This is the picture of George Osborne doings drugs with a hooker that he wants to expunge from the internet.

I don’t own the copyright and will remove it if requested.

I can’t be held responsible if others choose to copy it and share the hell out of it, now, can I?

Steve Bell, cartoonist in The Guardian, seldom fails to make me chuckle. Today he threw his nappy into the ring in the fight between Harriet Harman and the Daily Mail. (His cartoon is here.)

The Fail would no doubt justify this, now pointless, witch-hunt as investigative journalism holding elected representatives to account. In fact it’s politically motivated smear-drivel aimed at an audience which is predominantly right-wing and reactionary – the age of empire and “wogs begin at Calais” brigade.

So bloody what if Harman once worked for an organisation to which some nutter-kiddy-fiddler was affiliated. She has never championed his cause or fought his corner. Rather the opposite, in truth, but the Fail would never let an honest fact get in the way of a salacious headline. It is insisting that she apologise, but we’ve been waiting for one from the Fail for seventy-odd years. Planks and specks, Mr Dacre!

The Daily Fail really is “Something Rotten in the State of Denmark”. It is, by far, the most wretched excuse for a newspaper ever to be spawned from Fleet Street. It was suggested to me recently that it was only fit to wipe one’s bum, but as the years go by and it sinks from gutter to sewer it’s not even fit for that!

President Museveni today enshrined ignorance and bigotry into Ugandan law. He justifies this backward step with the archaic codswallop that homosexuality is a learned behaviour.

It depresses me so much that supposedly educated and intelligent people – those who should be leading their country towards greater understanding, tolerance and acceptance – can be so ill-informed and uncaring.

A message for you, Yoweri. We no more chose to be gay than you selected your skin colour. You, however, are choosing to be a narrow-minded bigot.

No matter what you say or do you will not “cleanse” Uganda or Africa of homosexuality. We were here long before you and we will be here long after your petty deeds are forgotten!

(* With apologies to my lesbian friends! XXXXX)

Sochi is turning out to be a bit of a PR nightmare for Vlad the Dictator, and it’s next to impossible for me not to savour the schadenfreude.

Despite the exorbitant cost (30 billion smackers is more than Eric Pickles spends on cake each year!) the whole shebang aint ready. By all accounts the accommodation is a shambles, there are missing manhole covers in the streets and the rest of the world sniggered up its sleeve as the Olympic Rings flowered at the opening ceremony – or most of them!

It would be nice to think that this is karma bitch-slapping the hell out of Russia for the sort of homophobic claptrap that this country sort of climbed out of with the repeal of the egregious Section 28. Sadly it is more likely just a demonstration, were it needed, that the bribery and corruption that is rife in Russia STILL can’t get a decent job done – whether or not the despot is “elected”.

Continue reading Putin and the Poofs* →

I wrote this three years ago. It still applies!

First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Pastor Martin Niemoller

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day.

More than 65 years after the end of World War II some may ask why we should bother reminding ourselves of man’s inhumanity to man.

Well, quite apart from the fact that the Holocaust was the worst example of mass murder in modern recorded history, there is the very reasonable observation that those who ignore or forget their history are doomed to repeat it. A lesson mankind has yet to learn.

Holocaust Memorial Day is about remembering the victims and those whose lives have been changed beyond recognition by the Holocaust, Nazi persecution and subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and the ongoing atrocities today.

Holocaust Memorial Day provides us with an opportunity to honour the survivors, but it’s also a chance to look to our own lives and communities today.

Genocide doesn’t happen overnight, it’s a gradual process which begins when the differences between us are not celebrated but used as a reason to exclude or marginalise. By learning from the lessons of the past, we can create a safer, better future.

Tonight, at home in peace and safety, light a candle to say never again and never in my name.

Interesting story in The Guardian this weekend which just goes to show why a politician should never be allowed to run anything.

Keith Vaz, the Chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, says that all bonuses at the UK Border Agency must cease because of “failures such as the relaxation of border controls, the inability to clear the asylum backlog and the reluctance to tackle bogus colleges through unannounced inspection”.

Granted, UKBA has serious problems – no-one would deny that, but parts of it can and do work well. And it is right that where there is excellence it should be recognised and rewarded.

But Vaz says no, treating employees like naughty schoolchildren, keeping the whole class in detention because some are miscreants.

Vaz sits for a safe seat and enjoys a salary well in excess of what most civil servants earn. His job has no minimum entry requirements or performance standards. How about we muck about with his terms of service on the grounds that some of his colleagues are useless pissheads?

Vaz’s posturing might make for a good headline, but in the long tern it doesn’t work. Staff who might previously have gone the extra mile will look at this and think “Bollocks, why bust a gut” and just perform within their required parameters.

Take away the carrot and all you’re left with is the stick. And a cowed beast does the bare minimum to avoid the beating.

On 30 November last year I published a long blog about why, after 37 years of working life, I was finally going on strike. I’m not going to rehash that argument here because you can read it for yourself. Clicky.

Suffice to say that today I find myself on strike again. It is not done lightly or frivolously or because I just fancied a day off. It’s costing me money for a start, but money well sacrificed to make a point.

I have just had my annual performance and development review. I have either met or exceeded ALL the targets set for me. But I am not rewarded for this – rather I am penalised merely because I am a civil servant.

For decades we’ve heard Tory politicians proclaim that if an employee works hard and performs well they should be rewarded for their efforts. This is so embedded in Tory ideology it could almost have been handed down on stone tablets. Unfortunately, it does not apply to public and civil servants. It hasn’t since 1979, when the rot of ministerial power without responsibility started to set in. The Tories hate us, despite the fact that we do their dirty work for them.

In his budget George Osborne made a huge song and dance about raising tax thresholds to “put money back in people’s pockets”. At the same time as these are implemented Francis Maude and Danny Alexander have hiked my pension contributions so that, at the end of the month, I’m actually worse off. This is coupled with a two-year pay freeze followed by a pay cap of 1% while inflation is running at 3.5%.

There is no rationale behind the government reform of public service pensions. Their own report (Hutton)  showed that the costs of the existing system were falling, that it was not “unaffordable” and rejected the notion that civil service pensions were “gold plated”.

You are left with only one reason for it.

Spite.

Her Majesty’s Government seems to be in a bit of a pickle!

Hot on the heels of George Gobshite’s tacit admission that he’s never bought a pasty from Greggs come Scameron and Fraude with the most inept handling of a non-crisis I’ve seen in many a long year!

There’s been a vote for strike action by tanker drivers. There’s no strike been called and the union and hauliers are still talking. The union has, by law, to give seven days notice of a strike. As of yesterday afternoon there was no shortage of fuel on the forecourts. A situation that is changing rapidly, because two of our most senior politicians don’t know when to keep their sodding mouths shut.

On the way home last night we passed a queue for our local petrol station. There’s normally a car or two there at that time of night, but this queue was more than a hundred yards long. Petrol stations across the country are beginning to report that they’re running out of fuel.

Any marketing agent can tell you that one of the best ways to make sure you sell out of something that’s a “must have” is to hint that it’s in short supply. Apple, Adidas, Sony, Reebok – they’ve all done it – Disney DVD do it all the bloody time.

Underneath the veneer of civilisation, human beings en-masse are actually a bunch of selfish bastards (I include myself in that!) and the “must have its” will go out and buy as much “must have” as they can get their sticky little paws on.  This accelerated demand creates a real shortage and the “think I ought to have its” then join the queue.  This is then seen and joined by the “it would be nice to have its” followed by the “what are they queuing fors”, and so on.  To put it into terms that the cabinet dipsticks would understand, it fuels itself like a run on a bank. Remember the lines outside Northern Rock, Dave?

What in hell did Scameron and Fraude think they were going to achieve? They should have been making soothing noises about no fuel shortages and the talks continuing, not casually gob-flapping that it might be a good idea to get Jeeves to fuel up the Bentley and stick an unlit twenty litre Molotov Cocktail under the carport.

Are we really stuck with these plonkers for another three years?