A Policeman's lot is.....LOBBYING???

Is it any wonder we have the police in a bind over their subservient role in the New Labour fantasyland? Now we have ACPO (Association of Chief Police Officers) lobbying MPs and acting like a think tank. A spokeswoman said "This was a police service proposal. We were asked some time ago to put forward a proposal of 90 days. It is our opinion that we have a duty to back up that professional judgement with evidence. Of course we were contacting MPs. They needed to be informed before they made a decision."

What does she think she is saying? Who asked the police to "put forward a proposal of 90 days" and why was ACPO contacting MPs? In the UK it is Parliament that hears of the concerns or views of the police from ministers. It is certainly not the duty of police officers, servants of the Crown, to be digging around in political lobbying practices.

This confused woman misunderstands the term duty, misunderstands the role of policing and misunderstands the separation of political decisions and employment as a servant of the Crown!

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Blair's In Touch? Ummm!!

Tony Blair has accused some MPs of being out of touch with the public and of failing to face the terror threat. He bases this on public opinion polls which probably asked fairly simple questions. Seeing that he didn't really offer MPs an adequate explanation of his views, why on earth should they take him at face value?

This is the man who duped Parliament over WMD and the whole Iraq intelligence fiasco. Then the public were mainly against him and he thought they were out of touch!

If it's Monday the public are confused, if it's Tuesday the MPs are confused but on Wednesday the Prime Minister tries to confuse us all at PMQ's.

He really does have a nerve!

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The Sun should set!

Rebekah Wade , the "editor" of the Sun newspaper is in no place to castigate others and call them traitors. Here's a woman who gives her husband a good hiding and ends up in trouble with the police. "Sun slapper in slammer!" Now there's a good headline for a woman who runs this rag under the eagle eye of Murdoch, a man who has little loyalty to this country (or any other it seems!)

She has a downright cheek in calling sentient MPs traitors. The headline should read as "wot I wrote it!" to use Sun-speak!

Here's a link to the rag. (shame on me!)

http://www.thesun.co.uk/section/0,,2,00.html

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Blair not quite out for the count!

So Tony Blair suffers his first defeat in the House of Commons since becoming Prime Minister. And on a measure he staked his reputation on! His style has been that of the cocky know-it-all, bruisingly using bullies to get his own way. Now the Labour party is beginning to strike back.

Blair sounds like a shrill preacher on terrorism. Those of us who believe his arguments are flawed, are less than studied, and have an element of control about them, are dismissed as closet traitors! This is of course rubbish, but he never has thought debate mattered. It is the result that is important to him. Clare Short was right tonight when she said no Prime Minister can act alone. This is not a dictatorship but a parliamentary democracy.

The 50-plus rebels now have a taste for rebelling. They will do it again. This is the beginning of the end of a premiership that will have a historical legacy of spinning and subterfuge. And the Iraq War will cloud the desire of New Labour to have a legacy wrapped in the memory of "winning" three elections!

Have a vote in my November poll. The runners and riders are listed here!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/uk_politics/03/the_cabinet/html/default.stm

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New Labour? New Horrors!

Some people say, in exasperation, that toddlers can be little horrors. Well, they will need to know that there are other horrors out there and one of them is Beverley Hughes, the New Labour aparatchik, who has said "We want to establish a coherent framework that defines progression for young children from nought to five". And she means it!

Another outcry at New Labour control! Watch out maternity wards, lock your doors! The New Labour horrors are about!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4420138.stm

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Brown Man in the Ring?

The Sunday papers in Britain were well tuned into the Tory party leadership battle and the prospect of one of them sparring against Gordon Brown, the man that nearly all the press sees as heir apparent. In fact, Brown has a better chance of succeeding Blair than Prince Charles has of being King! The shoe-in certainty is somewhat disconcerting for democrats, though. Why should Brown get moved in as PM just because Blair made a sleazy deal in the Granita restaurant? I don't think he should. He's looking more like a bear with a sore head as the days go by.

Blair, on the other hand, is now talked of as being on his way out. Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British ambassador to Washington, has said that Blair's period of premiership is coming to an end. "You can smell these things!" he said, remembering the similar reasons for the end of the John Major times. Meyer has also said that "there is plenty of evidence" that "home-grown terrorism was partly radicalised and fuelled" by Iraq. These comments were rubbished by David Miliband, the Blairite "fire extinquisher" who rather cattily said, "Christopher Meyer, I think I am right in saying, is an expert on foreign policy. He is not an expert on the domestic issues that are going on inside communities in this country."

Well, Miliband appears to be no expert on domestic issues himself and Blair is certainly no expert on foreign policy! So they're in no place to preach. However, Blair is probably going sooner than later (so take a look at my November poll, folks!) and I don't really expect Gordon Brown to be eased in like an eel to the water! I think there will be a contest and Brown will get really ticked off with Blair.

Opinion about Blair is now becoming adverse. The Sunday Telegraph gives Dario Fo, the left-wing Italian playwright and provocateur a platform for his views. Discussing his plans for a new career with the Sunday Telegraph, Fo, 79, was keen to display his contempt for other political leaders, notably Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian premier, and Tony Blair.

"Blair is a horrible man," Fo said, sitting on a sofa in his fifth-floor Milan apartment, which is decorated with theatrical masks. "He is a complete liar, very crafty and would fit in perfectly in Berlusconi's cabinet. He comes across as pleasant and charming but he has just peddled in lies and duped the nation. I'm amazed the Labour Party hasn't got rid of him. His policies have been disastrous and he has taken Britain into a war in Iraq from which it cannot now withdraw. Both he and Berlusconi are very similar. They are horrendous liars who have cheated the electorate. Italy has been ruined by Berlusconi. He's nothing short of a spiv, a travelling salesman".

Powerful talk indeed! But it is starting already and Blair may not be able to spin his way out of other people's webs!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/11/07/nblair07.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/11/07/ixhome.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/11/06/wfo06.xml

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Blair Shifts Ground!

So Tony Blair is going to announce tomorrow that he is rethinking his plans to allow terror suspects to be held for up to 90 days without charge. This is not, apparently, because he had a dream that told him it was wrong, but because Downing Street conceded he may struggle to get the measures through Parliament. All very neat and tidy, then!

What Blair fails to realise when he mocks the opposition to his plans is that the concerns expressed are not about terrorists as such, but about his inability to have laws drafted properly and when laws are enacted, for the police (who currently appear to be in some kind of trance when it comes to New Labour's bidding) to go around using them against people such as aged hecklers of long-standing Labour party membership. It is because the vast majority in this country now no longer trust Blair's words that the detail of his anti-terrorism measures are being so avidly scrutinised.

We are all against terrorist acts, as the Conservative (David Davis) and Liberal Democrat (Mark Oaten) Home Affairs spokesmen said. We just don't want to live in a society where free speech is curtailed and liberty abused because the police don't have the necessary resources to do a proper job!

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A Right Reverend Row!

The row in the Anglican Church over the consecration of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire simmers along and has just had the heat turned up recently. Robinson is in England for the 10th anniversary of the gay Christian pressure group Changing Attitude. For those who don't know, Gene Robinson became the first openly gay man to be consecrated a bishop anywhere in the Anglican Church worldwide. And because of the dissension it has caused he is the only one!

However, I was very alarmed to hear him say today that when he was consecrated he wore a bullet proof vest and had security all around him. He had received death threats! Whatever one believes about this thorny question of homosexuality and the Church (and I am on, I suppose, the traditionalist wing, but without any desire to be censorious), it is certainly NOT a Christian person's place to be issuing death threats! It would be far better that these people take stock of their own minds and consider the evil they are bringing towards themselves. And also reflect on the words "Let both grow together until the harvest." (Matt. xiii. 30).

Whatever Gene Robinson is or is not, it is certainly not our place as Christians to judge his soul. I will not be one who worries unduly on this and I will not be waking in the middle of the night screaming epithets about the devil and all his works!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4405844.stm

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