Now recent British history is changing.
Last week we heard that the Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, had offered to resign but that the Prime Minister refused to accept his resignation. The PM subsequently told the House that he did not know the details when he rejected that resignation.
Yesterday the PM told the News of the World that he might have to sack Clarke, depending on what happened. This morning it emerges in The Sun, the News of the World’s stable-mate, that, “BUNGLING Home Secretary Charles Clarke did NOT offer to quit last week over the freed foreign convicts scandal. He told the BBC he had offered to go — which infuriated Prime Minister Tony Blair.”
Those of us who have been seized by the strange idea that the reason a PM might reject a resignation without asking for more details could only be in order to be able to deny knowledge later, can take comfort. It never happened.
That the serious press, read by a tiny proportion of the public, may have carried stories in which Blair supported his Home Secretary, and that he told the House of Commons something similar, carries no weight. Many millions of tabloid readers are subvocalising the much simpler truth: that Tony has been badly let down, and investigations are going on to discover how badly.
And as to the Battle of the Cowshed, I believe the time will come when we shall find that Snowball’s part in it was much exaggerated. Discipline, comrades, iron discipline! That is the watchword for today. One false step, and our enemies would be upon us. Surely, comrades, you do not want Jones back?
Guy, your link: resign but that the Prime Minister refused to accept his resignation does not seem to be working.
Is this some carelessness on your part or mine, or part of the plot?
Best regards
Ah!
Guessed the correction eventually; it’s:
resign but that the Prime Minister refused to accept his resignation
Best regards
Additionally to that story was the revelations in yesterday’s Mail on Sunday about John ‘2 Shags’ Prescott’s anctics with his secretary, which Prescott has been trying to deny by threatening the MoS with the Press Complaints Commission.
Kinda pisses all over the idea that Charles Clarke was sincere. More like a poor man’s Iago.
What a touching faith you all have in the accuracy of the tabloid press.
I am not sure if I am surprised that somewhere in the region of 1 in every 60 convicts in this country is a foreigner. In fact, it’s probably more than that, given that those released are not purported to be all of the foreigners in our gaols.
It seems to me prima facie odd that the nation should be so apparently indifferent to the fact that such a quantity of people allowed to live or otherwise stay within these shores should be of a criminal character. Or am I not allowed to say that?
Edward Lud – I don’t think people are indifferent. The truth has been hidden from them. I think many suspected, but the figures are rigged. “The Project” is to destroy British identity and pride in being British.
I mean, the late unlamented Robin Cook had The Internationale played at his funeral, for god’s sake!
It’s more like over 10% of prisoners are foreign nationals. Approx 1/3 of female prisoners in the UK are Caribbean drug mules.
Edward Lud,
Though the goal population has been increasing steadily of late, you neglect the facts that it is not static, and that the figures for those released without deportation proceedings are totals over 10 years.
The characteristics of the foreigners in British gaols are also different from those of the natives. They may well be in for longer terms on average, precisely because of the availability of deportation (however inefficiently pursued) in relation to petty recidivists who make up the bulk of prisoners otherwise. That would tend to inflate the proportion. A very high proportion of women prisoners are foreign drug-mules, who are probably more dangerous to themselves than the general public, and in a rational polity would not be in prison at all because there’d be no crime for them to commit.
The proportion of criminals in goal who are foreigners gives no evidence of the proportion of foreign residents or visitors in Britain who have “criminal character”. You can make your comments, but they are tinged (at the very least) with xenophobia, and the whole idea of “criminal character” is of a piece with the PM’s sheep-and-goats moralism.
Guy Herbert, where do you get off telling people who make well-founded accusations about foreign criminals in Britain, xenophobic? This is a bullying word employed for one purpose only: to shut down the discussion.
I hope the people who have been commenting above will pay you no heed.
“Kinda pisses all over the idea that Charles Clarke was sincere. More like a poor man’s Iago.”
Unlike the Iago in the opera, I think this one will get his comeuppance.
‘Credo in un Tony Crudel.’
“What a touching faith you all have in the accuracy of the tabloid press.”
We don’t ,watching the press and politicians in action is akin to watching two drunkem hookers fight over a john.
Le Cabinet Gouvernement
Blathering Blair, the Confidence Man
Bung the cash attem Brown, the antigoldbug [old scattercash]
Can’t catchem Clarke the Chief Constables Calamity
Hapless Hewitt the Nurses Nightmare
and of course
Pants Down Prescott, the Planners Plague
For those unfamiliar with French slang, “Le Cabinet” = the sh*t h**s* or b*g h*l*
Thing is, Verity, many of your concerns are well founded. But you use these instances to confirm your overall conspiratorial hypothesis that government is out to destroy the British people.
For what reason? For what purpose? And why are they so good at doing it across Government if they are so incompetent at doing everything else?
The more valid inference is the cock-up theory. Countries change constantly, both in values (which we can only to try to make more liberal as time goes on), culture and ethnicity. The government at the moment just happens to be pretty bad at maintaining law and order during this particular transition.
Yep, bloody right you are and keep saying it. Don’t be cowed by the spineless and and don’t be cowed by liberals looking to show off their liberalism and ignore silly, baseless accusations of xenophobia. If you don’t say speak the truth you’ll one day find you’ve lost the freedom to do so.
nic – You ask why I believe the British “government” is destroying Britain: And why are they so good at doing it across Government if they are so incompetent at doing everything else?
They are not incompetent. They have competently destroyed the integrity of the civil service; they have competently made great inroads in destroying the two-parent family; they have competently removed learning, except for politically correct inanities, from schools; they have competently allowed vast numbers of undocumented immigrants, many of them from a very alien, destructive culture, to burrow into Britain; they have competently criminalised the streets, deflected the purpose of the police force and destroyed faith in British justice with leftwing judges and by handing power over criminal law to the Human Rights court over there in Europe somewhere.
I don’t think they’re incompetent at all.
As to why they are doing it? I have absolutely no idea. They’re destructive. They’re hungry power power over the minutia of people’s lives. They have a hatred of British history.
The accusation of xenophobia doesn’t bother me especially. Like snobbery, it’s a rather amiable vice.
But in any event, it would surely have been xenophobic only had I suggested that foreigners are ipso facto criminal, which I did not.
As for ‘criminal character’, I’m a defence lawyer; people have criminal characters as a matter of law. Generally speaking, they are desperate to keep such knowledge out of the hands of juries for the very good reason that juries will, usually with good reason, conclude that Bad Character means Criminal Character means ‘this is the kind of person who does that which is alleged’.
My point, above, was more to do with the fact if a high proportion of our prison population is not indigenous, then we appear to be pretty ineffective at guarding our borders against those it would seem most desirable to keep out.
Oh, and Nic, I think the point is not that the government is out to ‘destroy the British people’, which is after all an act of physical violence leading to extirpation, but that instead the government is out to obliterate ‘Britishness’, as a culture. And before Guy accuses me of supporting an hermetic Aryan laager of drones, I mean that the dictates of transnationalism and multiculturalism mean, int. al., that the defence of, say, the Anglo-Saxon tradition of property rights is, at best, no more ‘valid’ than the continental European tradition of, say, the rights of the community as expressed by the state supreme. There are other examples. But the overall point is one of denuding Britain of its historic character as such, the easier to transfer self-government to transnationalist boondoggles.
@nic, who wrote:
“For what reason? For what purpose? And why are they so good at doing it across Government if they are so incompetent at doing everything else?
The more valid inference is the cock-up theory.”
These are good points nic.
However, I see a requirement in politicians and government for judgment and integrity.
The current situation arises through a lack of judgment; this is a lack that has been repeated, so it is demonstrative of not only poor judgment but lack of caring much about it.
This is followed by cover-up, in so far as that is possible (and sadly it is to a large extent), and also diversion of blame.
You will probably agree that, in such circumstances, the cover-up usually ends up being far worse than the original lack of judgment.
However, if ministers and their departments are not “punished”, there is inadequate deterrent on other ministers and other departments in the future. Thus government gets worse and the people are worse served.
On the current case, I think the problems are sufficient to justify the current (and considerable) fuss. This is especially when they build on previous problems in the same department, and also problems throughout this particular government (though it is by no means unique in this).
It is also the case that the cover-up, including obfuscation and dilution, is wider than the original department where the problem arose.
Best regards
In 1954 Sir Thomas Dugdale, the Agricultural Minister, insisted on resigning after his department was shown to have profiteered from farmland requisitioned during the war. His junior, Lord Carrington, also offered his resignation but was told to stay by Churchill.
Both were Old Etonian Conservatives with an inherited spirit of noblesse oblige.
Compare and contrast Clarke’s antecedents, and his determination to cling to office after allowing foreign criminals to swarm across our country.
I knew Clarke slightly at Cambridge. He was a standing joke in more sophisticated undergraduate circles as the epitome of the dull hack politician, devoting every waking hour to plotting his rise in the new CSU. He worked himself to the front of every protest, in his trademark loose pullover and straggly beard. I suppose I should not be surprised at how he has ended up.
Edward Lud,
[…]but that instead the government is out to obliterate ‘Britishness’, as a culture.
With that I am inclined to agree, but I think you confuse means and ends. Transnational institutions and international conventions (and doctrinal multiculturalism, too, for that matter) are being used as mere means for imposing New Left nostrums, the Ho Chi Min trail by which power is routed out of the country and reapplied where it is more difficult to resist. The end is power unconstrained.
As to why they are doing it? I have absolutely no idea. They’re destructive. They’re hungry power power over the minutia of people’s lives. They have a hatred of British history.
Well… yes. They do hate British history. Yes, they do want to control everything. They have even produced a leaflet with information detailed instructions on defecation:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0%2C%2C2-2156521%2C00.html
But I’m not convinced of the existence of a “conspiracy”. NuLab appear too shambolic for that…
I just think they’re a bunch of student union politicos who haven’t grown-up.
It is oft stated that our problems with asylum seekers and outreaching and muzzies is because a massive industry has developed and the Human Rights lot have a vested interest. True, but it isn’t a conspiracy, it’s ironically enough demented quasi-market forces. It’s much easier to go to university, learn NuLabSpeak, say all the right things and extort a tidy some for the rest of your “career” telling the inhabitants of Dundee how to take a shit than become for (example) an electrical engineer. The kids are voting with their feet, voting for an easy life on the back of the Poor Bloody Taxpayer. No need to learn nasty, difficult things like calculus or commercial law when you can make a living parroting platitudes about “discrimination” or “diversity”.
I also agree with an earlier poster (different thread, sorry can’t remember) that a lot of NuLab are francophiles and are trying to run a Gallic technocracy without the technical skills. There’s much to be said against the French model but at least if Chirac decides to build a TGV line it bloody well works.
Well I guess I agree with all of this. As long as the sort of “values” that people are concerned about here are for property rights and personal liberty rather than Christian virtue and indiginous white “culture”, I have no problem echoing what people have said.
Why did Blair refuse to accept Clarke’s resignation and refuse to sack that clown Prescott – our “Deputy Prime Minister” for god’s sake? Someone over at Guido Fawkes has said it is well known that Tony Blair is a “friend of d******. No surprise there, of course, but when is this going to come out? They’re all, ultimately, protecting Blair. He can’t sack them.
Verity,
Perhaps the bigger question is why Blair ever gave Prescott the job? Perhaps Cherie goes for a bit of Yorkshire “rough”.
I was vaguely under the impression bugger-lugs Clarke didn’t actually offer his resignation to Blair. He just told the papers to look like he’d done the decent thing.
And what is a “friend of d******”? I must admit to being scoobied.
I suspect sackings in labour are in hiatus until the succession is sorted.
nic,
huh?
Nick M – Obviously, Prescott was always the nexus between the Labour Party and Zanulab. That has been established for nine years. That is the only value this illiterate lout has.
But Prescott appears to have been totally out of control for those nine years. Out of control. Party-time in his cabinet office seems to have been pretty serial. Maybe Tony ‘n’ the Boyz preferred the Old Labour figurehead permanently engaged in drunken sex and using his limousines and grace and favour residences to stagger about entertaining willing women (or not-so-willing, according to reports) than have him lumbering into the foreground punching voters faces, and destroying the Green Belt and wrecking their programme.
Tracey Wossname was hardly the first. Had it been an intelligent, competent, fairly moral man diddling about on his own time and his own dime, who would care?
But his drunken lurching around as Deputy Prime Minister of Britain, and having stand-up shags behind his open cabinet office door with seven other civil servants working in next door office with the door open: if I may employ the term knee trysts, a la Bill Clinton, behind Prescott’s desk, on government time and government property paid for by taxpayers who really can’t afford the deductions to fund it … arrogant. Sovietesque. Totally out of control. Like Tony Blair and his “government”, which never took root. Did it. It never felt like a government, did it?
On the contrary, it feels exactly like a government to those unfortunate enough to have been governed by it. Its motto is, “He governs best, who governs most.”
Nic,
‘Christian virtue and indiginous white “culture”‘
There are some people who subscribe to these things, lets not forget that they have both rights and valiv points of view too.
Otherwise, I agree completely.
valid, PIMF.:)
Valid Robert, it is just sometimes the group that is trying to maintain the liberal rule of law gets infiltrated by reactionary forces that would prefer a homogenous ethnic and cultural state, using the argument that only one culture is capable of appreciating liberal values.
Melanie Phillips, for example, typifies this as, when it comes to the war on terror and questions of criminal law, she is definitely on the right side. Catch her talking about video games or films or music, however, and you will find that she is a modern day Juvenal, and is very sympathetic to authoritarian censorship. She is fine with this contrast because she thinks that Liberal values come, necessarily, from Christian Protestant ethics, and therefore, to maintain her conception of liberal society, Christian and family values must be promoted. This I reject because I think Britain’s liberal values come more from non-conformist and athiest sources and that we have transcended Christianity as a political force just as we are trying to persuade the ME to transcend Islam as a political force.
Of course, it doesn’t help that be they Liberal or White Christian, both get called “fascist” by the Left which is very irritating when trying to make these careful distinctions within ideologies.