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STRANGE PEOPLE AND POWER

Mentioning no names, I simply observe that where damaged psyches find a way to a situation where they can exercise absolute power over an individual or over 60 million, the result is enhancement of peculiarity and multiplication of misery. I would regard the latter case as far more worthy of scrutiny than the former. Our devaluation of mothering, alienation of fathering and imposition of schooling, ensures an ever increasing number of damaged minds. As R.D.Lang wrote in 1974: (from memory) 'A child born today has a ten times greater chance of entering a mental institution than a university. PERHAPS IT IS THE WAY WE ARE EDUCATING THEM THAT IS DRIVING THEM MAD!' One thing is sure: no need to pay MPs more, the supply is ensured.

Re #1 and 2.
Sounds like you are in rip-snorting form today Barrie. R.R.R. Respect

THE CLEVERNESS WISDOM GAP (2nd try)

Sorry Newsnight - I called too many spades by name first time.

With reference to the 'information age' I contend that, by its content and use, the internet typifies our nihilistic trajectory.
We have a wealth of understanding that, wisely applied, might modify human excess, but it is buried under froth.

On Omar Al Bashir please can you make it clear whether the Chinese can actually block this process. Would the court try him in absentia? As for the peace talks they have been going almost as long as I can remember. Everybody wants to see peace in Darfur.

On the information issue surely the issue is third parties and outsourcing as with HMRC scandal. As there is an intimate relationship between the outsourcing and costs they will always have a tendency to be cavalier - hence they sent the Audit Commission more info than they wanted because it was cheaper that way. I do see that as something that afflicts government more than big business.

As ever I would hope Scottish referendum on 2010 might make the agenda one day before 2010.

Litvinenko. Will the Christopher Bower thing disappear like the "Mosely background" so everybody knows about it but nobody must talk of it. Is that for our protection or a fig leaf for their reputation.

If the UK position on Lugavoi is wrong, and I accept it could be right although I have swung heavily to timelythoughts position, then it is going to be excruciating if the Russians win the argument.

Gordon to resign? Jonathan Evans, Dearlove (?).

If the US had access to the same facts and reached a very different conclusion its got to be worth discussion.

Hello Shaminder,
May I suggest a report looking, for a change, at how the host white British population feel about many of the things going on in their country today, as a result of the immigration that has taken place, without their consent.
For example, you could do a piece on reactions to 7/7 islamic bomb attacks in London, since we've just had the anniversary, if that's the correct word. And I don't mean a politically correct, cleaned up version from someone planning a career in the media, or flogging a book, but genuine responses, giving anonymity, where it's requested.
Alternatively, why not look at how Brits feel about the immigrant/community wave of shootings and stabbings that take place almost daily on the streets of our Capital City? It would make a change from the parade of wet politicians, prison reformers and black "ex-gang members" or "youth workers" that we've been subjected to recently.

I am fed up to the back teeth with the media only ever reporting official propaganda about the Information Commissioner and his department whilst persistently ignoring the facts and the truth.

That office supposedly exists to regulate the Data Protection, Freedom of Information and Privacy and Electronic Communications Acts and to provide the public with a means of redress for breaches of their rights under those pieces of legislation.

In practice, if as a member of the public you have proof that an organization has breached your rights under the DPA and you make a complaint to the ICO, after about ten months, you get a letter telling you that "It is likely that 'so and so' has breached sections 'whatever' of the DPA, however the Information Commissioner does not intend to take any further action.

Complaints about FOI are just as bad. On the 29th of this month, I will be the proud owner of one of the longest unresolved cases pending with the ICO in its history... By then, they will have been investigating my complaint about the Cabinet Office for three full years and they still have not issued a decision notice.

Since 1998, they have been trotting out the excuse for delays that they do not have enough staff - but they haven't done anything to address that shortage.

Or they claim they are receiveing a huge volume of complaints - well maybe if they enforced the law with meaningful penalties, more organizations would comply thereby reducing the number of complaints.

Just for once, could someone please illustrate the total pointlessness of establishing a regulatory body that persistently refuses to use the enforcement powers it has and as a means of redress, it is completely worthless.

The phrase 'unfit for purpose' was once used about the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Office - I have never dealt with a more 'unfit for purpose' department than the Information Commissioner's Office.

Hello Shaminder,

May I suggest a report on Searchlight the international anti fascist magazine, 25 years fighting racism and fascism.

Its a good read.

The participation of the USA and Britain in the International Criminal Court might be examined.

Is the former a member? Has it passed legislation authorizing the immediate military rescue of any US official arrested by the Court?

What is the rationale that would justify such an exception to the purpose and jurisdiction of the ICC?

Now that Davis has deservedly got his kick against NuLabour in, can't you have a look at the goings on in the sleepy hamlet of Bailleston in Scotland's beautiful Clyde Valley just East of the dreaming spires of Glasgow?

I do realise that travel expenses may be a bit tight what with the exec's bonuses emptying your sporrans, but you might even discover what has become of the sadly missed Brian Taylor, ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Scotland's political editor who hasn't blethered since last Saturday.

Re #7 Steve_In_Liverpool

A very good idea.

This needs to be investigated and reported upon urgently as our authoritarian government seeks to obstruct FOI whenever it can and suppress bad news on its own performance. Leave it much longer and there's no chance you'll be allowed to.

Re #8. Gangofone.
Turning to others to make your arguments for you now I see?
Best put your report on at the end of the programme, since it can't fail to have everyone nodding off.

Re #7. Steve_in_Liverpool.
Bang on IMO.

I'm with thegangofone - 25 years of sterling work and, if thses blogs are anything to go by, another 25 to come...

On McNulty
"Tony McNulty also accused the ex-shadow home secretary of "vanity" for quitting his seat to trigger the contest....."David Davis? Probably ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖr Simpson."

I see the character of McNulty as a total turn off to the voters. He will also rant on that no deals were done on 42 days - though Dianne Abbott has a tad more integrity in my world and says the opposite. Vaz etc.

Please try to get McNulty on next week and get an assurance like "I would resign immediately if it ever came to light that the DUP were offered incentives". Hopefully he will take Gordon with him.

#14 DrKF77
Good on you DrKF77 and sadly yes it does look that way doesn't it.

Hi to Brownedov by the way.

SURVIVAL OF THE UNFITTEST (#7)

Does government, actually, have much to do with anything - except government?
Decades ago I worked for a company that was so badly run it was laughable. It still trades. I have worked with, and for, useless individuals who just 'do stuff' and get paid. There is a politically pedalled illusion that we can 'vote out the useless' but it only makes way for - the other useless. We are governed as a self-perpetuating game of Monopoly, played ineptly. Politicians have no credentials in Nation Management. Indeed, the old-timers generally have CVs of serial failure. As for the ones who swan abroad, apparently with instant aptitude (Miliband D springs to mind) but absent mandate, playing 'Super Monopoly', they don't seem to be achieving much of note either. So small wonder, Steve, that their enactments do nothing for the ordinary citizen like you; all they do is pass Go and collect 200. The Gravy-go-round of politics, big-business, quangos, 'notepaper directorships, etc. typifies the British malaise. I have a bad feeling that David Davis is the Millennium High Water Mark for quasi-altruism. When that drains away it will be back to the mire.

Re #15 thegangofone

Good one, but I'm sure Mr McN is too true to his Bliarist roots to be caught that way.

#18 Brownedov

Probably true - but I don't see how he can credibly maintain his position in the long run. He will just hope the fuss dies down.

If Brown reneges on his word to save his reputation then there will be some unhappy campers.

If he keeps his word particularly the rumour of the DUP picking up a prestigious intelligence committee place then it will be obvious.

I don't see them going to court over this.

Re: #17 barriesingleton,

You've hit the nail on the head again...

"Decades ago I worked for a company that was so badly run it was laughable. It still trades. I have worked with, and for, useless individuals who just 'do stuff' and get paid. There is a politically pedalled illusion that we can 'vote out the useless' but it only makes way for - the other useless."

I have been there too! Actually on the subject of data breaches, my former employer dealt with payroll information (bank accounts, NI numbers etc) for millions of people. The office I was based in processed upwards of 80,000 payslips each month.

The call logging system they used (which management drew its reports from) actually had a category "Incorrect Payroll Data Packed" - meaning simply that company A had been sent company B's payroll information (payslips etc).

There were several data breaches of this type each week. It had nothing to do with the courier firm, it was a case of the wrong stuff being put in the wrong bag before it left the site.

This was an ISO 9001 acredited company. They never advised company A that company B had received all their data, they just reprinted it for them. They didn't ever worry about being held to account for data breaches as they knew it would never happen.

In one high profile case, a member of the sales team left a company laptop on the back seat of his car when he went to Tesco at lunchtime - of course, it was stolen - it had payroll data on it for a number of nationally recognised businesses and individuals. All staff were issued instructions (I still have my copy) telling us to deny any laptop had been stolen and various other untruths so as to avoid the company suffering any embarassment.

The Data Protection Principles require data only to be available to those with a genuine need to access it. The salesman in question should never have had access to third party payroll information - but the Information Commissioner's office refused to investigate the culture of incompetence that was so common, it had its own report category...

So his comments quoted above about risks being real are so much rubbish when he refuses to ever take action against firms who repeatedly break data protection law in every way possible.

Re #14.
As long as the tax-payer finances this propaganda, they'll keep printing it. Do you think this is likely to continue? I know,let's have a vote.

ANTI-RACISM OR CYNICAL OPPORTUNISM?

What irks me most about those who self-righteously campaign for anti-racism, pro-immigration or racial-equality is that I'm never persuaded that any of them understand why others see the problem very differently and regard these campaigners as either hoplessly ill-informed or as self-interested opportunists.

The issue has nothing to do with skin colour or the name of the country immigrants come from, but it has everything to do with their skills and what they will work for relative to their potential earnings back home. We saw this temporarily with Poles where their skill level differential is less significant (but earning power/costs are). We can't import from the EU, the birt rate everywhere is too low.

But with respect to Africa and S. Asia, international educability statistics and crime/social disorder/corruption figures speak for themselves. They are not equal, just have a look. Start with PISA.

Yes, business interests can benefit from the short term import (and more significantly/cynically breeding) of cheap labour - but in the end, one ends up with a much less able population and one also ends up trying (and failing because of low birth rate amongst the more able who provide neeed services in medicine etc effectively winnowing the population there) to deal with the very problems which many of those who have been enticed here actually contributed to back home and then tried to escape.

The flaw in most racial-equality advocates' position as I see it is that we have absolutely no evidence that we can raise low ability through education - we teach TO ability, we don't CREATE it. That's the key obstacle which they have to face up to if they want to argue that they're entitled to respect for defending the moral high ground rather than actively assisting in subverting Western culture (or serving as useful idiots in others' cynical opportunism).

A PROBLEM DEFINED IS - ER - STILL A PROBLEM

The bloggers on this site (all credit to Newsnight) have highlighted various ineptitudes of British governance, above and beyond parties. But this being a democracy (!) we are powerless to make any impression on governance-as-a-whole. (I was out there against the war, being ignored, in my heroism, by Emperor Blair.)
So we must look to Newsnight to take the fight to the enemy. Newsnight: your country needs YOU.

Re #22 Jadedjean
How right you are. These Self-rightous campaigners you mention are so blinkered they are dangerous.
We do indeed have serious problems in our country that this government choose to ignore. I also suspect the majority of the British Public are no longer prepared to trust politicans who seem to be in terminal denial. As for Brown's vision! We can see through it. The future looks threatening to the working man. We should have the right to provide for our family, a debate on future employment is long overdue and would make a good programme, Shaminder, especially if it were to explore the possible resurgence of the self sufficient, industrial and agricultural nation we once were. We need to put the Great back into Britain.

TURkEYS *DO* VOTE FOR XMAS

shrinkingviole (#18) In 1997 the electorate was persuaded (by good PR, i.e skiled product positioning) to vote in New labour, and they, like the rest of the Socialist International, are committed to a Greater Europe just as Israel is committed to a Greater Israel - except in E. , along with the disintegraton of Great Britain.

All they care aboit is the semblence of democracy so they can say the electorate gave them a mandate to dissolve Great Britain.

TURkEYS *DO* VOTE FOR XMAS

shrinkingviole (#18) As I see it, in 1997 the electorate was persuaded (by good PR/skilled product positioning) to vote once again for international 'socialism'. New Labour, as a member of the Socialist International, appears to be committed to a Greater Europe just as Israel is committed to a Greater Israel, but this agenda requires the erosion of nation states.

Here this means the DISintegraton of the UK/Great Britain in pursuit of Regional Assemblies and 'grass roots' or 'workers' democracy', which, like the globalism promulgated by acolytes of the Austrian/Chicago school of anarcho-capitalist economics, inevitably means that the Great is taken out of Britain in pursuit of denationalisation or International Socialism.

Over the last three decades we've seen an indidious, systematic, weakening of public/military/national services by successive governments (both Conservative and 'New Labour'. All New Labour/Conservatives care about is securing mandates to continue this anarchistic programme of disintegrating Great Britain in pursuit of predatory international 'socialism' (aka global capitalism). The rest is inconsequential froth.

For #18, read #24.

MASTRICT MAN LIVES (Yet another Turkey)

On today’s Andrew Marr show, John Major said Back to Basics was solely ‘about education’ – OH NO!

“We must go back to basics. We want our children to be taught the best; our public services to give the best; our British industry to be the best. And the Conservative Party will lead the country back to these basics right across the board: sound money; free trade; traditional teaching; respect for the family and the law."

'RESPECT FOR THE FAMILY'
When, at the time, a reporter asked Norma how she felt about Edwina’s revelations, she snapped: ‘How do you think I feel!’ There’s respect Sir John - oh yes!