uk politics

00:01
The BBC has the usual suspects, a Dimbleby, heroically trying to interest us in Tumbridge Wells. Charles Kennedy is doing well, considering the late hour. George Osbourne is slowly turning into a Thunderbird puppet. Jeremy Vine is using the 'Ascent of Man' as a swingometer. Really. I wonder what ideas were rejected.

Bloggers are representeed by Iain Dale Blogger Royal to the Court of David Davis, Luke Akenhurst (Hi Luke, remember us?) representing the vacuousness at the core of the New Labour machine. There's some Lib-Dem blogger, but I've no idea who she is. Funnily enough there are no independent minded bloggers, just party hacks with shiny laptops.

Tessa Jowell is gracing  us with her insight. Notably she once said she'd happily throw herself under a bus for Tony. This propmted us to get an HGV and Passenger licence, but somehow she never seemed serious about her pledge, despite our best efforts.

00:19
We watched a programme on cannabis just before, and the presenter tried out lots of Dutch skunk as part of her research. The presenters of this broadcast would also benefit from a good lungfull of White Widow. Dimbleby is searching for Tim. Think Tim's hiding.

00:23
George Osbourne has just spoken about their conference in Gateshead. Apparantly they all got out without being lynched and he seems to think this is progress. Vine and the ascent of man are telling us what we, the humble public think. Apparantly when asked which party leader is a good leader, not one gets a majority. Jimmy doesn't actually say that but the figures do speak out.

00:27
Nuneaton has made history, we are told as the Tories grab the council, that also includes two councillors from the BNP, who figure on the far left - for once - on Jimmy's tribute to Dr. Jacob Bronowski, right next to the plankton. Osbourne's just been told that it's doom for Labour.

00:37
Let's be honest, there's nothing exciting going to happen. The politicians and tame parthy hack bloggers are going to say exactly what we expect and I could blog this whole long dark night of the polls in advance and get it right. some presenter, fresh from Local News has just interviewed some bloke from TV who gave us some funny voices. This is likely to bwe the highlight, unless I'm way off and we'll wake up tomorrow happy in the knowledge that ' we were there when they announced bogworth and crapstone'.

Jowell's telling us that this is all about which party has the best policies, the best leader. Earlkier she was saying that it was all about local issues. apparantly national turmoil translates to local uncertainties.

Oh God, Jimmy's just doing a sub Comic Relief skit pretending to be a cowboy. Oh God. This is more embarrassing since Richard went all AliG on our ass. Ye Gods man, just stop. Seriously, think of what your kids are going to face in school.

00:56
T' Bloggers are spouting. Dale is doing his usual stuff, t'Lib Dem is telling us how happy LD's are always - they're content with their usual flatlining, but she does offer some advice for Jimmy "Stop doing that now". Poor Luke is struggling, reduced to pointing to a solitary seat gain in Hastings or somewhere is making people feel very positive. That says  it all really.

01:04
Shock news from Wales: "Labour have seven councils. If they lose three they'll be left with four.

01:07
This is what's wrong with politics. It's just the same old crap, the same old vacuous spin and the same bland boring guff. Kennedy's talking about something, in his own words, 'quite interesting'. It isn't. He's saying that the LD's have the ability to take on Labour and the Conservatives. They do and they appear to be losing. Tessa is backpeddeling faster than Kollerstrom, but listening to her is about as enlightening as being subjected to Vogon poetry. Boris Johnson's dad is speaking. All is clear. It's a genetic defect.

01:18
John Denham is bullshitting like a true pro. He's saying 'we're listening to the message from the voters and we'll get through this difficult patch and get back to you'. Apparantly losing Southampton is down to the LD's even though Lab have also lost seats. They need to show that they've listened and the causes for that and that they've always listened to people and will continue to listen to people.

Think we've got the "Line To Take". Jimmy's using a lot of bad photoshop to illustrate something or other. Thankfully not with a Texan accent.

01:28
Ed Milliband is whittering along the listening to people guff - camera cuts to a stony faced panel. He appears to be trying to master some Yoda type hand signals. The 10p Tax has been 'difficult'. Robinson says they're doing worse than Blair's low point and the Brown bounce has turned into a Brown flounce. Can I face much more of this content-free comment. It's this boring.

01:43
Congratulations to Gordon, you're now scoring less that Blair did - 24%. Even the narcoleptic Lib Dems are getting more votes. Response, yet more guff about being 'very conscious' about listening, but this is about local issues, but it's a referendum about how well Labour are doing according to the Chair of the Parliamentry Labour Party. What has it not been listening to? the 10p tax rate. Now they have to explain why they're doing this and get through this rough patch.

Ye Gods. Will this crap never end?

01:49
It won't stop. Geoff Hoon is telling us how wonderful Labour is and trying the 'oh sorry I didn't think that question was addressed to me ploy when challenged. An odd one for a one-on-one interview.

01:54
Geoff Hoon is saying there's no crisis at 24% of the vote. Nick Robinson says that there's nothing for Labour to do, they can't change leader and don't know what to do. CUT TO Ed Milliband looking terrified. After more guff Milliband say that the Tories shouldn't be too happy over the results. And Labour will listen to people. No sign of listening to reality knocking on their door though.

02:00
Lord Hoyle is basically say they've got to listen. Pollster Tony King asks that when you've done listening, what are you going to do? Well, it seems that they have to adjust to problems before they happen. Then they're going to listen some more. The policies seemto be right so they'll listen to people.

02:05
Dimbleby wakes up Vince Clarke to tell him the LD's have lost Liverpool. He takes it well.

02:11
The LD's have Liverpool after all. They signed up an independent at the count for an unspecified 'offer'. Before this Jeremy Vine frittered away his dignity by waving pictures of Gordon Brown badly photoshopped onto Mr Bean in the air. To think this man was once referred as Paxman's Mini-me. He maybe demoted to the Teletubbies after this, at least he can embarrass himself in relative anonyminity.

Just returned from the Yorkshire Rantercon down Southwark way to find that Gwyneth Dunwoody has died aged 77.  Anyone who's ever had a passing interest in transport politics knows this is a sad loss, she was pretty much the epitome of backbench power as well as a hugely capable chair of the Commons Transport Select Committee, and was even up to her last weeks a formidable and capable examiner of anyone who came before her.  RIP.

The Chinese are, in my view on a PR disaster trail, with the Olympic torch. Today will not be remembered for the torch, but for the 20 35 or so people arrested. The free Tibet campaigner and the 'China is Great' counter campaigners.

One of the main stories I heard from from the 'China is Great' lot, is this, The Tibetans have killed my brothers and family, the thing is, I heard the very same story from far to many of the Chinese contingent. So I can only guess that it's the 'story' to tell any westerner who comes to the protests. Oh and that the BBC tells lies, to that, well, I can agree to at times.

So, here's some photo's of the demo at Trafalgar Square.

click for more image.

The BBC's view on the story here

Some History on the 'torch'  here. Something about a certain Carl Diem. Some link there with the past trying to tell us something. It's just a costly show with no benefit for anyone.

There's some new bloggers on the block - Lords of the Blog, who are members of the House of Lords and the site is an experiment in finding ways of communicating between their Lordships and the outside world. the posts are erudite, interesting and worth checking out. We can't see these guys getting into the tiresome but frequent flame wars running through the political blogosphere.

Some political memoirs are enlightening revelations, others are a window into governance. Oona's diaries are a cynical justification of her own failed ambitions. The diaries are not, despite her assurances, contemporary but are filled with post facto rewrites, often blatantly so.

She comes across as being completely overwhelmed, thoroughly disorganised and virtually friendless in the House. Somehow she portrays herself as an independent rebel, something not in accordance with the facts.

A mean and bitter streak is occasionally on show. After her first Question in the house she says "a lot of Tory MP's came up to me saying they were impressed.  Low expectations of black women can sometimes be helpful." Alternatively, the explanation could be that MP's traditionally say some kind words after a new member's first intervention.

Strangely enough, Oona is never short of a catty remark when ever Diane Abbot appears - a black, female MP.

In her lengthy introduction she explains how she studied Islam - getting a First, naturally. Strangely, to mark moments of great joy, she writes the Arabic phrase "Alli Akbar".

Oops. Even the Shia would find that deeply blasphemous. How can one not be aware of Allahu Akbar, especially when you claim an expertise in Islamic studies and live in a multicultural seat?

What is so exhausting about this book is the relentless me, me, me. Not one word of praise given to her is omitted, no admiring glance unrecorded. Underneath this, there is nothing. No substance, no revelation, just a self obsessed little girl drowning out of her depth.

The afterword is a real gem. After losing her seat our heroine finds herself on a plane and gets into conversation with a fellow passenger, who spontaneously starts spouting off about his wonderful, fantastic MP, a certain Oona King, whereupon our heroine reveals herself, the supplicant denies it could be her as she is so youthful!

In the blurb, Neil Kinnock says "It would make a good novel - but people would think it a little far fetched". This could be an example of Neil's famed sense of humour, but in this book the truth is stretched beyond breaking point time and time again. I've read plenty of politicians memoirs and this is perhaps the most shallow, the most self-serving and the least useful to history.

So, Gordon Brown has decided in his infinite wisdom that what school children need more than, say, learning to read and write, is to pledge allegiance to Queen and Country. This has to be his most idiotic idea to date.

Of course, if the kids were actually taught some history, then they'd know just what a destructive force nationalism can be, but seeing as basic literacy seems to be beyond the capabilities of so many schools, I guess the secret is safe. No, far better to teach children to revere an over-privileged family and salute a piece of cloth while filling their heads with bullshit concepts like “my country right or wrong”.

I just can't see this idea working. Can you imagine a bunch of half-pissed hoodies saluting the flag and singing the national anthem with trembling lips and tears in their eyes? – Tears of laughter perhaps. But Comrade Gordon seems to be very attached to this idea, he's been banging on about “Britishness” for months now without actually defining the term.

This nationalistic fervour is however, a disturbing development. Gordon has got Lord Goldsmith to come up with a report on “Britishness” and his ideas go several stops beyond barking. 

• A "small" council tax discount for people who complete volunteer work in the community, like organising neighbourhood recycling projects, helping children to learn to read in schools or setting up a residents' association

How small? Miniscule I bet! This sounds like slave labour to me. I particularly liked the “helping children to learn to read in schools” What is it teachers are supposed to be doing again? Oh that's right, teaching kids to Seig Heil the flag! 

• Reduction in university tuition fees and student loans for university undergraduates who carry out volunteer work

Slave labour again. Shouldn't students be, erm, studying?

• Extending citizenship ceremonies to all young people, with the possibility of incorporating the oath of allegiance to the Queen and the pledge of commitment to the UK

I've covered this bit. It's bullshit.

• A British national day by 2012, to coincide with the Olympics and what will be the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.

Well, I'm fine with the day off bit but I think I'll give all the flag waving a miss – or is that treason? Which brings us neatly to:

• Reform or scrapping of Britain's old Treason laws

We can't have people disagreeing with the Generalissimo can we?

• A review of the current ban on asylum seekers taking paid jobs

Careful Gordon, don't want to upset the Daily Mail do we?

• Reducing the fee charged for becoming a British citizen from £655, with a larger discount for foreigners who apply as soon as they become eligible

So what happens to British residents who have been productively here for decades, are they to be penalised?

• Creation of a new National Citizens' Corps, whose members could provide advice to others on training and development in citizenship.

Good grief!! I've been trying to avoid Godwin's law up to now. But FFS Gordon, why not go the whole hog and set up your own version of the Hitler Youth?

• Setting up a new "Deliberation Day" to be held before each General Election to encourage political debate and other events.

Yes, we're all very familiar with Gordon and New Labour's passion for political debate. The word “Gimmick” springs to mind.

• A special citizenship ceremony to be hosted each year and possibly attended by the prime minister and a senior royal, to recognise "outstanding acts of volunteering"

Someone fetch me a bucket please.

• The setting up of "Investors in Communities" - a title earned by businesses which allow staff paid time to carry out community work

Hmm, time off work to work. I know Labour are obsessed with getting people into work but this is ridiculous. What employer will take that idea seriously?

• Foreigners applying for citizenship should follow a new credits-based system under which they would earn points for various activities in the community. For instance, working in key jobs, like the NHS, could earn additional credits.

Why not just make sure people are paid a decent wage for whatever job they end up doing?

And let's not forget that this nonsense comes from Lord Goldsmith the ex-Attorney General whose stunning contributions to citizenship include scrapping a police investigation into his Government's corruption and allowing himself to be pressured by a foreign government into changing his mind on the legality of an illegal war.

Taking a break from Iraq, Afghanistan, extraordinary rendition and similar minor issues, it's time to return to London and all the fun of the Mayor.  Now, my main interest in London politics is seeing who has the best transport policy, under a long-standing prejudice of mine that you can always judge a government on how it treats its railways.  Now, this is one area where it's commonly acknowledged by people who live in London, like me (and not by people who live outside London and drive large cars, like Jeremy Clarkson), that Ken Livingstone has all the cards.

Proved expensively right on Metronet, he then arm-twisted the Treasury into paying for the debacle their crass ideology forced on us.  He also managed to wrest control of the North London Line from the dead hand of the DfT and their privatised bus bandit friends (National Express, in this case) and come up with what looks like the first sensible management for what should be a key transport link since the advent of trams about a century ago (hiring in the best from abroad, telling them what it should look like and letting them get on with it).  I could go on, but they're all pretty much well-rehearsed arguments by now.

I'd half-expected Boris Johnson not to even try going up against that, but transport is one of the four key areas the Mayor runs (the others being culture, emergency services and development) so he can't ignore it.  He is, after all, partly standing for election as Chairman of the Board of Transport for London.  Unfortunately for Boris and his backers, the evidence so far demonstrates that he can't be trusted with the job, full stop.

The first sign of this was the response to the proposed switch to emissions based charging, which is, after all, a fairly radical and unproven move.  Johnson's response was this bizarre comment:

"Londoners use their cars because of the appalling state of the transport system"
A big car tax won’t change that. We need better alternatives to get out of our cars - especially those who live in the outer boroughs with bigger families, many of whom can't afford to swap cars.”

Honestly, where to begin.  Obviously public transport can't replace cars completely, so what any sensible public transport professional looks to do is encourage modal shift, identifying where people will switch journeys from car to PT and implementing schemes to incentivise this.  So far Boris is coming out with received wisdom, no one admits they want *more* car use.  The mechanisms for accomplishing modal shift are obvious and well-proven; benign tactics to make public transport more attractive, such as more frequent services, better networking and information, interchangeable ticketing and newer vehicles all the way up to more controversial measures (at least to the right wing) like subsidised fares, bus priority schemes, tighter public sector control and congestion charging.

Now, Boris' problem here is that all of these have been implemented in London, including charging people with 'big cars' and the result is quite predictably not a system in an 'appalling' state at all, but a much improved one that provably encourages people to shift modes (by giving them 'better alternatives', in fact).  The combined effect has produced the near-miracle of a reduction in city centre car use during a boom and the incredible statistic a few years back the the entire apparent increase in bus use in the UK was down to London.  'Appalling state', eh?

[Actually, this is merely the continuation of a trend - I've lived in London since 1997 and I've never driven into the centre even once.  In fact I didn't own a car until 2003 when a new job outside London required it (previously I worked 20 miles away on the other side of town and never felt remotely inclined to drive).  In other words I went to work by bus and tube and rail every day for years and take it from me, they've never been better.  The local bus route here has a virtual stream of nearly new double deckers most of the day and a lot of the night - back in 1997 it was an occasional elderly single decker.  Fares are a flat 90p, cheaper than most of the rest of the country - from the centre of Birmingham to my parents' place is £1.40 on something that looks like it was last cleaned during the Wilson era]

Having unknowingly backed Livingstone's transport policy without realising it, Boris then tries to argue that the absence of what he's just backed and which clearly exists means that some people will suffer.  Now, it's obvious to me who suffers - people like a friend of mine living 100 yards inside the congestion charge zone with a two-seater sports car emitting just over the 225g limit who will lose their resident's discount and face a £25 bill every time they want to go anywhere during the weekday, which strikes me as a bit harsh.  However, they're having a kid soon, so the car'll have to go and I suspect he won't be buying a 4x4 (mind you, he won't be voting for Ken either, as he's made virulently clear to me in the past).

That's not what Boris meant, though - his fantasy sufferers instead appear to be people in the outer suburbs who can buy a big polluting car, afford to feed and house a large family, can't afford to pay £25 a day when they need to go into town but will switch to public transport when it's a better alternative, which, as we've seen, it already is.  So, looking at this honestly, they'll switch to public transport, won't they Boris? 

From this, one can see how lying about the state of London's transport system isn't an accident, it's the only way he can keep a semblance of a coherent policy.  To admit, honestly, that the current Mayor has pretty much got it right, perhaps suggesting a few tweaks here and there would also provoke a furious reaction from the traditional pro-car Tory reactionaries and dinosaurs who, emboldened by the polls, are dusting off their Great Car Economy soundbites and pretending its still 1985.  Don't they know Cecil Parkinson buried that one 17 years ago when he scrapped the various son-of-Ringway London road schemes (that never quite seem to die), instead putting money into rail and tube projects?

Conclusion: it speaks volumes that appeasing these twits is more important than running an honest campaign.  What happens when he sits down at the first TfL board meeting?  Does he spend the meeting telling seasoned professionals that they're wrong?

Boris' other big point, that people will get round it by buying a small car for the city run strikes me as a positive argument for the scheme, since any emissions based charging scheme is blatantly intended to incentivise the purchase and use of smaller, more efficient cars and thus encourage manufacturers to make them and dealers to sell them.  Not being an ideological Thatcherite, I'm not afraid of distorting the market, particularly as that's the way it's going anyway, with even quite large, well appointed cars like Ford's Focus and Citroen's C4 are now sneaking under the limits.  This actually benefits motorists, as it offers a way to reduce the effects of rocketing fuel prices without giving up on too many creature comforts.  And they say Livingstone is anti-motorist.

Now for some light relief - Boris wants to bring back the Routemaster.  Living up to his reputation as a joker, he justifies this by saying

it's time Londoners had an approach that is optimistic and can-do...

I don't know about you, but going to the Treasury and strong-arming them into paying for Metronet, going to the DfT and persuading them to give you control of parts of the privatised network, introducing the congestion charge, making winning the Olympics part of your election manifesto and building an entire railway line through East London sounds pretty can-do and in some areas (particularly the Olympics) pretty optimistic as well.  Boris seems to think bringing back a 1950s design of bus beats them all, because what the people of London want to do is be carted around in museum pieces  Let's just analyse what's wrong with this:

1) Bus design isn't the Mayor's job, it's the responsibility of private competing bus builders, of which we have a good number.  You'd think a Tory would know this.  Buying bespoke products instead of mass-production off the shelf items always costs a fortune, not just in up front costs but in full-life costs.  No one else is going to buy them.  Also, unless you get every manufacturer to produce one, you're not going to get the benefits of open competition.

2) The bus franchising system in London works well, with TfL specifying fares, ticketing, routes and service levels and private companies (you know, the ones the Tories encourage) working out how best to meet them.  What happens when they say 'actually, Boris, we can meet your targets more efficiently if you don't foist son-of-RM on us, thanks'.  Does he listen to the businessmen or his fantasies of leading London into the 1950s?  Who pays?  How much?

3) Routemasters were scrapped for a reason - they weren't up to the job any more.  As Peter Hendy, who as the person responsible would presumably not find favour in a Johnson administration (perhaps because Hendy has 30+  years experience in public transport management) said:

The issue that most recently inflamed Hendy was the reaction from certain quarters to his decision to pull the old Routemaster buses and replace them with bendies, or "artics" (short for "articulated") as they are less pejoratively known within the industry. The howls of outrage that met this piece of philistinism, as it was seen, came largely, says Hendy, from "middle-class dinner-party land," a place he seems to disapprove of at a conceptual level. These are people, in Hendy's mind, who have never taken a bus and only championed the Routemaster because they liked how quaint it looked as they shot past in their Saabs. "What will mark me for the rest of my life is experiencing people being prepared to advocate active discrimination against people with disabilities for the sake of nostalgia."

This nails it - Johnson is on record that people want 'the wonderful Routemaster buses they used to have', because he sees things from the point of view of a non-bus user.   Hendy takes the exact opposite view because he sees things from the point of view of a bus user, who, in a time of rising demand and overcrowding, might well welcome a bus with twice the capacity, and in many cases isn't going to remember using RMs anyway.  I certainly never regularly used them round here, because the standard driver-only double-decker was perfectly adequate, if rather slow until Oyster removed the need to pay at the door.

[Apropos the disability thing - I was on a (double-decker) bus the other day when a wheelchair bound chap rolled up outside.  The driver spotted him, extended the ramp, opened the rear door, the chap wheeled himself up the ramp and stuck the brakes on.  We trundled off up the road until we reached his stop, where the same speedy process happened in reverse.  The best thing about it?  No one offered to help him - the bus is designed and built to allow him to get about under his own steam.  Neither, therefore, did we need a conductor.  Indeed, quite what the point of a conductor would be when most journeys are on Oyster and all buses have CCTV and radio entirely escapes me.]

Having demonstrated that he's willing to pretend the opposite is true about the state of public transport, invent a class of people to justify reversing an improvement scheme and suggest dropping an unspecified amount of money on a pointless conductor job creation scheme (not very Thatcherite, Boris), Mr. Johnson turns to the Tube, where he wants more police.  Brian Paddick came back at him on this straight off, pointing out that Tube policing (plus National Rail, DLR and Tramlink) is the job of the British Transport Police, not the Met, and thus isn't under direct Mayoral control or MPA funding (there's an organisation called the BTPA involved, which is nationwide in scope). 

TfL do, however, have direct control over BTP officers on the London transport network and there's nothing to stop Boris Johnson funding some BTP cops through this structure.  However, there was nothing to stop Ken Livingstone doing so last year either:

Finalising his budget proposals for 2006/07, the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, today announced funding for an additional 89 British Transport Police covering London.

...

Funding will be provided by TfL under contract with the BTP in North and South London to add to policing around violent crime hotspots, on the Bakerloo overground stations and Silverlink services London, alongside a similar deployment in South London. These mobile and visible teams will patrol these stations and trains targeting specific crimes and providing much needed security and reassurance for London’s travelling public.  The officers will join 500 British Transport Police who already cover the over land network in London and also return to full strength the 670 officers directly responsible to Transport for London who work exclusively on London Underground and the Docklands Light Railway network.

So Mr. Johnson's hardly advocating anything revolutionary here, in fact yet again he's backing Ken Livingstone's existing plans.

On the rails he doesn't inspire confidence.  If people are, as he claims 'paying some of the highest prices in Europe' they're on mainline rail Train Operating Companies, which, having been privatised with Boris' full support, are under the control of the private sector and, increasingly, central Government via the DfT's micro-managed franchise specifications.  This therefore isn't in the Mayor's remit and Boris doesn't seem to have realised this or proposed how he intends to accomplish this, merely saying:

We must end the lack of investment in London's overstretched, unaffordable and overcrowded rail services. A Londoner in Richmond on the minimum wage will have to work two hours just to cover the cost of their daily Travelcard. This has to change.

As an illustration there's currently a tussle between Tfl, the TOCs and DfT to get pay-as-you-go Oyster deployed on commuter lines, which would, if the Tube zonal fares applied, result in a lot of journeys becoming much cheaper.  A lot of the north-of-river lines are now done, but the big commuter operators south of the river are holding out, to my local annoyance.  Part of the issue is financial arrangements outside the Mayor's control, part is a highly esoteric technical one between the DfT's favoured (vapourware) ITSO smartcard technology, included in the franchise contracts, and TfL's extremely widespread Oyster, which people actually want to use.  The details are tediously dull (who pays for dual-smartcard gatelines?), but Boris is going to have to get a handle on them or we'll lose out.  Does he seem to be the man for the job?  What in his background and experience prepares him for fighting his corner, on a state-of-the-art technical issue, against Whitehall bureaucrats and private rail operators anxious to protect their profits?  Not a lot, I reckon.

Finally, one last bizarre comment:

I genuinely think we can make a huge difference to the commuting experience of every Londoner, by looking at the multiplicity of ways by which people get to work, stop clobbering them, start helping them.

Now, I hear that as code for 'more cars please!'.  The only people who can remotely think they've been 'clobbered' and thus might need 'helping' are motorists who won't switch to public transport, and so Boris Johnson has contradicted himself again - remember he said 'better alternatives' would be needed to get people onto public transport?  In his roads policy we get a whole range of motorist-friendly, traffic-encouraging policies - rephasing traffic lights to speed traffic, scrapping the emissions charge and (presumably, although he euphemistically says 'reformed') abolishing the western extension.  Those aren't better alternatives to car use, they're making car use more attractive, you mug.

Livingstone described all this as 'chaotic'.  For once, I don't think he's being harsh enough on an opponent.  They're a barking mad attempt to hide a hard-right, environmentally unfriendly, damaging car-friendly shift behind a facade of a crude repackaging of TfL's existing policies.  Does David Cameron think this is fooling anyone?

Question for you - what's more important in 21st century Britain:

a) The freedom of the press to report from a warzone where British forces are heavily engaged in trying to prop up what looks like a busted flush,

b) The freedom of the second son of the heir to the throne to fire his gun at a bit of desert

If you answered 'a', you haven't been paying attention.  Obviously it's 'b', it's not like major UK press and broadcasters can afford to go around employing investigative journalists to report the truth from Afghanistan.  Much better to rely on MOD-issued propaganda, supplied in return for a voluntary total news blackout.  WTF?  It's not like there aren't enough real gagging orders (see previous story).

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

A big injection of foreign troops has failed to bring stability. The US has almost 50,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and - twice as many as in 2004 - while the UK has 7,700, mostly in Helmand. Another 2,200 US marines are due to arrive next month to combat an expected Taliban surge.

Expected Taliban surge?  We get this every year - the fabled 'Taliban Spring Offensive'.  If it's true, it does mean that Prince Harry just happened to be sent at the quietest time of the year to do a job that apparently can be done from a chair with your helmet and jacket off.  Hail the conquering hero, indeed.

All this PR flummery doesn't mean that Prince Harry lacks courage or other soldierly qualities, he probably does, he's got the right brains (few) and background (posh) to make a decent British officer, but this was never about Prince Harry.  Like Ross Kemp's Sky documentary, this was about presenting a narrow, controlled view of events in Afghanistan, framed as 'Brave Tommies Getting On With A Difficult Job' without peering too closely at minor issues such as the nature of that job, why it's so awfully important to us, why the central Afghan government appears to be so monumentally pissed off at us, why Lord Ashdown was rejected as 'envoy' and what those two 'diplomats' were doing apparently talking to the Taliban the other month.

From the 'You couldn't make this up' Dept:

The British tax authorities have paid an informant for the bank details of scores of wealthy Britons. The records were stolen from one of the world’s most secretive tax havens.

HM Revenue & Customs paid £100,000 for data that it is using to launch investigations of up to 100 British citizens who have accounts at Liechtenstein’s biggest bank. - Source

More details here. Not a bad deal, the Germans paid 3.2 million quid, the UK handed over 100k and the US an undisclosed amount. Not bad for one DVD.

What a terrible place. The nearest we have to a Hell on Earth. Education about the holocaust is vitally important, especially as we will soon be in a world where there are no survivors left, no people who could say, "It happened, I was there".

The holocaust was the moral low point of humanity and although it took place over a vast area, forests and clearings, homes, streets, towns and villages over Europe, the death camps stand as a symbol of the horror that hatred, extremism and bigotry can do.

At the recent conference I attended there was much discussion of what makes an extremist, a terrorist. The process it takes is complex and hard. It's not easy to turn a human into a murderous extremist. Humanity wants to live in peace and tolerance. We are the overwhelming majority but the extremists have one great advantage over us; they are utterly dedicated to their cause.

Listening to these discussions and looking back over the reading and other experiences I've had, one question came to mind. We think of extremists as other people, but, under different circumstances, in a different place and time, could I have become a murderer? A terrorist?

If I'd been born in the Falls road, could I say that I would never have walked down the path of intolerance? If I was born in Germany in the 20's could I have become a stormtrooper? A concentration camp guard? The honest answer is a chilling one for me; I don't know.

I don't know. I used to think the holocaust was a German thing, something that happened in some sort of historical anomoly, but that was wrong. Many nationalities contributed to the deaths, the suffering.

When I look at a photo of the approach to Auschwitz I can sense the dread, the bland horror of the railway lines heading to the chambers. It's a deeply uncomfortable image and it should be.

About a year ago one of the most intelligent men asked me a question. He was well off and about to retire. He said that he wanted to devote the rest of his life to a cause, the most important issue facing the world, but what did I think that cause was?

I didn't know, I stumbled around it confused. That question has resonated with me but I think I'm coming to an answer, at least for myself. I'm coming to the view that conflict resolution and countering extremism is what I want to concentrate on.

Auschwitz isn't just a symbol of horror but it is also a beacon, a calling to us, asking us to prevent it happening again, and holocausts do happen again and again. In different forms and scales, certainly, but mass violence through dogma, bigotry and hatred have been a feature of history. The amount of human suffering caused by these impulses is incalculable.

Earlier I wondered if we at Blairwatch could work effectively in this area but I have to say that I don't think we can. We need to reach out to others, to work with them.

If you have any ideas I'd like to hear from you. No, I need to hear from you. Please email me.

Oh dear. After Jack Straw gave us all the details about rendition, it seems Condi has dropeed him and Milliband in it again.

A British overseas base was used for American "torture" flights the Government has been forced to admit, despite categorical denials of British involvement from both Tony Blair and Jack Straw.

More worryingly, the story continues:

Mr Miliband made clear that the Government expected the US to seek permission if it wanted to render terrorist suspects through UK territory and airspace.

He said that permission would only be granted if the Government was satisfied that it was in accord with British law and the UK's international obligations, including those under the United Nations Convention Against Torture.

Translation: Rendition will continue.

Curious how these things work.  In the week the Leader of the Free World threatens us (implicitly) with more 7/7s if we don't follow the lead of the Japanese Empire, the Spanish Inquisition and the Republican Party and sign up to torture, we learn that our Saudi friends were in the habit of threatening the British Prime Minister with 'another 7/7' if we continued with the SFO fraud investigation, leading to the withdrawal of Saudi intelligence co-operation (something jamie is of the opinion would be more a problem for them than us, particularly given that our homegrown bad boys are more likely to come from Rotherham than Riyadh).  As far as I know, the mere victims of 7/7 haven't been asked what they think about being used as an excuse for advocating torture and protecting the corrupt, but Rachel has let us know anyway:

I divine that she's not happy.

Prince Bandar, who amazingly turned up for a private meeting with Tony Blair in London shortly before the SFO dropped the case, is known as 'Bandar Bush' for his close personal friendship with the Decider.  The rest of the story is as inevitable as it is outrageous, but keep an eye on the court case - the judges include Mr. Justice Sullivan, more commonly found acting as Judge Dredd opposite the perpetual perps at the Home Office.

Well, not backing in the sense of agreeing with him, since as I've made clear before I don't think his ideas necessarily have much to recommend them, but when the howling mob of slope-headed morons and professional noise-making machines try and stop an intelligent, moderate man making his point in an intelligent, moderate way, all of use who consider ourselves intelligent and, er, moderate had better take a stand.  The alternative of allowing anti-intellectualism and the type of political correctness practiced by those who perennially shout 'political correctness' more room to flourish, doesn't bear thinking about.

With this in mind, I'm right behind Sunny Hundal, Tim Ireland and, in fact, most of my favourite bloggers in this post at Liberal Conspiracy in urging Rowan Williams to stick to his guns and refuse to give an inch to the moronic tabloid mob.  Funny that, as various people have pointed out, a lot of the Archbishop's support on the blogosphere has come from committed atheists.

Nuanced, intelligent comment elsewhere:

Liberal Conspiracy

Bloggerheads

Beau Bo D'Or

Chicken Yoghurt

Crooked Timber

Lenin's Tomb

Obsolete

Blood & Treasure

First up, cheers to Chicken Yoghurt for linking to my post from last night, it makes this morning's extreme tiredness worthwhile.  Best of luck to Justin and his project for living with just the mainstream media for a day, but I note from his Twitter page that he's already broken that rule by, er, finding a copy of Private Eye.  Tut, tut.

Back to the Bishop - Gracchi at Liberal Conspiracy offers up a reaction:

Partly he has made an idiot of himself through the fact that whatever Rowan Williams does understand, the media isn’t one of the things that he gets. Partly though he has made an idiot of himself because he has advocated a concept of law which I think is dangerous and creates a special privilege for established Churches in this country which they should not have.

Indeed, dealing badly the media is where the problem started here.  The original speech I commented on last night clearly reads that when Williams refers to something that 'seems unavoidable' he means Ayelet Shachar's idea of an open market of competing jurisdictions as an alternative to a single state legal system or multiple ad-hoc communal ones.  The word 'sharia' isn't mentioned near this, and it's pretty obvious that Williams intends one of the competing jurisdictions to be the Anglican church wresting back some of that nasty arid secular state power.

However, when Christopher Landau came to interview the Archbishop yesterday, his very first question invented the link to sharia, completely unsupported by the original text.  This was the right time to say 'no, hang on, that's a misquotation' but what actually happened, according to the transcript on the Archbishop's own website, was this (which is appallingly badly copy-edited, so I've neatened it and emphasised the key parts):

CL To begin with you've given this vision of if as a nation Britain wants to achieve social cohesion, that challenge is how to accommodate those of religious faith in relation to the law; and your words are that the application of Sharia in certain circumstances if we want to achieve this cohesion and take seriously peoples' religion seems unavoidable?

ABC It seems unavoidable and indeed as a matter of fact certain provisions of Sharia are already recognised in our society and under our law; so it's not as if we're bringing in an alien and rival system; we already have in this country a number of situations in which the law the internal law of religious communities is recognised by the law of the land as justified conscientious objections in certain circumstances in providing certain kinds of social relations, so I think we need to look at this with a clearer eye and not imagine either we know exactly what we mean by Sharia and not just associate it with what we read about Saudi Arabia or wherever.

Thus he missed the opportunity to correct the misquotation and thus gave the impression that he agreed with it, either because he didn't notice it or because he wanted to ramble off onto one of his learned digressions (in the form of a 117 word sentence, no less).  Not a great day at the office, then, but part of the refreshing thing about Rowan Williams is that he's a genuinely intelligent, moderate, thinking man who's trying to work in a world of spin and presentation.  It's not surprising he screws up badly seen through that distorting prism.  Perhaps it's the prism that's the problem here, not the Bishop.

Mind you, he's still wrong in his conclusion, as Gracchi points out - legal systems aren't really his area (despite the speech being at the Temple to an audience of lawyers) and his idea, which he's admittedly lukewarm about, is profoundly unworkable at anything much above the strictly minor scale it's used at present.  A decent legal expert will spot a ton of pitfalls in a few minutes.

Just a quick update to the previous buggers story - Nick Robinson is claiming that it was Thames Valley Plod, not the Met, who bugged Mr. Khan and Mr. Ahmad.  Probably reasonable given the location of the prison, so apologies to the incompetent murderous mendacious bastards at the Yard.

However, given that it seems to have been initiated by a TVP copper acting on his own initiative, it's quite possible the Met and indeed every other force in the country is happily reaching for the RIPA 2000 and bugging anyone and everyone without bothering to inform a judge or the Cabinet.  This leads to the following bit of speculation:

If you or I went round blabbing details of anti-terror surveillance operations we'd be in Paddington Green trying to remember Gareth Peirce's phone number* before too long.  Doesn't seem to apply to the Sunday Times and the Tories, however, who evidently both received this information, so who leaked it?  Whose noses would be put out of joint by a lot of ordinary coppers getting in on the domestic surveillance game?  Whose paper is the Sunday Times?  Answers on a postcard (left in a dead letter drop in the Brompton Road) and addressed to 'MI5, Thames House, London'.

OK, so what would the spooky calculation be?  Let slip that the fuzz are bugging MPs and suddenly Straw and the boys (and the Tories, hence the leak to them) are put on the back foot, realise what a monster they've created in allowing the police unchecked surveillance powers, put uppity Plod and his Acme Listening Kit back in his box and go running back to the professionals.  Perhaps.  All seems rather neat, really, but there's a plausible case here to say that genuine MI5 anti-terror surveillance operations (which I'm certainly not opposed to, see Shami Chakrabarti's comments) could easily be badly compromised if there's a police operation unknown to them going on.  If that's the case, the leaker's done us all a favour.

The only unanswered question is what on earth TVP thought they'd pick up - Sadiq Khan MP isn't a terrorist, he's Jack Straw's PPS FFS.  I suggest they did it because they could and because there's no accountability *at all*.  Thus are police states run, you don't have to have a reason to be arbitrary.

Talking of which, Olbermann is in fine form (via ChickYog).  There's more from SpyBlog too, and Tony Benn makes the obvious, if paranoid, point that the Wilson Doctrine never meant that much anyway.