Diana, Paris, and Sky News

At the risk of banging on too much about Diana and becoming like The Daily Express, I caught a glimpse of Sky News earlier today. They were reporting on the Princes' response to the Inquest verdict, and had a split screen on their channel. One side was showing Kensington Palace, which I suppose makes an obscure form of sense. However the other side was showing the tunnel in Paris where Diana died. And I cannot work out why.

What on earth did they expect to see? Another fatal car accident? The rusting wreck of the beamer, still not cleared away by the French authorities? Perhaps the ghost of Diana, looking forlorn by the tunnel entrance. Maybe an MI6 agent arriving at the tunnel, only to breakdown in tears and confess to murder? I mean, there must be a cost attached to sending a camera operative to that site in Paris. And what did Sky News get in return? Footage of traffic. On a road. And not much else.

Maybe it is my inability to see a point in that footage that has denied me the chance to have a career in media...

Protect yerself

We hear it a lot from our elected leaders, don’t we? That crime is going down. That the streets are safer. That their policies mean you can walk anywhere in your home city without fear of being attacked and stabbed.

It is just that you need to take some responsibility for yourself, that’s all. As Harriet Harman showed when she went on a walk about with the police in her home constituency. Wearing a stab proof vest. Take a look:


And Harman’s insensitivity is so great that she actually put that photo on her own website. Jeez.

Of course, this is Nu Labour. So rest assured that there is a reason why she was wearing a stab proof vest whilst she was walking the streets that she purports to represent. It was to fit in with the police, you see. They were all wearing them, so she felt she had to too:

"It was just a courtesy, there was no security issue whatsoever, it was almost like wearing the kit when you go out with the team."

Which could, I suppose, be true. Maybe she does view police officers as so insecure that they need her to wear the same personal protective equipment as them so they don’t feel like freaks. I rather doubt that, but you never know. And God help us if Harman ever visited a Wrestling event. She's probably end up wearing a leotard to be like Hulk Hogan or something.

What is much more interesting, and what hasn’t been mentioned in any of the coverage I’ve seen, is the fact that the police wear these stab vests day in, day out when they are patrolling the streets. Harman may feel safe enough to walk through her own constituency without protection, but the police don’t.

And, of course, the police are at the front line of fighting crime, so they are more at risk than, say, the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party who lives in a self-constructed, protective bubble. But the real issue is the police feel the need for extra protection, and one of the reasons might be this inconvenient (both for Harman, the police and for anyone living in the area) little stat:

Incidents of violent crime in the borough of Southwark, which includes Peckham, have increased by 6.9 per cent in the last 12 months.

Enough said.

The Diana Inquest: No, really?

The Diana Inquiry has found no evidence that Duke of Edinburgh, or MI6, had anything to do with the death of Princess Diana. I cannot be alone in thinking "you reckon? I could have told you that a loooong time ago." After all, any woman, being driven at high speed through Paris by a drunk driver, is at risk. And when said drunk driver hits a concrete block, and said woman isn't wearing a seat belt, you don't need an assassin. At the risk of being brutal, simple physics will intervene and kill.

But this big, fat, pointless waste of time has cost £7m. £7m? Christ on a trike! A small fortune spent investigating a mad as a badger conspiracy theory. We may as well have spent the money investigating the theories of David Icke. At least they are more credible. Or, failing that, at least they are more fun...

Hopefully now Al-Fayed will shut his mouth and stop spouting this nonsense at all and sundry. After all, as the coroner points out, his theories are ""so demonstrably without foundation" that even his lawyer was no longer pursuing them." Although I think I'm being optimistic there. I'm tempted to run a sweepstake on when Al-Fayed will denounce the verdict, or vow to fight on. My money's on by close of play to day...

Sack the Pig!

The Times has published details of how much the Speaker of the House of Commons costs us:

The Speaker’s bill
£137,000 Salary; he also gets a grace-and-favour apartment
£17,346 Expenses he claimed for a second home last year
£7,595 Expenses he claimed last year for running costs for using his Scottish home as an office, a practice from which MPs are discouraged
£50,000 Amount of public money he spent on air travel for his wife, Mary. She also spent more than £4,000 on taxis
£21,500 Amount of public money spent on legal challenges by Mr Martin’s office to newspapers, including The Times
£3,000 Value of Air Miles used by Mr Martin to fund flights between Scotland and London for his family. Guidelines stipulate that Air Miles should be used to reduce the cost of travel paid for by the taxpayer
£15,201 He also claimed £3,138 in car allowances, £10,587 in flights and £1,476 on stationery and postage

So, from what we know, the Speaker of the House of Commons cost us £251,642. £50,000 was spent on travel for the corpulent cunt’s wife. It gets even worse when you put these figures into perspective – I earn above the average salary for the UK, and I cost my employer just 14% of what the Speaker has cost the taxpayer. The main difference between the speaker and my good self is I’ve actually achieved something for someone, somewhere to justify my cost this year. I don’t think the speaker has.

Of course, with such alarming figures buzzing around, the House of Commons has acted with speed and with dignity:

The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards has now been asked to investigate whether more than £4,000 spent on taxis for Mrs Martin’s shopping trips amounted to an inappropriate use of public money.

You what, now? The House is investigating just £4,000 of the above? And they actually need an investigation to decide whether the fucking wife of an MP’s shopping trips are an appropriate use of public money? Let me save you the hassle, guys: no it fucking isn’t!

As Guido notes, it is time for Martin to go. If he won’t resign, he should be pushed out. He is a corrupt, incompetent shaved gorilla of a man. A bloated pig, standing at the front of the Commons, milking his position for everything it is worth. In any decent democracy the Speaker would be stripped off office, and thrown out into the street to the baying condemnation of the masses. However, in the decadent, fetid atmosphere of the modern House of Commons, the Speaker can rely on the support of his colleagues. Even in the face of such obvious, naked, corrupt use of public funds.

If the House wants to regain the respect of the electorate and fight corruption in the ranks, it could do far worse than striking out at the Speaker. Because this pink faced bloater is pissing not only on the dignity of the House, but all over the British electorate as well.

Conceding Defeat

I've had a number of conversations about Gordon Brown with my good friend the Moai. My predictions (such as "he'll be too much of a coward to call a snap election") about that spineless shit have generally been proved to be correct. So here's another one, published to the limited readership of this blog.

Gordon Brown will not be Prime Minister after the next election. Cameron may not get an overall majority, but the Clegg led Lib Dems will run into the waiting arms of Cameron in the event of young Hug A Husky needing to form a coalition. But that is not my prediction - my prediction is about how Brown will behave in the event of losing the election.

Brown has waited his entire adult life to be Prime Minister. He has had to live in the shadow of his much more capable (and calling Blair capable really shows the incompetence of Brown) and charismatic colleague for over a decade, watching that man in the job he feels he is owed. Now he has the job, his arrogance is such that he does not even feel the need to be elected by anyone. Can you imagine how he will feel if he loses the prize he has coveted for so long?

I think he will go into meltdown - suffer a Nixonesque mental collapse. He won't be calling Cameron to concede defeat in the election - a subordinate will do that. He won't be making a speech on election night: a senior Labour minister will make that speech for him. There will be no gracious concession speech, no "when the curtain falls it is time to get off the stage" moment. He will disappear into the woodwork, vanish up to Scotland in a way that will make Ming the Merciful's vanishing act look positively dignified. Grace and dignity will not be seen from Brown after the next election.