Jester, Amuse Thyself

So Charles Clarke thinks that Gordon Brown should resign if things don’t improve? So what? Almost everybody else thinks he should have resigned before he came into office. But even so, surely Mr Clarke’s remarks are a bit rich coming from someone who after a few months in charge of a government department, it was described as being ‘unfit for purpose’ by one his own colleagues. Of course, these comments come from a man who has yet to master the art of shaving, has the savoir-faire of a Tourette’s sufferer and the dress sense of a ‘Big Issue’ salesman.

But what else can we expect from a Labour Party politician; the organisation that has brought us the seemingly endless succession of clueless buffoons, incompetents and dogmatic pseudo-socialists we have had the misfortune to call a government over the last eleven years? Let us review this Z list of political wannabes and failures; it includes such illustrious names as: John Prescott, Frank Dobson, David Blunkett, Geoff Hoon, Des Brown and Stephen Byers to name but a few examples of the embarrassingly ineffectual and damaging personalities that we have had to suffer in Westminster over the last few years. Against this lot George W. Bush looks positively erudite.

Ours is a government that has, amongst other things, masterminded the break-up of the United Kingdom; the handover of (for all practical purposes) sovereignty of the nation to a European federal government; and the destruction of our economy. Now, finally, just as it all starts to go to hell in a handcart; they start to spot the inadequacies of each other.

Who Sets The Standards For Our Police?

On 19th August I read that ‘a man was arrested when he photographed a police van outside a fish and chip shop after he had seen it reversing the wrong way along a one-way street’. Apparently an officer came running from the shop and battered the camera from the man’s hand on to the floor and arrested him for three crimes, none of which he had committed. After the incident ‘the officer faced a disciplinary inquiry and was made to apologise in person to Mr Carter but still held on to his job’; and the deputy chief constable also wrote to the man, apologising for the officer's 'totally unacceptable' behaviour.

Today I read ‘that two policemen have been sacked and a third told to resign for assaulting and threatening a 16-year-old boy and then trying to cover up their actions’.

What’s with this ‘unacceptable behaviour 'and 'made to apologise'? And what on earth do they mean ‘sacked and told to resign’? In any just society police officers are held to higher standard of accountability than the rest of us plebs. In both cases there were attempts to pervert the course of justice which would have brought prosecution and automatic imprisonment for those found guilty. But what do I know?

As One ‘Criminal’ To Another

I read that our illustrious government now intends to recruit hundreds of people whose sole job will be to issue ‘on the spot’ fines to people who contravene one of the regulations or bylaws introduced to make us a ‘better’ society. These will include parking, littering, playing in the street, annoying your neighbour, and practically anything to do with wheelie bins, refuse collection or recycling.

If you fill your wheelie bin too full you will be fined; if you leave your wheelie bin too far from the kerb you will be fined; if you leave your wheelie bin the wrong way round you will be fined; if you put additional rubbish bags out with your wheelie bin you will be fined; if you put your rubbish in the wrong container you will be fined; and if you put your rubbish out on the wrong day you will be fined; and what’s more if you obstruct the pavement with your rubbish you will be fined. Of course if you drive any or all of your rubbish to the tip in order to avoid falling foul of any of the afore-mentioned regulations and pump additional greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, that’s okay.

Since coming to power this government has introduced laws creating over 3,000 new criminal offences. These come under guise of improving or protecting the environment, and enhancing law order.

By the time this government leaves office there will only be two classes of people left in this country; criminals and people who work for the government. New Labour, new Stasi.