malcolm reads this and takes note on his first trip to Murrayfield with his School. No more than two tins of Irn Bru will be allowed.

My January no blogging is over.

Rugby Fans Urged To Drink Sensibly At Scotland Six Nations Clash (from The Herald )

The Battle for Basra Palace

Listened to Jane Corbin on Radio 4 this morning and this programme sounds like it will be one not to miss.

BBC NEWS | Programmes | Panorama | The Battle for Basra Palace

BOHICA

Reading through a few of the Police Blogs at Planet Police you get the feeling that some of them might just be a tad annoyed. Now if I was a Labour politician at this point in time, I would think twice before annoying anyone in the police, because they might have an easy route to annoying them back.

We have Facts and Figures, Songs, Stories about Dogs, Fiscal Prudence, Divide and Rule, Theft, Gore, Bending, Shafting and Smiles.

And of course BOHICA.

And that's just in one day.

And it goes on even the Police Superintendents are not happy.

The Police Federation have even manged to raise a complaint and a short film


Here are some possible links for you to try and rectify this wrong.

Have your say - lobby your local MP on Police Pay 2007/2008 Federation Letter to Home Secretary 6th December 2007 Police Federation pursuing a legal challenge Home Secretary announces 42 day pre-charge detention for terrorist suspects Absolute disgrace - Home Secretary’s letter of betrayal last straw for police officers Federation response to 2.5% pay award More news and information on Police Pay 2007/2008 Make your voice heard - show your support for Fair Pay for Police and sign the 10 Downing Street e-petition The impartiality of policing - joint statement by PFEW, ACPO & PSAEW - 13th November 2007 Policing hit by widespread detective staffing shortages Federation response to Sir Ronnie Flanagan’s Review of Policing, (Interim Report) Click here to petition the Prime Minister for change to police widow(er) pensions PFEW response to Tory paper - Policing for the People Police Bravery Awards 2007

This is a disgrace and it is not just the police who should be complaining.

The general Public should be telling their MP's in England and Wales that 30 million is nothing to pay for a decent police force. Remember this is 1000th of how much we have lent Northern Crock!

Planet Police

Nimrods are Still Safe to fly

Des Browne says Nimrods are safe to fly Beau Bo D'or disagrees and so do I.

Pigs fly over the Ministry of Defence - New animation for Channel 4 News.

Report and link to video report here.




Board of Inquiry- Nimrod MR2 XV230

Today in Parliament Des Browne acknowledged what anybody following the story of the crash of XV230 and the loss of 14 British lives could have told you.

According to the Times

Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, in an extraordinarily contrite statement to the Commons, said: “On behalf of the MoD and the Royal Air Force, I would like to apologise to the House of Commons, and most of all to those who lost their lives, and to their families. I am sorry.”

Gordon Brown sat next to him as he revealed the shortcomings that were at the heart of the worst fatal incident to be suffered by the Armed Forces in either Afghanistan or Iraq. The families of the victims are now due to receive substantial compensation.

Coming after attacks on the Government by five former defence chiefs who complained that the MoD’s budget was inadequate, the Nimrod affair was seized on as another illustration of the Forces having to depend on ageing and unreliable equipment.

The following condemnation from the same article reveals some of the problems.

The most damning condemnation of what had gone wrong in the general maintenance of the Nimrod fleet came from Air Chief Marshal Sir Clive Loader, Commander-in-Chief Air Command. Sir Clive said: “I conclude that the loss of XV230 and, far more importantly, of the 14 Service personnel who were aboard, resulted from shortcomings in the application of the processes for assuring airworthiness and safe operation of the Nimrod.”

The attached link takes you to the full report of the Board of Inquiry into the loss of Nimrod MR2 XV230 and the loss of 14 British Lives.

A quick scan of the report brings out that the likely cause of the crash was a fuel leak after air-to-air refueling and the subsequent ignition of this fuel by a pipe at above 400 degrees centigrade. What is staggering is that despite a seven fold increase in the number of fuel leaks and general knowledge of this problem no action had been taken to properly sort out the problem.

The graph shown here shows the number of leaks per 1000 flying hours and show that the rate increased from about 0.5/1000 hrs in 1984 up to 3.5 in 2006. This was apparently missed as being a problem and was not fully investigated.

A brief report is available here with the 33 recommendations it makes.

Michael Smith writing in his Blog in the Times has the following

The scandal of the deaths of 14 servicemen on board Nimrod XV230 continues. I am bound to say that I believed long ago that there couldn't be any more bad information coming out. But the release under the Freedom of Information Act of a report by QinetiQ, the defence company, on the extent of the leaks on board the Nimrod fleet and in particular the six aircraft flying over Afghanistan and Iraq simply beggars belief. The leaks represented a "critical" structural problem. Civilian contractors at RAF Kinloss were not only not required to pass on the substantial information they had on the leaks and how to deal with them to the Integrated Project Team which oversees how the Nimrod fleets is run, they were not required to tell the RAF technicians working on the aircraft at Kinloss that the Air Publications they were working to were out-of-date and of "little, if any, value". The problems with the leaks dated back ten years but were exacerbated by the "intense" schedule flown by the six Nimrods equipped with special video surveillance equipment fed back directly to commanders on the ground. Since these leaks were largely being caused by pressure from the aircraft's air-to-air refuelling system, never part of its original equipment and fitted as an emergency measure during the Falklands Conflict, they could not be replicated on the ground. "QinetiQ were unable to establish a clear impression of how these non-detected leaks are addressed," the report said. Or put another way, they couldn't be found so they couldn't be fixed. But so essential was the real-time video surveillance equipment to troops on the ground that the RAF had to keep the aircraft in the air quite literally, and tragically, at all costs.

The Times reports here on the release today of the report.

All I can do is express my sympathies to the relatives of the dead and hope that lessons are learned, in particular by this Government and the MOD, that penny-pinching results in the death of our Armed Forces. Let us hope that Des Browne did not lie when questioned in the house about the 15bn defence cuts that have been rumoured.

Ministry of Defence | About Defence | BOI Nimrod MR2 XV230

Kebabgate - Hain and the Fifth Man

Nearly a day went by without some more embarrassing revelations for Labour.

Now Peter Hain, the Work and Pensions Secretary, admits

that he had not registered all the donations to his unsuccessful deputy leadership campaign with electoral watchdogs as is legally required. Mr Hain said his failure to register the payments was "extremely regrettable" and apologised, while sources stressed the failure to declare the money was an "administrative error".

And a fifth man may be involved in the David Abrahams donation crimes.

George Crawford, a Newcastle-based lawyer, went to the police amid claims that his name may have been used to illicitly donate money to the party.

He is demanding an investigation after a man of the same name was registered as giving Labour £36,000 in 2004. Mr Crawford believes he may have been used as a secret conduit by Mr Abrahams to donate money to Labour.

The lawyer suspects that the money was given in his name and has now reported the matter to the police as suspected identity theft by someone trying to conceal their donations. Northumbria Police said they would be forwarding the complaint to Scotland Yard.

So just another day in the Sleazy Life of Labour in the Kebabgate scandal. I think they are trying to bore us with the number of scandals and are trying to make it seem like "normal" behaviour.

P.S. As suggested by James Burdett in a previous entry, I'd just like to say that our Wendy hasn't yet resigned despite admitting having committed a crime. Apparently 800 criminals in Barlinnie have asked to be allowed out early as they hadn't realised they were committing a crime either, Honest Gov.

Peter Hain caught up in Labour funding row - Telegraph

Worker reveals 'Nimrod problems'

This my 500th post on this blog and it's probably on the subject closest to my heart, the armed forces and in particular the RAF.

Tomorrow will see the publication of a report into a Nimrod crash in Afghanistan which killed 14 Military Personnel last year. It is likely to be bad reading for those in the RAF, MOD and this callous government. It will also confirm the fears of the relatives that their loved ones died because of known and fixable problems.

I have blogged before on the problems and still cannot believe that they have not been sorted out or workarounds put in place. The replacement for the Nimrod is still probably 5 years away and guess what it will be yet another Nimrod still using the current airframes.

This report reveals

An insider at Kinloss said that fuel leaks among the fleet were "perpetual".

The Ministry of Defence declined to comment ahead of the Board of Inquiry findings on Tuesday.

The BBC has learned that the aircraft which crashed in Afghanistan was being worked hard and flying sometimes twice a day.

It also had seven fuel leaks on board which were not due to be fixed for several months.

Also having watched Newsnight tonight we were informed by an expert that basically the Nimrod is not airworthy and that the only reason it is flying is for operational reasons to support the troops in Afghanistan. Whilst I can understand that reasoning, the lack of money being spent to sort out the problem is nothing less than criminal.

Just listened to John Nicol on Radio 4 confirming that basically these planes would be grounded if there were not urgent operational reasons for keeping them flying. This is another example of where we are breaking the Military Covenant. Nowhere else would we put up with sort of situation and ask people to put their lives on the line.

BBC NEWS | Scotland | North East/N Isles | Worker reveals 'Nimrod problems'

UK 'failed to make Basra safe'

173 members of the armed forces have died in Iraq since the start of the latest conflict and now we here that the UK

"has failed to make Basra safe"

What does this say about the sacrifice made by these people, Was it all worth it, what have we achieved and are we running away with out tails between our legs.

The report on the BBC says

The initial goal of UK forces in south eastern Iraq was to establish the security necessary for the development of representative political institutions and for economic reconstruction. Although progress has been made, this goal remains unfulfilled."

It also suggested that the relative security of Basra did not mean that the root causes of violence had been tackled.

The report added: "There remain murderous, corrupt and militia-infiltrated elements within the police which must be rooted out as a matter of priority."It went on to speculate on the future role of UK forces in Iraq. The report said: "If there is still a role for UK forces in Iraq, those forces must be capable of doing more than just protecting themselves at Basra Air Station.

This basically means we have achieved little in our 4 years in Basra and that our continuing presence is pointless with the current level of troops.

The report also explains that

The relative security of Basra is said to owe more to the dominance of militias and criminal gangs, who are said to have achieved a fragile balance in the city, than to the success of the multinational and Iraqi security forces in tackling the root causes of the violence.

So basically we have the standard gang warfare of a disintegrating society. This is our gift to Iraq.

I can only point to the relative success that the US now seem to be having in other areas after intensifying its commitments to Iraq. Our problem is that we no longer have the capability to do this and also fight in Afghanistan, why because we do not invest in our Armed Forces.

Des Browne bleats on about how the Defence budget is keeping pace with inflation completely ignoring that most of the increase is for two ships and that inflation in the highly technical defence world runs at least twice as high as normal bread and butter inflation. This means that year on year we have been, and are, losing up to 5% of our capabilities purely to inflation never mind any other cuts this government foists on the armed services at a time when they are at their most stretched in nearly 50 years.

Makes you glad to be British.

BBC NEWS | Politics | UK 'failed to make Basra safe'

Kebabgate - Mad Party Disease claims another Labour Leader

Interesting article from Iain MacWhirter in the Herald.

Two pieces of the article stand out. Th first points out that it is Labours own Laws that may put them in prison. Labour have to remember that these are not rules as they keep saying.

What a desperate situation: was no-one in the Labour Party prepared to step up to the plate and defend their own leader? Labour appeared to be in denial, unwilling or unable to face up to the enormity of the situation. This isn't any old law we are talking about, but one of Labour's own flagship statutes: the Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. This makes clear that any attempt to conceal the identity of a political donor is against the law, as is acceptance of a donation from anyone who is not on the electoral register.

This is not some obscure piece of redundant legislation but a fresh and potent statute designed by Labour to drive sleaze out of politics altogether. Breaching this law carries an unlimited fine or one year in jail. The way things are going, a number of senior Scottish Labour politicians face losing their political careers and gaining a criminal record.

Then we have the following which indicates that someone out there really doesn't like Wendy (join the queue!) and that Labour have been in disarray since their defeat by the SNP.

We know that all is not well in the Labour leader's inner circle, since this story has been driven by a series of damaging leaks from people with access to the most sensitive inside information. The Sunday Herald document, for example, could not have been widely circulated within Labour, but it found its way into the public domain. Someone somewhere harbours a very deep grudge against Alexander and is prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to settle accounts.

I'm afraid this has been the Scottish Labour story since devolution - factionalism, cronyism, incompetence and personal vendettas. They can't seem to help themselves. The party seems to have lost the will to live. Alexander was their best hope in years for a clean break from the old numpty machine politics, but it has broken her instead.

Mad Party Disease Claims Another Labour Leader (from The Herald )