Bananarama know!

Hat Tip: Guy News

Nice work if you can get it

You've got to love massive spending on consultants on projkects which have been widely reported to have been complete bloody disasters right? Take the National Offender Management Systsem (NOMS). Last week the FT reported on reform taking place to make the system actually work along with attempts to cut bureacracy.

The primary consultancy behind the scheme was McKinsey and Company, who have received payments from the Home Office and later the Mnistry of Justice of £13,573,318.94 since 2003. Cheap at half the price I say! Just think what it would cost if they got it right?

Party Political Animal

Have this morning learnt of a new blog on the block, called Party Political Animal which is a joint effort between the former MP and columnist, Phillip Oppenheim and Jonathan Sheppard of Tory Radio. Phillip has already posed two interesting question regarding the Democrat Race,

would anyone listen to Hillary if she was a man? And would anyone turn up to Barak’s gigs if he was white? I’m not sure of the answers, I just pose the questions.

Well quite!

How can this policy sit with lower tax and matched spending?

A state-funded maternity nurse for six hours a day for the first week of every child's life. That is the latest Tory policy idea being floated and yes, you may think on the face of it that it is a great idea. You may also think 'what the hell is a maternity nurses?'. You are most likely to ask that question if you're not well off because they are by no means cheap. A maternity nurse will cost you around £100 for a 12 hour shift, so if you had one for a week that's nearly a grand. That's why most people will not have heard of them.

Now think about those figures in relation to the policy. Six hours each day for a week. Let's assume they mean a full week, that's at least £350 per child born in the UK each week. Whether you get extra help for twins or perhaps triplets is unknown. In 2006 there were, approximately 14,500 babies born each week. Now multiply that by the low estimate cost and you're at about £5 million a week. That also assumes that you have a rolling maternity nurse pool of around 15,000.

At a time when there is a shortage of midwives already, are we seriously going to propose spending around a quarter of a billion each year on maternity nurses? Come off it!

Let the boy buy a butt plug Gordon!

Everyone today should be on the side of poor Danny Beattie. Who is Danny Beattie you may ask? Well he's just random person that has raised the following petition at Downing Street.

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Lower the legal age for the purchase of "Sex Toys" to 16. Currently the legal age for purchase of sex toys is 18. The legal age for consent to sex is 16.

When children reach the age of puberty, they start wondering what sex is like. Many will want to try sex as soon as they possibly can, whether practising safely or not. Lowering the age of sex toys would, I believe, help to reduce childrens curiosity as to what sex is like. Instead of going out and having sex with someone and possibly getting an STI or becoming pregnant, they could use a sex toy.

Currently this is not possible and I believe that the age limit of 18 only serves to further childrens desires to have sex.

Makes you wonder what he might be using currently doesn't? Of course he has a point about the inconsistency. But to be honest it's far more likely that they'd equalise up than down on consent if they could be bothered to resolve the anomoly.

After all, if they let 16 year olds buy vibrators and the likes then the next thing would be lowering the age for buying porn too*. Can you imagine the reaction in the Daily Mail?
* Yes people really do still pay for porn in the Internet Age. Weird huh?

The Wilson Doctrine places MPs above the law and should be scrapped

For the past year or so, if you look in Hansard, you will see that a question of regular occurrence is whether the Wilson Doctrine banning the wire tapping of MPs remains in place. The answer is always that the convention does, although there is of course no legislative reason why it should.

If you've read the papers over the past few days you will probably have heard the the police tapped the Labour MP and Government Whip, Sadiq Khan. David Davis has also released a letter he says he sent to Gordon Brown at the end of last year, which Brown denies receiving that noted that Davis had

reason to believe that the [Wilson Doctrine] has been breached in relation to communications between a constituent, arrested and detained as a terrorist suspect since 2003, and his Member of Parliament.

From a purely journalistic perspective it is a great scoop but I can't help wondering "who cares"? When you place it in context of the Davis letter, I should, frankly, bloody well hope that the anti-terrorist intelligence services were monitoring what is going on in relation to people they have on watch lists, and that will include the people they come into contact with. Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary has said

"Though I have no knowledge of the facts in this case, it is completely unacceptable for an interview conducted by an MP on a constituency matter, or on any other issue, to be recorded."

Excuse me? but why is it unacceptable? Why must MPs have a special status that excludes them from being subject to matters that concern the security of the Realm? Some might say that this is a civil liberties issues, but actually, within Straw's comment it is clear that this is about special status for certain people. Would he be saying it was unacceptable if they had recorded a conversation between this person and some who wasn't an MP on the same grounds?

Of course they wouldn't. It would be a matter of national security and would receive no comment at all. Why that would happen would be because we ordinary subjects are not above the law. The Wilson Doctrine however dictates that MPs are above the law, which is why complaining about a breach of the convention being unacceptable is, frankly, bollocks.

There seems to be a common theme in recent weeks with the stories coming from Westminster I'd say. That being that MPs are some how, once they become MPs special people with extra privilege and rights than the rest of us. Whether it be people saying they should be allowed to engage in nepotism; should be allowed to accept donations from people who they later help out; or that they should be exempt from being targeted by the Security Services on matter of national security.

In the current climate where Islamism is of such high concern, and the potential of people blowing themselves on the public transport network is a very real possibility, then MPs should be aware that if they meet with someone on a watch list then they're going to be watched themselves. Do not also be fooled by the fact that Sadiq Khan is a Muslim. That is a red herring, whoever his MP had been they would have listened to him if he had a conversation with this guy.

If MPs are to be above the law on matter of national security and monitoring then what is a potential terrorist going to see as the best position they can hope to achieve in a society they want to subvert? Let us not forget the sort of people we are dealing with here are the sort that send turn two Down Syndrome woman into walking bombs and then blow them up in a public place.

Wonder what they're trying to hide?

Have just spotted an interesting response from the Government about the progress of the ID Cards projects. Asked about what Gateway Review the Office of Government Commerce had produced and if the Home Office would be publishing them, Meg Hillier confrimed that there had been a number but that

"The Identity and Passport Service has no current plans to publish the reports on the Gateway reviews."

Probably worth someone doing an FoI on those then. Especially considering that there have been allegations in the past that the Treasury had ordered the shredding of Gateway Reviews. The Gateway Review is a tool for monitoring the progress of projects, including budgetary issues and RAG reporting. Wonder why the Home Office won't publish them? Perhaps No2ID will get hold of them. They will rpobably make interesting reading.

Quote of the Day

Love it.

"I do not suppose you will give me a ring back because you are an odious little bastard . . . You don't have the bottle to ring me back, do you, because you are a real little tosser. Why don't you join the fucking Tories, you odious little tosser."

- Former Labour councillor and husband of Labour's MP for Portsmouth North, Sarah McCarthy-Fry to a local councillor that had been nasty about his missus.

You'd have thought that he might try to be more creative and not just repeat the tosser insult though.
Source

Tory MP publishes detailed expenses

Is it likely, with the news that Tory MP, Ben Wallace, has decided to publish a detailed breakdown of his expenses claims that other MPs will now follow suit? Something tells me they won't, not sure why but I just doubt that many of them will. Some of them will not want to because they think it is a witch hunt, others probably won't want to because if they do people might find out that they've been claiming for money to pay for things that they shouldn't have.

I see Derek Conway has also decided to hit back now, and claims that he did nothing wrong in paying his kids salaries for non-existent work, and that the reality was that it was just a plot "supported by some Tories, some of whom may well have had their own agenda". Notice there are no names though.

Meanwhile, the Mail on Sunday has news that Bob Spink MP may have questions to answer about the people he has employed at the taxpayers expense. And that Nicholas and Ann Winterton have been avoiding death duties with their expenses.

Tut!

The evidence mounts against Livingstone

This morning I'm wondering whether Ken Livingstone will actually make it to the May elections without having to step down first. Apparently documents passed to The Times show that, contrary to his denials, his political campaign instructed public servants to write articles in support of his re-election. Looks very much like hard evidence of an abuse of powere doesn't it?

All it will take is another scandal and he'll have to go surely? I mean, what about if there were a juicy sex scandal? Imagine the fall-out if he was using his taxpayer funded transport to travel around London and see lots of women, or something else like that? Now that would be juicy, and hilarious at the same time wouldn't it? Mind you, the Lobby might be to scared to report something like that even if he did!

The really question I guess is how long he can hold on with the current scandals engulfing him. Perhaps it won't need another one to force him out of office. After all, he is fast losing the support of Labour MPs and he has now got the support of Galloway. Will Brown dither over Livingstone or will he act decisively against him? On past performance the former rather than latter seems most likely.