Blaney's Blarney

Howls of derisive S Laughter

2009-07-10T09:14:00.005+01:00

Few of you will have heard of Andrew Slaughter, the Labour MP defending tower blocks in today's Guardian and the only man to be rejected by both Oxbridge and Uxbridge.

Everyone has the right to be stupid but Slaughter abuses that privilege. Rather than work with council tenants to help them meet their aspirations of home ownership and to help them gain real quality of life, Andrew S Laughter works against their best interests. Slaughter, and his ilk, wish to subjugate what they no doubt dismissively call "the working classes" to the might of the state, making them dependent on the state's largesse so that they lose any last vestige of independence of thought, operation or dignity and so that they can be controlled and bullied by the levers of the left. It is, in essence, an evil creed that even the Cubans are moving away from. But some politicians take a perverse delight in subjugating others - and Andrew Slaughter is one.

Slaughter is an absurd creature, a barrister who has adopted the most bizarre of affectations and mannerisms that are strange even by the Bar's standards. I had the misfortune of sharing a debating chamber with him for four years when he misled Hammersmith & Fulham Council and the Tories were then in opposition (since when, of course, the Tories have become the Wandsworth of the 21st century by cutting taxes each year since 2006/7). His are the politics personified by Damian McBride, relentlessly negative and cynical.

But on this issue, Slaughter has shown himself still to be a politician of the 1970s such that I have some advice for him: don't let your mind wander in future - it's much too small to be out on its own.

The map that should shame Apple

2009-07-09T19:40:00.000+01:00

If you are stupid enough to buy an iPhone (as I was last summer), you are stuck with O2. The iPhone relies on 3G technology - so guess which network has the worst national 3G coverage according to Ofcom? That's right. O2.

Well done Apple. And on the day you proclaim some fab new software for the iPhone too.

And so the conspiracy theories begin...

2009-07-09T18:01:00.001+01:00

Yates of the Yard says the police aren't interested in investigating the News of the World phone hack scandal.

Hark! I hear cries of cover-up from what passes for the left-wing blogosphere!

Support Free Honduras

2009-07-09T14:25:00.000+01:00

As if you needed me to help you decide who is on the side of right on what's happening in Honduras, just look at who are the loudest proponents of the return of the ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya: left-wing zealots such as Raul Castro, Evo Morales, Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, and even Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama.

The position seems to me to be simple: Zelaya tried to do a Chavez. The evil dehumanizing creed of communism was to be foisted on Hondurans in perpetuity. His attempted unconstitutional actions were stopped and he was deposed as a result of a court ruling (not a Castro-style bloodbath).

For more, go to Support Free Honduras or the King of the Airwaves.

Hat Tip: Hannibal.

The Obama bubble has burst?

2009-07-09T10:59:00.001+01:00

I must have missed this on the BBC today.

Coulson: safe

2009-07-09T10:35:00.000+01:00

Yates of the Yard is investigating.

Coulson: the plot thickens

2009-07-09T10:06:00.006+01:00

Further Pulitzer Prize winning journalism from journalists at The Guardian. They have a list of other conspiracies that involve Andy Coulson, raising serious questions as to how he can continue to have the confidence of David Cameron.

Caesar's muder - eyewitness Sir Menzies Campbell reports that Coulson was seen listening in as Caesar exclaimed "Et Tu, Brute?" as he was murdered.

Becket's murder - Robert Fisk's characteristically accurate account of Henry III's question at the end of a rowdy medieval dinner ("who will rid me of this turbulent feast?") is overhead by murderers employed by Coulson who erroneously rid Henry III of the turbulent priest, Thomas Becket.

Profumo - was Coulson hiding in the shrubbery at Cliveden with an ear trumpet?

Robert Maxwell's larceny - tabloid editor Andy Coulson worked closely with Robert Maxwell, pension fund thief [check this with Charlie W; it might have been another AC - Damian]

The Kennedy Assassination - was Coulson the man behind the Zapruder film?

The Moon Landings - Coulson staged the "moon landings" in a TV studio in Hertfordshire, sickeningly lying to the world's public. Sick.

Princess Diana's death - has Coulson ever driven a white Fiat?

Michael Jackson's death - where was Coulson when Michael Jackson died?

David Kelly's death - [best not to mention this one, Dolly - Damian]

Watergate - the then six year-old Coulson used his Fisher Price wheelie phone to entrap Richard Nixon's lies and cover up.

9/11 - the conspiracy of conspiracies. Coulson supports Tottenham Hotspur, a Jewish football team. Jews faked 9/11. Ergo Coulson staged 9/11, killing 3,000 innocent people in the process too.

Iraq - produced the dossier that proved that weapons of mass destruction could be deployed within 45 minutes [is this the best you sassernachs can come up with? - Gordon]

Implicated in The News of the World's scandal

2009-07-09T08:40:00.004+01:00

Those paragons of virtue, decency in public life and principle, John Prescott and Charles Clarke, breathlessly vented their outrage at The News of the World's shocking conduct in hacking into voicemails of the powerful, rich and famous on Radio 4 this morning. It is, they said, all the fault of the Andy Coulson, David Cameron's chief spin doctor (conveniently ignoring the complicity in any cover up of the Crown Prosecution Service, the police and possibly even past Labour Home Secretaries such as David Blunkett, Jacqui Smith and, er, Charles Clarke).

It is, however, abundantly clear that the Tories have a real case to answer. Tory fingerprints are all over the scandal - as I can exclusively reveal here.

Theresa May - once possibly bought a copy of The News of the World. What did she know that we ordinary mortals didn't, eh?

Michael Gove - worked for The Times (wink, wink) which is also owned by Rupert Murdoch (nudge, nudge) and believed to have maybe picked up a copy of The News of the World on a train once. What clearer evidence of Tory complicity in this could you want?

William Hague - wrote a weekly column for The News of World. Rumoured to have been the real editor, publisher, proprietor and driving force behind the entire newspaper since 1977.

Boris Johnson - was one of The News of the World's victims but in his case he deserved to have his voicemail hacked into because he's a Tory toff and he stood for the Mayor of London against St Kenneth of Livingstone, the High Priest of Political Correctness.

John Gummer - might own a Sky satellite dish. Or might not. BSkyB is owned by Rupert Murdoch. So is The News of the World. Ohmigod, the circle of connectivity gets closer still.

Richard Ottaway - represents Coulsdon, Surrey in the House of Commons. Coulsdon sounds like Coulson so clearly he too had intimate knowledge of what The News of the World was up to.

According to The Guardian, also clearly implicated in this scandal are the Catholic Church (and Christianity itself), the state of Israel, Karl Rove (it was so clearly his idea), Sarah Palin, George W Bush (aka Bushitler), Exxon-Mobil, Fox News (Murdoch owns that too!!!!), Sir Fred Goodwin, Godzilla and Peter Viggers. It's clear what needs to happen: either the Tories fire Andy Coulson right now - hanging him from a lamp post, or through man-made climate change, sea levels will rise by 100 feet in the next 4 weeks killing 20 billion people worldwide and causing irreparable damage to Venus and Mars. It's your choice, David Cameron: do you want 45 billion people to die? Well, do you??

Swine flu: are we being told the truth?

2009-07-08T09:14:00.000+01:00

A mole at a London hospital has told me something interesting about swine flu.

First, after a recent outbreak at a mosque, elders insisted that worshipers were told they had H1-N1 (bird flu) and not swine flu (I kid you not).

Secondly, and this surely merits further investigation, the form of words used whenever anyone dies of swine flu - namely that the victim had "underlying health problems" - is apparently a euphemism for HIV/AIDS.

If this really is the case - and I have put in a Freedom of Information request to those hospitals where the victims tragically died of swine flu to get to the truth - then for the public to be lied to as to the risks of swine flu for the sake of political correctness really is one of the great scandals of our time.

Brian Coleman does it again

2009-07-07T23:04:00.003+01:00

I warned you about Brian Coleman last August when I wrote this about him. Today the stupid sod has surpassed himself.

He should be deselected immediately and never again allowed to stand for public office.

Good news if a relative gets murdered tonight

2009-07-07T09:23:00.006+01:00

The BBC does it again: a truly frightening news story that ought to concern every household in Britain and yet it doesn't even merit a mention on news bulletins today.

The story? 1,000 missing criminals who should be jail remain at large - including murderers, rapists and paedophiles. Of course if we still had the death penalty then some of them would never have had the chance to escape in the first place but that's a debate for another day.

Do-gooders refuse to publish photos of them to protect their privacy (because God forbid that their human rights might be infringed, the poor souls). No resignations from the Prisons Service, the police or the Justice Department. No sense of outrage on the state broadcaster.

The primary role of a government is to keep its citizenry safe - and yet Jack Straw has been shown to be wanting.

The good news? Radio 4 managed to do a lengthy piece today about the climate change effects of plastics recycling. That's good to know when a member of your family gets sodomized or brutally murdered by one of these convicts that our government has failed to apprehend.

Labour's femmes fatales

2009-07-05T18:26:00.000+01:00

We have gone from Blair's Babes to Brown's Ball-Breakers. In today's Mail on Sunday, we learn that Tory health spokesman Andrew Lansley has walked into a dirty tricks trap set by one Sally Gainsbury - but which seems to have been the brainchild of Alastair Campbell and Gainsbury' s boyfriend, Alex Hilton (pictured left soon after he woke up). In the last month, Hilton has launched a Labour supporting PR machine called Game Changer with David Prescott, son of Two Bogs. His ascent up the greasy pole continues.

But is the game changing? Who was it that said this in relation to Labour's last high profile unsuccessful foray into dirty tricks?

"Sneering at Tories with lies about sexually transmitted diseases, mental health problems or homosexuality counteracts the very noblest aims of the Labour movement...

Politics is the means by which a country is run and good politics means a country is run well. But politics is also the name of a silly game played by silly boys in the Westminster bubble. It’s a fun game, I fully admit, and sometimes it just has to be played. But when playing a game is your ambition and your daily motivation, it’s time to grow up...

I know many Labour figures who shun these silly games. There are many more who, like me, enjoy playing a game from time to time but who don’t let it get in the way of more noble, long-term objectives. But this week, until this embarrassment dies down, every single one of us will look like a duplicitous, power-mad fool".

The author of this tortured exercise in self-examination, vigorously condemning the now disgraced Damian McBride and the twice-disgraced Derek Draper, was the same Alex Hilton, the founder of LabourHome and author of Recess Monkey (and, let us not forget, Labour parliamentary candidate).

In February of this year, Alex Hilton was admitted to hospital with potentially fatal bacterial meningitis. Often such a close shave with the Grim Reaper makes someone re-evaluate the priorities in their life. Evidently not in Hilton's case. But you have to admire his cunning. Rather than getting his own hands dirty, his girlfriend did the dirty work. Nice.

It's rather akin to a cowardly jihadist commander strapping explosives to one of his wives and sending her onto a packed Israeli bus so she can kill as many Jews as possible, rather than doing it himself.

Indeed this seems to be the new pattern on the left - for it was only this week that we learned that the latest move from the Damian McBride playbook came not from McBride but from Balshen Izzet - McBride's "long-suffering girlfriend". Is it now de rigeur to hide behind your other half's skirt rather than to take the fight to the enemy yourself, comrades?

UPDATE (2.45pm): Tory Bear has more.

From Gay Pride to Gay No Pride

2009-07-05T16:15:00.000+01:00

Does this sound familiar?

"He's the Prime Minister's aide, and loves him deeply. Clingy, bitchy and insanely jealous, he wants nothing more than to have the Prime Minister all to himself. The Prime Minister only just tolerates his erratic behaviour, but is largely oblivious to his aide's obsession".

I refer, of course, to Little Britain's Sebastian and Michael - but reading Iain Dale today I learn that Peter Mandelson is in true Sebastian form, even to the extent of refusing to speak to Gordon Brown until Shaun Woodward was forced out of the room. Truth is stranger than fiction.

House of Thieves - Part 94

2009-07-05T09:59:00.003+01:00

A Labour MP is in deep trouble for claiming for 13 computers in just 4 years. It doesn't look good for him.

It does, however, remind me of Tory Tim Yeo's own "interesting" computer claim. At the end of May I wrote:

"Today we learn that he claimed for a pink laptop computer in the days running up to Christmas in 2007 - when his love child, Claudia-Marie, was 14 years old.

Would it be too far fetched to wonder whether the pink laptop computer was, in fact, a Christmas gift for his love child and not a legitimate parliamentary expense? He can set the record straight by handing over "his" pink laptop for forensic analysis; or he can pre-empt the inevitable furore and resign."

Yeo remains a Conservative MP and candidate for the next general election. Will Fabian Hamilton?

Progressive policing from San Francisco

2009-07-04T16:01:00.000+01:00

Dirty Harry shows how to deal with rapists, how to stop a bank robbery and how to talk down a suicidal man. Why can't we have cops like him today? :)

Labour supporter's praise for National Socialism

2009-07-04T13:57:00.003+01:00

Iain Dale has shown what a liar Labour MP Angela Eagle is. In a debate about gay rights, Eagle (who is sufficiently repellent that not only would no man go anywhere near her but, I suspect, no woman either) whined about how nasty the Tories are (when anyone who has ever been into a working man's club will know that it is Old Labour that bleeds homophobia if anyone does).

Angela Eagle was at it again today on Radio 4 - bleating that the Tories' new grouping in the European Parliament was full of homophobes. Fair play to Alan Duncan for promptly retorting that Labour sat in a grouping with a Polish MP who had praised Hitler. That is no surprise: for national socialism is a left-wing philosophy (the clue being in the name). It should therefore come as no surprise to discover today that former Labour party donor, Bernie Ecclestone, was lauding Hitler as well. I wonder if they'll be happy to take money in 2009 from a man who had such nice things to say about the Fuhrer?

Sarah Palin: WTF?

2009-07-04T08:53:00.003+01:00

A bizarre and rambling resignation speech from Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Readers will know that I have been a fan of her since she hit the national stage last August. But her resignation speech yesterday really was weak. It was as if it had been written (it had been written, right?) by Tina Fey.

The excellent Toby Harnden hits the nail on the head, as ever. Palin's resignation statement was rather akin the Nixon's after he lost the race in California in 1962 (as acted here by Anthony Hopkins):

Hannan in the USA

2009-07-03T20:43:00.002+01:00

Outstanding, as ever. If he carries on like this they'll draft him for Congress!

EXCLUSIVE Izzet McBride or not?

2009-07-03T14:30:00.003+01:00

Whether or not disgraced peddler of vile smears, Damian McBride, is back advising the government, it seems that his ghost lives on in Whitehall.

This week, Tory frontbencher Greg Hands MP raised a bizarre tale of civil service impropriety that arose when Ed Balls and Gordon Brown visited Hands' Hammersmith & Fulham constituency. Having failed to adhere to the established parliamentary convention of informing an MP of their intention to visit his constituency, Balls and Brown were protected by a rottweiler of a civil servant called Balshen Izzet.

Izzet's modus operandi of dealing with Greg Hands' unwanted arrival at Brown and Balls' planned photo call at a Fulham school was to imperiously tell him he was not invited, to snarl that his presence would make the school visit "political", to seek to dupe Hands by misleading him as to the entrance Brown and Balls would arrive through and, in essence, to act in a manner that was self-evidently improper for a civil servant to act.

Where did Balshen Izzet learn this tricks of the trade - the bullying and underhand approach that comes straight from the Damian McBride playbook?

Was it as a result of pillow talk - given that Izzet was revealed by The Daily Mail in April as being McBride's "long-suffering girlfriend"?

Brown's vandalism: I told you so!

2009-07-02T19:01:00.002+01:00

The BBC today reports that questions have been asked about Gordon Brown's vandalism of the despatch box in the House of Commons.

How nice of you to catch up! On 23 July last year, I broke this story - a rare exclusive. If Brown has indeed been damaging the despatch box, send him the bill.

Gangster Government in the USA

2009-07-02T08:39:00.000+01:00

A hard-hitting critique from Rep Michele Bachmann in the US House of Representatives, calling the Obama Administration a "gangster government". Spot on.

Hat Tip: Kelly.

Time to scrap EDMs?

2009-07-01T18:43:00.001+01:00

A new campaign has been launched to scrap Early Day Motions in Parliament: check here to see why it deserves our support!

EXCLUSIVE Bercow's latest tantrum

2009-07-01T10:56:00.003+01:00

Quentin Letts writes today about Mr Speaker Bercow's latest tantrum, this time in the Chamber of the House of Commons itself. This is just a week after he threw a similar strop at ITN's Tom Bradby (which, if you haven't seen it, is well worth watching). Clearly his inability to control his temper, coupled with him behaving like a referee who believes the crowd is there to watch him, will be the defining characteristics of his eleven months in the chair.

It had been feared that Mr Squeaker's latest hissy fit wasn't saved for posterity but I have obtained exclusive footage of him losing it at James Gray.

How can 48% of prospective Tory MPs back Obama?

2009-07-01T09:43:00.006+01:00

Yesterday I attended the excellent Conservative Intelligence conference that looked at the new intake of Tory MPs and Cameron's key advisers. ConHome had run an opinion poll of the new intake (which is being published tomorrow) and most of the findings were unsurprising: they are, by and large, Thatcherites rather than Heathites and they are particularly Eurosceptic. Excellent.

One finding that appalled me, however, was that 48% of those who replied to ConHome said that they would have voted for America's first Kenyan-American President, Barack Hussein Obama, and not the fiscal conservative war hero, John McCain.

It might be, of course, that in doing so they adopted the strict Eurosceptic line of the great Daniel Hannan - Dan took the view that McCain's support for Eurofederalism ruled him out. But I cannot help but suspect that most of the prospective Tory MPs who said they were glad to see Obama in the White House did so from a position of ignorance about US politics (yes, that's you, Simon Burns). For while I can see some merit in hoping that the message of "change" that Obama campaigned on translates to British politics so that the "change" candidate here, David Cameron, wins the next election, which of Obama's other policies was it that so impressed these prospective Tory MPs?

Is it his chippy partisanship? His liberal voting record that was even more extreme than that of Ted Kennedy or John Kerry? His desire to appoint more judges who legislate from the bench? His appeasement of Islamists? His reckless spending? The higher taxes he is imposing? His soft immigration policies? His desire to give more power to trades unions? The extra business burdens inherent in his energy policy? His weak diplomacy towards North Korea, Iran and Latin American dictators?

Or perhaps it is his character that they so admired - his consorting with crooked property developers such as Tony Rezko, palling around with terrorists such as Bill Myers or worshipping for 20 years at the church of racist preacher Jeremiah Wright?

Or his family values - with an aunt living illegally in the US, a wife who only finally became proud to be an American last year and a half-brother denied entry to the UK?

Barack Obama is many things: a powerful orator who stood on a twin campaign pledge of hope and change and who had the potential to be America's first post-racial President. But he is also a dangerous radical whose actions in office these past six months have shown him to more like Jimmy Carter than a latter day FDR. It is unconscionable for any Conservative to support Obama.

Rights for whites, US style

2009-06-30T07:32:00.000+01:00

In his rush to relaunch his premiership for the umpteenth time, and in a desperate attempt to stave off the growth of the far-left British Nationalist Party, might Gordon Brown look to yesterday's US Supreme Court ruling in which white firefighters were ruled to have been discriminated against?

In a ruling overturning a decision of, inter alia, the Obamessiah's nominee for the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayer, 5 of the 9 justices (Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Kennedy) sided against the self-evident anti-white racism inherent in New Haven's recruitment procedures. How long until Martin Luther King's dream, that conservatives such as Charlton Heston (left) and I hold so dear, is realised - of people being judged not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their characters?

Hat Tip: MCFLR.