There is a new entity in charge of the UK’s Ship of Government. Enter Cleggeron the Unexpected!!! After a tumultuous struggle with arch-nemesis Gordzilla, Cleggeron has emerged as the King of Monster Island, ah, I mean Westminster.
Cleggeron! Coming soon to a Parliament near you.
Will good Clegg head manage to stop the middle boss head from taking the evil Murdoch head’s advice? Anything could happen in the next five years!
I will get around to continuing my Mortal Online exploration. I’ve still not hit the play button, so as to see it with fresh eyes.
I’ve been distracted by the small matter of the UK General Election. Voting is today, and I shall be spending tonight glued to Mr David Dimbleby and his gang on the BBC, as the results come in. In preparation I have a bag full of comfort food, as I doubt it is going to be a pretty business for a progressive.
In honour of the day, here’s a little thing I made a couple of years ago, after Liberal Democrat finance-wizard Vince Cable suggested that Gordon Brown was very much like Mr Bean. The government had just lost millions of citizen’s financial records, and in the US a new catch-phrase was sweeping the land: “Don’t tase me bro!”.
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No trackbacksI’ve experienced both school and workplace bullying, and I have no time for people who behave in such a way. I’ve even called a supportline or two in the past. So don’t take what follows as in any way diminishing the anguish that bullying can cause.
I have two points to make on the current scandal, which involves Christine Pratt, the head of the National Bullying Helpline, going public with claims that staff at Number 10 had called her support line about the Prime Minister’s behaviour.
1. These things are supposed to be confidential. By breaching this, she has made it much harder for people to pluck up the courage to call support lines. Not to mention that I strongly doubt that staff at Downing Street will thank her for damaging the government for which they work. They have been betrayed, and used to score political points.
2. That is, of course, assuming that these staff even exist. How does she actually know that the people that called really worked at Number 10? She obviously does not run background checks on people who call, so what is stopping random idiots, and/or the Tory dirty tricks department, calling in and making all sorts of outrageous claims? Unless a real, solid, person comes forward and states that they were bullied by Gordon Brown, this whole business should be considered inadmissible.
We’re supposed to believe that a number of different individuals all chose to call the same helpline, and more than that, that they unnecessarily divulged the sensitive information that they worked at Number 10.
The National Bullying Helpline has this to say about itself on its website:
The National Bullying Helpline is the brainchild of Christine Pratt and her husband David. Christine first set up HR & Diversity Management Ltd in 2002 and realised the enormity of the problem caused to industry by bullying at work, so launched a bullying Helpline. The Helpline was awarded Charity status early 2007 and is the only UK workplace Bullying Helpline Charity in the UK run by qualified CIPD professionals. The Charity is the only Helpline in the UK that addresses bullying in all corners of society.
I’m sorry to say, but The National Bullying Helpline should lose it’s charitable status for its confidence-breaching and naked politicising. There are many other similar helplines that do respect confidentiality, and do so without funnelling money to their husband’s Human Resources company.
The whole thing stinks like a political hit-job just a few weeks before a General Election. Journalists were sent by Conservative operatives to Mrs Pratt makes it obvious that there is a link, and the way that the opposition parties are making hay out of this is distasteful. They’re now calling for an in-depth enquiry, which is clearly an excuse for a fishing expedition to rummage through the inner workings of Downing Street. Gordon Brown is now caught in an intolerable position, having to deny ever-escalating accusations from ghosts, who can have whatever words put into their mouths that Brown’s enemies choose. You can’t defend yourself if you don’t know your accuser.
Disclosure: I’m a Liberal Democrat voter, not a Labour one, and I am far from happy with the way Nick Clegg is handling this.
Write a commentNo trackbacksDaniel Hannan was of course the first chap to get me riled up about this, but now I’ve been looking about, in spite of David Cameron’s protestations, turns out there are a whole lot of Conservatives who have it in for the NHS.
We have a centralised health service that is run by the Government
from Whitehall. A health service that is managed and directed by a few
from their ivory towers in Whitehall. A health service that would not be
out of place in Stalin’s Russia.How on earth has it got as bad as this? We are one of the most
successful countries in the world. We are meant to be a modern 21st
Century country. Yet we have gone from having one of the best health
services in the western world to arguably the worst.
That’s Peter Bone, Conservative MP for Wellingborough, and strident foe of UK embryonic research, claiming that we have the worst health system in the Western World. However, he has a plan to fix it!
The new system would require you to take out health insurance to
cover your family’s medical expenses. This would be set at a level to
cover all your family’s medical expenses greater than 5% of your
family’s income. The insurance must cover all serious medical
conditions which could require significant costs. In addition you could
take out voluntary insurance which could cover other areas and, if you
like, the medical deductible.Separately you would be required to set up a medical savings account.
This would be a savings plan that commences when you reach the age
of 18 and would provide for all your health insurance premiums in
retirement.
That’s right. He wants us to pay into an insurance scheme. One that only covers certain things, and if we want any more, we have to pay extra. Once you’ve bought this insurance, it would not kick in until you had paid out 5% of your income (what insurance folks call a deductible). This healthcare would be provided by private profit-making healthcare companies. Essentially what he wants is to break the NHS up and create a compulsory version of the US system. According to him, this would magically never have waiting times for treatment AND cost us less.
A look at expense claims suggests Mr Bone could certainly afford this. He employs his own wife as Executive Secretary, paying her £40,000 a year. He also claims £4800 a year in food allowance, the maximum allowable under MP expenses rules. He’s quite trim for someone who eats that much.
While I’m sort of a Liberal Green sort of chap, I accept that there is a relatively sane wing of the Conservative party, the “One Nation Conservatives”. I’m actually quite fond of several of them (particularly Kenneth Clarke). They need to stand up against the radical ideologues of the far-right who have been gaining in numbers and influence within the Tory party for far too long. Ideally before the next time the conservatives have the power to actually go through with any of these crazy ideas.
Write a commentNo trackbacksWhile socialised medicine is considered with great mistrust in the US, here in the UK, no political party would dare to suggest that the dear old NHS should be replaced. Unless, of course, they didn’t think anyone from Britain would notice.
In this clip, UK Conservative, MEP Daniel Hannan, holds court with the crown prince of right-wing crazy, Glenn Beck.
You would not think it to listen to Hannan and his FOX friends, but we do actually also have private medicine here. It’s much cheaper than the US, of course, because they have to compete with the NHS, but if you have the money, you can still buy whatever healthcare you desire. You can also buy painkillers pretty much anywhere. Hannan’s “friend” that claims that NHS staff got aggressive with him for trying to buy painkillers is either fictional, or not telling the whole story. Also, those prostate cancer survival rate claims have been debunked so many times (they’re measured totally differently in the different countries so have no relation to eachother), nobody with any respect for their audience ought to be trotting them out. Ah right, I forgot, it’s Glenn Beck.
Daniel Hannan is of course the man who famously insisted that the BNP is a party of the far-left. He has clearly learned from Beck, who is equally happy to claim that the Nazi party was left wing, as part of the “liberal fascism” smear.
Why is Daniel Hannan still a member of the Conservative party? This man is getting a platform because of his membership of a mainstream party, and is using it to be paid to tell the most grievous lies about the UK, and Europe. Lies that would not be tolerated here.
Yesterday he found a new friend, Mr Hannity. Apparently he is spending a great deal of time in the US campaigning against healthcare reform. Do the people who elected him to the European parliament realise this is how he is spending his time? How much money is he making from his disloyal behaviour?
Dear US readers. Daniel Hannan is a liar being paid to lie, and you should not place any stock in his words. The leader of his party, David Cameron, has said in response “I support the NHS 100% and the Conservative Party supports the NHS 100%. We are the party that gives the biggest amount of support to the NHS. It is incredibly important to my family. It is incredibly important to this country.”.
That’s all very well, Mr Cameron, but Mr Hannan is not doing his job, and making the UK look bad in the eyes of America. Kick him out.
I should thank him, I suppose, for making me sufficiently angry to end a month-long lack of posting!
4 commentsNo trackbacksAs a pinko socialist commie I don’t think anyone is worth this much, but it is especially irritating in a government owned company.
The “extraordinary” £1m-a-year salary for the head of a government-owned company set up to combat developing world poverty has been attacked by MPs.
The salary of CDC Group chief executive Richard Laing rose from £383,000 in 2003 to £970,000 in 2007, the Commons Public Accounts committee found.
But the Department for International Development, its 100% shareholder, was not properly consulted, the MPs said. BBC
Also, seriously, get a new name. The Colonial Development Corporation does not put out happy signals.
Write a commentNo trackbacksThe David Abrahams illegal donation scandal ( and I do not apologise for calling it that. Proxy donating IS illegal, as anyone but a small child or a Labour fundraiser would know.) seems to have quietened down a little for now, as various investigations begin into it. The Prime Minister’s own enquiry is likely to be a whitewash, but the Metropolitan Police enquiry is somewhat more hopeful.
Harriet Harman has managed, somehow, to keep her job. Hereafter known as the Umbrella Thief. Simon Heffer reports in the Telegraph:
It was a Labour Party conference in Brighton a few years ago. It was pouring with rain. I was leaving a restaurant and asked for my coat and umbrella.
The latter was a shockingly expensive, black wooden-handled model, bought deliberately so I would remember not to lose it. Instead, I was given the sort of floral collapsible one sold by Italian street vendors for a quid. I then saw a woman leaving the same restaurant with my umbrella. She protested it was hers. I protested it wasn’t.
I pointed out that a brass collar on the shaft bore my initials. At that moment, a waiter said, “Madam, here is your umbrella”, and handed her the Italian floral job. Flustered, Harriet Harman (for it was she) said that she thought she had borrowed the gamp from her sister who, being called Sarah Jane Harman, had the same initials as me.
Looking at the two brollies, I said I could see how easily she might have confused the two. She failed to appreciate the joke. Am I surprised that she is up to her neck in effluent about dodgy donations? Am I hell.
Clearly she has a taste for the finer things in life, be they Deputy Leaderships, or finely carved umbrellas. Given the closeness of her husband, the Labour Party treasurer Jack Dromey, to the current scandal, she is in danger from two directions. As they say, when it rains, it pours. Jack has been less than forthcoming about his involvement. I suppose he’s only the treasurer, not the finder-outer, or question-asker. Treasure your job while you can, Jack.
Mr Abrahams, showing cunning if not decisiveness or integrity, donated to both Harman and Hilary Benn for the Deputy Leadership campaign, though Mr Benn insisted that Abrahams donate in his own name for a change. Thus Benn has come out of this cleanly. He’s probably practising his Deputy Leader speeches in front of his bathroom mirror as I write. Dad would be proud.
Jon Mendelsohn is certainly doomed. Apart from Greg Palast’s revelations about his appallingly unethical lobbying company before he became Chief Fundraiser for Labour, Abrahams has now revealed that he has thankyou notes for all his various donations via various proxies. The thankyou notes being addressed to Abrahams rather gives the game away. Really thoughtful of him to have saved them all, don’t you think? David Abrahams assures us that he knew it was all above board because nice Mr Mendelsohn knew all about it.
Gordon Brown prides himself on the number of people from outside the Labour party that he’s brought into his Government. That’s lucky, as at the rate they’re going he’s going to need to replace half his cabinet by Christmas. Well done, Mr Abrahams! You’ve destroyed what little credibility New Labour had left. That was, ah, your intention, I assume?
Given that he first came to light trying to trick the Labour party into letting it stand as one of its MPs by hiring a fake family to accompany him, and was found out and cast into ignomy, it is not hard to imagine that he resolved to take his fiendish revenge upon them. Imagining things is fun!
I know, let’s have a poll! They’re always fun too. If you think I’ve missed anyone from the choices you ought to be there, post in comments and I’ll add them in.
[poll=3]
1 commentNo trackbacksMy biggest effort at a webcomic ever! I should probably have tried to do it in something a bit better than Windows Paint.
I also completely failed at fitting it into the amount of width I have here, so you’ll have to give it a click to see it. You might also have to click magnify on it, if your browser unhelpfully resizes it so you can’t read the text. I’ll make sure I get it to fit in here next time. Probably. It’s kind of thin over here.
For non-Brits, the Lib Dem leader, mighty Vince Cable, said this week: “The House has noticed the Prime Minister’s remarkable transformation in the past few weeks from Stalin to Mr. Bean – creating chaos out of order, rather than order out of chaos.
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