RANDOM THOUGHTS ...

Blairite, Tristram Hunt has told Cambridge student Labour supporters that they can best serve Labour by leading a campaign of dissent against leader Jeremy Corbyn.

He said to them that they were the top 1% and needed to show leadership in the party.

And there was me thinking that Labour wasn't all about what school and university you went to... but, it seems that unless you went to Cambridge, which probably means you went to a public school, you're one of the bottom 99%.

Hunt, who supported loser, fellow Blairite, Liz Kendal (remember her brief appearance in the news) in the English leadership contest, had thought about standing himself, but reputedly had difficulty getting  the 35 nominations required to put his name forward.

I can't help but wonder if Tristram isn't in the wrong party. He doesn't sound in the least like he belongs in an organisation in which 70% of the membership voted from Jeremy Corbyn as leader.
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I'm delighted, but bamboozled, by the Labour party's stance on Trident. 

Again that magic figure of 70% of the Scottish membership voted to get rid of it, despite known support for the weapons system from Kezia Dugdale and a rousing speech by Jackie Baillie demanding that it be maintained until all the nuclear countries agree to give their weapons up. 

Given that there is no point in spending £167 billion that you don't have and can't afford on weapons that you will never use (and her leader says he will never use them), hasn't she somewhat lost the plot?

The main plank of her argument for a weapons system that is capable of killing millions of people, is that she reckons that 13,000 jobs would go if they scrapped Trident, which is up from her last estimate of 11,000 made during the referendum campaign. MoD figures suggest that the number is nearer 600. 

But you know, for £167 billion surely we could create alternative jobs for the workers, whatever the number is: jobs that didn't involve murdering millions of innocent men, women, children and animals... and, let's face it, bringing about the end of the world as we know it. 

Maybe that's beyond Ms Baillie's imagination. It's not, however, beyond the imagination of Mr Corbyn.
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I am also delighted to hear that Labour in Scotland will restore the Tax Credits, they claimed their aristocratic colleagues had already restored when they all but caused a constitutional crisis and incurred the wrath of Gideon the Grim last week.

My take on working tax credits is that if a country cannot ensure that working full time pays enough money to afford modest accommodation, and basic costs of living...heat, light, food, clothing for you and your family... then that government must necessarily ensure that at least those with children are compensated through the tax or social security system.

It is basically corporate welfare...subsidising companies too mean to pay a living wage, and landlords too greedy to charge an affordable rent. But, wrong though it is, rather that any day than people who work all week having to go hungry, sitting in the cold, or being made homeless.

So well done to Kezia and her team for that. We realise that no one in the Scottish parliament can affect the minimum wage, so I'm happy that Scotland will do something to help those so unfairly treated by the UK.

Of course it is probably impossible to 'restore' something that Westminster has taken away. The power to do that does not exist.

However, as the bedroom tax in Scotland proved, the Scottish government can (at the moment with permission from Westminster, but by 2017 of its own volition) made substitute payments where it feels London has been wrong and unjust.

In the case of the bedroom tax, administered by local authorities (within the Scottish government's remit) it must have been relatively simple, and not too costly, to put in a system which would override the new demands from London, and substitute Scottish government money.

Tax Credits, administered by the DWP and HMCR will, I imagine, be a rather different, more complex and infinitely more expensive matter. How to pay for this will be a problem.

The SNP intend to reduce and eventually scrap Air Passenger Duty in an effort to make travelling to and from Scotland more affordable. The idea, presumably, to encourage tourism, and business, by improving communications. I imagine that John Swinney has identified how he will deal with the loss of the estimated £250 million a year that will be removed from the Scottish grant as a result of that. 

Labour intends to maintain that tax, but presumably still cut whatever it was that Mr Swinney was going to cut, in order to pay for the tax credit substitute.

I wonder if that will be enough.

I suspect, too,  that the Scottish government can look forward to a deal of awkwardness and a lack of co-operation from London. Nonetheless, if we can;t be independent of London, at least we can make every effort to have systems within the UK that suit OUR needs.
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I was in Paris in the weeks before the Iraq war. Every single person I talked to (or overheard in cafés, bars and restaurants) were totally opposed to France taking part in it and, although he was not the most popular of people, President Jacques Chirac was roundly praised when he announced to the country on French television that France would veto military action in Iraq at least until Dr Hans Blix, the UN weapons inspector, was ready to report on the question of WMDs, estimated to be within the month. 

Chirac's speech was measured, clear and logical, as he set out calmly the reasons for his decision.

I remember hearing from somewhere that Mr Goldsmith, the English Attorney General, had advised the UK Cabinet, that to take military action without express UN clearance (and France had made it clear that that could not happen), would be illegal.

It was also rumoured that, having given that advice at a Cabinet Meeting, Goldsmith was pinned against the wall in the corridor outside the Cabinet room by one of Blair's enforcers and told to think again. I had no idea how much truth there was in that, but it was an amusing image.

Now it seems, it may not have been so far from the truth, according to an article in the Telegraph.

You know, maybe, just maybe, we will get to see Blair facing charges in the Hague. Just let's hope that he is accompanied by the rest of the weasels that backed him and Bush to the hilt and in doing so murdered and maimed so many people, ruined a country, opened the door to ISIS and the utter chaos of the Middle East and acted as a recruiting sergeant for militant Islam.

WHY ARE WE WAITING?

And what are we waiting for...till Blair and Straw and the rest of them  are dead and can't be prosecuted?

Let's have the report now.

Pete Wishart: Chilcot

It appears the Irish don’t much care for Tony Blair.

His appearance in at Eason’s bookstore in O’Connell Street, Dublin, for a book signing was met with jeering anti-war protesters.

Eggs and shoes (a huge insult in the Arab world) were thrown at him, but none hit him (which makes him a damned sight luckier than many of the poor, utterly innocent Iraqis he managed to kill with his enthusiasm for believing every word his friend George W Bush told him, not to mention the British troops who, but for him, would be alive today).

Around 300 flag carrying and banners waving protesters clashed with gardai, pushed down barriers and chanted “arrest the butcher Blair” or “hey hey Tony hey, how many kids have you killed today?” and “Tony Blair war criminal”. All of which seems fair enough to me. I mean, if you can’t take it, don’t dish it out.

The only thing I was dubious about was that the protesters abused people who bought his book. OK. I wouldn’t read it, never mind buy it, and the thought of meeting him and having him sign something that I own is repugnant to the point of nausea, but Ireland’s a free country, and if people want to meet him, fair enough. They didn’t send planes to wreak mayhem on the streets of Baghdad. They didn’t kill and maim kids.

One woman tried to make a citizen’s arrest on Blair, but for some reason the garda didn’t seem to want her help in arresting this particular crim. She told of being grabbed by 5 security men and dragged away. I image that these will be security people paid for by the British state. The woman, Kate O’Sullivan shouted: "There are half a million people dead in Iraq. How can you live with yourself? You've committed war crimes."

Needless to say Blair appeared unaffected by this.

Four men were arrested during the protest and charged under the Public Order Act although not, it would seem Ms O’Sullivan.

People like Blair live in a bubble, far away from us little people, transported in first class cabins, chauffeur driven Mercedes limos, presidential or royal suites at hotels. Today Dublin, tomorrow Cairo. They are entertained in presidential palaces or prime ministerial residences. Their routes are planned for them; they wait for nothing. The “ordinary”people they meet are handpicked to say exactly what they are told to say, and in his everyday life he will be surrounded by toadying lickspittles. Blair will have little, if any, grasp on reality.

I’m delighted that the Dubliners shone a little light on that particular reality for him.

He may find, if he has an extended tour of signings, that that reception will be repeated wherever he goes.

Actually, given that we went in Iraq to (excuse number 6) liberate them from the tyranny under which they lived; given that we went there to bring them democracy and freedom, can we expect Mr Blair to be signing his book in Waterstones in Baghdad? Or not?

LIAR, BLIAR, PANTS ON FIRE!

I’ve always been more than a little dubious at Blair’s insistence that toppling Saddam Hussein made Britain, or London, a safer place.

I can only imagine that the illegal (in that it didn’t have the backing of the UN) invasion of a sovereign state; the killing of tens of thousands of its totally innocent citizens, including children, in night after night of utter terror in the ‘Shock and Awe’ campaign conducted jointly by the US and its poodle, would have made the likelihood of a revenge attack on these countries more likely...

Especially as the reason given for this horrific invasion was to rid the country of WMDs, which were there for absolute certain, but in fact haven’t been found in the 7 years since.

The fact that the invading powers were pathetic enough to go in without the semblance of a plan for what would happen after Saddam was toppled, and that the resultant mess makes people’s lives intolerable even now, may have an added effect of disgruntlement in the Arab and Islamic worlds.

But hey, what do I know?

Well, nothing of course. For me it was a simple application of common sense. Bush and Blair together with two other nut job right wingers in the form of Silvio Berlusconi and José María Aznar López acting, as Lord Bingham described it, like ‘world vigilantes’, seemed to me to be an open invitation for revenge. As indeed it has been.

However, I feel somewhat vindicated because yesterday came (for Blair) the damning evidence of Eliza Manningham-Buller at the Chilcot Inquiry. She told the inquiry that, contrary to what Blair had said, the surge of warnings about home-grown terrorist threats after the Iraq invasion led to a 100% in MI5's budget. A fact presumably hidden from FoI requests on the grounds of national security.

Mrs Manningham-Buller said that the UK’s involvement in Iraq had radicalized a whole generation of young people who saw it, and our involvement in Afghanistan, as being an attack on Islam. She added that arguably it had given Osama bin Laden his Iraqi jihad so that he was able to move into Iraq in a way that he was not before.

I wonder why Mr Blair neglected to mention this information when he was giving his evidence to Chilcot. Did he not know, was he not briefed, did he just forget with all his money making activities to worry about....or did he just plain, old fashioned lie?

To be honest there is little satisfaction in the knowledge that I was right all the time. Tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed, millions more rendered homeless or injured, some horribly and irrevocably. Freedoms, including women’s rights which were widespread and liberal in Saddam’s Iraq have been rolled back and there is still no effective government.

Unlikeable though he was, Saddam was the kind of man who could keep this concoction of a country together and the blockheads got rid of him.

When will the “stupid white men” learn to keep their stupid ignorant paws off other people’s countries? Eliza Manningham-Buller for Defence Secretary!!

IF THIS IS THEIR SECRET WEAPON, LOOK OUT FOR SOME SHOCK AND AWE

For some reason beyond my comprehension, Labour has decided to rehabilitate Tony Blair in an effort to help them win the election.

He made his first intervention criticising the Tories for inconsistency and indecision while praising Gordon Brown for experience, judgment and boldness at the Labour Club in his old constituency in Sedgefield.

He said that during his decade in power he had always been known as an optimist, and he was still optimistic about Britain. (So would I be if I have a hundredth of his money.) He said: "Strange as it might seem, the financial crisis does not diminish this optimism. We are not out of the woods yet; but we are on the path out.” (Easy to say when none of it hurt you at all!)

Mr Blair's analysis is that Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling made the right decisions during the financial crisis and should now be trusted to lead the recovery. (Except of course that if Brown wins the election, Alistair Darling won’t be anywhere, and we’re looking at Ed Balls for chancellor.)

"At the moment of peril the world acted. Britain acted," he said. "The decision to act required experience, judgment and boldness. It required leadership. Gordon Brown supplied it." (Ye gads, while he was swanking round the world making money with our security guards looking after him, did he even look at the newspapers?)

He accused the Tories of going to the right over Europe; going liberal when actually they should have stuck with a traditional Conservative position on law and order; and on the economy, of worrying too much about public opinion (That’s rich!)

He further accused them of being confused compared to Labour which had “chosen its path. It is mapped out. It is consistent. It is solid. It matches a strong commitment to public services with a strong commitment to reform."

Mr Blair listed Labour’s achievements so far: reduced crime, higher standards in schools, hospital waiting lists reduced from 18 months to 18 weeks. (All English only issues. He didn’t mention illegal wars or soldiers’ deaths, or MPs who think that they should not have to face the courts.)

He said that the country needed strong leadership. (He seemed to have forgotten that it is Brown we are talking about here; Brown who is renowned the world over for his dithering, for his inability to decide about anything except when he loses his temper.)

I wonder how much Labour is paying him for this intervention. I’m not sure that it is money well spent. Many people see Blair at best as insincere, at worst as a war criminal with the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis and British soldiers on his hands. Almost everyone must be disgusted at the way he has made money (estimated at £20 million) since he left office and that he had all his expenses paperwork destroyed, including repairs to his house the week before he left office.

I’ve never met anyone who likes him and the comments on the Times article which is my source for this post seem to bear that out.

I wouldn’t want him in my corner. Would you?

Pic: Brown and Blair; Blair; Blair: Blair and Brown (And now I'll put my Iraq experience at the service of the Isaeli-Palestinian cause)

WHAT A MESS STUPID PEOPLE MAKE WHEN WE LET THEM HAVE SOME POWER

There is no doubt that Sadam Hussein was a murdering tyrant, but you have to wonder if the mess that has replaced this once friend of the United States (and therefore the UK) is any better.

We were promised for all our tax pounds (or dollars) and all those lives, Iraqi and Western, that democracy would be brought to the country.

But today Iraq is heading for a dangerous and uncertain future after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, lost the election narrowly but refused to step down. That’s democracy for you?

It has taken 3 weeks of counting marred by accusations of fraud, but in the final count the nationalist Iraqiya bloc led by Ayad Allawi won 91 seats, to 89 for Mr Maliki's State of Law.

Mr Maliki accused election officials of fixing the result and has demanded a recount. He said he did not accept the result. His supporters have threatened a return to sectarian violence if Mr Allawi were to be declared the winner. There have been demonstrations in Baghdad and chiefs from southern Iraq, the power base of Mr Maliki’s State of Law party, have said that there will be a "major escalation" unless there was a recount.

However, officials have refused, and election observers from the United Nations have reported only small irregularities. The UN representative in Iraq said that the elections had been credible and he called on all parties to accept the result.

In the weeks that follow it is likely then that sectarian violence will erupt again, as the parties battle for supremacy. Neither of course can form a government alone and both will be looking to the third-placed Iraqi National Alliance to work in coalition with them.

As I read this sad story in The Telegraph, it occurred to me that once again the US and UK poked their noses where they were not wanted. First they removed a dictator without the slightest notion of what or who to put in his place. Then they forced a so-called democracy on a country which a hundred years before they had cobbled together, ignorant of, or at least uninterested in, the composition of it, from three very separate regions with different peoples with different religious beliefs and customs.

The chances of this working were so slim that they really were discountable.

Under Sadam the Iraqi people were lacked democracy, and with weapons that we sold him Sadam kept them in check, and yes, there was slaughter: gassings, torture and murders.

But, if you kept your nose clean, got on with your work, and didn’t criticise the government, most could go about their business without fear of violence or intimidation. Iraq was relatively progressive. Women were relatively free to take up careers, adopt Western dress, and enjoy some level of freedom.

All of that has gone. Quite apart from the misery wished upon innocent people during “Shock and Awe”, the frightful violence that has been visited upon the Iraqis by the incompetence displayed by the conquering governments has wrecked lives. From leaving open the borders to allow Al Qaeda to penetrate the country to the foul atrocities of a small number of Western troops we have let these people down badly.

When, oh when, will Stupid White Men learn to look after their own countries, instead of poking their noses into things they do not understand? Lord knows there was enough wrong with the UK to have kept Tony Blair occupied for years.

Pictured: Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and his main rival Ayad Allawi (GETTY IMAGES), Iraq, and Torture in Abu Ghraib.

LIAR, LIAR, PANTS ON FIRE!

Even when he’s caught out lying through his newly whitened and straightened teeth, the prime minister just can’t own up and say something like, “Sorry, I was totally wrong”, or, “Fair cop, Gov, you got me bang to rights”. Oh no, not the UK prime minister.

What does the estimable Gordon Brown do? He lies again, that’s what.

When it was pointed out to him that he had misled the Chilcot Inquiry, and on several occasions to the House of Commons (something I thought they weren’t supposed to do), the slimy little toad replied: “I do accept that in one or two years defence expenditure did not rise in real terms.”

LIAR:

In fact it did not just “not rise”; it “fell”. For the mathematically challenged, as Gordon Brown appears to be (remember the economic growth forecast of 0%), “fell” means “went down”. Additionally it wasn’t “one or two years” it was “three years”, which again I will explain for Mr Brown's benefit, is larger than two.

Throughout his testimony before Chilcot, Brown insisted again and again that military spending had increased in every year since 1997.

The Times points out that his claims were greeted with incredulity by retired military big wigs including General Guthrie, the former Chief of Defence Staff and Admiral Boyce, the former defence chief both of whom accused him of deliberately misleading the inquiry.

It seems that they were right. But there can’t be the slightest doubt in anyone's mind that when he gave that evidence he must have known that it was a lie.

So we have a prime minister who gives false evidence to an inquiry into a war and the next day flies out to be photographed with the very troops that he has starved of money and equipment, which as we know has caused deaths?

Did the fool think that no one would ever find out? No wonder he looks like he never sleeps. Neither would I if I had these lads' blood on my hands.

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IT WISNAE ME: A BIG BOY DONE IT AN' RAN AWA

In what was, I imagine, a carefully rehearsed performance Brown took over the Chilcot Inquiry as if he were chairing it and laid the blame for equipment shortages on generals who should have predicted the operational needs of their troops. Brown told the inquiry. "At every point we were asked to provide money and the resources for new equipment or for improving equipment, we made that money available." So none of it was his fault. It was anyone but Brown who was to blame....

But he has been accused by retired generals and families of servicemen killed in Iraq of having starved the Armed Forces of funding. General Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank, former chief of the Defence Staff, has said that the lack of funds had "undoubtedly cost the lives of soldiers".

Brown said that as prime minister he had always asked the military when they were undertaking any new operation to assure him that they had the equipment they needed. Always they had said that they did.

I think that, as a matter of great urgency, it needs to be decided who is lying through their teeth. Is it all these generals and the ex-ministers and the families of the dead soldiers, or is it Brown and Blair? I’m not a great fan of the MoD or of senior officers who fight from behind their desks with their minds on pensions, knighthoods and a seat on a red bench, but surely they aren’t ALL out and out liars?

Brown babbled about the international community’s duty to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein, seeming to forget that the international community, in the form of the United Nations Security Council, had made it perfectly clear that it would not sanction military intervention; that Hans Blix had said that he doubted that there were weapons of mass destruction but begged to be given a couple of weeks more to be sure (a request denied); that there were, in fact, only a few countries led by right wing puppets who were prepared to join with the biggest joke of them all, George W Bush.

Brown would do well too, to reflect on all the other countries that have dangerous and fearful regimes, in which the populations have very limited freedom, and deaths of dissenters are normal. He might ask himself what he intends to do about them, or if it would be a good idea to remember that we are a broke little country in which thousands of pensioners die of the cold every winter and clearly we can’t afford to right all the wrongs of the world.

We are appallingly managed perhaps because our idiot “leaders” spend their time effort and what very little intellect they have, planning how people on the other side of the world should live. Of course it would be dull for such minds to concern themselves with the mundane issues of domestic matters, and there would be no opportunity to stride around like they belonged in the White House. But it might make our lives a bit better.

Nothing will bring back the people who were killed in George W Bush’s ILLEGAL war in Iraq. The hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and the troops from the US’s allies, but we owe it to them to find out the truth, and frankly I don’t much care if they bring back the rack so that we can do that! Torture? How ironic would that be?

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SPECIAL TREATMENT FOR BROWN AND CABINET

It has been announced that the Chilcot inquiry in to the invasion of Iraq will not now call Mr Brown or his ministers to give evidence until after the General Election.

The plan to summon Mr Brown to give evidence was revealed in a statement from the inquiry team working for Sir John Chilcot.

The statement listed witnesses who will be called to give evidence to the inquiry next year, who include Tony Blair, the former prime minister, and Alastair Campbell, his former spokesman.

Sir John’s committee will hold new evidence sessions in January and February, before pausing during the general election campaign that is expected to start in March.

The statement also explained that witnesses who are currently serving as ministers will not be called until after the election. It said the decision has been taken to ensure that the inquiry's work cannot be used for political purposes.

It seems to me that, before we make our choices about who should govern the country for the next up to 5 years, we should really be appraised of the part of these people in the war that killed and maimed so many of our soldiers and hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens. There would be no reason not to call the members of the opposition parties who were also involved in decisions on a Privy Council basis, in order that no political advantage or disadvantage could be seen to fall to any party.

And there were we rather naively thinking that the Chilcot Inquiry was to be open, fair and independent of government.... silly old us.

“Are we then preparing for possible military action in Iraq, Prime Minister?” "NO"

Secret papers leaked to The Sunday Telegraph show that Tony Blair lied to parliament and the British people over the Iraq war.

He insisted throughout 2002 that no military action was being contemplated, whereas in fact the decision had been taken (probably by George W Bush) in February of that year for a full-scale invasion and for regime change. Needless to say, the need to conceal this information from parliament and from all but a tiny number of officials meant that the planning was, to put it mildly, constrained. As a result, the invasion was under-resourced and lacking in cohesion, which caused significant risk to troops and critical failure in the post war period.

According to the Telegraph, some troops went to war with as little as five bullets, some had to deploy on civilian aircraft carrying their kit as hand luggage. Needless to say some troops had their weapons confiscated by the airport security staff. No. I’m not making it up, and I doubt very much that The Sunday Telegraph is either. Noddy and Toytown are two words that come readily to mind. Shameful and diabolical are two others, perhaps more appropriate.

The operation was so badly planned that commanders noted that the communications system stopped working around midday, because of the heat, and somewhere in the desert was found a container load of skis... yes SKIS!

The papers leaked to The Sunday Telegraph include transcripts of interviews with Army Officers in which they vent their frustration with Ministers and Whitehall Officials. They are revealed on the eve of the Chilcot Inquiry into the war and its aftermath.

It seems to me that it will be rather difficult to whitewash this one as effectively as has been done with so many things in the past. I urge everyone to give the full article a read as there is a great deal more than I have mentioned above, particularly concerning the lack of planning for a post war strategy.

The disrespect that this government has shown to parliament, to the people, but worst of all to our troops is astounding. For that, if for nothing else, they must be removed at the next election.