Even the most hard-bitten student activist would recognise its not an abrogation of his radicalism to get an ID card if it helps him to provide an assurance of his identity to those who provide services to him.
– Ms Home Secretary Jacqui Smith (quoted in Computer Weekly) reacting to criticism by the National Union of Students of plans to hustle and hassle students to register themselves for life on the great and glorious National Identity Register. It is just extraordinary how tone deaf to human life, how uncomprehending of the impulses to privacy and personal liberty, this strange class of apparatchiks is. Jacqui Smith’s own concept of radical activism may not extend very far. A friend who was her contemporary at Hertford College commented:
Yes, I remember Jacqui Smith from college but only vaguely. She was a fairly inoffensive JCR/political hack… you know… terribly earnest. I think she may have been president of the JCR at some point.
It seems she has grown, changed, and reinvented herself – as a monstrously offensive political hack.
She was a fairly inoffensive JCR/political hack… you know… terribly earnest. I think she may have been president of the JCR at some point.
It seems she has grown, changed, and reinvented herself – as a monstrously offensive political hack.
No, I believe you are wrong there. The entire New Labour ‘project’ is just leftish JCR politics writ large. The juvenile and offensive controls they were able to get away with at university are now being applied to the country at large.
She hasn’t grown, she hasn’t changed, and she hasn’t reinvented herself. In fact, she hasn’t even matured into an adult politician, however gormless.
These people are children on a power trip, that’s all.
JCR?
JCR = Junior Common Room
It is the name given to the students’ social organisation in Oxford and Cambridge colleges. It is the equivalent of the student’s union or guild in other places, typically running the bar and organising events… and providing scope for those who like getting elected to things and running things to start doing politics.
At Oxford or Cambridge the Union debating societies are where the would-be pols with star quality stretch their legs, though. No one has ever accused Ms Smith of having star quality.
As Counting Cats points out the politics of New Labour is a direct decendent of 70s and 80s leftish student politics. It has many of the same values, including a reactionary puritanism, the same unquestioning attitude to its own incredibly narrow worldview – and quite a few of the same personnel.
That doesn’t make it any the less monstrous, though.
CC may have missed my irony. Smith doesn’t believe in people re-inventing themselves. One of the points of the ID scheme is to stop that sort of thing.
Many people of my generation will have seen the likes of Smith banning newspapers from campus, “denying a platform” to fascists, wallowing in PC management policies and in ishoos to the exclusion of their proper role of arguing with the University authorities and providing cheap drink, and just shrugged. We thought, “Well, at least it’s not serious. They aren’t running the country. Out in the real world there are grown-ups and sanity.” Only now they are running the country. And that is pretty serious.
Ah, student politics…
When I was a postgrad at Leeds my office was just past the science library (and the math smoking spot – which is where the real work occurred) so every morning I walked down red-route (as it was named) and past the ads for assorted types running for student positions.
Now, Leeds and Manchester are quite similar in many ways and I know them both well. Leeds has a problem and it’s a Fozzy Bear of a one. 30000+ students and abysmal rental housing stock. I tired once to get a gaff with an Italian Mech Eng PhD. It was embarrassing. We saw one gaff and a bedroom had been sub-divided with a curtain. Mic said this was something up with which the Milanese would not put. Ironically, at the time, Leeds was flush with having a Harvey Nicks open up and was billing itself as “The Milan of the North”. I was living in a back-to-back opposite a drug dealer (which was handy if the people on the other side were having a “domestic”) and they usually were. They regularly got through more plates than a Greek state-wedding. “Milan of the North” – I’ll take that seriously when a certain Italian city bills itself as “The Leeds of the South”.
Yet, what did I see on the ads for the various candidates? Did I see anything about student housing? Did I see anything about crime? Did I hell. I saw a lot of promises to tackle racism and homophobia on campus. Seriously. Now my understanding is that on a university campuis you can be queer as Christmas and nobody gives a toss. Can you imagine my outrage as I saw all these posters walking in from a gaff that would have disgraced the 1930s? In one of the most multi-ethnic cities in the country with a hang-over from having spent the previous night in Queen’s Court which had just been voted Britain’s top gay bar? It was a going away do for a gentleman who preffered the company of gentleman. I knew the lad quite well and had frequently seen him walking hand in hand with his beau on Leeds campus. In three years he never got even insulted.
There are parts of England where they will kill you for holding the hand of another man. This was not a problem on Leeds campus though I wouldn’t rate your chances in South Shields on a Saturday night. How demented are these people to try and solve non-problems when the were very real ones to deal with right in front of them?
These are the morons who become our Lords and Masters. There was no problem with racism or homophobia on Leeds campus. Actually there was. Anti-semitism (sorry anti-Zionism) was rampant. I was accosted once by some Muslim fucker wearing a “peace scarf” who was wittering on about the plight of the Palestinians. I told him to go fuck himself. I had a meeting with the Prof and I was not to be messed with. Especially not by a git and imperatively not seeing as I was dating a Jew at the time.
My wife’s Russian grammar lecturer was constructively dismissed for racism and sexism. He took it well, he was former SAS. He had some right-wing connections and had written a paper saying the black Africa hadn’t developed mathematics whereas Europe, the Arabs, the Chinese and Indians had but that was it. My wife detected no hint of racism in Dr Ellis and as far as sexism is concerned – well, why did he keep giving her firsts? He was also a bloody good linguist and that afterall was his job.
The Stasi had a file on him but they did him no harm. The “do-gooders” who “opposed racism and sexism” on campus cost him his job.
Dr Ellis was a hard bastard but he was a bloody good teacher and he shouldn’t have been forced to resign. He divorced his wife because she disagreed with him disciplining the kids. During the divorce proceedings he moved out, into a tent in the garden. So I guess someone had worse housing in Leeds than I. Clearly he was a mentalist of some form but where better for him than a University then?
Alas he wasn’t a leftist mentalist. Leeds did have one at the time (it had hordes actually). An Economics Prof had to pisseth-off in rapid order because he’d actually worked for the Stasi. The amazing thing was it took years to track him down. Amazing because he had a bust of Lenin on his desk which one might have thought would be a clue. He never though attracted the opprobrium that Dr Ellis did. Angry letters were written to The Guardian and indeed The Independent concerning Dr Ellis.
Christ almighty there was an effing picket line of gits outside the Russian department once. I shouldered my way through, was called a “racist-enabler”, and responded in finest Anglo-Saxon. I was buying a computer from a Prof and I would not be thwarted.
My wife wrote her MA on that Mac Classic. Cost me 30 notes. I think I got a good deal?
it helps him to provide an assurance of his identity to those who provide services to him.
Why do they want such assurance?
When I walk into a bar, restaurant or shop I use the old fashioned method.
I give them money. They give me the goods or services.
End of story.
All the excuses for this unspeakable piece of evil are unravelling one by one.
The real purpose is to create the database.
Once we are all on it we can be tracked pretty much everywhere we go.
All financial incomes and out goings will also be tracked and if your tax return doesn’t tally with the Database, you are going to be in big trouble.
Question. How much identity fraud is actually happening?
These things were usually populated by those too dull and/or plain,the dweebs and nerds,this is their revenge.
Outside politics Smith might have risen as high as primary school teacher in the netherworld she is Home Secretary.
On the subject of ID cards,can we take it down to basics? The system will be run by bored inputers,people on £5 an hour operating a multi million system.We will be whatever these low level employees say we are.The opportunity for error is gargantuan,as we know government is brilliant at error.
“Question. How much identity fraud is actually happening?”
Not as much as there will be when there is a central database and copies on disc available on eBay.
Question. How much identity fraud is actually happening?
No one knows. Not least because no one can agree what “identity fraud” is. Pretty nearly all fraud involves some form of misrepresentation of authority.
But the Home Office, whose departmental ring-around is now so discredited that they are now not producing it again till they have “revised the methodology” (i.e. can fake it better).
It is the certainty (narrowness of view is another way of putting it) that gets to me. “Even the most hard-bitten student activist” “This is just like a passport for use inside the country” (with certainty that people would actually believe it to be a good thing. “Obviously, everyone would be in favour of ID cards for foreigners…..”. One kind of wonders whether they have ever met anyone who was not involved in student politics. Once again, one wonders if they realise how much they sound like something out of the Soviet Union. (Obviously they are not as nasty as that, but the mentality seems not too far from one in which people who do not agree with what is “obviously” true are diagnosed as mentally ill.
“they sound like something out of the Soviet Union. (Obviously they are not as nasty as that, but the mentality seems not too far from one in which people who do not agree with what is “obviously” true are diagnosed as mentally ill.”
Well yes they are. One has only to look at the raft of reprresive legislation which has spewed forth from this government to realise that.At the moment people are either unaware or compliant with the draconian laws,on the ground of thier benefit.Just wait until the laws get broken The Metric Martyrs foe example.
“Even the most hard-bitten student activist would recognise its not an abrogation of his radicalism to get an ID card”
For once, I totally agree 100 %. Let’s give the lady her due. iIt is absolutely not an abrogation of radicalism to be against this ID card plan. It’s an abrogation of common sense to buy into this scheme* or any other scheme by this government whose incompetence is of almost mythic proportions.
I wouldn’t trust the current UK government to poor piss out of a bucket with instructions written on the bottom. There’s nothing radical about that position whatsoever.
*nb. American negative meaning applies
In the words of the late Rt Hon Jim Hacker MP… “I think we’re all agree that this is pretty serious. Very serious indeed. In fact it could not be more serious.”
The point is, what are we going to do about it? Do we have to take up arms in order to throw these schoolchildren out? They remind me of the children who denounced their parents during the cultural revolution.
Interestingly, I think there’s a move across Europe to find arms and take them out of commission before we do revolt against the revolting EU. I’m not talking about the arms held by black teenagers in South London, but arms held by responsible adults. For example, recently in Northern Portugal, the GNR swooped and arrested 29 people in a few small mountain villages who all kept a gun for hunting. Many of these guns were unlicensed, as has always been the way, but the GNR confiscated the lot. Why? Because all over Europe governments are taking weapons out of circulation before the people get to the point of revolution. Think I’m imagining black helicopters circling overhead? I don’t think so. Anyone else know about this sort of thing?
“Freedom for Soajo
On August 23, 2007, Soajo and other surrounding villages were invaded by modern-day storm troopers of the much distrusted Guarda Nacional Republicana (GNR) in an operation dubbed “operação Face 452.2”. Over 221 GNR troopers took part in this operation that led to the confiscation 50 weapons, most of which were hunting rifles. Twenty-nine people were arrested in this operation. Many are honest, hard-working people. Fortunately, no one was killed in this overly reckless action by GNR. The officer in charge of the operation, Lieutenant Ricardo Cortinhas, commander of the GNR detachment in Arcos de Valdevez should be held to answer for his actions. It’s incomprehensible that in 2007 GNR would so aggressively search 57 homes in one single day just to confiscate hunting rifles. Good God! What kind of country has Portugal become?
Soajo is a peaceful village with around 1,000 residents. The young people have emigrated seeking prosperity in other countries or in the cities of Portugal. The people left in Soajo are mostly elderly residents who are retired, spending their days tending to their small farms, animals, or playing cards in the Casa do Povo. Crime in Soajo is virtually non-existent. There is no mafia in Soajo. There are no drug cartels or anything remotely close to that.
So why then would Lieutenant Cortinhas and the GNR feel it necessary to provoke the people of Soajo with such a heavy-handed tactic? Why risk life just to confiscate a few hunting rifles and pistols (which are used for protection of property and homes)? Why is the GNR confiscating illegal weapons to begin with? Perhaps it’s because the government makes it next to impossible for people to obtain a gun legally.
The GNR is no stranger to the use of intimidation tactics. For years the GNR has operated in the Minho region as a paramilitary outfit instilling fear in people. During Salazar’s dictatorship the GNR was one of the State’s primary instruments of fear. What is shocking to us is that the GNR is still playing the same game of intimidation during this democratic time.
No doubt we live in violent times. Violent crime, drugs trafficking, crimes against children, cyber crime and terrorism are all on the rise. Effective policing strategies are essential for civilized democratic societies to prosper. In order for modern police agencies to be really effective, however, they need to earn respect of the citizenry otherwise their only option is instill fear in them. Without respect, there is only fear. Hopefully, GNR’s overly aggressive operation against Soajo is not an indication that fear is their chosen strategy.
We urge all Soajeiros and our friends to contact the GNR to voice opposition against this type of action against Soajo. Send an email to the GNR’s national leader, Tenente-General CARLOS MANUEL MOURATO NUNES, at cg.gabcg@gnr.pt, to let him know that all Soajeiros are seriously concerned about the actions of the Arcos GNR. Or call the GNR general command in Lisboa at 213-21-7000. Lastly, our politicians in Soajo and Arcos should demand an official explanation from the GNR.
Jose Afonso
November 25, 2007″
There are some benefits from an entitlement card beyond security. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to present our card every time we buy petrol, pay a gas bill or take a plane or train journey. The government could then keep a tally of our carbon footprints and thus help us to help ourselves save the planet. This would have the added advantage of tracking everyone’s movements via a sub-dermal entitlement chip with a GPS-enabled module. It would be marvellous for finding lost children or kidnap victims. Oh… there’s no need to be alarmed, citizens. The government won’t bother you unless your movements are identified by the national database as being unusual or haphazard. This intelligence is how terrorists are found and stopped from committing atrocities. Isn’t it worth it if we save even just one life? Come now, citizens. I urge you to support such a measure . It is your patriotic and moral duty.
Jacqui Smith was at Hertford?
Dear me. The old place is clearly going downhill in a bad way.
Tut.
I’m not sure exactly what the stats are in the UK, but I can’t imagine it’s that much different than here in the states. Our Federal Trade Commission estimates around 8 million people are a victim of ID theft per year. Most of it goes undetected. The vast majority of these crimes will not be prosecuted in any way whatsoever.
Yes, they just get away with it. It’s one of the more depressing things I have to explain to my clients.
The is from Consumer Sentinel Consumer Fraud and Identity Theft Complaint Data January – December 2007
Between January and December 2007, Consumer Sentinel, the complaint database developed and maintained by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), received over 800,000 consumer fraud and identity theft complaints. Consumers reported losses from fraud of more than $1.2 billion.
Does anyone remember Gauntlet? Fabulous arcade game, mid 80s, you played a Thief, Warrior, Elf or Valkyrie with big boobies, and ran around mazes killing monsters and, cunningly, you could get more lives just by pumping more money into the machine, which made a serious dent in my wages at the time. Thing was, there were hordes of monsters, and they popped up out of “monster generators” that were like, um, little tent things, and the only worthwhile strategy was destroying the generators of course. You could keep batting at the monsters all day but in the end you’d be mobbed and overwhelmed.
So now here we have hordes of monsters popping up and costing us vast amounts of money, and overwhelming us, and the only way we’re going to win is if we can get at the generators which I keep saying and which various other people seem to be agreeing are in education.
I’m not against education, the idea of learning stuff, but it seems to me that Education, the network of institutions, is entirely the root of our problem. The universities are, primarily, the tents from which the hordes of Jacqui Smith monsters erupt and have been for most of the last century and they’re winning, and we’re nearly overwhelmed, and trying to kill the monsters themselves isn’t getting us anywhere and won’t, because you might bat one Smith, Darling or Millipede out the way but there’s just a queue of them behind them.
We really need a strategy to get at the monster generators. To put it in “street lingo” as I believe it’s known, we need some way to stick the boot into the academic world, or we’re lost. The academic institutions across the western world are just a big smelly nest of statists, which is a polite word for fascists and communists really, truth be told. If we can kill the generators off, gradually the supply of asshats into politics and the bureaucracy (and indeed into business) will dry up. Any hope of sorting out politics, governace or anything else without attacking the source is a waste of time.
The problem is, they seem to be currently entirely immune from attack. Do any “Top Tips” readers have any useful suggestions?
Mark Sparrow offers his suggestion in the tine of joke extremity. But others have been there before, with complete (and stupid) seriousness. See here.(Link) The millipede is unaware of the spectacular energiy consumption of fabs and server farms but is quite competent to use to price every personal transaction of every indvidual in a parallel currency.
“This intelligence is how terrorists are found and stopped from committing atrocities. ”
“I’m sorry but the computer is down for maintenance at the moment,please hold the line and one of our operators will be with you shortly.”
Poor Mrs Povis,82 of Penge will get whacked by an armed response group for refusing to drop the tin of Whiskas she bought with he ID.The ID had been cloned when she bought some Steredent from a corner shop.
Has anybody tried telling one of the kiddywinkies who man,sorry,person government telephones, that the information they have is wrong?
That plan of David “Gullum” Milipede will do wonders for the crime figures.Addicts can trade their credits for drugs.Oh to be a crime boss in the New Prohibition.
That plan of David “Gullum” Milipede will do wonders for the crime figures.
In Soviet days, activities which we would label normal economic activity were criminal offences. And it was only criminals who were able to offer the services needed by anyone who wished to live decent lives.This proposal from Miliband, while ostensibly about carbon rationing, is in fact a proposal to turn half the economy black, impose a level of micromanagement, command and control over the rest of it which would have left Stalin green (appropriate colour) with envy, and criminalise most of the British population.
NuLab has been captured by ecofascism and is now proposing to impose its pernicious doctrines on a previously free people.
“NuLab has been captured by ecofascism and is now proposing to impose its pernicious doctrines on a previously free people.”
Oh,I think any old kind of fascism would have done,this lot are Internazis rather than common or garden Nazis.
The real joy for them will be when we are unable to obtain our carbon rations without and ID card.
Gollum is proposing to expand the underclass,hereon known as outlaws.I hope that ‘elf an Safety are keeping tabs on rope and lamposts.
Well, the easiest way for them to succeed is to ban cash. Then they will know everything about you.
Does anyone know what the tax situation for barter is?
Milliband’s money line is priceless. Comparing it to a store loyalty card.
We already have a parallel currency on our streets its called drugs.It would be difficult for traffickers to start dealing in other things,there is already booze and people trafficking.The black market will be fueled by what ever fungible items can be bartered.
The problem with “year Zero” idiots like Milipede,is that they are oblivious to what has gone before.The fool is simply turning back the clock.
No luck with bartering. That’s subject to tax on the assessed value in kind. However, a barter is harder to track. That said, HMG could try to stamp out bartering by making it a criminal offence and requiring people to have a GPS tracking device so that they may explain their whereabouts if necessary. “Why were you at Mrs Smith’s house on the day the alleged bartering offence took place?” Of course, you’d need your ID card to buy anything so anyone buying large quantities of a certain commodity (cement, electric cables, flour etc) could be easily tracked down. This would make a great market for trading our cement credits etc with each other.
The other method of clamping down is to use informants. It worked extremely well in the Eastern Bloc for many years. Denunciations of people would be encouraged and maybe extra purchasing or carbon credits could be added to our ID cards for each person we dobbed in. We could call them Disloyalty Points!
anyone buying large quantities of a certain commodity (cement, electric cables, flour etc) could be easily tracked down
Sorry, but no. The sheer scale of the number transactions which take place every day would obviate against this. ‘Wastage’ would occur at every point down the supply chain.
The determination to track and carbon control every transaction would render any official estimate of economic activity worthless.
Prior to glasnost the USSR published official economic figures on a regular basis, and these bore little relation to the western estimates. After glasnost, the official figures were revised, and they bore a fascinating resemblance to the official CIA estimates.
The Soviets, as a result of their determination to control, had no idea of the state of their economy or the transactions which took place.
No luck with bartering. That’s subject to tax on the assessed value in kind. However, a barter is harder to track
You can’t tax what you can’t measure.
Well, exactly CC. I do tech support for my wife. How can they tax that?
Your point about the Sovs is well taken. Production reports were complete fictions and in any even vaguely sophisticated economy most production goes through many phases. Every stage will tell porkies.
In anycase my I point out a couple of Sov era witticisms.
Russia: We have a social contract. You pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.
Georgia: May you have to live on your salary! (about the nastiest curse in Georgian).
The reason I ask about barter is that a lot of technical forums use a points system and there is a monetary equivalence because you can buy points to ask questions. Could they tax, realistically, Linden dollars?
I once temped for the IR and it was nightmare of bureaucracy. It was largely paper based. Now if a “favours” site was set up with heavy encryption how practical would it be for them to hack? RSA can be broken but it would be a ‘mare to do it on a large scale and we all know what UKGov is like at big IT projects.
Of course it’s possible that RSA has been broken by something cuter than brute force but… I suspect that would have leaked because it’s a Fields Medal thang…
Let’s say I fix up a network and some guy fixes my wife’s car – well, we’re mates, natch. I mean you can do a favour for someone or should I bill dinner guests?
Operation Ore pulled in peadophiles not by breaking encryption but on the basis of credit card numbers… Now if you’re not directly trading currency I fail to see how they can nab you. Unless they get ultra sneaky.
And I don’t believe they’re that good. Unless of course they use Echelon but surely that’s up to it’s neck in intercepting Islamicist traffic.
Some poor sods topped themselves because they’d had their cards cloned.
If every time you make a purchase you have to swipe your fiscal card, then the HMG will be able to see exactly what you buy and consume. Those purchases only need carbon points attached to them to make it look all green and friendly – “In the Name of the Planet” could soon become a mantra like “May Peace Be Upon Him”. A quick tally of your spending cross referenced to your tax return will soon weed out the tax cheats. Remember, HMRC have already used Tesco Club Cards to cross reference for spending and nailed someone on the evidence.
I would think that a swipe of the fiscal card is the most likely. Already in Spain and Portugal people are issued with fiscal cards. When making some purchases your fiscal number is recorded. THat will eventually happen in the UK, I think.
The whole of the United Kingdom run as if it was a giant Student Union – yes that is about how things are now.
The Conservatives had 18 years in office to get rid of compulsory student unionism – and did nothing.
Instead they got rid of the Federation of Conservative Students – the main organization campaigning against compulsory student unionism.
There were the normal lies and, of course, a stab in the back from the then Chairman of the F.C.S. (who is now a Conservative M.P. – who gets on very well with the Labour government), but there was no vote from the members.
The “Wets” understood that their campaign against their foes had been successful – they had even got Norman Tebbit to do their dirty work for them.
So their next target was the Prime Minister herself.
The lady had won three general elections – but what had democracy got to do with anything (the Wets believed in neither liberty OR democracy).
And Mrs Thatcher was vulnerable – after all her most vocal young supporters (the sort of people who might give real trouble) had been destroyed.
So the Conservative party was subverted – first at the student level, later the leadership itself.
It has never recovered – and now goes along with almost everything the Student Union government demands.
Even some times (as with N.H.S. spending) denouncing the government for not being left wing enough.
The Wets have won.
“No luck with bartering. That’s subject to tax on the assessed value in kind.”
You lead a sheltered life Mr Sparrow.Take a look a unfamiliar areas,observer the young men riving around in top of the range BMWs during the day.Ask your local fence how business is,the young ladies who seem to spend a lot of time hanging around.There is a whole world out there way beyond the control of government.
Compare with the former Soviet Union where the ruling elite had to make a compromise with the crime barons.View any third world country
I was trying to be ironic. Of course they can’t tax bartering or keep track of the “informal economy” but it still doesn’t stop HMRC trying to tell us that they know everything – even how often we sneeze.
That is the con trick of government,omnipotence,it all falls on its ares when we notice that,not only has the juggler droped his balls,in this case he has no balls at all.We are rapibly approaching the Italian model of governance.
Ladies and Gentlemen of Samizdata;
I realise that this particular issue has been kicking around for a long time now. I also realise that when you speak about certain issues core to a person’s very deeply held beliefs, a certain amount of irrationality (or at least, irritability) starts to creep up. No one is immune to this, least of all myself.
Nevertheless, I would like to request something simple. You do not have to post it, though I guess it would be nice to see it in print. But please, please. I would suggest writing it down so that you can see it on paper. But at least, enumerate for yourselves the following:
0. What are the theoretical benefits of National ID? Do they stack up IRL?
1. What are the theoretical worst case scenarios in the adoption of national ID? Name them all, why not?
2. In the case of adoption, what are the ways in which these can be minimised/ameliorated from the private POV?
3. What public safeguards are currently in place (or not in place), and how can they be improved to deal with (1)?
4. What are the real-world constraints that would militate against (1)?
Now, I realise many of you have probably already done this. Many, many times over. Ad nauseum, for all I know. But could you take a look around the rest of the world and compare your take with reality?
Sure, you do not even want a shred of it. But would alarmism make your case stronger? Really?
For myself, I’m fine with national ID. Maybe I’ve been brainwashed, along with all my countrymen. But I don’t think so. Our election results in Malaysia have pretty much proven that, I should say. Because I seriously cannot see all that doom and gloom crap you’re positing happening, you know? And I am quite outspoken. So either I am not consonant with reality, or you are not consonant with reality. And I’m really curious to see which one it is. Because if it’s me that’s not in touch with reality, well, there’s a word for that – insane. I’d like to be guided back to sanity – or at least know I’m nuts. (Not that I’m not slightly nuts, but anyway.)
I filled my “European Parliament” candidate list form recently – it did not matter much what order I and other members of the Conservative party put the candidates in because the thing is rigged so that a female candidate comes high up the four – regardless to whether the lady is any good or not.
Just as in selecting the four candidates it was comulsory to pick females – whether or not they were the best candidates.
I suppose David Cameron and his comrades learnt such things from Student Unions.
I am told Mr Cameron was on “Women’s Hour” yesterday promising that at least a third of his cabinet would be female (assuming he gets elected).
Oh well, I suppose it makes a change from denouncing the Labour government for not spending enough money on the N.H.S. and other such.
And it is all a “good laugh” as they say.
I filled my “European Parliament” candidate list form recently – it did not matter much what order I and other members of the Conservative party put the candidates in because the thing is rigged so that a female candidate comes high up the four – regardless to whether the lady is any good or not.
Just as in selecting the four candidates it was comulsory to pick females – whether or not they were the best candidates.
I suppose David Cameron and his comrades learnt such things from Student Unions.
I am told Mr Cameron was on “Women’s Hour” yesterday promising that at least a third of his cabinet would be female (assuming he gets elected).
Oh well, I suppose it makes a change from denouncing the Labour government for not spending enough money on the N.H.S. and other such.
And it is all a “good laugh” as they say.
Doesn’t the word “taliban” mean student ?