Something we can expect a great deal more from the Labour sympathising commentariat between now and the May 2010 General Election, is disingenuous garbage masquerading as “impartial analysis”.  An example is Anatole Kaletsky’s article in The Times today entitled The two faced Tories can’t have it both ways.   Commenting upon the article, Padraig O'Halloran retorted,

“If one were overly-generous, one would say that Anatole is as a political babe-in-the-wood.  He knows full well that Oppositions are supposed to hold governments to account - pointing out the details and truth about policies and the economic status.

 

When the Tories spell out the extent of the economic mess, “they are talking down the economy”. When they spell out their broad policy directions and some policy details, they are not being totally candid, apparently.

With the unlimited bureaucratic resources available, together with the co-opted public servants, from Gus O'Connell down, any incumbent can cause any Opposition a lot of grief - who can argue with all that “impartial” analysis? Yeah, right!

Any Opposition would be totally stupid to spell out the full details of their intentions, then be blown over by shrieks of “unfunded spending, “blackholes”, etc.

Stick to economics, Anatole!”

Whilst largely agreeing with Mr O’Halloran’s reply, I should add that Mr Kaletsky’s views upon economics have oft been found wanting, too.

Reports Richard Norton-Taylor of The Guardian today,

“Joanna Lumley said today that Gurkha supporters had been the victims of smears and lies, after a defence minister publicly apologised for attacking her over the way she conducted the successful campaign to allow all Nepalese veterans of the British army the right to settle in the UK.

 

Kevan Jones, the veterans' minister, said: “I apologise unreservedly for any offence caused to Joanna Lumley … I have the greatest of respect for Joanna for her superb work on Gurkha issues.”

Joanna Lumley is held in great esteem by the British Public and in consequence is strong enough to look after herself, but what of the lawyers involved on behalf of the Gurkhas?  According to Mr  Richard Norton-Taylor,

“[Kevan] Jones was asked by the Commons home affairs committee whether he was aware of “rogue solicitors” involved in Gurkha cases. He replied that he understood an organisation called the Gurkha Army Ex-Servicemen's Organisation (GAESO) had been taking payments of £500 from Gurkha veterans and passing them on to UK solicitor Howe & Co, which was part of the campaign to win settlement rights.

 

The firm’s senior partner, Martin Howe, said Jones’s comments were “extremely defamatory”. “I knew at the time that his words were untrue and should not have been made, but as a result almost a Stasi-like investigation was started into my firm. Within days investigators were in my office, crawling over files, questioning people, asking for documentation.” ”

Anyone who dares to challenge Labour’s distorted version of the truth or exposes its spin on events is smeared, or worse.

Gurkha champion Joanna Lumley attacks 'smears' by minister

“Labour vowed last night to target the shadow chancellor, George Osborne, as the strategic "weak link" in the Conservatives' bid for power.

 

Party sources told the Observer that a decision had been taken to focus on Osborne as the prime target throughout the campaign, because the future stewardship of the economy is the issue that most concerns voters.

 

They said there was "strong evidence" from their own focus groups that people regard Osborne as "shrill, immature and lightweight", and that the Tories are already being harmed in the polls because of doubts about their economic policies.”

 

The Observer

It is going to be a case of smear, smear and smear again.

“It was no coincidence that the Ministry of Justice chose to release details of the highest-paid legal aid barristers and firms at the same time as it unveiled its latest plans for a tendering system for legal aid work.

The unsubtle message is, ‘we’re tightening our grip on what we will shell out on legal aid, and if you want to know why,  just look at how much some of these lawyers are trousering’.

It is ironic, then, that the firms the Ministry of Justice has chosen to spotlight as high earners are following precisely the model that it favours – increasing in size, taking on high volumes of work and operating with maximum efficiency.”

Editorial – Law Society Gazette

“Even now, though, we are gullible. Artificially low interest rates have made people think that things are looking up. The outlook is “brighter” for house prices, we read. As Spring comes at last, people linger longer at the estate agents' window, unaware that the cost of debt servicing is already rising. It may well be right, because of our near-collapse in 2008, not to put up rates yet, but rates held down for too long persuade people to forget risk, which is why we got where we are. It suits Mr Brown to encourage that oblivion. Between now and May, he has to try to make us feel hopeful, when the truth, in exact reversal of the winning slogan of 1997, is that things can only get worse.”

Charles Moore

…as the opinion polls begin to show the Conservative lead widening again.  It is understandable, of course.  It is not the news most of the commentariat want to hear because it drowns a good story about a “hung Parliament” following the General Election in May 2010 and also, given the political sympathies of a significant number of them, it is unwelcome.

Dominic Lawson tells a few home truths about opinion polls results here.

“…Among the ordinary public, meanwhile, many people know little beyond an oft-quoted fact that a mere 6 per cent of reported rapes end in a conviction.  But as a thoughtful government review, published today, points out, constant repetition of this figure – usually for the purpose of indicting an allegedly failing police and criminal justice system – is unhelpful to victims and society alike.  It is a good example of a “fact” that generates more heat than light.

As Baroness Stern's report explains, this low figure refers only to the percentage of complaints received by the police that end in a conviction. About 60 per cent of those actually charged with rape are indeed convicted by the courts. This latter figure radically changes the standard portrayal of a justice system that is routinely failing women and all too often treating the victims as if they had “asked for it”.”

Leader - The Independent

The Stern Review

A guide to injustice: something must be done – anything in fact, to raise rape conviction rates

Professor Jennifer Temkin rides again: devious barristers and ignorant judges

“Mr Brown's act of hypnosis is to make us ignore the facts about what will become of Britain should he be left in charge for much longer: economically relegated, permanently crippled with debt, addicted to public spending and big state interference, reliant on ever higher taxes and ruled by the trade unions.”

Gordon Brown has voters in a trance - it's time for a wake-up call – Benedict Brogan

“We British Muslims, who enjoy full freedom of faith, should remember that Islam obliges us to be good neighbours and respect others. Rather than dismissing objections as either racist or intolerant, we should listen to local opinion. And if the Muslims of Camberley are still determined to build their “traditional” mosque, they should seek an alternative site. More importantly, they should jettison reactionary ideology and adopt a progressive Islam that is part of the British mainstream.”

Taj Hargey

“[The Liberal Democrats] show no sign of ceasing to be the third party in British politics. They remain a dustbin for the votes of all those whose policy on cake is pro-having it and pro-eating it, and who think you can govern the country by sucking and blowing at the same time [My emphasis].”

Boris Johnson

“You would expect [the Bribery Bill] to criminalise both the person who pays a bribe and the person who accepts one. And so it does. But the Bribery Bill also makes it lawful for a very broad range of law enforcement agencies to provide or receive what would otherwise be improper financial inducements.  They include not just the police, prosecutors and bodies such as HM Revenue & Customs and the UK Borders Agency. Clause 12 would allow every environmental health officer and local authority trading standards officer in the land to go around handing out or accepting cash if they can prove, on the balance of probabilities, that this is necessary for the prevention, investigation or detection of ‘serious’ crime.

Officers from all the security and intelligence services would also be able to pay or receive bribes if they can show it was needed for the ‘proper exercise of any function’. So would all troops on active service.”

Joshua Rozenberg

Says House of Lords Constitution Committee member Lord Pannick QC,

“It is quite unacceptable for any intelligence officer of whatever rank, any employee of the CPS or any employee of a local authority carrying out law enforcement functions to be able to decide for themselves to carry out an act of bribery.”

Quite so.

“Having overcome rivalry between Protestants and Catholics, and learned to live in harmony with the Jewish faith and other minority religions and cultures by accepting a society based on Judaeo-Christian principles, we should be wary of those who seek to implant a rival culture with its own legal systems and standards of public behaviour to keep separate its followers from the mainstream of our majority. Apartheid is made no better by being voluntary.”

Norman Tebbit

“Although designed to deal with serious crime, European Arrest warrants are often issued for minor crimes. This puts huge pressure on the police and courts, and shipping people across Europe for petty crimes is, in itself, grossly disproportionate.”

Jago Russell

“And the next time a Labour politician bangs on about Thatcher having destroyed Britain’s manufacturing base, remember this: under new Labour, manufacturing output has contracted by 1.2 per cent every year, down to around 12 per cent of GDP. Britain’s finances were in deep structural deficit before the crisis hit — one reason why, even with aggressive fiscal pump-priming, it has taken Britain longer than any other major economy to start emerging from recession.”

Rosemary Righter

“Class attack is an inherently discourteous and unpleasant way of conducting yourself. Voters and the news media already have an image fixed of the viciousness and spite that [Gordon Brown] and those around him show to enemies both within and outside their party.”

Matthew Parris

 “What has become evident in the run-up to [the climate change conference in] Copenhagen is that every time someone comes up with some ludicrous, self-flagellating proposal, yet another chunk of the population becomes disenchanted with the whole issue. There can hardly be a farmer left in Britain who has any truck with fighting climate change after being told last week that 30 per cent of the livestock in this country needed to go.

The failure of the “experts” to understand the situation was staggering. They clearly did not know that 60 per cent of our farm land is grassland, suitable only for rearing animals. The environmental damage that would ensue should this be ploughed up for cereals and legumes would be catastrophic.”

Charlie Brooks

“When Thatcherism destroyed organised labour and unleashed free market fundamentalism 25 years ago, the middle-class professions cheered, wearied of power cuts and grateful for tax cuts. But the bell tolled for them too. ‘Professionals’ replaced miners as the ‘enemy within’; they too had to be neutered as one of the remaining bulwarks against the power of the state and untrammelled markets. And so the assault began, through privatisation, commoditisation, the sweeping away of restrictive practices, and an obsession with costs and targets at the expense of amorphous ‘value’.

That the status of professionals should have diminished in consequence was only to be expected.”

Editorial – Law Society Gazette

“The brazenness with which Mr Brown reduced the election ahead to a battle between the rich and the rest has one advantage at least: it exposed the fraudulence of his claim to govern for all the people, or whatever the phrase was that he used when he first took over in 2007. He governs for himself and his party, first and always.

And, like the Russians retreating before Napoleon, Mr Brown pursues a scorched earth strategy. Its purpose is two-fold: to put the Tories on the spot as an Opposition by driving them towards difficult policy choices that can then be demolished, while doing everything to ensure that if they do get in, they will find the wells have been filled and the fields ploughed with salt.”

Benedict Brogan

“Labour’s hopes of avoiding a general election rout at the hands of David Cameron’s Tories will be boosted today as a new poll shows a sharp fall in the Conservative's lead, raising the possibility of a hung parliament”

reports The Observer  today.  The figures show Conservative support slipping to 37% - only six per cent ahead of Labour.  However, the field work for this “new poll” conducted by Ipsos MORI was undertaken between 13^th and 15^th November 2009, the same period as The Guardian’s ICM poll published six days earlier.  The Guardian/ICM poll disclosed the Conservatives as being thirteen points ahead of Labour.

One of these polls looks like a rogue.  Now let me think…which one?

Yesterday, discussing why it would be suicidal electorally for either of the main party leaders to holiday abroad in a hot clime this Christmas Steve Richards of the Independent explained,

“The case of Cameron is more revealing. Unlike Blair he would be taking a big risk if he headed for somewhere hot this winter, and the reasons highlight better than any opinion poll why he has not “sealed the deal”, to apply the accurate cliché.”

Four days earlier Julian Glover of the The Guardian reported the result of the latest Guardian/ICM poll under the heading, “Cameron closing deal despite Labour boost – Guardian/ICM poll”. According to the poll, as well as indicating that Labour had lost its crown as the champion of the poor,

“Cameron appears to be cementing his reputation with voters on key issues of character – suggesting that voting Tory isn't just about being fed up with Labour, but is now being seen as a positive move.”

If the facts don’t fit your argument, ignore them.

Enough of this nonsense about David Cameron not having “sealed the deal”

So Labour held Glasgow North East in yesterday’s by-election.  This was hardly a surprise, particularly as the Labour Party was likely to throw everything into the fight to retain the seat.  As reports The Times today,

“So desperate was Labour to hang on to this seat that the party flooded the constituency yesterday with hundreds of activists from all over Britain.”

Now, they are not going to be able to repeat that concentration of their remaining activists at every vulnerable seat during a General Election, are they?

In The Sunday Times on 1^st November 2009, Andrew Sullivan wrote,

 “And my bet is that in a decade’s time, the banning of cannabis will seem as strange as the banning of alcohol.”

This is not the first time I’ve heard that sentiment expressed.  Indeed, it was a common view at my school.  In 1971.

“…Mr Cameron and his close allies are proper, robust Eurosceptics. The Tory split on Europe at the beginning of the last decade was always misunderstood. The party was not split down the middle. The vast majority were on the Eurosceptic side. The row came because a relatively small, senior and ageing group at the top of the party was intent on resisting the stance that everyone else wanted to take. So in Mr Cameron’s generation almost everyone is a Eurosceptic. His position was, and remains, standard on the British centre Right.”

 

Daniel Finkelstein

And while you’re at it you should read this, too.

Addressing The Sun newspaper on 26th September 2007, David Cameron announced,

 “Today, I will give this cast-iron guarantee: If I become PM a Conservative government will hold a referendum on any EU treaty that emerges from these negotiations.

 

No treaty should be ratified without consulting the British people in a referendum.”

To highlight the obvious, Gordon Brown signed the Treaty of Lisbon on 13^th December 2007 thereby completing, in effect, the ratification process on behalf of the United Kingdom.  Today, the last outstanding signatory, President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic, signed the Treaty. Ratification by all member states of the European Union is now complete.  It is all over bar the shouting.

The referendum pledge by the Conservatives envisaged that the Treaty had not been ratified – “No treaty should be ratified without consulting the British people in a referendum”. We now know that the ratification process was accelerated (and according to some conspiracy theorists, a General Election delayed) to avoid the prospect of a Conservative Government throwing a spanner in the works. The Conservatives have little choice but to give up on the Lisbon Treaty referendum.  It has been overtaken by events.

Labour and its Media fellow travellers will now no doubt present the Conservatives as having reneged on their promise.  That would be worse than disingenuous.

“We have seen from alcohol and tobacco exactly what legalising certain substances can do to health, so why on earth add others?”

Ann Widdicombe

“All peoples possess a culture, but this does not mean all cultures are equally valid and commendable.  Some values and ideas are better than others.”

Peter Tatchell

“Policy-based evidence making”

It’s what Labour do.

Hat Tip to Obnoxio

According to The Sunday Times today,

“Gordon Brown is planning a final public spending spree to help pull the economy out of recession and put pressure on the Conservatives over their plans for deep cuts….

....Brown also hopes the stimulus package will open a new dividing line between Labour and Conservative plans over the public finance.  “At the next election we need a clear story to tell about how Labour will support the economy through investment while the Tories would choke off the recovery with draconian cuts,” said a cabinet source.”

The report continues,

“However, the proposals have caused alarm among Treasury officials who fear any increased spending could upset the financial markets, making it harder to service the growing national debt.”

Just how much long term damage is the Labour Government prepared to inflict upon the British economy in return for a small amount of political gain against the Conservatives?

The problem with pointing out that Polish MEP Michal Kaminski has a splinter in his eye when he doesn’t is that as well as damaging Foreign Secretary David Miliband’s credibility; it also causes attention to be drawn to the plank in Labour’s own.

This is yet more proof that Labour cannot even run an effective smear campaign anymore.

Accusing Euro-sceptics of anti-Semitism is the most shameful tactic yet

As should be expected, the “progressive” Media has roundly condemned the removal of Professor David Nutt from his position at the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.  In essence, the pro legalisation of “recreational drugs” lobby approve of what Professor Nutt has to say, so it is outraged by his treatment by Home Secretary Alan Johnson.

As an adviser who has suffered the rejection of sound advice, I can commiserate to a small degree with the Professor but at the end of the day he is paid to give an opinion and his “client” is entitled to accept or reject it, notwithstanding that he is a high and mighty academic.  It is the Professor’s paroxysm at the rejection of his advice and reaction that shows, to my mind, that the Home Secretary was right to ask for his resignation.

Sacked drugs adviser accuses Gordon Brown of meddling in cannabis decision

Sacked – for telling the truth about drugs

Sacked adviser criticises Brown

Do you really want to help Labour divide and conquer?

As usual, someone else expresses my thoughts better than I ever could, so today I quote Dominic Lawson (with my emphasis),

“People seldom seem more pointlessly pompous than when they declare a joke to be "not funny"; and as for [Jimmy] Carr's career being at an end, I suspect he will still be doing successful stand-up long after everyone has forgotten who Patrick Mercer is – assuming that they knew in the first place.

 

Above all, I am certain that Jimmy Carr will be much more popular with the squaddies out in Iraq and Afghanistan than any of the politicians who sent them out there into harm's way. This is not least because Carr, unlike Ainsworth apparently, has been a regular visitor to the Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham and the neighbouring rehabilitation unit Headley Court, where maimed British soldiers – hundreds each year – are treated within the NHS.  He will have witnessed for himself the amazing moral and physical strength required to recover from appalling injuries and trauma – and also the remarkable skills of the medical teams giving the hope of some sort of tolerable life to men who in previous wars would have had little possibility even of survival.”

 

“David Cameron could find old regime partisans sniping at him from the hills; the people who sit on boards and commissions, hold chairs and run reviews: the whole well-intentioned infrastructure of progressive society that, almost like royalty, remains in place from one government to the next.”

Julian Glover

Labour’s fifth columnists

The Conservatives winning the next General Election is not the half of it

“…in the past six years, I have risen several hours earlier than I used to in my innocent bachelor days and, in consequence, I now go to bed at the hour I used to start going out….”

Michael Gove

So, Gordon Brown says that the British economy will be growing again by the turn of the year, according to his podcast yesterday.  Taking into account that the next quarter will include the Christmas trading period and the figures for the most recent quarter showed a slowing contraction of the British economy, I suppose he might be proved right, technically.  In any event, one “good” quarter would not make a recovery, especially if it is followed by indifferent figures, let alone figures showing further albeit small, contractions of the economy. A weak recovery is little better than no recovery at all, except for the purpose of temporarily boosting moral, unless prolonged.  In fact, the prospects for real sustainable growth in 2010 are not good.  A stall of “the recovery” in the first quarter of 2010 is more likely than not, notwithstanding the Labour Government’s attempts to engineer a phoney uplift in the economy during the months preceding the next General Election.

This recession is unfortunately, another struggle that will not “be over by Christmas”.

This is the crux of the issue, isn’t it?

“They feel [uncontrolled immigration] diminishes their chances in life.

 

It threatens their jobs, they believe. Ten years ago, a self-employed painter and decorator in, say, Barking might have earned £120 a day, enough to get a reasonable mortgage and sustain a modestly secure family life. Today, after the Government underestimated the number of Eastern Europeans likely to come here by almost 20 times, he would get £70 or £80. If his ailing father pays regular visits to hospital, he may be denied a bed because so many foreign women are giving birth. If his child has special needs, he may find the local school neglects them because it is desperately trying to teach English to children who do not speak it at home. If his brother is a soldier, he may return from risking his life to be insulted on the streets of his country by people who hate it.

 

…If they complain, they are told they are racist. It is not surprising that they say things like “My country is being taken away from me”. They are not completely mistaken.”

 

Charles Moore

 

“It should have been laughably straightforward for the panellists to debate with and destroy Griffin’s arguments. Instead, inflated by their outrage, the other speakers repeatedly interrupted, spoke over and cut short the BNP leader. They could have given him all the rope he needed to hang himself. By treating him as a pariah not even granted the liberty of finishing many of his sentences, never mind a particular proposition he was beginning to elaborate, they showed precisely the disregard for others and their views that they condemn in Griffin’s party.

Nearly one million people voted for the BNP in the Euro-elections. Whatever one thinks of their party’s platform, they have a right to be heard. Some parties cannot be more “legal” than others. That is a consequence of living in a democracy and it is part of cherishing the right to free speech. You persuade such people that they are wrong by discussion of what they say; and that means exactly what they say, not what it can be distorted into sounding like...”

Sholto Byrnes

________________

“Was there nobody to restate, with the relaxed confidence that philosophical certitude should bring, the only available position for a modern British liberal: that this is a free country in which a range of highly diverse opinions may be held and, if held, published, subject to the law? Full stop. Yes, full stop; for heaven’s sake, full stop.”

Matthew Parris

“The Foreign Secretary accused the public yesterday of lacking a sense of urgency in the face of the potentially devastating consequences of climate change.”

We don’t pay much attention to religious cults when they tell us the world is going to end next week, either.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband accuses public of climate change apathy

 “Economists today cast doubt on official data showing that British gross domestic product (GDP) contracted by 0.4 per cent between July and September, claiming the surprise fall is far worse than economic reality.

The shock figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed that the country remained mired in recession during the third quarter — the sixth consecutive quarter of contraction, signalling the country’s longest downturn since records began in 1955.

Economists had widely expected that the country had emerged from recession between July and September.”

Oh dear.

Economists revolt over surprise recession data

This morning The Daily Telegraph's  Benedict Brogan provides another reason why the Conservatives are not as far ahead in the opinion polls as certain (Labour supporting) media commentators believe they should be at this stage of the game.

“From the beginning, when [David Cameron’s] leadership campaign struggled to attract the support of commentators, he learnt to do without…

 

....He is more at ease in the media salons of London than Mr Brown. But he has so far managed to resist the pressure to trade policies for headlines. That may explain why he has yet to secure the kind of fawning coverage from the press that Tony Blair enjoyed in 1996.”

 

And you can cut the bunkum about “Tony Blair having had a more substantial opinion poll lead than David Cameron at the same point in the electoral cycle”, too

Enough of this nonsense about David Cameron not having “sealed the deal”

They're at it again

“[Sarah Brown] calls [Gordon Brown] a hero but she is considered a heroine for conquering her nerves and standing up publicly for her beleaguered husband. Actually she is an incredibly astute PR woman. She has exploited Twitter more effectively than any British politician or celebrity, overtaking Stephen Fry as the country’s foremost Twitterer. She wanders round Glastonbury with Naomi Campbell, organises photo shoots of the G8 wives for Vogue and is seen squeezing President Obama’s hand, just as the special relationship comes under scrutiny….

.....This is no meek housewife, it’s a woman who is enjoying the limelight more than her husband.”

Alice Thomson

Of the Labour Party Max Hastings remarks today,

“This is a Party in such dire straits that Peter Mandelson, a man with the moral compass of Dr Faustus, is perceived as its most plausible saviour.”

 

I have a problem with all this nonsense involving the Attorney General, Baroness Scotland.  Her mitigation is being spun currently on the basis that her “technical breach” of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 was merely an oversight by way of her not photocopying her housekeeper Loloahi Tapui’s documentation. Thus it is argued that she did not knowingly employ a person who did not have the right to live and work in this country.  Might I ask what documentation it was that Baroness Scotland omitted to copy?  It has been established that Ms Tapui had no right to remain in this country, so she could not have possessed any relevant papers to copy.  The Attorney General failed to read the documentation she was purportedly shown, or failed to read it properly before failing to copy it as the law required.

All this from someone who is the chief legal adviser to the Government and responsible for all Crown litigation, yet she does not resign nor is she dismissed.  Incredible.

Baroness Scotland must now stand down