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Review of the Year 2015

 

 

Silly Person of the Year Award

1st Place John Chilcot

Sir John (not yet a Lord) Chilcot comes pretty high on the list of silly persons, as a one-time civil servant his performance was unremarkable, suggesting that his choosing for the Iraq inquiry is a trifle suspicious. We now know that his inquiry has been held up for a year by the Cabinet Office's refusal to hand over conversations between the liar Blair and the lunatic Bush. We also know that Chilcot was under no compulsion to go down the time-wasting maxwellisation process - the inquiry into the Mid Staffs abattoir chose not to pander to the hurt feelings of the guilty parties. We also know that Chilcot was offered extra bodies to carry out his work but he declined the offer. If Chilcot is not silly then he has allowed others to make him look silly and for that he should be ennobled immediately!

In February Chilcot appeared before one of those pointless Parliamentary committees that ask a series of questions that we already know the answers to. The episode was hardly inquisitorial, Chilcot spent most of the time like a man talking to himself in the bathroom mirror. When he did acknowledge that he was being asked a question, he failed to provide any answers. He did not know when the people being Maxwellised would respond to his request for comments. He could not or would not say how many people were being Maxwellised. He does not know when he will publish his report. At £800 a day you might suppose he would be a bit better informed. At 75 years of age it is not even certain that he will live to finish his report, although exhaustion will not be a factor in his demise.

Chilcot deserves to be praised for providing further evidence of how an elitist establishment mocks a citizenry who are being asked to conspire in their own mockery by believing that Chilcot's sloth like inquiry has anything to do with democratic accountability.

Chilcot tells us that he spent 13 months jousting with with former Tony Blair foot stool Sir Jeremy Hayward, over what conversations between Blair and Bush could and could not be released to the public. The Sir Jeremy's of this world are not saying that we can't handle the truth, he and his chums have decided that American sensibilities are far more important than the truth.

Note: Maxwellisation is the process of providing those whose actions appear in a report the chance to respond before a final version of the report is published. Unfortunately, it does not mean that they will be taken out to sea and thrown overboard.

Update: Chilcot says he will be ready to publish his report in July 2016.

2nd Place Kim Jong Un

It can take the uninitiated a minute to realize that “Gangnam Style” is satire but if your name is Kim Jong Un it may take you a bit longer, especially if you believe that PSY, the K-pop star is really impersonating you, by way of tribute.

Still if you are the North Korean bloater boy you can get some relief from the mockery of the global community by feeding your relatives to savage dogs or building a ski slope in a country where no one can afford a set a skies.

3rd Place James Brokenshire

Immigration Minister Brokenshire said that reducing net migration is still an "ambition". He said this in a week when we were told that net Migration stood at 330,000 for the past year, that's a 28% increase over last year. His idiot boss, Dave, you will remember, pledged to reduce immigration to tens of thousands.

Dave, himself, proved yet again that his own silliness lays way beyond the Silly Person judges remit after ennobling Douglas Hogg, who claimed MP expenses for having his moat cleaned. Every Tory rag in the land including the Times, Telegraph and even the Daily Mail criticized Dave's latest slap in the face for the electorate: that is, providing a contemptible group of lickspittles with a tax free £300, plus expenses for doing nothing, except turning up.

4th Place Tristram Hunt

Tristram is wasting his time, he's in the wrong party. Currently, he is the Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central. He's been an MP since 2010, he is perhaps better known as an author and journalist and former Shadow Education Secretary. His most famous utterance: "nuns do not make good teachers". He apologised for his nuns remark? In February 2014, Hunt crossed a picket line at Queen Mary University to teach his students about Marx, Engels and the Making of Marxism, saying he was not a member of the union. Um, we wonder if Marxism was made by crossing picket lines? Tristram is just too confused, soggy, wet, to be of any use. He gave up his 'shadow' role, saying that Labour was in danger of turning into a sect. We think he meant that it may start believing in something again.

*****

 

 

Andrew Mitchell said "Ouch!"

March

We learnt today that PC Toby Rowland is due to receive £80,000 in libel damages from Mitchell, who if you need reminding called Toby a pleb. This follows an award of £300,000 to the Police Federation for court costs. And waiting to be announced, Mitchell's pay out to the Sun, something between £2m and £3m is expected.

It now seems clear that Mitchell should never have started playing Duplicity, the board game designed for politicians who lie for a living.

However, another matter needs explaining. Like, why is Mitchell still an MP? Yes, that's right, it's because his MP chums will not indorse the Recall Bill.

Why is Mitchell being paid a fortune for offering financial advice to huge corporations and the super-rich. Obviously because he is providing information and access they do not have. But how on earth can they overlook this man's record. When he was development secretary he restarted aid to Rwanda, after it had been halted due to the support it was giving to the extremely nasty M23 in the Congo. A Select Committee managed to establish that Mitchell had decided all on his own that Rwanda was nolonger supporting M23.

More importantly, Mitchell is now a known and proven liar - let's hope that the citizens of Sutton Coldfield care more about Mitchell's veracity than the money grubbers.

Update: Mitchell was returned as MP for Sutton Coldfield at the 2015 general election, with his majority increased by 0.6%?

Theresa May goes the extra mile

February

Well, actually she went 12,000 miles to find someone to head up her inquiry in to historic child sex abuse. She has now, hopefully, found someone untainted by the old boy establishment and friends of the Paedophile Information Exchange in the shape of New Zealand judge Lowell Goddard. Lowell says she's up for the challenge and has decided that she will not be publishing before 2018. Worryingly, she is already talking about learning from past mistakes. What's to learn, just tell us who the child buggers were and tell us who covered up for them - name them all, the politicians, the civil servants, the policeman, the clerics and the children's charities who ignored the cries for help.

The Incompetence of Theresa May

January

May's decision to scrap the historic Child Sex Abuse Panel that she set up last year is either incompetent or an act of nasty cynicism. She must be very stupid not to appreciate that her Panel have been interviewing 'survivors', the victims of abuse for past three months. Those victims and the interviewing panel members believed they were taking part in an honest process, designed to root out the disgusting and vile behaviour of a cabal of establishment abusers. Now they have been let down by the Home Secretary's decision to set another panel, as yet unspecified. What is May up to? Does she really think that the victims of abuse are going to go through the whole process again, to relive every ghastly moment of their abuse? There's something unsavoury going on.

 

Greece reveals the failure of the Eurozone

July

When the IMF says the latest deal for Greece is a waste of time, then, after a pause for astonishment for a global agency, with a history of failed interventions, we know that the system is broken. The IMF with its knowledge of failure cannot be wrong, servicing Greek debt, which is all that is happening, is like keeping someone on life support, who is well past their sell by date.

The Greek fiasco reveals that the Eurozone project is unworkable, it was always unworkable.

DSK: Life is not full of surprises

June

Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK) was acquitted this week of procuring prostitutes for sex parties, i.e. pimping. His trial has been described in the French press as a joke.

This man was once in charge of the IMF until a hotel maid accused him of rape, which for some reason she later withdrew. Now, he wants to be the president of France, only the small matter of a pimping charge to get round. He got round it.

Lord Janner: "I don't believe it!"

April

The DPP told us this week that Lord Janner is too demented to mount a defence against those who accuse him of sexual abuse, going back decades. Janner's old MP chums and lords a leaping don't believe that Janner, the jolly good egg, could have engaged in child buggery. Ed Miliband says he was shocked to hear of the allegations. We wonder whether he was more or less shocked than Nick Clegg, when he found out, belatedly, about the disgusting Cyril Smith.

However, we also learnt this week, that former DPP, Lord MacDonald, was not told in 2007 that a case against Janner had been dropped by 'local' CPS people. Unbelievable, the idea that some 'locals' would take it upon themselves to drop a high profile case without telling the guy in charge? But be reassured, he tells us now:

"If it had been referred to me, I would certainly have given it my close and robust personal attention."

Janner should have been arrested at least three times over the past 30 years. The police had enough evidence of his child abuse but the man never came before the courts. Why wasn't Janner pursued, who were the senior police figures who told their troops to drop the Janner cases? Ah but, it's foolish to ask such questions, when we have a prime minister in David Cameron, who believes that 'we can't know anything because there's nothing to know'. By which he means, incidentally, because all the evidence keeps going missing.

We do know that the police were just about to pounce on Janner when Alison Saunders, currently heading up the CPS, pulled the plug, due to Janner's mental state - "not in the public interest", she said. We think that's political speak for 'the public don't need to know'.

We could ask 'What about the victims' interests'. How will they be served having been denied their day in court? Saunders has the answer, they can tell the Historic Child Sex Abuse Panel all they know, which will gain them the sum of nothing.

Alternatively, if they want some retribution, they can sue Janner for his pension and tough luck if he's too demented to turn up.

Readers' Note: The Attorney General, Jeremy Wright, has oversight for the CPS and can if he chooses, decide to prosecute?

Update, December:

Lord Janner is expected to face a “trial of the facts” after both prosecution and defence agreed he was unfit to stand trial for the alleged sexual abuse of nine boys and men. However, this exercise will be pointless as he will never be found guilty of anything. Unfortunately, Janner died on December 19th.

 

BBC licence fee - the future

A Poll Tax on all your houses

March

Tony Hall, BBC director general, thinks the licence fee is good for another 10 years. He wants to modernise the licence fee for what he calls the Internet Age. Basically, he's talking about charging people for using iPlayer online. He says:

"...we’re not trying to sell anything” "We're not Amazon.."

Skillfully overlooking the BBC's market activities with BBC Worldwide, BBC Asia, BBC America, BBC Africa. Also, and outrageously, he misses the irony that selling BBC services online, including BBC3, makes his outfit just like Amazon.

The Commons culture, media and sport committee sees the free use of iPlayer as a 'loophole' that enables licence dodgers to watch telly without paying for it. They too fail on the irony front, no one asked the BBC to make their programming available for free on the Internet.

Fear not, the politicians on the committee are full of ideas to make the dodgers pay. Well, in fact, they intend to make everybody pay. One of their more worrying suggestions is to introduce a household levy, i.e. a sort of poll tax that every household pays whether they have a telly or view programmes on the Internet or not. Mr Hall gave his full support to this idea and why wouldn't he, it signals longevity for his moribund institution. Tony is not happy with the idea of decriminalising licence fee dodging, after all its fines bring in £200m a year.

On a positive note the committee are seriously questioning the existence of the BBC Trust and suggest replacing it with an external watchdog. They have also suggested that the Audit Office, be brought in to check the BBC’s financial accounts – something the Beeb has long resisted. And why wouldn't they resist, the licence fee gives them £4bn to play with and much to discover about where all the money goes and indeed has gone - executive pay and payoffs, and just as questionable, payments for bought in programmes like the woeful Voice.

It's worth noting that no one is talking about introducing advertising and abolishing the licence or perhaps a better idea, if Tony Hall wants to modernise, introduce a subscription model and then BBC Trust will discover how much the public value all those repeats.

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A summary of the year...

Northern Powerhouse Flooded

The year ended with George Osborne's Northern Powerhouse under water. His leader Dave, speaking from a northern puddle, said that his government had already done a lot to protect the Powerhouse from flooding and he was considering if more needed to be done. Ungrateful people, recently flooded out of their homes, heckled Dave. Meanwhile, his Environment Secretary, Liz Truss, speaking from a puddle elsewhere, read from the Book of Compassionate Conservatism to hold back the flood tide but as King Cunute demonstrated water pleases itself.

 

ozzie

 

****

Was the world safer in 2015?

Ask the people of Paris after Jihadi lunatics attacked twice this year, first killing all the staff at Charlie Hebdo in January then in November, killing 130 people set to enjoy the weekend. France responded by launching air strikes on IS targets in Syria with a vengeance. Politicians here responded by agonizing over whether to join the fray. After a sleepless night they decided that bombing Syria would make us all safer and the 'worried well' were reassured that our air strikes would be surgical - it would avoid killing innocent civilians. Obviously, the people of Syria do not think the world is a safer place. Five million people have been forced to leave their homes, those with the means are fleeing to the EU. And the EU have bribed Turkey to build a big fence to stop any more leaving. Over 200,000 have been killed on all sides, the numbers of injured can only be guessed at. Russia's Vlad the Impaler decided to add to the carnage, by assisting the Assad regime by bombing rebels, IS nutters and cilivians alike but they too claimed to be surgical.

Time to remind ourselves what Mo Mowlam wrote in 2002:

"This whole affair has nothing to do with a threat from Iraq - there isn't one. It has nothing to do with the war against terrorism or with morality. Saddam Hussein is obviously an evil man, but when we were selling arms to him to keep the Iranians in check he was the same evil man he is today. He was a pawn then and is a pawn now. In the same way he served western interests then, he is now the distraction for the sleight of hand to protect the west's supply of oil."

"What is most chilling is that the hawks in the Bush administration must know the risks involved. They must be aware of the anti-American feeling throughout the Middle East. They must be aware of the fear in Egypt and Saudi Arabia that a war against Iraq could unleash revolutions, disposing of pro-western governments, and replacing them with populist anti-American Islamist fundamentalist regimes."

Bottom line: we know now what the legacy of the Blair-Bush Iraq war is, a string of anti-Western Islamist fundamentalist regimes spreading like a virus across the whole globe.

Ask the people of Yemen if the world is a safer place.

In case you missed it, there's a war going on in Yemen. The number of dead and injured is unknown, no one is counting; we do know that people are now starving to death. We also know that Saudi Arabia has intervened on behalf of the incumbent regime and that Iran is assisting the rebels, who back the last incumbent. We also know that Saudi bombs are state of the art, almost surgical, ask the doctors and nurses who saw their hospital blown to smithereens - that's right, they were supplied by the UK. Let's just say that our country's ethical foreign policy is a work-in-progress.

In Ethiopia a famine on the scale of the 1980s is happening, with 20 million people affected and their government is in denial:

"There will not be famine of any sort, let alone anything remotely like the magnitude of that of 1984," the Ethiopian Embassy in London said.

The problems of Ethiopia are many; ethnic strife, war with neighouring countries, corruption, inept government and Bob Geldof is nowhere to be found this Christmas.

*****

An end to aspirational waffle

Lost Labour's leadership 'struggle' terminated in September with overwhelming support for Jeremy Corbyn. This demonstrated that Labour supporters have had enough of aspirational waffle from people in $500 suits like Chuka Umunna. The outcome also reflected a grass roots rejection of New Labour's astroturf version of social democracy.

Corbyn left his opponents in the leadership race more stunned than the day they were born. Corbyn's win was huge and did not need to rely on the votes of £3.00 Tories and Trotskyite entrists, strange how the media managed to avoid noticing that small detail - having spent the past several weeks telling us that the whole process was a sham.

The good news is that several shadow cabinet drips have now decided that they can't work with Corbyn - Socialism makes them feel uncomfortable. This may be a good time to remind ourselves what Gordon Brown said would happen if Corbyn won, he said that the Labour Party would be reduced to a party of protest. Yes Gordon, and that would be more than it's ever been in its entire history.

Bag of bones found in Tesco carpark

In March 35,000 people turned out to watch a 500 year old bag of bones being driven through Leicester, not much to gladden the heart there, that is, for anyone expecting some post-modern indifference towards a 15th century psychopath. Trade in Chinese souvenir tat was brisk, and much value was added to the notion of Britishness. This was most important in the Year of British Values that David Cameron found himself struggling to promote with the reverberations of the Trojan Horse letter still keeping him awake at night. Dave's attempts to define British values fooled no one, talk of fish and chips really did not carry the day. Dave tried to save his inability to define British values by invoking the spectre of the 13th century Magna Carta, er, that was 800 years ago, the peasants didn't read it then and are unlikely to do so now. Still, that is what British Tory values is all about, forever looking backwards for something to celebrate. It distracts the mind marvelously from the rotten uncivilized chaos of the world today. To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, beware distractions as changes are made to your affairs, which you will not appreciate until it's too late.

rotten

Sporting Legacy

This year left us in no doubt that FIFA was no more than a crime syndicate after a large number of the mob bosses have been nabbed by the FBI (God Bless America). We also saw smug IAAF president, Lord Coe, claiming to be alarmed by the scale of doping going on in his sport. He said he was the man to fix the problems. He prefers to overlook the fact that he has been number two in the IAAF for several years before getting the top job this year. However, both FIFA and the IAAF have problematic decisions to make, by which both organisations will be judged going forward. The IAAF have the tricky fact that Russia needs to be banned from the 2016 Olympics following its doping antics in the 2012 games. FIFA have to face up to the fact that the 2022 World Cup in Qatar cannot go ahead. And our FA must become less pusillanimous. Note: The IAAF voted to suspend Russia's federation (Araf) on 13 November but a final decision as to whether they can take part in 2016 will not be taken until March next year.

 

 

The Pace and Urgency of our Leader

Our leader Dave found some pace and urgency. He moved everywhere at speed, providing us with the illusion of purposeful action. Dave spoke of his urgency following his election victory:"We will not waste a single moment with getting on with the task." Obviously not everything was urgent for Dave, e.g., English votes for English laws, a British Bill of Rights, a Care Cap for the elderly and a vote on fox hunting, they are not urgent.

Dave does have a more urgent list, e.g., the Immigration Bill and of course, turning every school in the country into an academy and setting up another 500 free schools, £12bn in welfare cuts, a ban on so-called legal highs, a "truly seven day" NHS by 2020. He also plans to farm out children's services to the private and charity sectors.

action rule
Dave is keen to bring his "snooper's charter", that is, the Investigatory Powers Bill, to the top of his urgent list. The snoopers will be vying for top spot on the list with the Trade Unions Bill and Dave's determination to sort the unions out, that will be while he's building a 'northern powerhouse' and the HS2 rail line, so that we can all get there, twenty minutes earlier.

He also intends to sell off the entire social housing stock, including everything the housing associations own by 2020.

And obviously most urgent for Dave is the impending EU Referendum. Apparently, the Referendum, planned for 2017, will ask citizens to Stay or Leave. During the third week in December Dave went to Brussels for a conversation on EU reform and had this to say:

"I want to see real progress in all of the four areas that I've mentioned. We're not pushing for a deal tonight, but we're pushing for real momentum so that we can get this deal done."

Three of Dave's areas are of no mark, expect the other 27 countries involved to say fine but he will make no progress on a four year exclusion of benefits for incomers.

The outcome of his conversations will depend on whether Dave can convince citizens, when he comes back empty handed that he is actually carrying a basket full of reforms. He will then call the Referendum on the quick, before the Leave campaign gains its own momentum.

 

The Massacre at Charlie Hebdo

January

Three Islamist killers massacred the entire staff at French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. The whole world responded by holding vigils. Security experts were interviewed, politicians made the usual speeches and held meetings to assess the threat level, cartoonist across the world picked up their pencils in solidarity. What was it Shakespeare said, something about "full of sound and fury signifying nothing".

The journalists at Charlie Hebdo had mocked the messenger Muhammad and according to Anjem Choudary, currently living on benefits in Britain, "they knew there would be consequences".

In a letter published by USA Today, Choudary helpfully clarified Islamist thoughtlessness for us. He tells us that muslims do not believe in the concept of freedom of expression. Islam is not about peace, it's about submission to the commands of Allah.

Oddly Choudary's logic takes a giant leap, most necessary otherwise his argument doesn't work, when he tells us that this submission must apply equally to muslims and non-muslims alike.

Question: why isn't Choudary on the Work Programme?

The Fake Tory Road

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This picture shows the first poster of the May election campaign from the Tory party.

Chancellor George Osborne assured everyone:

"It's a British picture, a British road".

Not true. It's mostly a German road and the bits that are not were provided by Photoshop. German photographer, Alex Burzik tells us he took the original picture of the road near his home town of Weimar, he added that the photo had been digitally altered. Tory high command, attempting to support the woeful George, said the poster was based on a number of images and they had been assured that all the elements of the photograph were British. We do not know who provided the aforementioned "assurance"?

 

 

 

 

Cared for Children

December

Our great leader plans to save all children in care from the failings of local authority services. He told us:

"This will be one of the big landmark reforms of this Parliament, as transformative as what we did in education in the last".

Transformative is an interesting word, it makes an action seem grandiose, life-changing, radical, when in fact the changes being made are uninspiring and mediocre, based on a wing and prayer, social engineering being managed by alchemists.

Poorly performing children’s services will be told that they must improve within six months or be taken over by high-performing authorities, experts and charities. All very interesting but eleven months after the new trust took over Doncaster it was still deemed to be failing by Ofsted - perhaps Dave should bus in some more experts.

Edward Timpson MP is the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children & Families is responsible for the failure of three-quarters of all child protection departments across the country that Ofsted says are not fit for purpose. Timpson appeared in an interview on Channel 4 in December and announced that he was proud of the fact that more children have been taken into care this year than ever before. We think he wandered into 'silly person' territory there.

 

Iain Duncan Smith claims he is from Barcelona

August

IDS told Sky News that he did not know anyone called Sarah or Zac and had no knowledge as to why their stories were posted on his website at the Department for Work and Pensions. He added that those responsible, within his organisation, for trying to implicate him in Sarah and Zac's lying subterfuge would be punished.

Sarah and Zac were in fact actors paid to promote the wonders of IDS's welfare reforms. The actors were paid to appear as penitent and grateful, reformed into contributing citizens by having their benefits taken away.

Later in the month, Duncan Smith said he didn't know why his customers keep dying. More than 2,500 sick and disabled benefit claimants have died after being found 'fit for work' in just two years. In fact, some died within two weeks after having their benefit reduced.

IDS's ghouls did not want the figures released for fear that "incorrect conclusions would be drawn"... "Such misinterpretations would be contrary to the public interest, particularly given the emotive and sensitive context of mortality statistics."

IDS says disabled people are not normal

September

In an effort to defend his department's record on getting more people with a disability back into work, Duncan Smith, made a fine mess of things:

“I think the figure is now over 220,000, which I believe is the highest figure since records began, in proportionate terms, but the most important point is that we are looking to get that up to the level of normal, non-disabled people who are back in work.” (When, you may wonder did records begin? How about a millisecond after someone asked IDS for a number.)

 

Tax Credits U-Turn

November

Newspapers are spent a lot of column inches discussing the government's proposed tax credit cuts during October. The only thing anyone needed to know was that the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said that 3 million families would lose over £1,000 a year. And neither Boy George or his Treasury chums were able to counter that claim!

However, following massive opposition to the tax credit cuts, by the House of Lords, Boy George decided not to cut tax credits in his Spending Review. This was only a temporary stay of execution for low paid families. Two years down the road the introduction of Universal Benefit, the Tory 'final solution', will ensure the cuts occur.

 

TTIP latest.... Did you see Prime Minister Cameron, at the Tory conference, getting all excited about the most anti-democratic piece of manoeuvring in recorded history, i.e. the introduction of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. TTIP

 

VW tops the Pure Greed league

September

The BBC said that car giant Volkswagen admitted cheating emissions tests in the US. That is not true, US authorities discovered that VW had cheated on advertised emissions from their diesel vehicles. Saying that VW 'admitted' doing it makes it sound like they had an attack of honesty; which would never happen. Now, VW think they can undo the damage to their reputation by replacing chief executive Martin Winterkorn, with the untainted Matthias Mueller. Acting chairman, Berthold Huber made an apology to customers, adding: "I want to be very clear, the manipulation of tests for diesel engines is a moral and political disaster". No, it's a financial disaster and when greed is your reason for existing then it really is a disaster.

Morality, all very interesting, now the focus is on regulatory authorities across Europe, who we are told knew about VW's fixing as far back as two years ago and did nothing. But by now no one should be surprised by the inaction of our regulatory protectors, after all they did not protect us against horsemeat, or PPI, or interest rate riggers.

VW Update (08/10/15): VW were now claiming that their global emissions scam was all the work of two rogue software engineers and the board of directors knew absolutely nothing about it.

 

Tory election victory

May

The next thousand years...

When the exit polls showed a win for the Tories, all the pundits said like Victor, "I don't believe it". How wrong these chumps were. Leading the chump pack was Paddy Ashdown who said he would eat his hat if the predicted wipeout of his LibDem crew occurred. Well, they got wiped out and he has not eaten his hat - so much for LibDem promises. However, good riddance to the Zombie Party and their middle ground, beige, unchallenging, don't upset anyone, don't change anything claptrap. Meanwhile Tories should see their pallor improve, now that they can stop transfusing the Zombies. Zombie leader Clegg resigned.

Miliband's One Nation, Squeezed Middle, Not Quite Attlee Party also got tranced and sent scurrying into a huddle of stunned simpletons. They will spend the next several weeks navel gazing and pretending they do not know why they lost so pathetically. Quite simply it was due to the fact that all they offered the electorate was more beige and a few tweaks, at a time when the Tories have been tearing up the welfare consensus, privatising every public service, destroying local government, and allowing further erosion of parliamentary democracy by facilitating the corporate capture of every government department. Labour hardly mentioned any of this, preferring to pretend none of it was happening. The pundits say that Labour lost because the electorate believed the Tory mantra about the lamentable record of New Labour, specifically their excessive spending and poor economic management. Don't believe it, it was the vacuous beigeness of Labour's message, sadly summed up by Ed's final last ditch gimmick - the tombstone of pledges. Ed's One Nation dream faded into more meaningless twaddle than it already was as the SNP took all the Scottish seats bar three. Ed resigned as party leader and rightly so. Ed heralded the end of days for the Labour Party.

Nigel Farage also resigned his role as front man for the Real Ale Society. Nigel didn't manage to become an MP, it was his seventh attempt, he decided to give up. UKIP has only one MP, Douglas Carswell; so expect him to become the party leader. No wait a moment, Farage is having second thoughts, he says he may decide to stand again to lead the Party. Oddly, UKIP managed to get over four million votes based on a platform of only one policy, i.e. Britain is full up. As we now know, Farage came back but the media are getting their sound bites elsewhere now.

Meanwhile Dave is celebrating in the bierkeller with the Bavarian wing of the party, busy discussing the next thousand years, while Duncan Smith and Shapps-Green-Fox, the many-faced dosh dealer, entertain with a chorus of Deutschland uber Alles....

Footnote: Shapps, one time Tory co-chairman, and latterly, no-mark minister for international development, resigned in disgrace after it was revealed that he had been warned about bullying in the party before the death of one of its young activists and did nothing about it. (Nov. 2015)

 

Nicky Morgan: a tale of ambition and pipe dreams

July

Prior to the last election, the Tories ditched the Jesuit zeal of Michael Gove and replaced it with the humanist sentiment of Nicky Morgan in order to improve their election chances. With the election won, Morgan has had time to establish herself as Education Secretary and we now see that the difference between her and Gove were no more than cosmetic, a new wrapper around the same ambitions and pipe dreams, the same structural tinkering and scapegoating.

In response to the latest PISA results, which has England in 26th place for Maths, Nicky pledged to put us in 5th place by 2020. Leaving aside the worth of the PISA tests, expecting our 15 year olds, five years hence, to achieve what can only be described as a miracle. Our position in the international league table has been unchanged since they started in the 1990s. What measures we may wonder will Morgan be introducing to accomplice this epic achievement, will Cecil B DeMille be on hand to capture the moment.

Morgan tells us that happiness is just as important as a string of top grades, she does not want her legacy to be academically able students who are miserable and stressed out. Here we see Morgan nodding in the direction of wellbeing; the latest fad sweeping across the education landscape. Quite how you encourage wellbeing in circumstances where children are being hot-housed to take on China's finest is as yet unknown.

Enter Richard Layard who established the Wellbeing Programme in 2003, he believes that the teaching of happiness is possible. He tells us:

"How can we do this? I think it requires an educational revolution in which a central purpose of our schools is to teach young people about the main secrets of happiness for which we have empirical evidence."

Layard's secrets include: Caring for others makes you happy… not comparing yourself to others … choosing goals that are attainable and always focussing on the positive. For Layard, schools should be in the business of character building and a distinct curriculum subject, designed to build character should be put in place. As yet, Morgan has not announced an intention to follow Layard's sanction.

 

Royal couple boost earnings

May

The Duchess of Cambridge, aka Kate Middleton, gave birth to a healthy baby girl. The new birth boosted Royal income, they are now entitled to £34.40 in child benefit! This time round the world's media didn't embarrass itself by commentating aimlessly about nothing for a week and inflicting pictures of closed hospital doors onto our TV sets every evening. The peasants, once again, celebrated, cheered and danced deliriously, as if they had just been named in the family will. They left chanting "Princess, Princess", before returning to their wretched hovels. Unfortunately, there is no known medical cure for forelock-tugging deference.

The BBC's royal correspondent, still waiting for a knighthood, Stupid Nick did cover the over-night pervigilium at Kensington Palace, he doesn't know why but then he has been Stupid since his christening.

With no news to report, Stupid made up his report covering the lack of movement that he witnessed. The Royal quartet all slept as if they had done a days work, being untroubled by the need to pay the hateful bedroom tax for all those empty rooms at Ken' Palace. The needs of the, as yet, unnamed child, were catered for by a squadron of zero hours agency nannies. Stupid said they just love the flexibility and travel opportunities; next stop Norfolk, although the nanny package excludes travel expenses.

Some chump from the Centre for Retail Research, Joshua Bamfield, estimates that the new child will add £150 million per annum to the UK's economy.

Blow us all down with a feather, now we know why we tolerate them. However, it just might be the case that Mr Bamfield is a demented idiot.

Then we had an announcement from Visit London that they expect 32 million visitors from abroad this summer. We do hope they will all not be expecting an audience with the unnamed one.

They tell us: "The royals are a key driver that attract people from the UK and abroad to the capital."

This is pure speculation and has no substance in fact. Indeed, they seem to ignore the facts, for instance, Windsor Castle is the most visited royal residence but only ranks 24th on the list of tourist attractions.

Visit London didn't say how many of the visitors would be Russian oligarchs, Chinese millionaire gang masters and Arab camel barons, in town just to add more hot air to Boris Johnson's London housing bubble.

 

Playing Euro Monopoly with a Greek person

June

According to Mr Hasbro, the rules of Euro Monopoly are simple, child's play, when you have no funds left, you are not playing anymore! So, become a spectator or find another game to play, perhaps with your new chum, Vlad the Impaler.

Also, in the rules, you will find the sanction that no player may borrow money from another player, only the bank. Well, it seems clear that the Greek person has been receiving substantial funds from other players, chiefly, a German woman and a French man - to the tune of £50bn. The European Central Bank has lent a good deal more but according to the rules this should only be done if the borrower has assets to cover the value of the loan - not rubbish government bonds.

These people are a crazy bunch of rule breakers; the Greek person should never have been allowed to join the game in the first place. The whole world knows that Greece did not meet the Copenhagen Criteria, the books were cooked by some American bank and all the other players ignored the crime and said welcome.

The Greek must now leave the game, the other players should never have lent money to the Greek, neither should the ECB. And to compound the silliness, we had the International Monetary Fund lending money to the Greek as well. The IMF were not even playing Euro Monopoly but decided to prop up the Greek and now they are getting all sulky and want their Euros back. But only a fool lends money to a man with empty pockets and should expect no more than a poke in the eye in return. They are telling the Greek, cut your pensions, raise VAT, and tell your people to sustain themselves on the contents of the trash cans.

As for the Greek, he was not born yesterday, he's just behaving like he was. Alexis Tsipras told his people that he would put an end to the austerity that was being imposed on his people by the money men. Tsipras was not lying, he just never Googled the rules of the game!

Rifkind and Straw duped into honesty

February

Jack Straw and Sir Malcolm Rifkind were caught out in a media sting, set by reporters from the Daily Telegraph and Channel 4's Dispatches posing as a Chinese firm wanting to employ politicians with influence to facilitate the company's business projects.

In separate interviews both men showed their true colours; greedy, duplicitous, idle and self-obsessed. Both appeared not to notice that they were nolonger sitting in the canopy of the political monkey tree.

Straw bragged about operating 'under the radar' in the past, when he helped out a firm that was paying him to get EU rules changed. He assured the phony Chinese company that he would not be averse to doing the same for them, for a small fee, £5000 a day.

Rifkind said he for up for anything since he had so much time on his hands these days. Adding: "I am self-employed - so nobody pays me a salary. I have to earn my income." He was a snip for between £5000-£8000 a day.

Rifkind's current earnings (those we know about) are £67,000 for being an MP (that will be the salary he says he doesn't get) and £180,000 for three company non-executive directorships. Subsequently, he described himself as "silly". Extremely silly bordering on idiocy would be nearer the mark.

Who's got the plastic sword?

However, his leader, Call Me Dave, acted with uncharacteristic speed and decisiveness, to jettison Rifkind from the Party. Dave had a problem, however, no one knew where the plastic sword was. Who had it last, Dave asked, ah, yes, it was that Maria Miller. Then Dave realised they had another problem, where was Miller - in her first home or second home?

Where's Straw

Straw has been stood down by One Nation Labour and appears to have gone to ground, perhaps he's working under the radar again. It will be good if he stays there, he still has questions to answer over extraordinary rendition.

Update for Jack Straw: The overdue release of Shaker Aamer in December, after 14 years in Guantanamo Bay, may cause Jack to have some flash backs about torture and rendition. Obviously, Jack will be relieved to hear that Shaker has no plans to sue anyone over his illegal detention.

 

King Abdullah: gone and easily forgotten

January

A cabal of Saudi sycophants lined up to pay homage to the oil money that pays for their fake tans and dental work. Our own great leader, Dave, made a superb contribution by referencing the dead king's “commitment to peace” and his encouragement for “understanding between faiths”. Now, citizens of these islands will by now have worked out that our Dave is not the sharpest tack in the toolbox, but Saudi funding for ISIS and al-Qaida could not have passed even him by. You do not have to be an Islamic scholar to know that Wahhabism is the most intolerant among religious ideologies. You will get your hands chopped off for bible smuggling and they will kill you for converting to another religion. And while we are laying it on with a trowel, we might as well add in the fact that women who get raped are accused of adultery.

Dave was not at the head of the fawning queue, that place is always reserved for Tony Blair. He said that Abdullah was “A staunch advocate of inter-faith relations … he launched the Arab Peace Initiative in 2002 which has stood the test of time as a potential basis for a solution to the Israel-Palestine issue” . Well, excuse me for being old fashioned but I see no evidence of any progress in relation to the Israel-Palestine issue over the past 12 years. Every time I see Tony Blair I am reminded of David Icke's notion that the world is being run by reptilian humanoids called the Babylonian Brotherhood.

Others in the Uriah Heep queue included:

Ban Ki-moon: “Under his leadership over many decades in different high-level positions in Government, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia achieved remarkable progress and prosperity for its people,”

Comment: That would be the same Ban Ki-moon who walked away from his abject failure in the Syrian conflict and signed up to the safer ground of supporting the save the planet brigade.

IMF chief Christine Lagarde: “A discreet but strong advocate of women”

Comment: By discreet she presumably means undetectable except by the Wahhabi police.

US Secretary of State John Kerry: “A brave partner in fighting violent extremism”

Comment: This man seriously raises suspicion that Icke may be on to something.

Barack Obama: “Always candid and had the courage of his convictions”

Comment: Obama should be more worried about his own convictions and the way he has failed the majority of Americans. In particular, he should examine his failure to stand up the gun toting lobby.

 

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Super Highway to nowhere

November

"Access to the internet shouldn't be a luxury, it should be a right - absolutely fundamental to life in 21st Century Britain," thus spoke our great leader. Mr Cameron promised to get a 10Mbps to those hard to reach locations, i.e. the places that the telcos can't be bothered with. All this will apparently happen by 2020. You may recall that silly ex-Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt, in 2012, promised us "the fastest broadband of any major European country" by 2015.

BT is the company being paid to drive the super highway project, they have already had £1bn from the tax payer, they may reach 95% of the population by 2017 but it's unlikely that that elusive 5% will be having their data hacked anytime soon. And they may well still be shopping in their local shops.

Tory Manifesto Pledge: "We will protect children"

April

Three quarters of all child protection departments across the country are not fit for purpose. Ofsted said!

Edward Timpson MP is the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children & Families. Timpson is more shadow than man of substance, never seen or heard in public. However his responsibilities are boundless, they include: adoption, fostering and residential care home reform; child protection; special educational needs; family law and justice; children’s and young people’s services; school sport and more.

Timpson then must be responsible for the failure of child protection in England that Ofsted point to? This might explain why he prefers to keep his head down. And after revelations from Rochdale, Rotherham and Oxford, who can blame shadow man for moving under the radar like Jack Straw.

Surely, the Tory manifesto would have much to say about addressing child protection failure throughout the land. Well, actually no. All it says is:

"We will continue to raise the quality of children’s social work, by expanding training programmes, such as Frontline, and creating new opportunities to develop the next generation of leaders in the field."

Celebration for a psychopath

March

Henry VII paid £60 for Richard III's tomb. That was in 1495, today that would buy you a BMW 4 Series Convertible. If you find that fact remotely interesting, you were probably one of those who stood and gawped as Richard's bones were paraded through the streets of Leicester.

What kind of lunacy was this, 35,000 turned out to watch the funeral possession of a psychopath who died 500 years ago. Predictably, flower throwing extras from the funeral of the People's Princess were in attendance, alongside others bused in from Brize Norton and Wootton Bassett - there to add audience participation and interactivity to the proceedings.

Flower throwers aside, it would be foolish to ask what all these people were doing or why they turned out to watch a bag of bones roll by? It's like asking why a dog chases its own tail, obviously because it's got nothing better to do. Not much happens in Leicester, finding Richard in that supermarket car park changed all that. Thus far, 250,000 people have paid £7.85 to see the hole in the car park where the bones were found. The site is laughingly called a Visitor Centre but it's hard to disguise the fact that you have just paid a kingly sum to stair at an empty hole. And over at Leicester Cathedral, a queue of 5000 formed to view the coffin; business is brisk in tea towels, mugs, key rings and other useless objects with Richard III printed on them.

Interest Rate to rise

July

Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, finally provided the world with some 'forward guidance', when he announced this week that interest rates would rise by the end of the year or perhaps early next year

The world may have forgotten the notion of forward guidance but it was Carney's attempt to differentiate himself from the spectator of financial chaos who preceded him. Carney really is what they used to call 'a placeman' in the 18th century. Over his time in post he has done and said nothing of any note, which is exactly what he gets paid to do.

Update, December, The Bank of England Biscuit Committee announced that there would be no increase in the interest rate. It is unknown how many biscuits and cups of tea were consumed to arrive at this momentous decision.

Gove and prison education

July

It seems that Gove just can't get over his failure as education secretary and now seems determined to address failure elsewhere, in the prison estate, by using education to solve all the problems of Britain's prison system. A prison system that the Inspector for Prisons says is in a mess, "places of violence, squalor and idleness".

In a typical Tory sound bite Gove said he would end the "idleness and futility" of prison life. However, Gove was shoved off of his soapbox by shadow justice secretary and wallpaper expert, Lord Falconer:

"How can prisons focus on improving the quality of education when violence and drug-taking are rife, there is persistent overcrowding and serious assaults on staff are rising?" He forgot to mention staff shortages, especially in the training department. Also, and not a minor detail, a huge number of inmates are drug and alcohol dependent, the majority are mentally disturbed - not exactly fertile ground for a prison education revolution.

 

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